Visiting her grandmother in the Louisiana bayou, ten-year-old Maddy begins to realize that she may be the only sibling to carry on the gift of her family's magical legacy.

"Only the living can make the world better. Live and make it better. Twelve-year-old Jerome is shot by a police officer who mistakes his toy gun for a real threat. As a ghost, he observes the devastation that's been unleashed on his family, his friend Carlos, and his community in the wake of what they see as an unjust and brutal killing. Jerome meets another ghost: Emmett Till. Emmett helps Jerome process what has happened, on a journey toward recognizing...

In 1870, Reconstruction brings big changes to the Louisiana sugar plantation where spunky ten-year-old Sugar has always lived, including her friendship with Billy, the son of her former master, and the arrival of workmen from China.

"Addy is haunted by the tragic fire that killed her parents, leaving her to be raised by her grandmother. Now, years later, Addy's grandmother has enrolled her in a summer wilderness program. There, Addy joins five other Black city kids--each with their own troubles--to spend a summer out west. Deep in the forest the kids learn new (and to them) strange skills: camping, hiking, rock climbing, and how to start and safely put out campfires. Most important,...

Spanning six decades of the 1800s, this mesmerizing story is a fictional biography of Marie Laveau--one of the most haunting characters in New Orleans' history. Part of a long line of voodoo priestesses and healers, Marie tells of the mystery, passion, and violence that pattern her life. Like her grandmother, Marie sees visions from an early age. She never knew her mother, who practiced a spiritualism so potent she was murdered by those who feared...

A writer's guide filled with practical guidance, essays, and journal exercises for the African-American writer including advice from E. Lynn Harris, Charles Johnson, and Yolanda Joe [that includes] a guide to all the elements necessary to crafting fiction: character development, point of view, plot, atmosphere, dialogue, diction, sentence variety, and revision. Writing techniques are taught using exercises, journaling, story examples, and analyses...

Jewell Parker Rhodes follows up her acclaimed Voodoo Dreams with a present-day mystery surrounding the gifts of an ancestor of the Voodoo Queen. Doctor Marie Levant can't explain why she's drawn to New Orleans, why it's comforting and unsettling at the same time. And she can't shake her haunting dreams. But when she delivers a dead woman's baby, Marie knows malevolent forces are at work-and it's up to her to stop them.

The second novel in Jewell Parker Rhodes' acclaimed Voodoo series, Yellow Moon finds New Orleans' preeminent voodoo practitioner hunting an African vampire -a wazimamoto. Marie Levant is tired of seeing corpses drained of blood arrive at the hospital each night, and tired of being haunted by their ghosts. It'll take all her skills to expel the deadly spirit.

During the land rush of 1889, African American Will and his father journey from Texas to Oklahoma, racing thousands of others to stake their claim.