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If you liked The Water Dancer, try these:
by Cebo Campbell
Published Sep 2025
Read ReviewsIn a world without white people, what does it mean to be black?
by Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Published Aug 2024
Read ReviewsTwo Black sisters growing up in small-town New England fight to protect their home, their bodies, and their dreams as the Civil Rights Movement sweeps the nation in this "magical, magnificent novel" (Marlon James) from "a startlingly fresh voice" (Jacqueline Woodson).
by David Wright Falade
Published Feb 2023
Read ReviewsBlack Cloud Rising is a compelling and important historical novel that takes us back to an extraordinary moment when enslaved men and women were shedding their bonds and embracing freedom.
by Jabari Asim
Published Jan 2023
Read ReviewsThe Water Dancer meets The Prophets in this spare, gripping, and beautifully rendered novel exploring love and friendship among a group of enslaved Black strivers in the mid-19th century.
by Jenny Tinghui Zhang
Published Apr 2022
Read ReviewsA propulsive and dazzling debut novel set against the backdrop of the Chinese Exclusion Act, about a Chinese girl fighting to claim her place in the 1880s American West.
by Afia Atakora
Published Apr 2021
Read ReviewsA mother and daughter with a shared talent for healing - and for the conjuring of curses - are at the heart of this dazzling first novel.
by Rion Amilcar Scott
Published Aug 2020
Read ReviewsThe World Doesn't Require You announces the arrival of a generational talent, as Rion Amilcar Scott shatters rigid genre lines to explore larger themes of religion, violence, and love - all told with sly humor and a dash of magical realism.
by Esi Edugyan
Published Apr 2019
Read ReviewsA dazzling new novel about a boy who rises from the ashes of slavery to become a free man of the world.
by John E. Wideman
Published Mar 2019
Read ReviewsWith characters ranging from everyday Americans to Jean-Michel Basquiat to Nat Turner, American Histories is a journey through time, experience, and the soul of our country.
by James McBride
Published Sep 2018
Read ReviewsExciting new fiction from James McBride, the first since his National Book Award–winning novel The Good Lord Bird.
by Colson Whitehead
Published Aug 2016
Read ReviewsFrom prize-winning, bestselling author Colson Whitehead, a magnificent tour de force chronicling a young slave's adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South
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