African American men book series in reading order

by Walter Mosley

by Barbara Hambly

by Joe R. Lansdale

by Eric Jerome Dickey

by Walter Mosley

Walter Mosley

71 books• 6 series

Easy Rawlins, a Black private investigator in Los Angeles, is the figure Walter Mosley returns to most. Devil in a Blue Dress (1990) opens the catalogue, which holds 71 books and reaches Ghalen (2026). Leonid McGill heads a second detective sequence, and Fearless Jones, Socrates Fortlow, King Oliver and the Crosstown to Oblivion science fiction books make up further lines. Los Angeles and New York are the recurring settings.

Eric Jerome Dickey wrote about African American men and women, love and betrayal, often in Los Angeles. 33 catalogued books run from Sister, Sister (1996) to The Son of Mr. Suleman, including Friends and Lovers (1997), Milk in My Coffee (1998), Cheaters (1999) and Liar's Game (2000). The Gideon novels, the McBroom Sisters and Nia Simone Bijou head series of their own, alongside standalone fiction, short stories and graphic novels. The catalogue closed in 2021.

Percival Everett

36 books

Percival Everett, born December 22, 1956, is an American author and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. The fiction moves across western, mystery, thriller, satire and philosophical forms, often using satire to examine race and identity in the United States. Erasure (2001), I Am Not Sidney Poitier (2009) and The Trees (2021), shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, are the best-known novels. The catalogue lists 37 books from Suder (1983) to James (2024), with Serious Music due in 2027, and includes short stories and poetry.

James Baldwin

40 books• 4 series

James Baldwin (August 2, 1924 - December 1, 1987), born James Arthur Jones, was an American writer and civil rights activist whose essays, novels, plays and poems drew wide acclaim. Time magazine ranked Go Tell It on the Mountain among the top 100 English-language novels. The essay collection Notes of a Native Son (1955) established Baldwin as a voice for human equality, and a 1965 debate with William Buckley became a landmark on race in the United States. Catalogued works include Giovanni's Room (1956), Another Country (1962) and The Fire Next Time (1963), with race relations and African American life as recurring subjects.

E. Lynn Harris wrote about African American men, gay and bisexual identity, and friendship. Invisible Life (1991) opens a catalogue of 17 books that runs through Just As I Am (1994), If This World Were Mine (1997) and Not a Day Goes By (2000) to No One in the World in 2011. The Yancey Harrington Braxton and Bentley L. Dean books form the later series, and nothing after 2011 is catalogued.

Barbara Hambly

119 books• 23 series

Barbara Hambly, an American novelist and screenwriter born August 28, 1951, works across fantasy, science fiction, mystery and historical fiction. The Benjamin January mysteries follow a free man of color, a musician and physician, in antebellum New Orleans. Hambly's other series include James Asher, Darwath, Sun Wolf and Starhawk and the Windrose Chronicles, and the science fiction extends into Star Trek and Star Wars settings. Historical novels about Mary Todd Lincoln and Abigail Adams are also part of the output. The 119 catalogued books run from The Time of the Dark (1982) to Death in the Palace (2026).

Chester Himes

23 books• 2 series

Chester Himes (July 29, 1909 - November 12, 1984) was an American writer, several of whose works were filmed. If He Hollers Let Him Go appeared in 1945. Himes is best known for the Harlem Detective novels, set in the 1950s and early 1960s, whose leads are two black policemen, Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson. France awarded Himes the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in 1958. The catalogue lists 23 books, including Lonely Crusade (1947), For Love of Imabelle / A Rage in Harlem (1957), The Real Cool Killers (1958) and All Shot Up (1960).

Joe R. Lansdale

156 books• 24 series

Joe R. Lansdale, born Joe Richard Lansdale on October 28, 1951, is an American writer and martial arts instructor who works across Western, horror, science fiction, mystery and suspense and has also written comic books and screenplays. Lansdale's honours include the British Fantasy Award, the American Horror Award, the Edgar Award and eleven Bram Stoker Awards, and several novels have been adapted for film and television. The catalogue begins with Act of Love (1981) and includes Dead in the West (1986), The Magic Wagon (1986), The Nightrunners (1987), The Drive-In (1988) and Cold in July (1989); Petrified Dreams (2026) is the newest. Hap Collins and Leonard Pine head the Hap and Leonard series, and Texas features in the subjects.

