Up to No Good by Carl Weber

There is always a man around the corner. And church trustee James Black should know—he’s usually that very man, carrying on affairs with married women and sleeping with one conquest after another. He has charm and good looks, and he knows how to use them. But when the tables turn and he suddenly finds himself in love with the woman of his dreams, he’s not the only one who’s surprised. And his marriage proposal quickly generates a ripple effect of shocking proportions...

The other women in James’s neighborhood have a thing or two to say about James’s new love. His daughter Jamie, only six months younger than his new fiancé, has every intention of dismantling his new relationship. But her plate becomes full when she discovers a mystery woman has been secretly calling her lover, Louis.

James’s son Darnel always swore he would not grow up to become a player like his father. His life is the picture of monogamy and devotion—until he catches his fiancée cheating and decides to follow in his father’s womanizing footsteps.

James knows he’s largely to blame for the turmoil that surrounds him and his loved ones. And now he’s going to have to find a way to bring peace to his loved one’s lives. But the only way he can do this is by facing some hard truths about himself and changing his own scandalous ways.

Basketball Jones by E. Lynn Harris

Aldridge James “AJ” Richardson is living the good life. He has a gorgeous town house in always-flavorful New Orleans, plenty of frequent-flier miles from jet-setting around the country on a whim, and an MBA—but he’s never had to work a regular job. He owes it all to his longtime lover, Dray Jones. Dray Jones the rich and famous NBA star. They fell in love in college when AJ was hired to tutor Dray, a freshman on the basketball team.

But Dray knew if he wanted to make it to the big time, he must juggle his public image and his private desires. Built on a deep, abiding love, their hidden relationship sustains them both, but when Dray’s teammates begin to ask insinuating questions about AJ, Dray puts their doubts to rest by marrying Judi, a beautiful and ambitious woman. Judi knows nothing about Dray’s “other life.” Or does she?

Freeman Walker by David Allan Cates

At the age of seven a mulatto slave boy with an indomitable spirit, Jimmy Gates, is freed by his owner-father, separated from his mother and everything he holds dear, and sent to England for an education. Four years later when his father drowns at sea, leaving him bereft, Jimmy is apprenticed to a London workhouse where he spends six hard years making saddles, reading heroic novels to his companions, finding the comfort of prostitutes, and discovering the inspirational speeches of an Irish revolutionary name Cornelius O Keefe, or O Keefe of the Sword.

At eighteen, dreaming himself a warrior and a hero, he returns to the states intending to rescue his mother. Both blessed and cursed by his late father s words-to-live-by and armed with his free papers and a copy of the Declaration of Independence, Jimmy grows into manhood while he s on the battlefields of the Civil War and in the gold camps of the American West, repeatedly forced to reckon the joys, terrors, and ironies of his freedom. He also discovers chameleon-like ability to shift identities and re-invent himself along the way.