Benable — create shareable lists of things you recommend!
E.g., products you love, local businesses, travel recs - you can add anything to a Benable list!
Essential Black Reads
28
items My collections of novels that celebrate Black voices, history, and culture. From timeless classics to modern must-reads, these books explore identity, resilience, love, and the pursuit of freedom. They offer insight, inspiration, and a deeper connect...
Sections
5
Eric Jerome Dickey
Zane
Tracy Brown
Omar Tyree
Terry McMillan
Eric Jerome Dickey
Eric Jerome Dickey is the New York Times bestselling author of more than 20 novels, including A Wanted Woman, Sleeping with Strangers, and An Accidental Affair, as well as a six-issue miniseries of graphic novels featuring Storm (X-Men) and the Black...
Jordan Greene is in culture shock when he arrives in Manhattan from his Tennessee hometown. Still, he manages to keep the pace and stay in the race, with a Wall Street job, a Queens apartment, and a very sexy girlfriend named J'nette.
But when Jorda...
Milk in My Coffee by Eric Jerome Dickey
Dana Ann Smith has ditched New York and a relationship gone bad for Los Angeles, looking for a new man, a new career, and some stability. She thinks she's found it in Vincent Calvalry Browne Jr., a handsome, hardworking aerospace tech. They've offere...
Liar's Game|Paperback
On a cold and rainy night during the Christmas season, a woman who has suffered great personal loss and a successful businessman from Orange County meet by chance at a gas station in Los Angeles County. They have nothing in common, but as they engage...
One Night|Paperback
Valerie, Inda, and Chiquita are three women looking for love in Los Angeles.
Sexy and in-your-face, Sister, Sister depicts a modern world where women may have to alter their dreams, yet never stop embracing tomorrow.
Sister, Sister|Paperback
Born in Trinidad and living in Atlanta after a relationship gone bad, Nia Simone Bijou is an ambitious writer who has it all. Except for the one thing that'll give her the control she craves-and the power she deserves: absolute, uninhibited sexual sa...
Pleasure|Paperback
What Nia Simon Bijou desires, she works hard to achieve. Her accomplishments as a respected writer have not only brought her to Hollywood, but she’s now poised for worldwide success, and pursued and desired by Prada, a man of international power and ...
Decadence|Paperback
Genevieve is brilliant and beautiful. Her husband has a thriving career. Together, they have a beautiful home in Los Angeles. Together, they're crazy in love. Then one day a family tragedy brings Genevieve back to her Alabama hometown, back to a past...
Genevieve|Paperback
Dmytryk and Cora Knight were a respectable couple with a solid, comfortable life on the affluent side of Detroit until a crippling recession annihilates their careers, and they find themselves desperate to hold on.
Then a powerful crime boss gives t...
Tempted by Trouble|Paperback
Zane
For successful Black businesswoman Zoe Reynard, finding the pleasure she wants, the way she wants it, is not worth the risk of losing everything she has: marriage to the man she has loved since childhood, a thriving company, and three wonderful child...
Addicted: A Novel|Paperback
Decades after fleeing from Atlanta after an unspeakable trauma, Caprice Tatum returns to her roots, only this time she’s Wicket, the international pop sensation who has become a living embodiment of fame and fortune. While she may be have refashioned...
Vengeance: A Novel|Paperback
Jonquinette Pierce has never felt comfortable around men except when she’s her alter ago, Jude, who takes over on the weekends to lead a life of wild and intense sexual escapades. Jonquinette knows she can’t keep living like this and sets out to over...
Nervous: A Novel|Paperback
Tracy Brown
Tracy Brown crafts a tale about a master manipulator and serial survivor, who will scorch earth to get what she wants. The question isn’t who murdered her; the question is who wouldn’t?
