"Not since Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine has such a powerful and urgent Native American voice exploded onto the landscape of contemporary fiction. Tommy Orange's There There introduces a brilliant new author at the start of a major career. "We all came to the powwow for different reasons. The messy, dangling threads of our lives got pulled into a braid--tied to the back of everything...

"A dazzling, unforgettable novel about a young Black woman who walks the streets of Oakland and stumbles headlong into the failure of its justice system-a debut that announces a blazingly original voice. Kiara Johnson and her brother Marcus are barely scraping by in a squalid East Oakland apartment complex that calls itself, optimistically, the Royal-Hi. Both have dropped out of high school, their family fractured by death and prison. But while Marcus...

Six years ago, Moss Jefferies' father was murdered by an Oakland police officer. Along with losing a parent, the media's vilification of his father and lack of accountability has left Moss with near crippling panic attacks. Now, in his sophomore year of high school, Moss and his fellow classmates find themselves increasingly treated like criminals in their own school. New rules. Random locker searches. Constant intimidation and Oakland Police Department...

A hard-boiled detective tale full of talking animals and murder, from the award-winning author of Motherless Brooklyn and The Arrest.

Gumshoe Conrad Metcalf has problems—there's a rabbit in his waiting room and a trigger-happy kangaroo on his tail. Near-future Oakland is a brave new world where evolved animals are members of society, the police monitor citizens by their karma levels, and mind-numbing drugs

...

Bestselling author Eric Jerome Dickey's creations “have enough sultry self-confidence to suggest, at their best, a Prince song on paper” (The New York Times). Now, he puts a twist on the love triangle in this sexy, searing, and wise novel.
Nicole made a bold move by dumping her fiance at the altar. From there, she's built a successful career, relocated north to Oakland, and fallen in love all over again—this time...

When Genie Lo learns of a cosmos-threatening force while the Jade Emperor is absent, she leads a party of quarrelsome Chinese gods through multiple planes of reality on a quest that will require sacrifice, not strength.

“You done lived a tough life, boy, and I know I’m part responsible for that. I ain’t askin’ you to excuse me or forgive me. Just know I did the best I knew to do. I was just tryin’ to make you tough enough to deal with the world. To stand tall among men, I knew you had to be strong and have yo’ own mind.”
“You were preparing me for war, Grandfather.”
Guy Johnson, the author of the...

When the Oakland coroner's office uncovers a body buried in a shallow grave in the outskirts of the city, homicide sergeant Matt Sinclair expects to find a drug dealer caught in the crosshairs of a turf war. Instead, the victim is identified as Phil Roberts, the commander of the police department's intelligence unit and Sinclair's former partner. Police brass want to pin the murder on a dead member of an outlaw motorcycle gang and they want the case...

Billy: dead. Felicia: missing.
None of the words made sense together, but the doom I'd expected announced itself. I felt iron in my mouth, like I'd gargled with pennies, a taste like blood, a bitter taste that always followed bad news.
The setting is Oakland, 1989; the crack epidemic is at its height and turf wars are brewing. Maceo Redfield, currently on hiatus from college, is walking a fine line between respectability and involvement in Oakland's...

A gang of young African American boys struggle to hold a few blocks of bleak turf in Oakland when a 16-year-old drug dealer instigates a fight with them. But the dealer's unwilling bodyguard emerges as the key player in a drama that illuminates America's urban reality in a totally fresh way.