Diane McKinney-Whetstone
Author
Language
English
Description
The Gen--short for Sexagenarian--is an upscale fifty-five-plus community located in the bucolic suburbs of Philadelphia. Main character Cynthia befriends the Gen's two other Black residents, Bloc and Tish, as well as Lavia, who everyone assumes is from India. They regularly convene to smoke weed, line dance, and debate politics and philosophy as the wine goes down like silk. Their camaraderie is exhilarating. But beneath the fun and froth, storms...
2) Tumbling
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 6.2 - AR Pts: 21
Language
English
Formats
Description
Noon and Herbie are deeply in love and living in a tightly knit African American neighborhood in South Philadelphia during the 1940s. But their marriage remains unconsummated because of a horrible incident in Noon's past, so each seeks comfort elsewhere: Noon in the warm acceptance of the neighborhood church; Herbie in the arms of Ethel, a jazz singer. Then one day an infant girl is left on their doorstep, and later Ethel blesses them with her five-year-old...
Author
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English
Formats
Description
In one West Philadelphia neighborhood, families come together in celebration of unity and togetherness. Their block parties provide a union that serves as a backdrop for discovering the truth about themselves and the people they think they know. Best friends Neet and Shay have depended on each other for most of their lives. However, their friendship will be tested when Neet becomes pregnant by one of the corner boys and Shay arranges an abortion that...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Neena's mother, Freeda, disappeared on a cold February morning in 1984, leaving the fifteen-year-old Neena and her younger sister, Tish, in the care of Nan, their stern grandmother. Two decades later, Neena-no longer living in Philadelphia-supports herself by blackmailing married men. Returning to her childhood home when a sting goes terribly wrong, she avoids her grandmother while attempting to pull one last hustle on a prominent local lawyer. But...
Author
Language
English
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Description
My aunt says if you smell butter on a foggy night you're getting ready to fall in love. For the last twenty years, the beautiful Verdi Mae has led a comfortable life with Rowe, the conservative professor who rescued her from addiction when she was an undergrad. But her world is about to shift when the smell of butter lingers in the air and Johnson -- the boy from the back streets of Philadelphia who pulled her into the fire of passion and all the...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
This stunning new novel from Diane McKinney-Whetstone, nationally bestselling author of Tumbling, begins in the chaotic backstreets of post–Civil War Philadelphia as a young black woman gives birth to a child fathered by her wealthy white employer. In a city riven by racial tension, the father's transgression is unforgivable. He has already arranged to take the baby, so it falls to Sylvia, the midwife's teenage apprentice, to tell Meda that her...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Set in west Philadelphia in the early sixties, Tempest Rising tells the story of three sisters, Bliss, Victoria, and Shern, budding adolescents raised in a world of financial privilege among the upper-black-class. But their lives quickly unravel as their father's lucrative catering business collapses. He disappears and is presumed dead, and their mother suffers an apparent breakdown. The girls are wrenched from their mother, and as the novel opens...