Richard Wright

17 books• 1 series

Richard Wright (September 4, 1908 to November 28, 1960) was an American writer of novels, short stories, poems and non-fiction. Race runs through the work, particularly the discrimination and violence faced by African Americans from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. Uncle Tom's Children (1938), a collection of novellas, Native Son (1940) and the memoir Black Boy (1945) are Wright's best-known books. Literary critics credit the work with helping to change American race relations in the mid-20th century. The catalogue lists 17 titles, including 12 Million Black Voices (1941), The Outsider (1953), Eight Men (1958), The Long Dream (1958) and The Man Who Lived Underground (2021).

Brenda Streater Jackson, born February 2, 1953, is an American author of contemporary multicultural romance. Jackson was the first African-American author published in the Silhouette Desire line, and in October 2013 became the first African American to publish a 100th novel. The site lists 154 books from Tonight And Forever (1995) to Beneath The Dawn (2026). Madaris Family & Friends, Westmoreland Legacy, Forged of Steele, Catalina Cove and Grangers are among the series. Subjects include African American women, ranchers and romantic suspense.

Terry McMillan

12 books• 1 series

Terry McMillan writes about African American women, their friendships and their families. Mama (1987) is the earliest of 12 catalogued titles, followed by Disappearing Acts (1989), Waiting to Exhale (1992), How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1996) and Getting to Happy (2010). It Was the Way She Said It (2025) is the most recent. Female friendship and family life fill the subject tags.

Tananarive Due

24 books• 4 series

Tananarive Due, born January 5, 1966, is an American author, educator and film historian of Black horror. Due won the American Book Award for The Living Blood (2001). The Reformatory (2023) took the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, the Shirley Jackson Award and the World Fantasy Award. At UCLA, Due teaches "The Sunken Place: Racism, Survival and the Black Horror Aesthetic", a course built on Jordan Peele's Get Out. The catalogue holds 24 books from The Between (1995) to Battle of the Round House (2026), with the African Immortals and Tennyson Hardwick series.

K’wan Foye writes urban and street fiction. New York settings, street life, gangs, organized crime, the drug trade and revenge all appear in the recorded subjects. The catalogue holds 52 books from Gangsta (2003) to Troubleman (2026), with Hood Rat, Animal and Fix named in the character records. Hood Rat, Fix, Gangsta, Hoodlum, Purple City Tales, Black Lotus and Reluctant King are the series listed. Six further names appear on one book each, among them 50 Cent, Victor L. Martin and Darrell King.

Jewell Parker Rhodes

19 books• 2 series

Jewell Parker Rhodes, born in 1954, is an American novelist and educator whose children's books include Ghost Boys, Black Brother, Black Brother and Will's Race for Home. Will's Race for Home won the Coretta Scott King Book Award. Ghost Boys has collected more than fifty honours, among them the Walter Award and the Jane Addams Children's Book Award, and later became a graphic novel. The catalogue holds 19 Rhodes books from Voodoo Dreams of Marie Laveau (1993) to 2025, including the Marie Laveau Mystery series and the Louisiana Girls Trilogy.

Ernest J. Gaines (1933-2019) was an American novelist and short story writer. Gaines was born in Louisiana and spent his early years on the Riverlake Plantation before moving to California and serving in the United States Army. Race, family, community and humanity run through the work. The catalogue holds 13 books dated between 1964 and 2019, from Catherine Carmier (1964) to Three W's (2019), taking in Of Love and Dust (1968), The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971), A Gathering of Old Men (1983) and A Lesson Before Dying (1993), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Four of Gaines's works were adapted as television movies. Recorded subjects include African Americans, race relations, Louisiana, plantation life and fathers and sons.

Ralph Ellison

12 books• 1 series

Ralph Waldo Ellison was an American writer, scholar and literary critic who died on April 16, 1994. Ellison's novel Invisible Man (1952) received the National Book Award in 1953 and is the work Ellison is best known for. Shadow and Act (1964) gathers essays on political, social and critical subjects, and Going to the Territory followed in 1986. Juneteenth (1999) was published posthumously, assembled from the extensive notes left at Ellison's death. The catalogue spans 1938 to 2019, from A Party Down at the Square to The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison.

Wes Moore

8 books• 1 series

Wes Moore, born on 15 October 1978, is an American author, businessman and former U.S. Army officer, and has served as governor of Maryland since 2023. Moore wrote The Other Wes Moore (2010) and The Work: My Search for a Life That Matters (2014); the source record credits him with five books published between 2010 and 2015, one of them a young-adult novel. Discovering Wes Moore (2012) and This Way Home (2015) also carry the name. Recorded subjects include African American men, prisoners, criminals, violence, soldiers and social conditions. The listing mixes in further titles that fall outside that account.