National Network for Equitable Library Service

In pre-apocalyptic 1990s Los Angeles, Michelle, a queer artist and writer, must make the most of the time she has left before the world ends.

From three big names in urban fiction comes this collection of novellas, unforgettable stories of urban love and its consequences for four young black women: Flirting with Disaster by Tracy Brown, Wild Cherry by K'wan, and Twice in a Lifetime by Angel Mitchell.

After news of the attempted murder of his fiancee, Gucci, Animal makes it to Miami, but getting to New York is trickier. A New Orleans refugee named Diamonds offers help and something more valuable: the name of the man who shot Gucci--but the information comes at a price.

Diamonds and Pearl is a gritty, compelling novel from #1 Essence bestselling author K'wan.They say that good girls like bad boys, and this was especially true for Pearl Stone, a child born of privilege to a drug baron and reputed killer known in the streets as Big Stone. Although the flashy, fast-paced nature of the streets calls to Pearl, she's been brought up to look but not touch.

Linda is a young, hardworking single mom struggling to get by from paycheck to paycheck. When she learns that her son Dre needs a kidney transplant, her family's already precarious financial situation takes a turn for the worst. Then she discovers that the only one who can help Dre is his half-brother LeVon, a drug-dealing gangbanger who thinks only of himself. Somehow Linda must get through to LeVon in order to save her son.

This ebook bundle offers three gritty urban tales by William Kowalski. In The Barrio Kings, Rosario Gomez struggles to stay out of the gang life that killed his brother while finishing his high school diploma and preparing for the birth of his first son. But when his old friend Juan gets out of jail, his past returns to haunt him. In The Way It Works, A young bi-racial man who suddenly finds himself homeless, struggles to maintain his dignity and to make his own place in the world.

In the Cote-de-Negre area of Montreal, the first stop for many new immigrants, live people of more than 100 nationalities, Marcelo, the sensitive son of Chilean refugees, and Cleo, a shy boy from Haiti, find friendship on the track, winning a major relay race together. Years later, in the same streets, two violent gangs, the Latino Power and the Bad Boys, confront each other, and their leaders must decide whether they will be united by their childhood friendship, or divided by race...

Just like any dysfunctional family reunion, loyalty, love, and good times soon turn to bitterness, regret, and promises to never see one another again. At the end of the day, the Banks sisters are no different than any other family in the city of Richmond-other than the fact that they are rotten to the core. Sure, the girls are bonded by D.N.A, but they're also tied together because of their past of robbing banks, extortion, drug dealing, and even cold-blooded murder. However, that bond means absolutely nothing to them.

Scarred by poverty and life with a crackhead mother, Onika Lewis had a rough start. Still, thanks to her sharp mind, and hard work, she graduated with honors from a prestigious college. But her achievements weren't enough to earn her the elite status she craved. So she leveraged her gorgeous looks to become a rich man's trophy.and was eventually dumped for a younger model. Now Onika is unemployed, broke-and homeless.

She won't back down. She'll never stop. And in this seductive, suspenseful novel, one gorgeous sister puts her future on the line for the exploited-even as her past and present collide, threatening to take her out. Tyesha Couvillier will never forget the rip-offs and brutal treatment she endured as a sex worker. So as the new director of the groundbreaking Lower East Side Women's Health Clinic, she'll take on the Ukranian mob and corrupt strip club bosses to stop local exotic dancers from being pressured into selling sex.