Sugar, a young prostitute arrives in Bigelow, Arkansas, to start her life over, far from her haunting past. She moves in next door to Pearl, who is still grieving for her daughter, murdered 15 years before. Over sweet-potato pie, an unlikely friendship begins.

The Bernice L. McFadden Collection features four novels from the three-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalis "McFadden works a kind of miracle--not only do her characters retain their appealing humanity; their story eclipses the bonds of history to offer continuous surprises." --New York Times, on Gathering of Waters "Riveting...so nicely avoids the sentimentality that swirls around the subject matter. I am as impressed by its structural strength as by the searing and expertly imagined scenes." --Toni Morrison, on The Warmest December "McFadden's lively and loving rendering of New York hews closely to the jazz-inflected city of myth....McFadden has a wonderful ear for dialogue, and her entertaining prose equally accommodates humor and pathos." --New York Times, on Glorious "An engrossing multigenerational saga...With her deep engagement in the material and her brisk but lyrical prose, McFadden creates a poignant epic of resiliency, bringing Sherry to a well-earned awareness of her place atop the shoulders of her ancestors, those who survived so that she might one day, too." --Publishers Weekly, on Nowhere Is a Place The Bernice L. McFadden Collection features four novels from the three-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist: Gathering of Waters (a New York Times Editors’ Choice and one of the 100 Notable Books of 2012), Glorious (2010), Nowhere Is a Place (2006), and The Warmest December (2001).

20th Anniversary Edition—with a New Foreword by Kimberly Elise A novel by a critically acclaimed voice in contemporary fiction, praised by Ebony for its “unforgettable images, unique characters, and moving story that keeps the pages turning until the end.” A young prostitute comes to Bigelow, Arkansas, to start over, far from her haunting past. Sugar moves next door to Pearl, who is still grieving for the daughter who was murdered fifteen years before. Over sweet-potato pie, an unlikely friendship begins, transforming both women's lives—and the life of an entire town. Sugar brings a Southern African-American town vividly to life, with its flowering magnolia trees, lingering scents of jasmine and honeysuckle, and white picket fences that keep strangers out—but ignorance and superstition in. To read this novel is to take a journey through loss and suffering to a place of forgiveness, understanding, and grace.

Having struggled throughout her life for an understanding of her identity, Sherry wonders at an uncharacteristic display of anger on the part of her mother and digs into her family's past throughout the course of a cross-country journey.

From award-winning author and creative writing professor at Tulane University comes an intimate and powerful memoir exploring inherited trauma, family secrets, and the enduring bonds of love between mothers and daughters. On her second birthday in 1967, Bernice McFadden died in a car crash near Detroit, only to be resuscitated after her mother pulled her from the flaming wreckage. Firstborn Girls traces her remarkable life from that moment up to the publication of her first novel, Sugar. Growing up in 1980s Brooklyn, Bernice finds solace in books, summer trips to Barbados, and boarding school to escape her alcoholic father. Discovering the works of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, she finally sees herself and her loved ones reflected in their stories of “messy, beautiful, joyful Black people.” Interwoven with Bernice's personal journey is her family's history, beginning with her four-times enslaved great-grandmother Louisa Vicey Wilson in 1822 Hancock County, Georgia. Her descendants survived Reconstruction and Jim Crow, joined the Great Migration, and mourned Dr. King’s assassination during the Civil Rights Movement. These women's wisdom, secrets, and fierce love are passed down like Louisa's handmade quilt. A memoir of many threads, Firstborn Girls is an extraordinarily moving portrait of a life shaped by family, history, and the drive to be something more.

Tass Hilson--the girlfriend of Emmett Till, who in real-life was a black boy murdered by a group of whites--leaves the town of Money, Mississippi, after Emmett's murder and relocates to Detroit where she lives out her life for 40 years, until something calls her back to Money, where she finds Emmett's spirit ready to rekindle their love. Simultaneous. 10,000 first printing.

