African American

Independent Apple Book Center Struggles for a New Lease on Life Sherry McGee may be in her last days as an independent bookseller. After signing yet another loan, dumping her 401(K) fund into her beloved Apple Book Center, and facing debts totaling $300,000, she told her staff in late February that she would close the doors this month.

In 1992, Sonia Williams-Babers entered the world of bookselling with "the smallest ad available" in the June issue of Black Enterprise magazine. The ad read "Get Hooked on Black Books -- send $1 for a catalogue." On returning home to Fort Worth, Texas, from Anaheim, California, and their first ABA Convention, Williams-Babers and her husband and business partner, Elvis Babers, found an overflowing post office box.

Ask Solomon Jones, author of Pipe Dream, (Random House/Striver's Row) what finally turned him away from a crack-addicted life that began in 1990 and he will answer quickly, "I turned to the Lord." Taking pages out of his own life, his novel Pipe Dream catapults readers inside Philadelphia's underground drug world to solve a murder mystery.