Adenrele Ojo

A young mother finds refuge and friendship at a boardinghouse in 1960s Memphis, Tennessee, where family encompasses more than just blood and hidden truths can bury you or set you free. Sara King has nothing, save for her secrets and the baby in her belly, as she boards the bus to Memphis, hoping to outrun her past in Chicago. She is welcomed with open arms by Mama Sugar, a kindly matriarch and owner of the popular boardinghouse The Scarlet Poplar....

"Avery Keene is back, trying to get her feet on solid ground after unraveling a conspiracy that took down the President of the United States. But as the sparks of impeachment hearings and political skirmishes swirl around her, Avery is approached at a legal conference by Preston Davies, an unassuming young man and fellow law clerk to a federal judge in Idaho. Davies believes his boss, Judge Francesca Whitner, was being blackmailed in the days before...

Savvy Sheldon knows it's time for some renovations: her high-stress low-thanks job, her clueless boyfriend, and the falling-apart kitchen she inherited from her grandma. Starting from the outside in she tackles the kitchen, her relationship with her body, her work-life balance (or lack thereof) and, last but not least, her love life. It turns out that the contractor she hires is the same sexy stranger she unintentionally offended by judging based...

"For fifteen years August Sitwell has worked for the Barclays, a well-to-do white family who plucked him from an orphan asylum and gave him a job. The groundskeeper is part of the household's all-black staff, along with "Miss Mamie," the talented cook, pretty new maid Jennie Williams, and three young kitchen apprentices - the latest orphan boys Mr. Barclay has taken in to "civilize" - boys like August. But the Barclays' fortunes have fallen, and their...

"The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the Problem of race in America, and what he called "Double Consciousness," a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois's words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans--the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and...

Alabama, 1937. Bootlegging was Milton and Yvonne Hamilton's ticket out of poverty, prison time, and plain bad luck. Now they've moved on--to a bigger, richer pool of clientele--right in their own respectable new middle-class backyard. And their growing friendship with seemingly-perfect couple Joyce and Odell Watson is proving golden in more ways than one. As Milton soon learns, Odell is hiding an outside family and dubious business dealings. It's...

"It's 1924 South Carolina and the region is still recovering from the infamous boll weevil infestation that devastated the land and the economy. Gertrude, a mother of four, must make an unconscionable decision to save her daughters from starvation or die at the hands of an abusive husband. Retta is navigating a harsh world as a first-generation freed slave, still employed by the Coles, influential plantation proprietors who once owned her family....

"A heart-pounding, curvy romance about an indie bookstore owner who finds herself in a love triangle when she meets the author she's had a crush on for years ... and his best friend"-- "Zora has committed every inch of her life to establishing her thriving DC bookstore, making it into a pillar of the community, and she just hasn't had time for romance. But when a mystery author she's been crushing on for years agrees to have an event at her store,...

In this captivating Depression-era set novel by New York Times bestselling author Mary Monroe, two couples find their grudges endangering more than their Alabama small town's deceptive peace. When good-time couple Milton and Yvonne Hamilton moved one house over from the respectable-but-restless Odell and Joyce Watson, it was a fast friendship of shared secrets--and secret jealousies and betrayals. Their alliance was bound to crash and burn, but the...

In the stunning climax of New York Times bestselling author Mary Monroe's Lonely Heart, Deadly Heart series, the tension--and the heat--reach unforgettable heights as two restless women go after the ultimate satisfaction . . . and a killer desire prepares to strike . . . For best friends Lola Poole and Joan Proctor-Riley, there's never too much when it comes to online-dating rich, no-commitments lovers. It's a fantasy come true that makes their unhappy...