Black Kindle is Back and still in the Lunatic Asylum

NUMBER 115

Poor Oprah!! Poor Billionaire Oprah!!! Her OWN network is sinking.  Her interview with Whitney Houston’s daughter and the woman in South Carolina who drowned her two boys by dumping her car, with them in it, in a lake and killing them.  Does Oprah think that is going to help her get more people to sign up for expensive cable to watch OWN?  If she is going to go that far and interview a deranged woman, (I really feel sorry for that woman.  Stories are coming out that the father of the two kids didn’t care or paid any child support; not surprising, and the mother mentally abused her.  You would snap over and over again, too!)  Why don’t Oprah interview Zimmerman and the parents of Trayvon Martin? Why don't she interview me!!  I got some faith driven, loving and hard core stories to tell her!! Why don’t she face the fact and come back to daytime television?  I told that woman to not leave TV, do the OWN cable station on the side.  You got enough money to pay somebody to take care of it until it starts making money.  But no, she did not read my e-mails, letters or accept my phone calls.  I told that woman to listen to me!!  Damn, now it’s plummeting.  Not like BET, oh, no way.  We can’t have booty hootchie girls shaking their buts and rumbling them against young men!!   What are we thinking trying to sink that!!!  (Sarcasm!!!!)  

Oh, I’m just tired.  I know you have wondered where the hell have I’ve been.  I’ll tell you where I’ve been.  From my last posting on March 11, I have worked from 5:30 am until 6 or 9:30 pm and still going.  I was able to take Saturday off from the part time job because I paid $40.00 to attend a dance/fundraiser/Motown function.  It was nice watching people from 18 to 80 years old wearing items they brought or wore in the 60s and 70s.  Watching Soul Train on the monitor.  An older gentlemen wore a plaid pants suit of checkered orange and black, which I know he wore in the 70s and it still fits him.  I won a dance contest.  Nothing much, but fun.  I won a CD, which I proceeded to give away since I don’t have a CD player only a iPod.  Wow, how times have changed.  Then there was the “exposed woman”.  Ms. Exposed wore a long yellow gown with white fringes around the sleeves, with a long, and I mean long, slit up the side.  It was damn high.  You did not have to look hard or salaciously to tell she had no slip or panties on and it was very, very sheer.  “I see London, I see France, I don’t see no underpants!!!”  Hey, what ever bumps you the right way and get the attention you want, who am I to I complain.  

On to the “loony bin” in my world.   As each weekend I worked, I got better at juggling both jobs.  Not as tired and was able to continue getting a good night sleep, eat right and walk the dog, on top of working a full time job.  I have worked part time jobs before, but this was different.  I've worked part time at book stores to buy books for my daughter and I and I taught at a local small tech school.  After a  few weeks into this job, they asked me if I could work Wednesday thru Sunday.  The second manager, Leslie, became ill and would be out for a week.  Man, that week wore me out.”  Julie, the third manager, who I met when I met Jake, helped and started showing me the short cuts in order to get us out 15 minutes after the store closed instead of the usual ½ hour or more when I worked only with Jake.  You see, Jake constantly second guessed himself which caused us to stay longer because he always forgot something.  When I closed with Julie, she didn’t care as much and just wanted to get out fast to go and party. 

I could not blame her.  She was young, about 24 years old, very soft spoken with a sweet personality.  She was also white with a black boyfriend.  Have you noticed so far that some of these women I work with are white with black boyfriend/husband/live-in or whatever?  As I told you, or maybe I haven’t,  the senior manager, Kat, was either married/living with a black guy and they have two kids.  She was always complaining about her “hubby” and the kids.  Each month I would hear a different story about them.  First, the young man was going into the Military.  Then the young lady was in high school and doing well.  Next month, the boy hurt himself while playing baseball and did not pass the military physical.  The girl became sick and dropped out of school.  The ailments, I never figured it out because it changed week by week.  

