6 Books by Black Authors for the Read Harder Challenge

Tell me you wouldn’t read the title of this in a bookstore and have to pick it up (which also makes it prime material for #16 of the challenge, “Read a book based solely on the title”). And the title is pretty spot on. Cinnamon is drunk when she saves the shifter demon Fallon, and after he follows her home and tells her of the evil goddess that has reduced demons to zombie-like states, she accompanies him to free his people. She helps him free some other things, too, if you know what I mean. This is a fun, funny, steamy monster romance with a Black female lead (in other words, you should read it ASAP). Bonus points for Cinnamon’s siblings being named Chili and Cumin.

Twelve Black men were led deep into a forest in Maryland in 1911 and made to clear the land, build a structure, and harvest tobacco. Once the structure was finished, it became the state’s Hospital for the Negro Insane, and they became its first patients. Thus begins Hylton’s 93-year spanning history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the largest segregated asylums that still has records, and a testament to how the more things change, the more they stay the same in this country. Through Hylton’s meticulous research, we see how the hospital represents a microcosm of America’s tendency to engage in slavery by a different name (the hospital started as an antebellum-style work camp), its struggle with integration and with providing needed mental health care to its most vulnerable populations, and the fight for civil rights.