MADreads

Is there any guilty pleasure quite as satisfying as royal watching? We all love to tune into the elaborate weddings, analyze sartorial choices and coo when a royal baby arrives on the scene. But as basically every generation of royalty throughout history has shown, the happy ever after surface doesn’t always match what’s happening behind palace walls, and occasionally that unhappiness breaks into the public.

It's a bit of misnomer to call Kwana Jackson’s newest novel, Real Men Knit a romance. It’s being billed as such by its publisher, but this is really more the story of a family with strong elements of romance intertwined. And unlike many other romances, this one begins with a tragedy: Mama Joy Strong, a foster-turned-adoptive mother to four boys and the proprietor of Harlem’s Strong Knits knitting store, has suddenly died. Her boys, now all grown and more or less launched into life with varying degrees of success, are left stunned.

It’s the fall of 2016 and Darren Mathews feels like a seismic change has happened. The African-American Texas Ranger isn’t just bracing for whatever changes will be coming to law enforcement following the election, but his personal life is equally posed on the brink of change. After the events of Bluebird, Bluebird, Attica Locke’s first book in the Highway 59 series, Mathews thought he had reached a precarious sense of peace. His marriage to lawyer Lisa ha

Dani Brown needs some loving and soon. The grad student star of Take a Hint, Dani Brown is in hot pursuit of her PhD, but her latest partner ‘caught feelings’ and if there’s one thing Dani is clear on, it’s that she doesn’t want anything more from her relationships than a good time in bed. So, she’s dumped her girlfriend and is on the lookout for a new buddy to help her deal with the tension of academia—but definitely not a relationship. There’s the very cute security guard at her university office, but big, brooding former rugby pro Zafir Ansari doesn’t seem interested in her.