Mallette worked part-time as a Federal Perkins Loan Coordinator at Medgar Evers College, part of the City University of New York, in Brooklyn, N.Y. from 1989 to 1996 while she wrote fiction in her spare time. Six months ago, she gave up working as a health-study interviewer at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. to devote herself full-time to writing. She lives in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, with her husband and son. She is hard at work on her next book.

Read an Interview with Gloria Mallette (August 2007) by DuEwa M. Frazier
 

Read an AALBC.com Chat Transcript with Gloria Mallette

Living, Breathing Lies
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Breathe a lie, live a lie. That's what Nadirah Lewis learns when she uncovers the stunning lie she was forced to live for seventeen years. Nadirah was twelve years old when she was blamed for crippling her Aunt Stephanie. Guilt and her trust fund kept Nadirah a prisoner in Stephanie's home and the object of Stephanie's cruel tongue, but it took another vicious lie and a threat to Nadirah's career as a teacher to infuse her with the energy to fight back. Nadirah's fight, however, is not just for herself. It is also for one of her young students, Bree Morrison.

When Bree is hospitalized after drinking a near fatal dose of poison, Nadirah petitions the Administration for Child Services for guardianship. Bree's mother has inexplicably disappeared, and what Bree won't say is what Nadirah needs to hear before Bree's aunt Erma, a she-devil on wheels, wins the custody battle. Erma, the soon-to-be ex-wife of Austin Gray, Nadirah's handsome new landlord, and close friend of Lynn, Nadirah's cousin, lets Nadirah know in no uncertain terms that she will never get Bree or her husband. But what unforgivable lie does Erma live that could stop her cold yet devastate all around her? And Lynn, as well put together and as orderly as her life is, what shameful lie lurks behind her picturesque suburban doors? While the revelation of many of the lies give Nadirah the courage to find herself, she must accept the fact that those same lies may well destroy the lives of those closest to her. Unveil the shocking, real life truths of Living, Breathing Lies.

If There Be Pain

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From acclaimed author Gloria Mallette comes a story of a man living his wildest dreams and confronting his worst nightmares.

Kyle Lawson has everything—a beautiful house in Brooklyn, a successful business, and more women than most men encounter in a lifetime. Yet marriage is nowhere on his horizon, despite pressure from his mother and several of his girlfriends. But just when Kyle thinks things couldn’t get any better, his life takes a turn for the worse—a whole lot worse.

After the death of his Native American grandfather, Kyle begins experiencing terrifying dreams that leave him in both physical and mental pain. As if the dreams—or nightmares—weren’t bad enough, his mother is pressuring him to stop screwing around, his gay sister wants him to impregnate her life partner, and several of his lovers decide he’s the one.

Desperate to regain control of his life, Kyle seeks the advice of a tarot reader, who warns him that danger lies in one of his lovers. Kyle thinks severing all ties with his women will end his problems, but he quickly learns life is not that simple, and if he wants to live, he has to get himself together—or die trying.

What's Done in the Dark
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From the moment Celeste Dawson was born, her big sister, Katrina, had it in for her. And as much as Celeste yearned for Katrina’s love, the sibling rivalry only got worse. For Celeste, the ultimate betrayal came when she was seventeen, and Katrina seduced her boyfriend. That was the day Celeste gave up trying for any kind of friendship with her sister. Now the two are grown, married, and leading separate lives. Until tragedy strikes.

When her husband is found murdered in a seedy motel room in a very compromising position, Celeste is devastated. Rather than comfort her, Katrina is more than happy to suggest that Celeste wasn’t properly “taking care of” her man. But the tables soon turn as Katrina’s husband falls into a coma from an illness no one knew he had. And that’s not the only surprise. A second wife soon comes out of the woodwork, looking to stake her claim. Oblivious as ever, Celeste’s parents want her to help Katrina fight back—even as she’s looking for her own husband’s killer.

Blindsided as she is by grief, Celeste can’t help wondering: now that she and Katrina are finally on the same side of pain—will blood finally become thicker than a history of jealousy and deceit?

When We Practice to Deceive
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ISBN: 0870678655
Format: Mass Market Paperback, 224pp
Pub. Date: December 1995
Publisher: Holloway House Publishing Company
 

When We Practice to Deceive: Two Female Lawyers Face Each Other in Court. One Is Angry That Her Opponent Is Passing for White

A deadly courtroom battle becomes a real-life nightmare for two women, both lawyers, one black, one passing for white. Gloria Mallette spins a suspenseful tale as the surface calm begins to crack with plot twists and turns leading to a shocking truth.

Distant Lover
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After vowing never to live in her father's house again, Tandi Crawford finds her failed marriage has brought her and her young son back to that same dusty doorstep. It's been eighteen years since Tandi left home and by now she's learned that life has a way of making one eat one's words...and of making old memories return with a vengeance. When her fantasy of getting together with a boy she hasn't seen in more than twenty years unexpectedly becomes a reality, she discovers the relationship is every bit as exciting and passionate as she dreamed. Yet nothing else in her world seems to be what she imagined. Tandi wants answers to questions that have haunted her--from the enigma surrounding her mother's demise, to her father's emotional distance, to her husband's coldness, and to her lover's unquenchable heat. Each step closer to the truth reveals its own secrets--secrets that will change Tandi's life.

