This novel is about a young man accused of a crime he did not commit who is forced to flee in order to prove his innocence. He is helped by a gay Puerto Rican man he met in a bar a couple of days earlier.

A Feast of Peonies

Literature & Fiction

United States

Penknife Press

In this, his second novel, Obi has done it again with equal insight and equal finesse. It is the story of a young man's development from a man of inaction to a man of action, from a man with no direction to a man with a purpose. The story is set in the 1960s, but opens with the ending scene some years later. The protagonist is sitting under a cottonwood tree in Rainbow Park on Chicago's southeast side. He is writing. As he writes, he is approached by a midget whom he recognizes from years ago when he was in the military stationed in Germany. In fact, he has been waiting for the midget for years. The midget pulls a gun on him, and asks if he is 'the one.' He avoids the question. The midget asks again, "are you the one?" The story shifts to the beginning, to the protagonist as a young man enrolling in college. His name is Noel Bodie. Noel is despondent because his options in life are limited, and he seems to be at the mercy of the forces outside his sway. As the story progresses, Noel comes to realize that one can increase the options available in one's life, if one but has the nerve to do it. He transforms himself into Al Pearsons. In the end, Noel- now Al- is a new man, a bold man, a man capable of anything. More importantly, he is now a man of wisdom.

The Last and Final King

Literary

Satan's Anvil is a collection of short stories told from the perspective of African-American males. The stories speak of the struggles black men have regarding themselves and their relationships.

Satan's Anvil and other stories

Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable, a man more than the sum of his parts, through the course of his life became variously a precocious scholar, planter, sea captain, trapper, explorer, tribal chieftain, and one of the wealthiest men in 18th Century Midwestern United States. Like all of us, he was shaped by the peculiar circumstances of his surroundings. But in order to survive the perils of his environment he constantly reinvented himself to fit his times. The central fact of DuSable's existence is that he has largely been lost to history by becoming the victim of myth. It has long been debated whether he was the founder of Chicago. Such debate is often garbled in the babble of semantics. The truth is that in the place he had the vision to predict was strategically situated to be the economic center of North America, there is scarcely a monument to mark his ever passing this way. This, too, is due to the circumstance of his being. Those in the process of stealing the land from its indigenous peoples and alternately, time and again, from each other were not willing to credit a Black man from Haiti with opening the bounty of the Midwest to prosperity that gained great currency after his death. It does not go unnoticed that subtle innuendoes like portraying his home as a simple cabin instead of the sumptuous mansion it was are among the more obvious attempts to obscure the truth of this visionary pioneer. Diligent study will dispel the myth and reveal the reality of Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable. As a philosopher, humanist, poetic seer, and peacemaker, Jean DuSable stands as the prototype of the American Dream. Ironically, the founding of the city may be among the least of DuSable's accomplishments. This novel offers insight into the personality that made his tremendous, and largely unsung, feats possible.

The Warrior's Belt: The Memoirs of Jean Baptiste Point Dusable

Holmes, Warren W.

‘Fat from Papa’s Head’ is a collection of short stories targeted at young adults.  All of the protagonists are young African-American male teenagers and young adults.  The main characters in these stories are at pivotal points in their young lives.  Some of the youth are at rite-of-passage moments, and others are merely faced with decisions. This collection was composed in response to the author’s conversations with incarcerated African-American male youth.  The discussions centered on reading materials, and the need and want for stories that reflected their lives.   These stories are an attempt to meet that need and want.

Fat from Papa's Head

Lindsay, Tony

<p>Emotional Drippings is a collection of short stories about love, lust and addiction. The stories are real enough to wrap the reader in the common prose of the characters everyday lives. These lives, these characters, these situations are lived by the reader. Moments of desire, anguish, pity, joy and heart-pounding excitement flow from the page. This collection of stories reflects lives lived during these times.</p>

Emotional Drippings: Stories of Lust, Love and Addiction

Erotica

One Dead Activist: A David Price Mystery

<p>Meet Valencia (Val) Banks Freeman. Chicagoan, WestSider, Malcolm X College graduate, Owner-Publisher of BlackSide Press, the largest community newspaper in the city, Community Activist and winner of one billion dollars from Lotto-50 - the first entire All-Fifty-States lottery. What? An activist winning the lottery? How can that be? True Activists don't buy lottery tickets. They protest against them. If you ever listened to black talk radio or seen the activists on television, then you know that the activists always have all the answers. But seldom do they ever have the money to fix the problems. Billion Dollar Winner tells the story of what happens when one of the main individuals who protested the loudest against the Lotto-50 lottery game turns out to win the very lottery she so actively disparaged. Will Val remain true to her activist nature? Or will the love of money, which is at the root of all evil, change her and make her the hypocrite everyone calls her when they find out she won the money? And just how did someone who never bought a lottery ticket in her entire life come to possess one in the first place?</p>

Billion Dollar Winner

Jones, Arlene

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Penknife Press publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Penknife Press