The long-awaited reissue of McFadden’s best-selling second novel praised by Toni Morrison, USA Today, Washington Post, and others—published simultaneously with McFadden’s new novel Gathering of Waters. “McFadden’s reissued second novel takes an unflinching look at the corrosive nature of alcoholism . . . This is not a story of easy redemption . . . McFadden writes candidly about the treacherous hold of addiction.” —Publishers Weekly “Riveting . . . so nicely avoids the sentimentality that swirls around the subject matter. I am as impressed by its structural strength as by the searing and expertly imagined scenes.” —Toni Morrison, author of Beloved For Kenzie, growing up in the Lowe household means opening the bottom drawer of her father’s dresser to choose which belt she’ll be whipped with that night, furtive trips to the Bee Hive liquor store for her father’s vodka, and dreaming of the day she can escape apartment 5A. Buoyed by the lyrical, redemptive voice that characterizes McFadden’s writing, The Warmest December tells the powerful, deeply moving story of one Brooklyn family and the alcoholism and abuse that marked the years of their lives. Narrated by Kenzie Lowe, a young woman reminiscent of Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John, the story moves fluidly between the past and the present as she visits her dying father and finds that choices she once thought beyond her control are very much hers to make. The Warmest December is ultimately a cathartic tale of hope, healing, and forgiveness.

During WWII, two African American musicians are captured by the Nazis in Paris and imprisoned at the Buchenwald concentration camp.

This powerful sequel to Bernice L. McFadden’s bestselling debut Sugar follows a young African-American woman back to her Arkansas hometown, where she must confront difficult truths about her parentage and a curse in her family’s past. When Sugar Lacey returns to Short Junction to find the aunts who raised her, she hopes they will be able to tell her the truth about her parents. What she discovers is not just a terrible story of unrequited love, but also a tale of black magic that has cursed generations of Lacey women. Armed with newfound knowledge and strength in the face of adversity, Sugar must push through the pain to find her absent father and discover the truth about the curse that has befallen her family line in hopes of breaking it before she passes it on to her own child. A powerfully realized novel that brings back the unforgettable characters from Sugar, This Bitter Earth is a testament to the ultimate triumph of the human spirit.

A young woman must learn to love and trust again after experiencing the brutality of ritual servitude in West Africa. —Longlisted for the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction —A Black Caucus of the American Library Association 2019 Honor title, Fiction “McFadden, writer of great, imaginative novels for years now (including Sugar and Gathering of Waters), is back with one of her best yet. Exploring ritual sacrifice in contemporary West Africa, Praise Song offers a fascinating, painful glimpse into a world beyond America’s shores, filled with tragedy and love and hope.” —Entertainment Weekly, One of 20 New Books to Read in August “The novel has a timeless quality; McFadden is a master of taking you to another time and place. In doing so, she raises questions surrounding the nature of memory, what we allow to thrive, and what we determine to execute . . . McFadden brings the sweeping drama of her earlier works — The Book of Harlan, Glorious, Gathering of Waters — into this small book, and reminds me of the gentle fierceness of Edwidge Danticat’s writing.” —Los Angeles Review of Books Abeo Kata lives a comfortable, happy life in West Africa as the privileged nine-year-old daughter of a government employee and stay-at-home mother. But when the Katas’ idyllic lifestyle takes a turn for the worse, Abeo’s father, following his mother’s advice, places the girl in a religious shrine, hoping that the sacrifice of his daughter will serve as atonement for the crimes of his ancestors. Unspeakable acts befall Abeo for the fifteen years she is held in the shrine. When she is finally rescued, broken and battered, she must struggle to overcome her past, endure the revelation of family secrets, and learn to trust and love again. In the tradition of Chris Cleave’s Little Bee, this novel is a contemporary story that offers an eye-opening account of the practice of ritual servitude in West Africa. Spanning decades and two continents, Praise Song for the Butterflies will break you heart and then heal it.