One early Monday morning around 3am, Kat called the second manager, Leslie, and asked her to come and open the store because she had to take her daughter to the hospital.  By the time I returned to work that Friday, Leslie was still pissed because Kat’s daughter was not sick, but had run away from home.  Jessica, one of the other cashiers, told me the real story.  Kat's daughter did not run away, she just didn't want to come in that day.  I’m telling you each week Kat told me a different story about her family.  Leslie, Jake and Julie would then proceed to tell me differently.  I just never knew what to believe and I just believed.  I didn’t have proof only talk, so I did not judge, just listen.  Until, she lied about having Breast cancer.  That did it for me and I never believed anything that ever came out of her mouth.  You don’t lie about cancer.  At any time.  It just too stupid and you never know what’s in store for you, your family or friends.   Ah! my wonderful world of the "loony bin.”  It only gets crazier as time goes by. 

On to books: 

CHERIS HODGES - RECIPE FOR DESIRE - $4.79 - - - At twenty-seven, Marie Charles is still Charlotte's number one party girl. But when she adds a DWI arrest and a totaled Jaguar to her list of tabloid news-making escapades, her daddy is done bailing her out. Sentenced to five hundred hours of community service at My Sister's Keeper, a homeless shelter for women, Marie won't have much time left for partying. 

Renowned chef and TV star Devon Harris volunteers at My Sister's Keeper. And he's not happy Marie is joining him. He may be single--and she may be gorgeous--but the last thing he's interested in is a superficial southern belle. But as Marie outgrows the selfish girl she was, Devon is turned on by the woman she's becoming.  

Recipe for Desire

VERONICA E.KELLY - DON’T TELL YOUR COUSIN - $2.99 - - - A tale of a twisted and steamy love triangle involving two cousins and a married man, a grisly love affair full of deceit, mayhem, and shameful women. As the mountain of lies come tumbling down and the drama unfolds, Amanda is forced to hold a mirror to herself and come to terms with a reflection she struggles to accept. 

Don't Tell Your Cousin

BEVERLY JENKINS - A WISH AND A PRAYER - $9.99 - - - I am a big an of Ms.Jenkins.  She will at the John Dart Library in Charleston, SC in May discuss her books.  If you are in the Charleston area, come celebrate the 85th Anniversary of the first free public library for African-Americans.  They will be having book signing, children shows and many other activities throughout the year.  


Anyone worried that living in a small town could be boring certainly hasn't lived in Henry Adams, Kansas. From the wealthy divorcee who saved this historic town founded by freed slaves to the romantic entanglements that have set tongues wagging and hearts fluttering (and everything in between), there's plenty to keep the lovably eccentric townsfolk busy.

Preston Miles is happy living with his foster parents, but an e-mail from his maternal grandmother is about to change all that.  Riley Curry, the former town mayor, is convinced his pet hog, Cletus, acted in self-defense when he sat on, and killed, a man. Now Riley just has to prove it in a court of law, and as for Rocky, she has already had a lifetime of hurt. Will she risk opening her heart—and her life—to Jack?

Warm, funny, poignant, and unforgettable, Beverly Jenkins's latest excursion to Henry Adams is a true delight—a welcome return to a place that always feels like home.

A Wish and a Prayer: A Blessings Novel

RASHEED CARTER - SUCKA FOR LOVE - $2.99 - - - Sucka for love is a riveting experience of romance, drama, love gone wrong, friends, loyalty, and one man’s search for meaning. Follow Tommy as his life unfolds right before your eyes. Feel his confusion as he wrestles with loving the woman of his dreams and the struggles that come with it. Tommy is quick witted, on top of his game, and associated with two of the most hardened villains in the streets. Hope is beautiful, savvy, and in love with fun, having a good time, and driving Tommy crazy. Find out why one of the most influential players in the streets is no match for Hope as she makes him a sucka for love every time. 

Sucka for love

Got to get one in for Black History Year

Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on one of the twentieth century's most jarring literary events. 
       

Black Kindle - They are talking about interracial dating again!!!