Brooklyn by Tracy Brown
Essence bestselling author Tracy Brown's scorching new urban tale about falling in love and one girl's descent into the murky and unrelenting depths of drug addiction
White Lines by Tracy Brown
In her most stunning, riveting, unstoppable novel yet, bestselling and critically acclaimed author, Tracy Brown delivers the not-to-be-missed sequel to WHITE LINES
White Lines II: Sunny by Tracy Brown
The ultimate love story forged on the gritty streets of New York began with White Lines, and now, in this stunning conclusion, Jada and Born come full circle, but not without paying a hefty price in White Lines III: All Falls Down by Tracy Brown.
White Lines III: All Falls Down by Tracy Brown
As the pampered wife of Frankie Bingham, Camille wants for nothing. After all Frankie and their life together are her whole world. So Camille tries not to be bothered by his closeness with his coworker and dear friend Gillian. But it soon becomes cle...
Snapped: A Novel by Tracy Brown
When Misa Atkinson confesses to the murder of Steven Bingham, her sister's brother-in-law, for doing the unthinkable to her son, everything is turned upside down.
Aftermath: A Snapped Novel by Tracy Brown
Single Black Female is a taut, edgy, deftly spun novel about four friends grappling with the dramatic twists and turns of life, love and what it means to “make it” in America.
Single Black Female by Tracy Brown
A tangled web of mischief, deceit, lust and lies in Twisted, the sequel to Dime Piece.
Twisted by Tracy Brown
Hold You Down is an edgy novel from rising star Tracy Brown about the perils of love and the ties that bind…
Set in New York City. Late 1980s to early 1990s.
Hold You Down: A Novel by Tracy Brown
Lamin Michaels learned at his mother's knee the importance of chasing paper, so it's no surprise he gets into the drug game when he's just a teenager. When he meets Zion, a product of the New York City foster care and prison system, Lamin knows that ...
Criminal Minded: A Novel by Tracy Brown
Omar Tyree
Named by Essence as One of the 50 Most Impactful Black Books of the Last 50 Years
From NAACP Award–winning author Omar Tyree—the iconic New York Times bestselling coming-of-age novel that follows the original Flyy Girl, Tracy Ellison, from childhood...
Flyy Girl|Paperback
In this New York Times bestseller, streetwise and boy-crazy teenager Tracy Ellison of Flyy Girl fame makes her grand return—now on the brink of superstardom as a screenwriter and actress—in a captivating novel exploring love, friendship, and the pric...
For the Love of Money: A Novel|Paperback
The beloved New York Times bestselling urban fiction series that defined an era continues as the quintessential Flyy Girl, Tracy Ellison, returns in a sizzling tale that explores the age-old question: can a woman really have it all?
Boss Lady: A Novel|Paperback
Terry McMillan
Terry McMillan (born October 18, 1951) is an American author known for her books with relatable female protagonists. Her bestselling novels include Waiting to Exhale, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Disappearing Acts, and The Interruption of Everythi...
When the men in their lives prove less than reliable, Savannah, Bernadine, Gloria, and Robin find new strength through a rare and enlightening friendship as they struggle to regain stability and an identity they don’t have to share with anyone. Becau...
Waiting to Exhale|Paperback
Now, McMillan revisits Savannah, Gloria, Bernadine, and Robin fifteen years later. Each is at her own midlife crossroads: Savannah has awakened to the fact that she's made too many concessions in her marriage, and decides to face life single again at...
Getting to Happy|Paperback
Stella Payne is forty-two, divorced, a high-powered investment analyst, mother of eleven-year-old Quincy- and she does it all. In fact, if she doesn't do it, it doesn't get done, from Little League carpool duty to analyzing portfolios to folding the ...
How Stella Got Her Groove Back|Paperback
Franklin Swift was a sometimes-employed construction worker and a not-quite-divorced dad of two. Zora Banks was a teacher, singer, and songwriter. They met in a Brooklyn brownstone, and there could be no walking away....
In this funny, gritty love s...
Disappearing Acts|Paperback