In the Night of the Heat by Blair Underwood

Threatened with death after acquittal for murder, football superstar T. D. Jackson asks struggling actor and former gigolo Tennyson Hardwick for protection. Tennyson has a reputation in Hollywood after solving the murder of rapper Afrodite, but politely turns Jackson down: His acting career is taking off with a new series, and he's trying to work out his personal life after a series of wrong turns.

But Tennyson's life is upturned when his seedy past catches up to him on the set of his TV series. Then T. D. Jackson is found dead in his home, the victim of an apparent suicide.

T.D.'s gorgeous cousin, Melanie, is sure the superstar was murdered, and Jackson's family offers Tennyson an irresistible fee to discover the truth. But prying into T. D. Jackson's death means answering the question that divided a nation and destroyed a film star and a football icon's life and career: Did T. D. Jackson kill his wife?

When the investigation takes an unexpected turn toward the governor's mansion and a long-forgotten football game in the segregated South of the 1960s, Tennyson uncovers secrets tearing at the heart of two dynasties and must rely on all of his assets -- his actor's heart, deadly hands, profiler's mind, and every other part of his body -- to keep from dying next.

The Sacred Place by Daniel Black

In the summer of 1955, fourteen-year-old Clement enters a general store in Money, Mississippi, to purchase a soda. Unaware of the consequences of flouting the rules governing black-white relations in the South, the Chicago native defies tradition by laying a dime on the counter and turns to depart. Miss Cuthbert, the store attendant, demands that he place the money in her hand, but he refuses, declaring "I ain't no slave!" and exits with a sense of entitlement unknown to black people at the time. His behavior results in his brutal murder. This event sparks a war in Money, forcing the black community to galvanize its strength in pursuit of equality.

Going Down South by Bonnie J. Glover

When fifteen-year-old Olivia Jean finds herself in the “family way,” her mother, Daisy, who has never been very maternal, springs into action. Daisy decides that Olivia Jean can’t stay in New York and whisks her away to her grandmother’s farm in Alabama to have the baby–even though Daisy and her mother, Birdie, have been estranged for years. When they arrive, Birdie lays down the law: Sure, her granddaughter can stay, but Daisy will have to stay as well. Though Daisy is furious, she has no choice.

Now, under one little roof in the 1960s Deep South, three generations of spirited, proud women are forced to live together. One by one, they begin to lose their inhibitions and share their secrets. And as long-guarded truths emerge, a baby is born–a child with the power to turn these virtual strangers into a real, honest-to-goodness family.