NUMBER 114

I just read on the Huffpost Books about Flight attendants on the weirdest and craziest passengers.  Some things passengers have done: need help putting on a bra, freaking out because their turkey sausage touched their scrambled eggs and other crazy things. The one that got me laughing was a passenger told a flight attendant that she has nice legs and then asked if they (probably a man), could lick them.  Now that's crazy. Just thought I’d give something think about…now Let’s slide right on in to another set of crazies… the continuing story of, "Drama at Part Time Job in Asylum.”

I have not worked part time in a few years and when on the first day I got home from that job, I was bone tired.  My schedule was Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights and I wondered if I would be able to do it, but I knew, I had an agenda and would struggle through.  I learned what needed to be done and by the Sunday night, I had everything down.  On those weekends, I worked with Jake and he made me laugh.  He had a bad habit of flying his hands up in the air and mumbling some incoherent words when a customer ordered something.  He fulfilled the order fine and when the customer left from either the front or drive thru, he had a funny name to call them.  Cockroaches, runts, etc.  I asked him why?  They seem OK to me and I didn’t care who or what the customer looked or talked like, I just made sure I was professional and courteous to them.  He wasn’t discourteous, he just hated his job.  He felt bad that at his age he was working a minimum paid job. He was the type of man who bad mouthed his wife, whom he called a “bi-polar bitch.” He would bad mouth his daughter, who at 18, dropped out of high school, did not work and got hooked on drugs.  They also lived in one of those “hotels” where you paid by the week.  Not the business type of hotel, you know the one, where displaced or homeless or even students attending one of those “colleges” that helps you get a medical or computer programming certificate.  I know about those students because I use to teach at a “college” like that and they lived right across the street in one of those “hotels”.  They signed a contract with the school for thousands of dollars.  Usually they did have a job somewhere and attended at night.  Some students were paid legally, some paid under the table.  It was probably easier for so many of them to be paid under the table.

It breaks my heart that we have so many people living like this and working at minimum paid jobs to just survive, but then again, it breaks my heart to see so many people who just don’t care and live day to day on who or what they can get for free. 

Another reason I enjoyed working with Jake is that he used to play trivial questions with me. I enjoyed listening to him, when he wasn’t mumbling and complaining about his wife and kid. He made me laugh when he was flaring his arms up and down, showing missing front teeth, wearing crooked glasses, stringy gray hair, but his brown eyes lit up when he played the trivial games.  I don’t think he thought of me in a romantic way, but he admitted to me that he liked me from the first time he met me.  He had always told me he just had a good feeling that I would fit in and actually work hard and he appreciated that since, as he stated many times, these people who work here are cockroaches, lazy and stupid. 

I did not understand at first why he stayed with a wife he loved/hated, but over time, I think I began to understand. 

On to books:

EDWIN BALL and EDWINA HARLESTON WHITLOCK - THE SWEET HELL INSIDE: THE RISE OF AN ELITE BLACK FAMILY IN THE SEGREGATED SOUTH.  It was a National Book Award Winner - $4.97 Paperback.  I volunteered at the first of the year Friends of the Charleston County Library Book Sale at Otranto Library.  While unpacking boxes of books to put on the tables for the sale, I found this book.  Not many African American books are donated to the libraries to sale, so I am always looking for “our” books and I usually find them and put them on display for the smaller group of African Americans who come to the sale.   Just got it and have not read it yet, but what caught my eye was South Carolina in the past had a rich black family, the history of Charleston and music.  It looks engrossing.

This is the story of the fascinating Harleston family of South Carolina, the progeny of a Southern gentleman and his slave, who cast off their blemished roots and prospered despite racial barriers. Enhanced by recollections from the family's archivist, eighty-four-year-old Edwina Harleston Whitlock, whose bloodline the author shares. The Sweet Hell Inside features a celebrated portrait artist whose subjects included industrialist Pierre du Pont; a black classical composer in the Lost Generation of 1920s Paris; and an orphanage founder who created the famous Jenkins Orphanage Band, a definitive force in the development of ragtime and jazz.

