Four new thrillers show that the class of 2010 is already off to a great start. The year kicks off to a promising start with four thrillers by first-time authors.

In My Sister's House A NovelWritten by Donald WelchTrade Paperback, 240 pages | One World/Ballantine | Fiction | $14.00 | February 2, 2010 | 978-0-345-50162-2 (0-345-50162-4)Skylar and Storm Morrison may be gorgeous twin sisters, but they are as different as night and day. Skylar is savvy and book-smart; Storm is shrewd and street-smart. But a twist of fate lands Storm in jail, where she must trade her Fendi bags and Prada boots for an orange jumpsuit and laceless white sneakers. Meanwhile Skylar makes a name for herself by transforming the restaurant that once belonged to the twins’ late father, Dutch, into Legends, Philadelphia’s hottest new nightclub.    Now, newly released from prison, Storm has some serious living to do. And she’s ready to take control of what’s rightfully hers—a share of Legends—with the help of some of Philly’s most notorious thugs. But moving back into the real world will prove much harder than Storm ever imagined. And as Skylar and Storm negotiate their new relationship, both women will feel the pull of Dutch, a figure so powerful he can keep his girls in line years after his death. In the end, the sisters will have to face their shared, tumultuous past—and a future that’s both uncertain and wide open.

Jesus, Jobs, and Justice African American Women and ReligionWritten by Bettye Collier-ThomasHardcover, 736 pages | Knopf | Social Science - African-American Studies; History - United States; Social Science - Women's Studies | $37.50 | February 2, 2010 | 978-1-4000-4420-7 (1-4000-4420-0)“The Negroes must have Jesus, Jobs, and Justice,” declared Nannie Helen Burroughs, a nationally known figure among black and white leaders and an architect of the Woman’s Convention of the National Baptist Convention. Burroughs made this statement about the black women’s agenda in 1958, as she anticipated the collapse of Jim Crow segregation and pondered the fate of African Americans. Following more than half a century of organizing and struggling against racism in American society, sexism in the National Baptist Convention, and the racism and paternalism of white women and the Southern Baptist Convention, Burroughs knew that black Americans would need more than religion to survive and to advance socially, economically, and politically. Jesus, jobs, and justice are the threads that weave through two hundred years of black women’s experiences in America.Bettye Collier-Thomas’s groundbreaking book gives us a remarkable account of the religious faith, social and political activism, and extraordinary resilience of black women during the centuries of American growth and change. It shows the beginnings of organized religion in slave communities and how the Bible was a source of inspiration; the enslaved saw in their condition a parallel to the suffering and persecution that Jesus had endured.The author makes clear that while religion has been a guiding force in the lives of most African Americans, for black women it has been essential. As co-creators of churches, women were a central factor in their development. Jesus, Jobs, and Justice explores the ways in which women had to cope with sexism in black churches, as well as racism in mostly white denominations, in their efforts to create missionary societies and form women’s conventions. It also reveals the hidden story of how issues of sex and sexuality have sometimes created tension and divisions within institutions.Black church women created national organizations such as the National Association of Colored Women, the National League of Colored Republican Women, and the National Council of Negro Women. They worked in the interracial movement, in white-led Christian groups such as the YWCA and Church Women United, and in male-dominated organizations such as the NAACP and National Urban League to demand civil rights, equal employment, and educational opportunities, and to protest lynching, segregation, and discrimination. And black women missionaries sacrificed their lives in service to their African sisters whose destiny they believed was tied to theirs.Jesus, Jobs, and Justice restores black women to their rightful place in American and black history and demonstrates their faith in themselves, their race, and their God.

Princess Noire The Tumultuous Reign of Nina SimoneWritten by Nadine CohodasHardcover, 464 pages | Pantheon | Biography & Autobiography - Composers & Musicians; Biography & Autobiography - Women; Biography & Autobiography - People of Color | $30.00 | February 2, 2010 | 978-0-375-42401-4 (0-375-42401-6)From the author of the acclaimed Dinah Washington biography Queen comes this complete account of the triumphs and difficulties of the brilliant and high-tempered Nina Simone. Her distinctive voice and music occupy a singular place in the canon of American song.     Tapping into newly unearthed material—including stories of family and career—Nadine Cohodas gives us a luminous portrait of the singer who was born Eunice Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina, in 1933, one of eight children in a proud black family. We see her as a prodigiously talented child who is trained in classical piano through the charitable auspices of a local white woman. We witness her devastating disappointment when she is rejected by the Curtis Institute of Music—a dream deferred that would forever shape her self-image as well as her music. Yet by 1959—now calling herself Nina Simone—she had sung New York City’s venerable Town Hall and was on her way.  As we watch Simone’s exciting rise to stardom, Cohodas expertly weaves in the central factors of her life and career: her unique and provocative relationship with her audiences (she would “shush” them angrily; as a classically trained musician, she didn’t believe in cabaret chat); her involvement in and contributions to the civil rights movement; her two marriages, including one of brief family contentment with police detective Andy Stroud, with whom she had her daughter, Lisa; the alienation from the United States that drove her to live abroad. Alongside these threads runs a darker one: Nina’s increasing and sometimes baffling outbursts of rage and pain and her lifelong struggle to overcome a deep sense of personal injustice, which persisted even as she won international renown.  Princess Noire is a fascinating story, well told and thoroughly documented with intimate photos—a treatment that captures the passions of Nina’s life.

Street Shadows A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and RedemptionWritten by Jerald WalkerHardcover, 256 pages | Bantam | Biography & Autobiography - Personal Memoirs; Social Science - Discrimination & Race Relations; Family & Relationships - Family Relationships | $25.00 | January 26, 2010 | 978-0-553-80755-4 (0-553-80755-2)Masterfully told, marked by irony and humor as well as outrage and a barely contained sadness, Jerald Walker’s Street Shadows is the story of a young man’s descent into the “thug life” and the wake-up call that led to his finding himself again. Walker was born in a Chicago housing project and raised, along with his six brothers and sisters, by blind parents of modest means but middle-class aspirations. A boy of great promise whose parents and teachers saw success in his future, he seemed destined to fulfill their hopes. But by age fourteen, like so many of his friends, he found himself drawn to the streets. By age seventeen he was a school dropout, a drug addict, and a gangbanger, his life spiraling toward the violent and premature end all too familiar to African American males. And then came the blast of gunfire that changed everything: His coke-dealing friend Greg was shot to death—less than an hour after Walker scored a gram from him. “Twenty-five years later, tossing the drug out the window is still the second most difficult thing I’ve ever done. The most difficult thing is still that I didn’t follow it.”So begins the story, told in alternating time frames, of the journey that Walker took to become the man he is today—a husband, father, teacher, and writer. But his struggle to escape the long shadows of the streets was not easy. There were racial stereotypes to overcome—his own as well as those of the very white world he found himself in—and a hard grappling with the meaning of race that came to an unexpected climax on a trip to Africa.An eloquent account of how the past shadows but need not determine the present, Street Shadows is the opposite of a victim narrative. Walker casts no blame (except upon himself), sheds no tears (except for those who have not shared his good fortune), and refuses the temptations of self-pity and self-exoneration. In the end, what Jerald Walker has written is a stirring portrait of two Americas—one hopeless, the other inspirational—embodied within one man.