On The Way Up!, Donna L. Murrell-Murray, Vantage Press, ISBN # 0-533-15247-X, $10.95.
Following in the footsteps of her grandmother, Donna L. Murrell-Murray has put together On the Way Up!, an anthology of poetry that opens new vistas for the imagination. It is her hope to have written verses “able to compose a visual picture in readers’ minds that make them think about yesterday, today.”
Poet Murrell-Murray asks and wonders in what direction mankind is headed. Her dedication to civic activism in support of women’s rights and equality is a strong element of her work. A utopian and peaceful outlook forms the core of poems such as “Aspire to a Rainbow,” “Can’t We See One America?” and “Measure Your Treasure.” Compiled in this work are poems both intimate and strong – and intensely readable.

Boss Lady, Omar Tyree, Simon and Schuster, ISBN # 0=7432-2872-3, $14.
Omar Tyree’s new novel, Boss Lady tells the story of the power of human perseverance and the difficulty of achieving one’s goals, even after they have already been reached. It is a novel about dreams colliding with reality, and the extraordinary drive needed to push those dreams through to the next level. Tracy Ellison Grant, Tyree’s most famous and enthralling character, must wrestle both a career and a love life in a society that deems even successful women unfulfilled if they fail to land a man and raise a family. Tracy tries to play by her own rules, as always, when she realizes that the world of Philadelphia and the world of Hollywood have equally constricting notions of how a woman’s life should be constructed. Tyree presents a complicated modern world, true to life from the grittiest detail of the rough streets of Philadelphia to the elegant parties of Hollywood’s movers and shakers.

When Love Calls, You Better Answer, Bertice Berry, Harlem Moon, USBN # 0-7679-1638-7, $12.95.
Bernita Brown is a quick-thinking, tireless social worker who is good at practically everything – except love. Her first marriage ends in divorce, a painful experience Bernita refuses to think about. Instead, she dives into a series of sad relationships and overwhelming commitments to community and church. But not even church can keep her from being courted by dogs. Bernita’s married pastor begins making passes at her, then blames her for his backsliding. Along the way, the ghost of Bernita’s Aunt Babe weighs in with plenty of advice (after all, Aunt Babe says, “You don’t need to be alive to tell folks how to live”). When a marvelous man finally enters Bernita’s life, only time can tell whether she will be able to trust him.

Bloodbeats: Vol. 1, Ernest Hardy, Redbone Press, ISBN # 0-9656659-8-4, $19.95.
Writing from a critical center that is melanin-based/feminist/pro-queer/unabashedly-leftist, LA-based writer Ernest Hardy (a Sundance Fellow and member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association whose work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Vibe, the LA Times Weekly and more) pens essays, interviews and reviews. His subject matter ranges from underground hip-hop and American indie film to modern French cinema, from revealing interviews with Warren Beatty, Meshell NdegeOcello and Les Nubians to an essay on gay rappers and queer rap audiences that pushes beyond the clichés of the media-stoked “down-low” phenomenon.

The Forsaken: A Vampire Huntress Legend, L. A. Banks, ISBN # 0-312-35235-2, $14.95.
Resident vampire huntress author L. A. Banks continues to entertain readers in the seventh legend of her Vampire Huntress Series. The seventh level of Hell is on the rise, with the death of the Chairman of the Vampire Council, who is none other than the Unnamed One’s son. But this time, a ruthless and carefully planned strategy has been developed. There is only one entity who can beat Damali, send Carlos Rivera packing and put the Guardian team at mortal risk. He was once banished into a forsaken land, and possesses everything that would drop a Neteru to his or her knees. This time the fight is not so clear cut, nor is the enemy known.

Dirty Little Secrets, Joy King, St. Martin’s Griffin, ISBN # 0-312-35407, $14.95.
Ever since she was a little girl growing up in Georgia, Tyler Blake has dreamed of two things: being a movie star and finding true love with a man who would care for her unconditionally. Watching as her mother leaves her father for the money and abuse of another man, all Tyler has to hold onto are her dreams. As soon as she graduates from high school, she leaves her hometown behind and heads to New York City to attend college and pursue her acting career.
But nothing prepares Tyler for life in the big city. It’s not long before she gets caught up in a scene of sex, drugs, and exploitation with some of the sexiest and most powerful men in the business. They all want to own her, even at the cost of her own soul, and in her quest for stardom Tyler finds herself going from one dysfunctional relationship to another. But just when she thinks that she’s found her dream man – a hip hop music producer – tragedy strikes and Tyler is exposed to a side of the industry that she never thought existed. And before she knows it, Tyler finds that she is hiding some dirty little secrets of her own.

