Waiting for your copy of The Help by Kathryn Stockett to arrive from the Clevnet waitlist? Or maybe you’ve finished it already and want to read a similar book. Look no further than one of these books!
The Little Giant of Arberdeen County
by Tiffany Baker
A spellbindingly woven tale about a girl who grows physically and emotionally beyond her small town’s wildest expectations an uprooting of Aberdeen County, and the possibility of love in unexpected places.
We Are All Welcome Here
by Elizabeth Berg
It is the summer of 1964. In Tupelo, Mississippi, the town of Elvis’s birth, tensions are mounting over civil-rights demonstrations occurring ever more frequently–and violently–across the state. But in Paige Dunn’s small, ramshackle house, there are more immediate concerns. Challenged by the effects of the polio she contracted during her last month of pregnancy, Paige is nonetheless determined to live as normal a life as possible and to raise her daughter, Diana, in the way she sees fit–with the support of her tough-talking black caregiver, Peacie.
Orange Mint and Honey
by Carleen Brice
Broke and burned-out from grad school, Shay Dixon does the unthinkable after receiving a “vision” from her de facto spiritual adviser, blues singer Nina Simone. She phones Nona, the mother she had all but written off, asking if she can come home for a while. Though reconciliation seems a hard proposition for Shay, something unmistakable is taking root inside her, waiting to blossom like the morning glories opening up in Nona’s garden sanctuary.
Big Girls Don’t Cry
by Connie Briscoe
Naomi Jefferson, who experiences her fair share of loss, betrayal, and addiction, believes that the weight of the world lies on her shoulders, until Joseph, her deceased brother’s illegitimate teenage son, enters her life and teaches her a lesson in courage and self-love.
What You Owe Me
by Bebe Moore Campbell
An unlikely pair of women–a black woman from Texas and a Jewish woman newly arrived from Poland–meet in L.A. in the 1940s and begin a friendship that will prompt 50 years of bitterness and betrayal.
The Summer We Got Saved
by Pat Cunningham Devoto
Embracing the belief systems of her Southern hometown, Tab witnesses changes in the attitudes throughout the course of a 1960s gubernatorial campaign, which is marked by the establishment of a voting school for church members.
A Lesson Before Dying
by Ernest Gaines
A young illiterate African American man witnesses two black robbers kill a white store owner in Louisiana in the late 1940s, and he is the one convicted.
Bombingham
by Anthony Grooms
A soldier in Vietnam becomes sucked into the Civil Rights movement through a letter written home to the parents of a friend killed in Birmingham’s early 1960s wave of racially motivated violence.
Saving CeeCee Honeycutt
by Beth Hoffman
Relegated to the care of an eccentric great-aunt after her mentally unbalanced mother’s accidental death, 12-year-old CeeCee is quickly surrounded by the strong women and cultural elements of her new Savannah community.
Their Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston
Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person — no mean feat for a black woman in the ’30s. Janie’s quest for identity takes her through three marriages and into a journey back to her roots.
Where I Must Go
by Angela Jackson
A story of young Magdalena Grace, whose narration takes readers through both privilege and privation at the time of the American civil rights movement. The novel moves from the privileged yet racially exclusive atmosphere of the fictional Eden University to the black neighborhoods of a Midwestern city and to ancestral Mississippi.
Gods in Alabama
by Joshilyn Jackson
Ten years after leaving, Arlene Fleet finds she still has not escaped Possett, Alabama, when an old classmate turns up asking questions about a crime Arlene committed in her youth, forcing her into a confrontation with her past.
The Air Between Us
by Deborah Johnson
Racial segregation in a small 1960s Mississippi community is brought into question in the aftermath of an apparent hunting accident, an event that also tests the views of two prominent physicians.
Mudbound
by Hilary Jordan
Recently married, Laura McAllan moves from her refined Memphis home to a struggling farm in Mississippi’s Delta region shortly after World War II. Faced with primitive conditions and a rocky relationship with her husband, Laura turns to the companionship of her black tenant farmer’s wife. But with racial tensions at a high point and the arrival of Laura’s unattached brother-in-law from Europe, events are set for a gripping conclusion.
The Secret Life of Bees
by Sue Monk Kidd
After a run-in with Southern racists puts Lily Owens and her beloved caretaker Rosaleen in jeopardy, they flee to South Carolina. There they meet the remarkable Boatwright sisters, whose skill at beekeeping help Lily come to grips with a family tragedy.
Sula
by Toni Morrison
At the heart of Sula is a bond between two women, a friendship whose intensity first sustains, then injures. Sula and Nel are both black, both smart, and both poor. Through their girlhood years, they share everything. All this changes when Sula gets out of the Bottom, the hilltop neighborhood where there hides a fierce resentment at the invisible line that cannot be overstepped.
Four Spirits
by Sena Jeter Naslund
College student Stella Silver has enjoyed a life of privilege, in spite of losing her parents at a young age. When the bombings at Birmingham open her eyes to the depth of the hate fueling racism, she determines to join the civil rights movement, with memorable consequences.
The Persia Cafe
by Melany Neilson
The disappearance of a black boy in a small Mississippi town in 1962 plunges young Fannie, who dreams of cooking her way to a better life, into her town’s own heart of darkness.
I’ll Take You There
by Joyce Carol Oates
In a novel set in the early 1960s, a young white woman falls in love with a black philosophy student and then must face a person from her past who she believed had died.
Wench
by Dolan Perkins-Valdez
Lizzie has been her master’s mistress for years, bearing his only two offspring and loving him as a husband. When he takes her to an Ohio resort for Southern men and their black mistresses, Lizzie meets free blacks for the first time, and begins consider her family’s fate if she were free.
Before I Forget
by Leonard Pitts, Jr.
A man recently diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease takes a road trip to visit his ailing, estranged father, along with his troubled teen-aged son.
A Conversation with the Mann
by John Ridley
Dreaming of making it big in the entertainment world, aspiring black comic Jackie Mann will do anything to achieve his goal as he journeys from Harlem to the height of fame, in a novel set during the early days of the civil rights movement.
Downtown
by Anne Rivers Siddons
Maureen Smoky O’Donnell goes to Atlanta to write for a magazine in the 1960s, and after writing about the city’s war on poverty, she falls in love with a man who leaves for Vietnam.
The Angels of Morgan Hill
by Donna VanLiere
In 1947, the small town of Morgan Hill, Tennessee, and the lives of its inhabitants are turned upside down by the arrival of the Turners, the area’s first black family.
The Children’s Summer Reading Program, Dream Big, Read! is open to children ages 6 to 12. Register in the Children’s Department. Each child will create a reading log and add to it as they read. Parents are encouraged to participate in the Adult Summer Reading Program and compete with their children. Reading a book to your child counts as an entry for the Adult Summer Reading Program! Look for a puppet show happening this summer, too!
Teens, get ready for Own the Night! Register in the Teen Department and start on your reading log. Participants will be eligible for weekly prize drawings on top of the grant prize drawing! The Teen Summer Reading Program is open to teens ages 13-17.
Adults, get ready to read and rate books to be entered in the grand prize drawing. After you’re done reading a book, just pick up a review slip at the reference desk and rate the book you just finished. There are no limits to the number of entries you can submit, so the more you read, the greater your chances are of winning! Between the Covers, the Adult Summer Reading Program, is open to participants 18 years of age or older.
