‘‘It’s a historical novel about slavery and based on a true story of two young men, one passing for white and one a very light-skinned slave, during the War of 1812.”
‘‘True Crime” by Michael Mewshaw
‘‘True Crime” by Riverdale-native Michael Mewshaw was also recommended by Tom Simon, branch manager of the Accokeek library.
The mystery novel follows Tom Heller Jr., who makes a living by writing true-life crime stories. The lead character’s father is shot and killed and while Heller searches for the murderer, he learns that the son and father of a woman he once loved were also killed, causing him to investigate all three murders.
While Simon noted that the book might not paint the best picture of Prince George’s County, it was still a good read.
‘‘PG County” and ‘‘Can’t Get Enough” by Connie Briscoe
Librarians and other library employees also mentioned Briscoe’s ‘‘PG County,” though many admitted they hadn’t read the books.
Briscoe, who grew up in Washington, D.C., and Montgomery County, said she’s always been intrigued by the way the black community lives in Prince George’s County.
‘‘Prince George’s is one of the wealthiest black counties in the country,” Briscoe said. ‘‘I’m happy to see it because that’s what the struggle was about.”
‘‘PG County” is about the lives of five women living and around in an upscale community in Prince George’s.
‘‘I was inspired by the Woodmore gated community [in Mitchellville],” Briscoe said, saying that it was her hope to show that just because those women had everything they needed financially, they still faced struggles in their lives.
‘‘Can’t Get Enough,” the sequel to ‘‘PG County,” expands upon the stories of those women.
Briscoe said she wrote the series as a way to counteract the negative stories are often found in newspapers and on television concerning county residents.
‘‘I was trying to counter that and show the positive more humorous side than what you read in the papers everyday,” she said.
‘‘Sisters and Lovers” by Connie Briscoe
‘‘Sisters and Lovers” was what Briscoe described as her first successful book.
The book is about three sisters living in Washington and their dealings with the men in their lives.
‘‘The theme is that men come and go, but we can always depend on our sisters,” Briscoe said, who lives in Ellicott City.
She is currently working on the sequel, she said.
‘‘Students on Strike: Jim Crow, Civil Rights Brown, and Me” by John A. Stokes
Written by a retired Baltimore school teacher and Lanham resident, John A. Stokes, ‘‘Students on Strike” is scheduled to be released Dec. 26.
‘‘When he was a high school student he lived in Prince Edward County, Virginia,” Simon said. ‘‘[In 1951] the students there went on strike because the conditions in their black schools were so bad.”
Stokes said the case of the desegregation of schools in his county was used in the historic Brown vs. Board of Education case in the Supreme Court in 1954, which declared segregated schools to be illegal.
‘‘Migrations of the Heart” by Marita Golden
‘‘Anything she writes is good,” Faye Powell, branch manager of the Hillcrest Heights library, said of Mitchellville author Marita Golden.
Raised in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington, D.C., Golden worked as a journalist before marrying a Nigerian man and moving to Africa. She returned after they divorced and published a memoir of the experience, ‘’Migrations of the Heart,” in 1983.
‘‘It’s about marrying someone in Nigeria and then taking her son and [bringing] him back into the country,” Powell said. ‘‘All of her books are just written well.”
‘‘The Hundred Penny Box” by Sharon Bell Mathis
Powell said she enjoys many books by Sharon Bell Mathis, who writes books for children and teens.
‘‘The Hundred Penny Box” is about a boy, Michael, whose great-great-aunt Dewbet Thomas, who is 100 years old, keeps a penny dated for each year of her life in a wooden box. She shares stories with Michael about each year of her life, enabling them to form a special bond.
Michael’s mother, and Aunt Dew’s daughter, decides to replace the hundred penny box with a new one, putting Michael in a place where he has to protect the box.
‘‘Capitol Rock” by Mark Opsasnick
Simon said he enjoyed reading ‘‘Capitol Rock” by Greenbelt resident Mark Opsasnick.
‘‘Capitol Rock” explores the cultural history of rock and roll in the Washington, D.C., area focusing on 1951 to 1976. Opsasnick discusses local nightclubs and artists that were popular at the time.
‘‘He does all of his own research and uncovered a lot of interesting things about rock and roll artists that lived in the county,” Simon said.
‘‘Ultimate Cheapskate’s Roadmap to True Riches” by Jeff Yeager
Simon also recommends Accokeek resident Jeff Yeager’s ‘‘Ultimate Cheapskate’s Roadmap to True Riches.”
The book teaches personal finance by explaining to people how to spend less by buying fewer unnecessary things and making smart decisions.
‘‘Dead Men Don’t Give Seminars” and ‘‘Dead Men Don’t Marry” by Dorothy Sucher
‘‘Dead Men Don’t Give Seminars” and its sequel, ‘‘Dead Men Don’t Marry,” by Greenbelt native Dorothy Sucher are two novels that Simon also recommends.
In ‘‘Dead Men Don’t Give Seminars,” private investigator Sabina Swift and her employee Victor Newman investigate the poisoning of Nobel Prize-winner Herve Moore-Gann at a party.
In ‘‘Dead Men Don’t Marry,” the pair investigates the deaths of two women who were killed by freight trains at train crossings shortly after being married.
‘‘Right as Rain” and ‘‘Hell to Pay” by George Pelecanos
‘‘All of the novels featuring Derek Strange ... are good reads,” Simon said. ‘‘They’re all excellent novels ... with true-to-life depictions of living in Prince George’s County.”
Ex-police officer Derek Strange is introduced in ‘‘Right as Rain,” and is hired to investigate the death of black officer, Chris Wilson, who was killed by a white officer, Terry Quinn, in a shootout. Strange and Quinn, who was cleared by police investigators, work together to find the truth behind Wilson’s death.
In ‘‘Hell to Pay,” the pair returns to investigate the killing of the 9-year-old star quarterback on Strange’s pee wee football team. The boy is killed at an ice-cream stand in a drug-related shooting.
‘‘Little X: Growing Up in the Nation of Islam” by Sonsyrea Tate
‘‘[‘Little X’] is about the African American Muslim experience,” Sonsyrea Tate said, who lives in Anne Arundel County. ‘‘It’s a personal historical narrative based on being raised in the Nation of Islam in its heyday — in the 1970s under Elijah Muhammad.”
The book was published in 1997, and then released as a textbook supplement in 2003 and used to teach classes on the Nation of Islam and women in religion, Tate said.
Powell said when the book was written it was the first of its kind.
‘‘It was the first time we looked at someone from the area who gave us a look at what life was like,” Powell said.
‘‘Do Me Twice: Life After Islam” by Sonsyrea Tate
Powell also said that Tate’s second book, ‘‘Do Me Twice,” is worth picking up. The book was released in November.
‘‘In this book she talks about her life from about age 18 to getting married last year,” Powell said.
Tate said the coming of age story looks at her life after breaking from her family’s Muslim traditions, including a few years when she worked in Prince George’s County.
‘‘It deals with the choices and circumstances of an urban woman in the 1980s,” she said, adding that the book has a broader scope addressing abortion and marital rape.
‘‘Building Houses out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, & Power” by Psyche Williams-Forson
Though it was written as an academic book, Warren suggested ‘‘Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs” by Beltsville resident Psyche Williams-Forson.
Williams-Forson, who teaches American studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, said she wanted to look at the ways black people interacted with and use chicken historically and in the present.
‘‘The stereotype has been that African Americans have more than an enthusiasm for chicken,” she said. ‘‘But we need to be aware of where the stereotype comes from. It has a long history.”
E-mail Maya T. Prabhu at mprabhu@gazette.net