Kam’s Picks
Book Reviews by Kam Williams

Mama Made the Difference: Life Lessons My Mother Taught Me by Bishop T.D. Jakes, Putnam,
Hardcover, 288 pages, ISBN: 0-399-15363-3, $19.95.
           
“My mother was a most remarkable person. She embodies the reasons that I esteem mothers so highly. In fact, when people ask me why much of my nearly 30-year ministry has focused on seeing women healed and released into everything God has for them, I tell them that my loving and ministering to women is born of the way I loved and appreciated my mother.
I am who I am today in large part because of my mother, and I have written this book on behalf of all the sons and daughters who know they are who they are because of their mother. I have penned these pages in honor, in celebration, and in tribute of every mother who has ever lived.”
--Excerpted from the Introduction

When I was growing up back in the day, most of the mothers in my neighborhood were stay-at-home moms whose husbands commuted into the city for work. This meant that the task of keeping the kids on the block on the straight-and-narrow essentially fell to a tight-knit, extended family of females each of whom somehow felt responsible for raising one another’s children. These caretakers of the community were generally very strong and spiritual role models who simultaneously served as teachers, nurturers, disciplinarians, protectors, and advisors to any youngster who happened to enter their sphere of influence.
African American culture, by-and-large, has changed considerably since then, especially since economic factors have come to mandate that most Black women seek employment. This development makes Mama Made the Difference, that much sweeter, for this loving tribute harks back to a time when motherhood was still cherished in America as a sacred calling.
As Bishop T.D. Jakes explains his motivation for writing the book, “These are the years when people of my generation must see our parents fade and slip from our hands. While we still can, we must seize the opportunity to honor them.”
And though he first waxes romantic about his own dearly-departed mother, Oditha, the popular TV televangelist then devotes attention to other amazing women, some famous, some Biblical, some who have walked the Earth in relative obscurity, but with dignity.

in this touching tome are Reverend Bernice King about her mother, Coretta; gospel great CeCe Winans about her mom, Delores, and former Secretary of State Colin Powell about his mother, Maud. If the good Bishop’s mission, here, was merely to let every mother know that their sacrifices matter, make a difference, and will forever be appreciated, well then, Mission Accomplished! 

Armed Madhouse By Greg Palast, Dutton, Hardcover, 384 pages, ISBN: 0-525-94968-2,  $25.95
           
“Before you enter these pages, I should warn you: I am not a nice man. Ask Alan Colmes, Fox’s house liberal. He once said to me, ‘Greg, you have no respect for the office of the President.’ No, I don’t. Not one iota.
You want something heartwarming, Alan? Buy a puppy. But if you want just the facts, ma’am -- facts rarely cuddly or cute – here’s your book.”
--Excerpted from the Introduction

