18 books like Lightning men
Darktown
"Responding to orders from on high, the Atlanta Police Department is forced to hire its first black officers, including war veterans Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith. The newly minted policemen are met with deep hostility by their white peers: they aren't allowed to arrest white suspects, drive squad cars, or set foot in the police headquarters. When a black woman who was last seen in a car driven by…
Shares: African American police, Atlanta, African American, Race Relations
In the Heat of the Night
A small southern town in the 1960s. A musician found dead on the highway. It's no surprise when white detectives arrest a black man for the murder. What is a surprise is that the black man-Virgil Tibbs-is a skilled homicide detective, passing through racially tense Wells, South Carolina, on his way back to California. Even more surprising, Wells's new police chief recruits Tibbs to help with the…
Shares: African American police, African American, Race Relations, African Americans
Grace Will Lead Us Home
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2019 BARNES & NOBLE DISCOVER GREAT NEW WRITERS PICK OPRAH MAGAZINE SUMMER 2019 READING LIST SELECTION NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR'S CHOICE “A soul-shaking chronicle of the 2015 Charleston massacre and its aftermath... [Hawes is] a writer with the exceedingly rare ability to observe sympathetically both particular events and the horizon against which they take place…
Shares: Hate crimes, Racism, African Americans
She's Leaving Home
London, 1968: The body of a teenage girl is found just steps away from the Beatles' Abbey Road recording studio.
The police are called to a residential street in St John's Wood where an unidentified young woman has been strangled. Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen believes she may be one of the many Beatles fans who regularly camp outside Abbey Road Studios. With his reputation tarnished by an…
Shares: Racism, Police Procedural, Mystery & Detective
Killing by colours
A twisty and unputdownable detective crime novel perfect for fans of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Faith Martin, J.R. Ellis, LJ Ross, Miss Marple and Midsummer Murders!'Killing by Colours' is the fourth instalment in Wonny Lea's DCI Martin Phelps series, set in the thriving Welsh capital city of Cardiff.When the body of the killer's first victim is discovered at a popular Cardiff leisure…
Shares: Police Procedural, Mystery & Detective
Dark Country
Three related famous country and western singers are kidnapped over a period of 50 years. Only one body has ever been found.Battling a debilitating illness, FBI agent Georgina O’Neil joins forces with newly licensed private investigator, Leroy La Portiere to find Susan Dark, the latest in the Dark family to go missing as she is on the verge of national stardom. But Georgina’s search for the truth…
Shares: Police Procedural, Mystery & Detective
Cop Town
"In 1974, the Atlanta Police Department is investigating a serial cop killer hardly welcomes women, so they partner Kate and Maggie to isolate them from the action. But the move will backfire, putting them right at the heart of it"--
Shares: Atlanta, Police Procedural, Mystery & Detective
Goodnight Nobody
Shares: Police Procedural, Mystery & Detective
Into Oblivion
"Into Oblivion, the follow-up to the gritty prequel Reykjavik Nights, gives devoted fans another glimpse of Erlendur in his early days as a young, budding detective. A woman swims in a remote, milky-blue lagoon. Steam rises from the water and as it clears, a body is revealed in the ghostly light. Miles away, a vast aircraft hangar rises behind the perimeter fence of the US military base. A…
Shares: Police Procedural, Mystery & Detective
Death by his grace
"Katherine Yeboah's marriage to Solomon Vanderpuye is all the talk of Accra high society. But when it becomes apparent that Katherine is infertile, Solomon's extended family accuses her of being a witch, hounding her until the relationship is so soured Solomon feels compelled to order Katherine out of the house they shared. Alone on her last night there, Katherine is brutally murdered by an…
Shares: African American, Police Procedural, Mystery & Detective
An unkindness of ghosts
"Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She's used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, she'd be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remains of her world. Aster lives in the lowdeck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For…
Shares: Racism, African American, African Americans
A rap on race
(From the introduction) On August 25, 1970, anthropologist Margaret Mead and writer James Baldwin met for the first time to have three recorded conversations, totaling more than seven hours of tape that, once transcribed, would compose the book, A Rap on Race (1971). The Mead and Baldwin Book is an amazing account documenting the meeting of two of the twentieth century's paradigmatic thinkers and…
Shares: African American, Race Relations, African Americans
Peau Noire, Masques Blancs
Fanon, born in Martinique and educated in France, is generally regarded as the leading anti-colonial thinker of the 20th century. His first book is an analysis of the impact of colonial subjugation on the black psyche. It is a very personal account of Fanon's experience being black: as a man, an intellectual, and a party to a French education.--Adapted from wikipedia.org.
Shares: Racism, Race Relations
Murder in Montague Place
Great Scotland Yard 1844. When the beautiful Eleanora Scambles claims that her husband has been wrongly arrested for the murder of Edward Mizzentoft, Inspector Bucket of the recently formed Detective Department is intrigued, but there are two problems. The case is already being handled by Bucket's colleague, who is in no doubt about his man's guilt; and someone else observed the conversation…
Shares: Police Procedural, Mystery & Detective
Leaving Atlanta
"It was the end of summer, a summer during a two-year nightmare. African American children around Atlanta were vanishing, and twenty-nine would be murdered by the end of 1981.
Like all kids across the city, fifth-grade classmates Tasha Baxter, Rodney Green, and Octavia Harrison were discovering that back-to-school now meant special safety lessons, indoor recess, and being thrown into a world…
Shares: Atlanta, African Americans
The Bone Tree
A follow-up to Natchez Burning finds Southern lawyer Penn Cage desperately struggling to protect his father from false charges and corrupt officers by confronting the puppet master behind the Double Eagles terrorist group.
Penn Cage's father, Dr. Tom Cage, stands accused of murder, and each effort to defend him unearths new, shocking secrets, leaving Penn to question whether he ever really knew…
Shares: Racism, Race Relations
Murmurs of insanity
In the wake of a teen drug runner's disappearance after a murder in Atlanta, Moriah Dru and Richard Lake question his ex-wife's half-brother about two missing students who were staging a controversial conceptual art performance.
Shares: Police Procedural, Mystery & Detective
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick
From “one of the greatest writers of our time” (Toni Morrison)—the author of Barracoon and Their Eyes Were Watching God—a collection of remarkable stories, including eight “lost” Harlem Renaissance tales now available to a wide audience for the first time. New York Times’ Booksto Watch forBuzzfeed’sMost Anticipated BooksNewsweek’sMost Anticipated BooksForbes.com’sMost Anticipated BooksE!’sTop…
Shares: African American, African Americans