She Had it Coming by Mary Monroe

If there's one thing Dolores Reese knows, it's how to keep a secret. It's a skill she learned early in life, watching her best friend Valerie Proctor do whatever it took to protect her family from her violent stepfather. Back then, Dolores was in foster care-just like Floyd Watson, a local boy who intrigues Dolores from the moment they meet. Even in high school, Dolores knows with certainty that she and Floyd are soul mates. When one bad decision sends an innocent Floyd to prison for life, Dolores pays clandestine visits and-out of a mix of love and pity-promises to stick by him.

While Floyd's world stands still, Dolores's horizons open up in exciting new ways when she lands a position working for a cruise line. There, she meets Paul Dunne, an accomplished businessman who promises her the kind of future she's always wanted-the kind she once imagined having with Floyd. Dolores is sure she can continue to visit Floyd without revealing that she's now married to another man. But when Floyd is suddenly freed on new evidence, Dolores is torn and makes a fateful decision-to live a double lie, devoting herself to two different husbands in two different cities.

Satisfied with Nothin' by Ernest Hill

Jamie Ray Griffin is among the first students to integrate his local high school in 1970s rural Louisiana15 years after court-imposed desegregation. Despite harassment, Jamie internalizes his anger much better than does his best friend, Booger, whose volatile temper leads to a riot on the first day of school. Jamie's athletic abilities earn him a starring role on the football team and the apparent respect of local residents. Yet when his cousin is caught dating a white girl, Jamie witnesses a brutal assault and lynching, which he vows never to forget.

In pursuit of a pro football career, he attends a local black university; while struggling to balance academics and increasing athletic demands, he falls in love with Stacy Lefere, an accomplished, upper-class black woman. His exploitive coaches drive others to quit, but Jamie, intent on a pro career, plays hard while his grades slide. When a crippling injury ends his chances to remain in college, Jamie is overlooked in the NFL draft and fails in a subsequent tryout as a free agent when his knee again collapses. Unable to accept Stacy's love, and with academic failureabetted by counselors who urge him to take "bowling" and "sports injuries"a near certainty, he returns to a low-paying job at home

Yellow Moon by Jewell Parker Rhodes

A medicine woman with her feet in two worlds battles evil in present-day New Orleans. Marie Levant is "the right doctor for a weird death." She's an ER doctor at a charity hospital who shares a bloodline with legendary voodoo queen Marie Laveau. The reluctant voodooienne is fiercely protective of what's hers, including her toddler Marie-Claire and a pooch named Kind Dog.

But the single mother has needs, too, which she pursues unabashedly in the Big Easy's rhythmic jazz clubs. After she sees a musician possessed during a performance, she suspects something dark has invaded her city. Next she weighs in on a series of bizarre murders whose victims include a drummer, a dock worker and a prostitute with puncture marks; the three have been drained of all their blood. To unearth the truth behind the horrifying deaths, Marie agrees to help Daniel Parks, a dedicated but open-minded homicide detective who doesn't mind Levant's unusual methods if they help him catch a killer. "This world, the next," he declares. "Don't matter. Murder is still murder."

One in a Million by Kimberla Lawson Roby

Kennedi Mason thinks she's the luckiest woman on earth. She loves her job, she has a wonderful best friend, and she's been married for ten years to her soul mate. There's nothing she can think of that could make her life any better.

Then one fateful day Kennedi receives a piece of news that will turn her world upside down. She's excited about it, and she knows that her husband, Blake, will be over the moon. He has always dreamed of this one thing happening, and she can't wait until he comes home so she can tell him.

But when she sees Blake that evening, he has a special announcement of his own. It shocks Kennedi into silence and wipes the admission she was planning to make right out of her mind. In an instant, her life and her marriage have changed, but not at all in the way that she had expected.