Format: Paperback, 149pp.
ISBN: 1584850841
Publisher: Pleasant Company Publications
Pub. Date: April  2000
Recommend Age Range: 12 and up

When Bessie's family is whisked away to New York City from North Carolina in the middle of the night-without her mother-Bessie must try to make sense of the changes in her life. Her search for answers leads her into the midst of the exciting Harlem Renaissance period of the late 1920s. She encounters artists, musicians, writers-and a woman rumored to have magical powers!

Format: Hardcover, 240pp.
ISBN: 0689838336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's
Pub. Date: February  2001
Edition Description: 1 ED
Recommend Age Range: 12 and up

"Come on Betty...Can't nobody stop us from winning, 'cause we fish," Keisha whispers fiercely to her friend. "I want you to swim. Come on...You and me, the first black girls going to the Olympics. Remember?"

For Betty, winning now means swimming upward from the depths of near-death. In the cold hum of the hospital, only Keisha can remember their dreams from earlier that summer, when she was to attend a premed vacation school at nearby Avery University. She had the grades for it. And her mama was determined to make it happen, no matter what. Keisha dreamed of being a doctor. Betty dreamed desperately of having a friend.

They were both at risk — at least that's the label Keisha gets slapped with when, instead of to Avery, she is sent to a high-minded, white-hearted urban rescue program for teens in poverty, or, as she figures it, born in sin. She is outraged to be thrown together with Clarissa, Phyllis, and Kimberly, but turns anger to something just as powerful — the will to prove her doubters wrong. For this she has friends beyond the family she knows — one ally especially. Plus Malik, Betty's watchful brother, who wants beauty to be there for everyone. Like the sky.

Born in Sin, which Keisha tells with straight-forward, often funny frankness, is part gritty drama, part victory lap, and all heart.

Format: Hardcover, 319pp.
ISBN: 0684831759
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Trade
Pub. Date: February  1998

"Girl Friend Gets Deep!
~Thumper AALBC.com

Atlanta journalist Patricia Conley's take on men has always been in reaction to a childhood of neglect: "There is an old saying that if you love a man, let him go, and if he loves you, he'll come back to you. I say hunt him down and kill him." Just when she'd thought she found someone who accepted her for the intelligent, fiercely independent martial artist that she is, her fiance disappears. But before Patricia can get her hands on him, someone else does - or so it seems. As she sets out to uncover just why Kenneth Lawson did her wrong (and who did him in), she encounters more than what she bargained for and finds herself on a treacherous path that leads to death for anyone who dares take it. In What a Woman's Gotta Do, Patricia, stumbles upon a plot that could devastate humanity. And if that isn't enough, she's hunted by the police for murder, by a crazed geneticist who thinks she knows too much, and by undercover cop Jeff Samuels, who claims to love her. Torn between his affection and the memory of Kenneth, Patricia awakens to realizations about what it means to be alone, and what it means to be independent.

Excerpt From Book:
Death is such a final thing. Maybe I would know death myself soon. What had Kenneth Lawson gotten me mixed up in? I could see images of Dr. Kia Mutota's body, bloody and oozing. I could hear the rumble of the train. I could smell the blood, and see it curdling like buttermilk. Three times I asked Jeff to pull over for me to throw up on the side of the road. Death was one thing I didn't stomach well.