"The experience and quality that I bring to my writing can't be faked. I know what I know. Through my novels, I invite readers to journey with me into the streets. Come see what I've seen. Let me show the gritty and grimy undercarriage of society, the 'flip side' of the game."—Shannon Holmes

Inspired by the events of his own life, the Essence bestselling author of B-More Careful and Bad Girlz presents a vivid,

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While working as a server at a retirement community to get the experience he needs to attend culinary school, Tommy Dees is assigned to train the new hire, Gabe, his first crush from summer camp who doesn't remember him at all, and as old feelings resurface, Tommy tries to keep his life together as the application deadline for culinary school nears.

When disturbing images keep appearing in Tai's camera lens, Trey and Tai reignite their search for their mother, who mysteriously disappeared 10 years earlier, uncovering strange secrets about their magical ancestors and a threat to their very existence.

"To help her best friend-turned-enemy Derek, who's possessed by a ghost, seventeen-year-old Aria must reestablish her link to the afterlife with the help of a new love to remove the lost soul from Derek's body or they could lose him forever."--

Harangued by his father about his weight and bullied in all the many schools he has attended, teenaged Michael finds some comfort in his ability to experience "lucid" dreaming but then starts to notice that the things that happen in his dreams are starting to occur in the real world as well.

"In the small hours of the morning, Abi Knight is startled awake by the phone call no mother ever wants to get: her teenage daughter Olivia has fallen off a bridge. Not only is Olivia brain dead, she's pregnant and must remain on life support to keep her baby alive. And then Abi sees the angry bruises circling Olivia's wrists. When the police unexpectedly rule Olivia's fall an accident, Abi decides to find out what really happened that night. Heartbroken...

"On a single night, five children suddenly vanish from their homes in Paris, Glasgow, Rome, and London. Years later, five enigmatic teenagers make an impressive entrance at an exclusive New York holiday party with their strange but beautiful governess, Madam Vileroy. Rumor and intrigue follow the Faust children to the elite Manhattan Marlowe School, where their very presence brings unexplainable misfortune..."--dust cover flap.

Calliope's friendship with a classmate and her sense of identity are compromised by the adolescent discovery that she is a hermaphrodite, a situation with roots in her grandparents' desperate struggle for survival in the 1920s.

"18-year-old Opal is a young Black woman working as a housekeeper in a small Southern town in the 1930s--and then the Klan descends. A moving story that confronts America's tragic past, When Stars Rain Down is both heartwarming and heart-wrenching. This summer has the potential to change everything. The summer of 1936 in Parsons, Georgia, is unseasonably hot, and Opal Pruitt senses a nameless storm brewing. She hopes this foreboding feeling won't...