In this classic novel from the Harlem Renaissance, a biracial musician living in the Jim Crow era chooses to pass as white and deals with the consequences. First published in 1912, The Autobiography of an Ex—Colored Man is the story of an unnamed, light-skinned, biracial narrator born in a small Georgia town, during the years following the Civil War. He knows nothing about race, until he and his Black mother move to Connecticut and an episode at...

Two novels of 1920s Harlem describe Helga Crane's search for freedom and personal expression, and Irene's friendship with Clare, who attempts to pass for white.

"Raised as a slave, Rhine Fontaine is building the successful life he's always dreamed of--one that depends upon him passing for White. But for the first time in years, he wishes he could step out from behind the façade when he becomes fascinated with the beautiful black woman he rescued in the desert"--

When Lord Geoffroy Loveall finds an abandoned baby, he treats the child as his daughter, despite the male gender of the child, who grows up desperately conflicted in the richest home in nineteenth-century England.

"Set in a small Nova Scotia town settled by former slaves, [the novel] depicts several generations of one family bound together and torn apart by blood, faith, time, and fate. Structured as a triptych, Africaville chronicles the lives of three generations of the Sebolt family--Kath Ella, her son Omar/Etienne, and her grandson Warner--whose lives unfold against the tumultuous events of the twentieth century from the Great Depression of the 1930s, through...

Against the backdrop of the War for Independence, two intriguing storylines emerge. Stuart Brodie is a black freedman from Charles Town who owns a tavern in the backcountry of South Carolina. On his return from the war, he finds his younger brother, Ezekiel, hanging from the limb of a tree, his tavern burned to the ground, and a note warning any passerby that this is what lies in store for all Tories. Knowing that the guilty party was allied with...