In 1987, the only Black person in all Swift River after her Pop disappeared seven years ago, Diamond Newberry, receiving a letter from a relative she's never met, is introduced to two generations of African American Newberry women, gaining a sense of her place in the world and in her family.

In North Carolina's tight-knit Oak Knoll neighborhood, professor Valerie Alston-Holt is raising her bright and talented biracial son, Xavier, who is headed to college in the fall. All is well until the Whitmans, an apparently traditional family, move in next door. Popular local businessman Brad has new money, ambition, a wife who escaped her upbringing in a trailer park, and a secretly troubled teenaged daughter. With little in common except a property...

"Mae Townsend has always dreamed of connecting with her estranged Black family in the South. She grew up picturing relatives who looked like her, crowded dinner tables, bustling kitchens. And, of course, the Townsend family barbecue, the tradition that kept her late father flying to North Carolina year after year, despite the mysterious rift that always required her to stay behind. But as Mae's wedding draws closer, promising a future of always standing...

Piano-prodigy Isabella, eleven, whose black father and white mother struggle to share custody, never feels whole, especially as racial tensions affect her school, her parents both become engaged, and she and her stepbrother are stopped by police.

Set in the 1970s, a young black boy's quest to reunite with his beloved white half-brother after they are separated in foster care.

"When a fragile young woman refuses to leave New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina approaches, her parents are forced to go without her, setting off a chain of events that leaves their marriage in shambles and their daughter catatonic, the victim or perpetrator of some unknown violent act"-- Provided by publisher.

"Our narrator is haunted. Haunted by panic attacks, a failed relationship, alcoholism, an academic career that wants to define him by his Blackness, and the trauma of the recent death of his 17-year-old son, Malcolm. When a letter arrives informing him that his maternal grandfather has left Malcolm a plot of land, our narrator leaves his life behind and heads to the seaside of the Northeast, where his identity is shaken by the dark and haunting secret...

Atticus "Atty" Peale fights for the rights of animals, copes with having a racially-mixed family in small-town Alabama, navigates the social scene of middle school, and determines to help her father prove Jethro Gersham innocent of murder.

"A simple story exploring the feelings of a mixed heritage child who begins to notice the physical differences between her mother's features and her own. One day, Izzy notices that her skin looks different from her mama's. "Mama," exclaims Izzy. "We don't match! You're sand, and I'm chocolate." Then Izzy realizes that her hair has big swirls and curls that jump out from her braids, while her mama's hair is smooth and straight with a braid that hangs...

As they look forward to the New York City Marathon in which their friend Mr. B. will run, the Vanderbeeker children learn that one of their good friends is homeless.