Denis Gray – författare

Walter Von Bulow, the owner of the Morning Queen, has recently discovered LucindaLucky Martinson. Luckys a talented young jazz singer. Von Bulow hires her in theyear 1925, to sing in Princes band. But shes in New Orleans for other reasons: LuckyMartinsons on a personal quest to reconcile her past. Luckys left Harlem and herboyfriend Tolliver Williamsa fellow jazz musician Luckys in love with. Shes put herpersonal and professional life at risk in traveling to New Orleans, Louisiana to unburytruths and lies. Luckys sucked further into New Orleanss network of mystery andintrigue once she uncovers these family secrets in a historical city where voodoo andsuperstition co-exist, and can destroy the people you love.

Noble Prince nurtures Luckys singing ambitions, but Victor Malreauxa young,dynamic trumpet player in the Prince bandnurtures her soul. Victor falls in love withLucky. But Victor Malreaux as well as Noble Prince are in for a rude awakening fromLucky Martinson; each for diff erent reasons.

Sixty-eight-year-old Della Ballad has a bad heart, but she still has a healthy outlook on life. Shes been suffering with heart disease for the last seven years; she has no intention of letting it beat her. Della plans to fight has hard as she can.

But heart disease isnt the only battle taking place. Since childhood, Dellas daughter, Margaret, and Dellas niece, Darlene Winston, have been fighting for Dellas love. The illness has only made the situation worse. Their rivalry has permeated the Ballad family, and Dellas greatest fear is that it will destroy them when she dies. Both Margaret and Darlene will have to abide by the directives in Dellas last will and testament, a will the women believe will finally confirm whom Della loved more.

Dellas Deed examines the complex relationships found in a family structure and shows how resentment and jealousy can break a family apart, only to find common threads in reuniting for the better.

Fifty-two-year-old Maurice Teardrop Williams is a world famous blues mansinger, guitarist, and songwriter. But since Maureen, his wife of thirty years, died seven months ago, Teardrop has lost the joy he once found in performing music on the road with his band, the Tearmakers. With his light-blue guitar called Lillian, he returns home to Walker City, Iowa.

Finding it difficult and lonely to stay in the home he once shared with Maureen, he moves in with his daughter, Arlene, and his seven-year-old grandson, Jamal. Teardrop is devoted to Maureens memory and counts on Arlenes and Jamals companionship and support. It isnt until three years later, when twenty-five-year-old freelance journalist Ursula Jenkins arrives from New York City to interview Teardrop for an assignment, that his world begins to change.

Ursula comes away from the interview discovering things about herself she had not bargained for, including an attraction to this once-famous musician. As the relationship deepens, Arlene feels she must continue to protect her mothers place in her fathers heart and tries to do what she can to put an end to Teardrops and Ursulas partnership. The couple faces issues of age, family and loss, and only time will tell whether love really can conquer all things.

When trainer Frank Black Machine Whaley of View Point, Texas, dies of a heart attack in 1946, Elegant Raines, an eighteen-year-old black prizefighter, must find a new trainer. Raines calls on Leemore Pee-Pot Manners, a boxing trainer who lives in Longwood, West Virginia. Any honest man would say Pee-Pot knows more about boxing than anyone alivewhether that man is black or white.

Rainess goal is to become the heavyweight champion of the world. Under Pee-Pots tutelage Raines wins not only the middleweight championship, but the light heavyweight championship, marking him as one of the greatest fighters of his time.

During his quest for the title, Raines falls in love with Gem Loving, a pastors daughter whose father, Pastor Embry O. Loving, maintains a dim view of fighters. Gem must fight for Raines in ways her father will condemn.

A Bigger Prize tells a fictional story of the boxing world in the 1940s and what the sport meant to both blacks and whites of the time. It considers the question of whether Elegant Rainess bigger prize is the worlds heavyweight championshipor something outside the ring more violent than boxing and its reward.

Arfel Booker is a great young blues musician in the 1940s South. One night, after playing a blues gig in a new town, a beautiful woman takes him back to her log cabin to make love. In the morning (after blacking out from too much liquor), he awakens to an unwelcome surprise. Instead of the woman, an unfamiliar white man is in the bed, and the mans throat has been slashed with Arfels knife.

Arfel knows hes been framed, so he makes a run for it and heads north by hopping trains. Once a safe distance from the southern town, Arfel makes the acquaintance of Lemontree Johnson, a fellow blues man who helps to reestablish Arfels music and him. Despite this spot of good luck, Arfels troubles are far from over.

Lemontree is the only person who knows the truth about Arfels run from the south and his current state as suspected murderer. All seems lost when a bounty hunter arrives looking for Arfel. Who was that strange murdered white man, and how will Arfel Booker escape the long arm of the law this time?

At sixteen, Crystal became MC Ms. Lady, a Brooklyn-based rapper. By age nineteen, shes known as the queen of hip-hop with hit records produced by Konscious Flow Productions, a rival hip-hop company of Precision Records. Not only is Crystal a brilliant rapper, but a scholar who attended Harvard University for one year, landing on its Deans list. She envisions being more than just a rapper; she aspires to be a record executive.

Crystal meets with Lord and earns an executive internship position at Precision Records. But she harbors a deeper and more personal reason for wanting to intern with her fathers company. Is it to seek Lords love and approval or to destroy him because of his past deeds and abandonment?