The mainstream media prefers to keep the American people in the dark when it comes to the truth about controversial questions like: why the Katrina evacuation and rescue really were botched, how the last two Presidential elections were fixed, and whether Republican tax cuts, downsizing, outsourcing, and undocumented worker programs represent an undeclared class war. Fortunately, intrepid journalist Greg Palast has been one to leave no stone unturned in quest of answers, researching deeply into such stories long after the rest of the press has chosen to parrot the White House talking points or big business’ party line.
Palast, an expatriate from Los Angeles who now makes his home in England, has been deemed “the most important investigative reporter of our time” in Britain, where he appears regularly on the BBC and writes revealing exposes for the Guardian newspapers. His previous book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, among other things, detailed the vote fraud in Florida which tainted the 2000 presidential race, putting Bush undeservedly in office.
In Armed Madhouse, Palast uncovers additional election irregularities, not only from 2000 and 2004, but the Republican plan already afoot to rig the results in 2008. Plus, he addresses such other underreported stories as the “plan to drown New Orleans,” the CIA plot to assassinate  Hugo Chavez, and the fact that the “No Child Left Behind Act” is actually designed to fail our kids.
Because Palast is shedding light on subjects either totally ignored in the U.S. or routinely dismissed as the talk of crackpot conspiracy theorists, his conclusions are likely to sound like the ravings of a paranoid nut at first blush. But because he has gone to great pains to document his every assertion, the evidence adds up to quite a convincing case by the end of this relentlessly compelling opus.
For instance, when revisiting the 2004 election, he states that the BBC revealed the “massive attack planned against Black voters” a week before the election. Moreover, this impending disenfranchisement of African Americans turned out to be “the most-watched story around the globe” at the time, precisely because of this nation’s long legacy of lynching, beating, hosing and siccing dogs on Blacks attempting to exercise their right to vote.
Yet, in the U.S., only one network, ABC, even bothered to mention the alleged scheme, and that was to dismiss the damning BBC coverage as “entirely incorrect.” So, while much of the rest of the world was calling for the stationing of UN observers at polls all across this country to protect the democratic process, the domestic press was disinterested in the array of racist measures being implemented by the Republican Party’s to purge hundreds of thousands of Blacks from the voting rolls and to discard the ballots of thousands more who might manage to vote. Welcome to Jim Crow, 21st Century-style.
Kudos to Greg Palast for this sobering wake-up call which could serve as the catalyst for the sort of wholesale social changes which America must make if the republic is to be saved.  

Black Cops Against Brutality: A Crisis Action Plan by DeLacy Davis , Introduction by Sergeant Hosia Reynolds, B-Cap Press, Paperback, 142 pages, illustrated, ISBN: 0-9745901-0-X, $25.

“Police brutality reminds me of the darkness in history when the master whipped the slaves just because he could… There can be no more blatant racism than that misuse of power by the police who have been entrusted to protect us.”
-- Excerpted from Chapter One

“The Vanishing Black Male” was the #1 documentary on my annual Top Ten List for 2005. That timely and thought-provoking picture seriously examined how guns, drugs, incarceration, suicide, and a host of other societal ills have collaborated to leave African-American men on the brink of extinction.
I start with this sidebar because one of the standouts of that groundbreaking film is Sgt. Delacy Davis, a recently-retired, 20-year veteran of the East Orange, NJ Police Department. Ever so eloquently, he bemoaned the breakdown of the Black family while delineating the efforts of Black Cops Against Police Brutality (B-CAP), to support single-moms and their kids in an effective manner.
But he originally founded that organization in order to prevent police misconduct and abuse of power, and to stem the rising tide of violence in the “hood” through the implementation of some innovative techniques and programs. Davis, who has a master’s degree in Administrative Science from Fairleigh Dickinson and a Bachelor’s in English from Drew University, has found himself to be quite in demand around the country, as of late, as a motivational speaker on this subject.
Fortunately, he has just published Black Cops Against Brutality: A Crisis Action Plan, a long overdue, logical extension of his dedication and commitment to the community. The book is basically a police encounter survival guide, for besides relating a litany of case histories by folks from all walks of life who fell victim to overzealous law enforcement, it offers plenty of practical advice on how to handle the situation, if you are unlucky enough to get detained by a cop for whatever reason.
Obviously, as a veteran officer, he has sage advice to share, such as to remain calm, roll down your car window, turn on the ceiling light and keep both hands on the wheel during a motor vehicle stop. He also lets you know how to handle the situation when the authorities arrive at your door, whether with or without a warrant, or if they simply begin questioning you right on the street.
Of equal import is how Delacy addresses what to do when you’ve become the victim of a profile stop, an unlawful arrest or an unfair search and seizure. Here, he delineates each step of the subsequent civilian complaint process, from keeping a log sheet, to finding an attorney, filing charges, and contacting the press and your political representatives.
Finally, because the author sees the issue as a nationwide crisis, he closes this priceless opus by stressing the need to develop both the leadership and the strategies necessary for eradicating police brutality once and for all. Overall, Black Cops Against Brutality is readily recommended as a legally-sound, morally-upright and most practical guide by a brother who breaks the blue wall of silence to help hip the people about how to deal with the criminal justice system most effectively.