Edward Ball introduces a cast of historical characters rarely seen before: cultured, vain, imperfect, rich, and black; a family of eccentrics who defied social convention and flourished.

The Sweet Hell Inside: The Rise of an Elite Black Family in the Segregated South (National Book Award Winner)

My favorite authors with interracial hook-ups:

J.J. MURRAY - I’M YOUR GIRL - $4.47 - - I read this book years ago when I found it while volunteering at the library.  The first thing that caught my eye was that the main character, Diane, an African American, is an librarian.  Who finds love in a library, I haven’t’, or maybe it’s because I’m stalking people to read more.  You think I have an issue?

You will get hooked on the back and forth of Diane and Jack’s relationship.  I will give you that J. J. Murray is using the same formula most writers have used over and over again of the “bad-evil mother” who tells the kids who and when to date, even though Diane’s mother danced with a white boy in her youth and has no problems with her other daughter who has three kids out of wedlock.  I know I have read this many times before, but I still love the story. I did enjoy Diane’s reviews of books.  Sometimes it got in the way of the story and was a bit too long, but J.J. Murray kept some humor in the book with all of the perilous and taboo topic.  That’s why I continue to read it and brought his other books.  

I'm Your Girl

STEPHANIE MORRIS - STAKING HIS CLAIM - $5.99 - - - Ms. Morris is another I call “kicking it relationship” another.  She is a beautiful looking women and her book covers stimulates your “bootylicious senses,” whew! not that’s an eye full. 

She is another author I had the honor to meet and talk.  She has been a romance writer for many years with very elegant and simple writing descriptions that gets to the point.  She talks the way she writes, damn good.

Here’s a recap - Leslie’s life is not the way she wanted it, so, she goes home to family to get it together.  You know the story, she meets older white guy, Blake Eaton and it’s on.  This was a quick read (My flight was only 2 hours and the second flight was about 45 minutes), but I finished it and it was sooooo! gooood!!! I’m ordering the rest.  The guy on the cover looks like some actor from the “Jersey Show,” at least to me or maybe one of the Sopranos actors.  You be the judge.

Staking His Claim

Got to get one in for Black History Year

CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT - Alice Walker and other authors speaking about their involvement in the Civil Rights movement.

       

Black Kindle - They are talking about interracial dating again!!!

NUMBER 114

I just read on the Huffpost Books about Flight attendants on the weirdest and craziest passengers.  Some things passengers have done: need help putting on a bra, freaking out because their turkey sausage touched their scrambled eggs and other crazy things. The one that got me laughing was a passenger told a flight attendant that she has nice legs and then asked if they (probably a man), could lick them.  Now that's crazy. Just thought I’d give something think about…now Let’s slide right on in to another set of crazies… the continuing story of, "Drama at Part Time Job in Asylum.”

I have not worked part time in a few years and when on the first day I got home from that job, I was bone tired.  My schedule was Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights and I wondered if I would be able to do it, but I knew, I had an agenda and would struggle through.  I learned what needed to be done and by the Sunday night, I had everything down.  On those weekends, I worked with Jake and he made me laugh.  He had a bad habit of flying his hands up in the air and mumbling some incoherent words when a customer ordered something.  He fulfilled the order fine and when the customer left from either the front or drive thru, he had a funny name to call them.  Cockroaches, runts, etc.  I asked him why?  They seem OK to me and I didn’t care who or what the customer looked or talked like, I just made sure I was professional and courteous to them.  He wasn’t discourteous, he just hated his job.  He felt bad that at his age he was working a minimum paid job. He was the type of man who bad mouthed his wife, whom he called a “bi-polar bitch.” He would bad mouth his daughter, who at 18, dropped out of high school, did not work and got hooked on drugs.  They also lived in one of those “hotels” where you paid by the week.  Not the business type of hotel, you know the one, where displaced or homeless or even students attending one of those “colleges” that helps you get a medical or computer programming certificate.  I know about those students because I use to teach at a “college” like that and they lived right across the street in one of those “hotels”.  They signed a contract with the school for thousands of dollars.  Usually they did have a job somewhere and attended at night.  Some students were paid legally, some paid under the table.  It was probably easier for so many of them to be paid under the table.

