MahoganyBooks Customer Favorites

It’s amazing what we find when we look at what MahoganyBooks customers are purchasing and viewing on our website as compared to the type of “Black Books” given high-profile merchandising placement at other retailers. Even with a cursory glance, you’ll notice a difference in the subject matter and genres our customers prefer. We point this out for two reasons: first, we just love bursting bubbles with facts as a means of destroying stereotypes :-), and second, it reflects the need for a specialty bookstore like ours to provide the deep dive book selection that readers expect to find when they’re engaging in “heritage learning.”

Enjoy and don’t forget let us know what you think in the comments section below!

MahoganyBooks Customer Favorites

Ballerina Body (Autographed) by Misty Copeland
Ballerina Body (Autographed)
by Misty Copeland

The celebrated ballerina and role model, Misty Copeland, shares the secrets of how to reshape your body and achieve a lean, strong physique and glowing health.

Misty Copeland believes “There has been a shift in recent years in which women no longer desire the bare bones of a runway model. Standards have changed: what women do want is a long, toned, powerful body with excellent posture.” In other words, the body of a ballerina.

In her first health and fitness book, Misty will show women how to find the motivation to get healthier and stronger, and how to reshape their bodies to be lean and flexible, with step-by-step advice, meal plans, workout routines, and words of inspiration. Celebrating the importance of healthy fats and a fitness regimen based on ballet exercises, Misty shares her own time-tested exercises and an eating plan focusing on healthy fats, both of which keep her in top shape. Tips for motivation and words of encouragement as well as tips on how to keep going even when you may want to give up.

Never Caught by Erica Armstrong Dunbar
Never Caught
by Erica Armstrong Dunbar

A startling and eye-opening look into America s First Family, Never Caught is the powerful narrative of Ona Judge, George and Martha Washington s runaway slave who risked it all to escape the nation s capital and reach freedom.

When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation s capital, after a brief stay in New York. In setting up his household he took Tobias Lear, his celebrated secretary, and nine slaves, including Ona Judge, about which little has been written. As he grew accustomed to Northern ways, there was one change he couldn’t get his arms around: Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. Rather than comply, Washington decided to circumvent the law. Every six months he sent the slaves back down south just as the clock was about to expire.

Though Ona Judge lived a life of relative comfort, the few pleasantries she was afforded were nothing compared to freedom, a glimpse of which she encountered first-hand in Philadelphia. So, when the opportunity presented itself one clear and pleasant spring day in Philadelphia, Judge left everything she knew to escape to New England. Yet freedom would not come without its costs.

At just twenty-two-years-old, Ona became the subject of an intense manhunt led by George Washington, who used his political and personal contacts to recapture his property.

Impeccably researched, historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar weaves a powerful tale and offers fascinating new scholarship on how one young woman risked it all to gain freedom from the famous founding father.”

Black Labor, White Wealth by Claude Anderson
Black Labor, White Wealth
by Claude Anderson

Dr. Anderson’s first book is a classic.

It tracks slavery and Jim Crow public policies that used black labor to construct a superpower nation. It details how black people were socially engineered into the lowest level of a real life Monopoly game, which they are neither playing or winning. Black Labor, White Wealth is a comprehensive analysis of the issues of race. Dr. Anderson uses the analysis in this book to offer solutions to America’s race problem.

#4 The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
The Hate U Give
by Angie Thomas

Eight Starred Reviews! #1 New York Times Bestseller!

“Absolutely riveting!” –Jason Reynolds

“This story is necessary. This story is important.” –Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.

But what Starr does–or does not–say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.

Insurrections: Stories by Rion Almicar Scott
Insurrections: Stories
by Rion Almicar Scott

Winner of the PEN America Bingham Prize for Emerging Fiction

A suicidal father looks to an older neighbor — and the Cookie Monster — for salvation and sanctuary as his life begins to unravel. A man seeking to save his estranged, drug-addicted brother from the city’s underbelly confronts his own mortality. A chess match between a girl and her father turns into a master class about life, self-realization, and pride: “Now hold on little girl…. Chess is like real life. The white pieces go first so they got an advantage over the black pieces.”

These are just a few glimpses into the world of the residents of the fictional town of Cross River, Maryland, a largely black settlement founded in 1807 after the only successful slave revolt in the United States. Raw, edgy, and unrelenting yet infused with forgiveness, redemption, and humor, the stories in this collection explore characters suffering the quiet tragedies of everyday life and fighting for survival.

In Insurrections, Rion Amilcar Scott’s lyrical prose authentically portrays individuals growing up and growing old in an African American community. Writing with a delivery and dialect that are intense and unapologetically current, Scott presents characters who dare to make their own choices — choices of kindness or cruelty — in the depths of darkness and hopelessness. Although Cross River’s residents may be halted or deterred in their search for fulfillment, their spirits remain resilient — always evolving and constantly moving.

About MahoganyBooks 242 Articles
MahoganyBooks is an online bookstore that believes in social entrepreneurship. We take a leadership role in the African American community promoting reading, writing, and cultural awareness as tools to improve communities as well as enrich the lives of motivated individuals.

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