McBride, James

"In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe's theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe"--Provided by publisher.

Tells the story of what happens to the witnesses after a fumbling, cranky old church deacon, known as Sportcoat, shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in South Brooklyn and in front of everybody shoots the project's drug dealer at point-blank range, in 1969.

Tells the story of what happens to the witnesses after a fumbling, cranky old church deacon, known as Sportcoat, shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in South Brooklyn and in front of everybody shoots the project's drug dealer at point-blank range, in 1969.

A slave child in Kansas in 1856, Henry Shackleford is taken in by abolitionist John Brown after Brown confronts and has a heated argument with Shackleford's master. Now privy to Brown's movements and the anti-slavery efforts of his small militia, Shackleford keeps his head down to stay alive right up until the moment Brown launches his doomed and fatal assault on Harper's Ferry.

James McBride shares the story of his mother's life and complicated racial identity which he only learned after becoming an adult. He tells of her infancy in Poland as the daughter of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, her childhood in small-town Virginia, her move to Harlem at the age of eighteen, her marriage to an African-American man, her achievements as a wife and mother to twelve children, and her refusal to ever admit she is white.

James McBride chronicles his twelve-year journey to learn about his mother's past, describing her unhappy childhood, marriage, refusal to admit she was white, and creation of an all-black church in Harlem, and shares details of his own life and the challenges he faced coping with his family's secrets.

A collection of short stories that explore the human condition.

Henry Shackleford, a slave boy from the Kansas Territory, is caught up in John Brown's crusade for freedom of slaves and when he escapes from his master's home, he must disguise himself as a girl in order to stay safe and is nicknamed Onion by John.

A biography of American singer and songwriter James Brown, looking at his roots in the American South and the influence he has had on American pop music.