It breaks my heart that we have so many people living like this and working at minimum paid jobs to just survive, but then again, it breaks my heart to see so many people who just don’t care and live day to day on who or what they can get for free. 

Another reason I enjoyed working with Jake is that he used to play trivial questions with me. I enjoyed listening to him, when he wasn’t mumbling and complaining about his wife and kid. He made me laugh when he was flaring his arms up and down, showing missing front teeth, wearing crooked glasses, stringy gray hair, but his brown eyes lit up when he played the trivial games.  I don’t think he thought of me in a romantic way, but he admitted to me that he liked me from the first time he met me.  He had always told me he just had a good feeling that I would fit in and actually work hard and he appreciated that since, as he stated many times, these people who work here are cockroaches, lazy and stupid. 

I did not understand at first why he stayed with a wife he loved/hated, but over time, I think I began to understand. 

On to books:

EDWIN BALL and EDWINA HARLESTON WHITLOCK - THE SWEET HELL INSIDE: THE RISE OF AN ELITE BLACK FAMILY IN THE SEGREGATED SOUTH.  It was a National Book Award Winner - $4.97 Paperback.  I volunteered at the first of the year Friends of the Charleston County Library Book Sale at Otranto Library.  While unpacking boxes of books to put on the tables for the sale, I found this book.  Not many African American books are donated to the libraries to sale, so I am always looking for “our” books and I usually find them and put them on display for the smaller group of African Americans who come to the sale.   Just got it and have not read it yet, but what caught my eye was South Carolina in the past had a rich black family, the history of Charleston and music.  It looks engrossing.

This is the story of the fascinating Harleston family of South Carolina, the progeny of a Southern gentleman and his slave, who cast off their blemished roots and prospered despite racial barriers. Enhanced by recollections from the family's archivist, eighty-four-year-old Edwina Harleston Whitlock, whose bloodline the author shares. The Sweet Hell Inside features a celebrated portrait artist whose subjects included industrialist Pierre du Pont; a black classical composer in the Lost Generation of 1920s Paris; and an orphanage founder who created the famous Jenkins Orphanage Band, a definitive force in the development of ragtime and jazz.

Edward Ball introduces a cast of historical characters rarely seen before: cultured, vain, imperfect, rich, and black; a family of eccentrics who defied social convention and flourished.

The Sweet Hell Inside: The Rise of an Elite Black Family in the Segregated South (National Book Award Winner)

My favorite authors with interracial hook-ups:

J.J. MURRAY - I’M YOUR GIRL - $4.47 - - I read this book years ago when I found it while volunteering at the library.  The first thing that caught my eye was that the main character, Diane, an African American, is an librarian.  Who finds love in a library, I haven’t’, or maybe it’s because I’m stalking people to read more.  You think I have an issue?

You will get hooked on the back and forth of Diane and Jack’s relationship.  I will give you that J. J. Murray is using the same formula most writers have used over and over again of the “bad-evil mother” who tells the kids who and when to date, even though Diane’s mother danced with a white boy in her youth and has no problems with her other daughter who has three kids out of wedlock.  I know I have read this many times before, but I still love the story. I did enjoy Diane’s reviews of books.  Sometimes it got in the way of the story and was a bit too long, but J.J. Murray kept some humor in the book with all of the perilous and taboo topic.  That’s why I continue to read it and brought his other books.  

I'm Your Girl

STEPHANIE MORRIS - STAKING HIS CLAIM - $5.99 - - - Ms. Morris is another I call “kicking it relationship” another.  She is a beautiful looking women and her book covers stimulates your “bootylicious senses,” whew! not that’s an eye full. 