The Honey Well
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Money has put Arnell Rayford’s mother, Ester, exactly where she’s always wanted to be—comfortably ensconced in the sixteen-room Victorian mansion where her own mother had worked as a housekeeper. Now she’s running a thriving business that’s surely making the previous owner turn in her grave. For Ester, money is the root of all happiness, and nothing and no one will stand in the way of her making it however she wants to make it—not even her only child.
While some may call Ester’s live-in employees prostitutes, she prefers to call them “ladies of charm”—or tenants, if the police come sniffing around. There are no laws against renting out rooms, after all. Of course, there are laws against pimping one’s own underage daughter. It’s a devastating secret Arnell and Ester have kept for years—years that have brought them far from the poverty they suffered after Arnell’s father died.

But Ester’s greed simply replaces one kind of suffering with another. No amount of money can make up for the trauma and shame she’s forced upon her daughter. And despite Ester’s promise that Arnell can quit after college, it seems she’s never quite free of her mother’s grasp. Ester calls the job “favors,” but Arnell knows them for what they are: demands couched in blackmail.

Now that Arnell is engaged to a pillar of the community, Ester’s latest favor may well send her over the edge—but she won’t be going alone. Because while Ester is holding her daughter’s past overhead, her own life is coming back to haunt her—a life where the lines between love and hate, parent and child, sex, profit—and even murder—have been irreparably, dangerously blurred…

Promises to Keep
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Shades of Jade
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Format: Paperback, 272pp.
ISBN: 0375757430
Publisher: Random House, Incorporated
Pub. Date: June 19, 2001

Reviewed by Thumper
I was debating on whether I should start this review by writing All Hail The New Queen. Why not? I‘ll only live once, so, All Hail The New Queen of AA mystery/suspense Gloria Mallette! Mallette has written the best, THE BEST, mystery/suspense novel that I have read in years! Shades of Jade is an ass-wiper! It’s a fast-paced mystery/suspense novel that has one hell of an ending! Oh yeah, Miss Ann, this one is for you!

A little background: Marissa is a young AA woman that dates only married men. Right now Marissa is involved with three married men: Terrance, who Marissa believes is the love of her life; Louis, who gives money gifts and of the insatiable sexual appetite; and Wayne, who’s more of a dinner and theatre companion than a lover. Marissa’s close friend Charmaine and sister Denise have warned Marissa about fooling with married men, that one day she’s going to run into a wife that don’t play the sharing game. That day has arrived. Marissa starts receiving phone calls in which a woman calls her a slut and warns her to stay away from her man…or else. Marissa’s world is soon turned upside down when the threats turns physical. Marissa’s life is in danger and if she doesn’t find the wife doing this to her, she’s going to be dead. Oddly, enough the man who’s willing to help Marissa is Levi, a man who Marissa considers beneath her. Will Marissa and Levi discover who’s making these phone calls? Will Marissa survive long enough to know the truth?

As I stated above, Shades of Jade is an ass-wiper! I didn’t think it would be. When I started the novel, I thought, Oh, another you-go-girl book. Within the first twenty pages, I changed that thought. What I read in Shades of Jade was a mystery/suspense novel in the vein that made Mary Higgins Clark and Joy Fielding rich and famous. I dare say that Mallette has even topped Mary Higgins Clark in my book. One of my favorite mystery/suspense novels is Clark’s Loves Music, Loves To Dance. Shades of Jades is easily the better book. The novel read like a movie. Mallette developed her characters and the storyline so well that I had no problem envisioning the unfolding action.

I’m not going to even hint the ending that would spoil the book FOR REAL! What I will say about the ending is that it was MAGNIFICIENT, DA BOMB, and any other colloquialism you want to attach to it.

You all know that I love mysteries. They’re my favorite type of books. For the last few years I haven’t been able to read as many as I would have liked, but I adore them. I’m saying all this to say that I’m not easily fooled when it comes to an ending. Years of reading mystery and accurately pinpointing the killer or guilty party within the first twenty pages is a skill one develops, or would like to think he does *smile*. I’m at the point where it’s a game, a Name That Tune-type of game. Chuck, I can guess that killer in 15 pages. Well, Chuck, I can name the killer in 10 pages. Miss Ann, I know you know what I’m talking about. With Shades Of Jade, I had no idea! I was shocked! I was so shocked that I started screaming at the top of my lungs. A friend of mine read it, started screaming and threw the book across the room. There are not too many books that will cause two grown men to scream at a book. This one did.

Needless to say, I highly recommend Shades of Jade. As my friend told me, drop whatever it is you’re reading and read Shades of Jade. Yes, the book is that good. Yes, the book is that tight. After reading it, you’ll want call hail Gloria Mallette too!

Related Links

Gloria Mallette Web SIte
http://www.gloriamallette.com/

 COME TOMORROW
http://usatoday.com/life/books/openbook_come-tomorrow.htm

A novella by Gloria Mallette on the USA Today website , Karla, after 15 years, is forced to come back home to confront her past in the eyes of the daughter she never knew. Check it out!
 

 

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