The explosion of racial hate and violence in a small Alabama town is viewed by a little girl whose father defends a black man accused of rape.

Four children witness a confrontation between an elderly black man and a white storekeeper in rural Mississippi in the 1930s.

Jessilyn Lassiter no longer has to convince people she's not a child. Having just turned 19 in the summer of 1938, her love for Luke Talley has never been more real. And Luke is finally beginning to care for her in the way she's always dreamed of. But their budding romance is interrupted when Tal Pritchett-a young, black doctor-comes to Calloway, stealing the heart of Jessilyn's best friend, Gemma, and stirring up the racial prejudice that has been...

In Mississippi in the early 1900s ten-year-old David Logan's family generously shares their well water with both white and black neighbors in an atmosphere of potential racial violence.

Daniel Emerson lives with Kate Ellis, and he is like a father to her daughter, Ruby. But he cannot control his desire for Iris Davenport, the African-American woman whose son is Ruby's best friend. During a freak October blizzard, Daniel is stranded at Iris's house, and they begin a sexual liaison that eventually imperils all their relationships, Daniel's profession, their children's well-being, their own race-blindness, and their view of themselves...

The man at Charles Blakey's door has a proposition almost too strange for words. He wants to spend the summer in Charles' basement, and Charles cannot even begin to guess why. The beautiful house has been in the Blakey family for generations, but Charles has just lost his job and is behind on his mortgage payments. The money would be welcome. But Charles Blakey is black, and Anniston Bennet is white, and it is clear that the stranger wants more than...

Fifteen years ago, in 1975, Genna Hewett-Meade's college roommate died a mysterious, violent, terrible death. Minette Swift had been a fiercely individualistic scholarship student, an assertive-even prickly-personality, and one of the few black girls at an exclusive women's liberal arts college near Philadelphia. By contrast, Genna was a quiet, self-effacing teenager from a privileged upper-class home, self-consciously struggling to make amends for...

Dr Aziz is a young Muslim physician in the British Indian town of Chandrapore. One evening he comes across an English woman, Mrs Moore, in the courtyard of a local mosque; she and her younger travelling companion Adela are disappointed by claustrophobic British colonial culture and wish to see something of the 'real' India. But when Aziz kindly offers to take them on a tour of the Marabar caves with his close friend Cyril Fielding, the trip results...

From Dorothy West, the last surviving member of the Harlem Renaissance, The Wedding is an intimate glimpse into African American middle class. Set on bucolic Martha's Vineyard in the 1950s, this is the story of life in the Oval, a proud, insular community made up of the best and brightest of the East Coast's black bourgeoisie. Within this inner circle of "blue-vein society," we witness the prominent Coles family gather for the wedding of the loveliest...