She is another author I had the honor to meet and talk.  She has been a romance writer for many years with very elegant and simple writing descriptions that gets to the point.  She talks the way she writes, damn good.

Here’s a recap - Leslie’s life is not the way she wanted it, so, she goes home to family to get it together.  You know the story, she meets older white guy, Blake Eaton and it’s on.  This was a quick read (My flight was only 2 hours and the second flight was about 45 minutes), but I finished it and it was sooooo! gooood!!! I’m ordering the rest.  The guy on the cover looks like some actor from the “Jersey Show,” at least to me or maybe one of the Sopranos actors.  You be the judge.

Staking His Claim

Got to get one in for Black History Year

CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT - Alice Walker and other authors speaking about their involvement in the Civil Rights movement.

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Black Kindle is one happy soul!!!

NUMBER 113 

Well, day by day, I’m getting all of my “groove” back.  It wasn’t hard, it was just me.  You know, like that guy or girl tells you when the end is near, “it’s me, baby, not you.”  It was me.  You cannot let people take your joy away and I allowed those jackasses to take my joy.  I had to get back on track with God and church and find myself all over again.  What the hell am I talking about?  I’m talking about not doing what I love.  Not doing my passion and not giving you guys who subscribe to my blog, my best.  I know better.  

On another rambling thought, I appear to be getting happier and happier each day.  Maybe I am finally realizing that, it’s what you take from a bad situation and how you react to it.  I have started to react with, "OK, no big deal, my life will go on and I'm loving it".  Just move on and slide to my passion.  “Huh, got that out of my system.”  OK, now that you are going, “what the hell is she talking about?”  I’ll move on to “Drama at Part Time Job in Asylum,” more places and characters you will not believe.

A year ago, I was hanging out with my friend from overseas and talking to her about finding a part time job to help me become debt free, when we stopped at this store for a cup of coffee.  I saw two people standing outside the store, Jake, a white guy about 45 years old, tall, scraggily gray not washed hair and smoking a cigarette, standing next to him was Lisa, a petite young and smiling happily white girl.  They said hi to me and I asked if they were hiring for any part time positions.  Jake said yes and went into the store with me to find the manager, Kat.  It took about 10 minutes before she and Jake came from around the back of the store and brought me an application.  I filled it out, brought a cup of coffee and was about to leave, since I knew like so many other places I applied for, they would give me the same spiel, “thanks, we will get back to you.”  I handed her the application and she ask if we could talk for a few minutes.  I sat with her in the lobby of tables and chairs for customers and told her I was only looking to work on the weekends, Friday thru Sunday.  I have a full time time job and don’t need health insurance or any other benefits they may offer.  I figure if I use that pitch, my chances would be greater since I knew many other applicants probably wanted benefits.  She thanked me and said she would call.  I left on the pretense that I would never hear from her again.  It was a Thursday.  The next day she called and offered me the job.  Shock, I was.  

Was given instructions to go the following Monday to fill out the usual tax papers and such.  The address given, to me, seem very sketchy.  When you apply for a job, you enter an office building or the actually place of employment, not some trash-trailer-park neighborhood with run down homes, a beat up house used as a day care center and cops.  You don’t feel comfortable and wondering, “is this for real, or are they pulling my leg and creeping me out.”  It took me a while to finally locate the “house” where I was instructed to submit my paperwork.  I kept driving by it.  You would too if you saw this neighborhood.  Can you believe it, a small house where if you did not know the address you would have never and I mean never know it was a home used as a office.  Drove around the back of the house, which had about 5 parking spaces, walked to the front and saw a brown and metal front door with a sign on it to go around the side and knock.  In the front of the house, a 3 foot tall wire fence with a small yard and no damn sign and you had to look real hard to locate the house number.  Creepy!!  Why did I continue, because I’m a nut, that’s why.  


