A Love Noire (PB) (2004)

When Noire, a hip, Afro-wearing Ph.D. student, walks into Brown Betty Books, her righteousness kicks in to overdrive amid the self-identified talented tenth who wear their double degrees and five-hundred-dollar shoes like badges of honor. And then Innocent, a well-heeled investment banker from Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa, walks in and turns her on her head. Innocent seems interested in her -- but he's one of them.

Before meeting him, Noire shunned the bourgie world of black-moneyed cosmopolitans like Innocent, opting instead for socially conscious (but economically challenged) artists and urban intellectuals. Their mutual attraction blossoms into lust -- and eventually love -- but it lives in the shifting sands of personal beliefs and professional ambitions that are often at odds.

Set in New York City with jaunts to Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean, A Love Noire is the story of an unlikely couple that transcends all they've known to learn the redemptive power of love.