Knocked on the side door and a young white woman with too much makeup and too little clothes on opened it and led me into what was the kitchen.  Not set up like a normal kitchen, it was set up like an office kitchen.  We then walked passed the dining room, which had another office setting with a long table and chairs and one or two small computers and proceeded to the back of the house.  There were three rooms.  Usually used as a bedroom but instead used as offices, so I felt better, but still creepy.  I filled out the forms as they checked my SSN and such in some database connected to the IRS and SS.  Oh, yeah, I was looking and watching everything.  Damn, I thought, this could be the setting for some 1970s badly made horror movie and I’m the latest victim.  I can see the news now, "black woman is missing and her car was found in a swamp five days later.  Police are still trying to figure out how the books belonging to her, were found in this particular neighboorhood with her name written in the book jacket, but her car was found miles away.  More on this story later.  "John, now back to you and this beautiful weather."  That's as afar as my life would go.


I started telling my self that if that muther from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre comes thru one of those entrances with a metal door slamming open, I am jumping out of that chair and flying thru that window and running my but off.  That has got to be the most craziest experience I have ever had in looking for a job and yes, I have had some lulu.  

On to books because I have talked too much for today.

LORI THARPS - SUBSTITUTE ME - $11.99 - - - My book club, Book Club GrOuPiEs, are scheduled to read this next month.  It has been a while since I read it, but I just love to re-read books, it brings back good memories.

Tharps's debut novel contrasts the lives of two polar-opposite women living in New York City with likable characters but common prose. Kate Carter is successful, white, and married. She hires Zora Anderson, a 30-year-old black woman, to nanny her infant son Oliver. While both women are from privileged backgrounds, their lives have taken divergent paths. Zora is still trying to figure out what to do with her life, and uncertainty over her nanny position, especially in light of her successful corporate-lawyer brother, wealthy parents, and awareness of "mammy" stereotypes, cause her great uncertainty. Kate's husband, Brad, becomes Zora's friend and confidante, encouraging her to pursue her passion for cooking and reconnect with her family. As Kate becomes busier at work, Zora and Brad grow inevitably more attracted to one another. This unsurprising turn is the book's major downfall, but the issues of race and relationships that Tharps extracts from the situation largely make up for it. While Tharps's prose leaves something to be desired, the reader is left to ruminate on some real questions concerning the modern family, and can draw on authentic characters to put a face on an otherwise abstract predicament.

Substitute Me

TYORA MOODY - WHEN RAINS FALLS - $8.79 - - - First her mother, then her detective husband Frank and now her best friend Pamela Coleman: Murder keeps striking down those who Candace Johnson loves most, and now she faces a terrible crisis of faith. Enter Detective Darnell Jackson. He’s determined to track down Pamela’s killer, but he’s going to need Candace’s help. In Darnell, she sees a chance for justice in Candace, he sees a beautiful, dynamic woman who desperately needs God in her life. As Candace reluctantly opens up about some unsavory aspects of her friend’s life, Darnell starts to see disturbing connections between Pamela’s killing and Frank’s. But the culprit is still out there, and if Candace and Darnell can’t put the pieces together soon, they may be the next victims!

When Rain Falls

EDDIE JOHNSON - BILLIONAIRE’S RETREAT - $3.99 - - - As you know, I love a murder mystery, and maybe, just maybe, this will be a good one.  I’m going to give it a try.  

Sarah Giltry's husband, Jared Jones, goes missing after retiring from a local fire department. She offers a quarter of a million dollars to anyone that can find him. Jared's Mother, Rachelle, is convinced that she is linked to his disappearance. Fraud charges fly rampant as one of Sarah's government contracts comes into question. Also, she is accused of having an affair with the City Councilman that is alleged to have taken the bribe. The desire to have more and more seems to be her sole motivation. Rachelle hires Private Investigator Daniels Burks to locate her son. 

Billionaire's Retreat

Got to get one in for Black History Year

A look at Muhammad Ali ("the man behind the myth") in a video interview with George Foreman, daughter Hana Ali, and biographer Thomas Hauser