New York: The Viking Press, 1929. Hardcover first edition - A member of the French diplomatic service, Morand become friends with Carl Van Vechten in New York in 1925-27 and in 1927-28 he traveled though the Southern U.S. and the Caribbean, including Martinique, Trinidad, Haiti, Jamaica, and Cuba. In 1928 Morand went to French colonial possessions in Africa, including Dakar (Senegal), French Guinea, French Sudan and Timbuktu, among other places -or, as he ended his preface to this book "30,000 miles. 28 Negro countries." Magie Noire or Black Magic is a collection of stories or vignettes, supposedly based on these travels. A few involve voodoo, and several are stories of 'passing' or attempting to pass as white, but all are about black people, often depicted in grotesque or stereotypical ways, and despite being illustrated by the noted Harlem Renaissance artist, Aaron Douglas, and the comment by the translator expressing gratitude to noted civil rights activist and author Walter White for his assistance, the underlying racism of this book is indisputable. A contemporary review in the NY Times noted that Morand "takes the black races as material for esthetic effects, for a smooth high-geared prose that is modern in its surface aspects and not particularly searching" while a more recent critic commented even when it "recounts various injustices which African-Americans have suffered at the hands of white Americans - including lynchings and sundown towns - the focus of the story is not on the real injustices against Black people, but on the negative portrayal of Black people in striving for economic success and political equality." Translated from the French by Hamish Miles. Striking full page illustrations by Douglas at the beginning of each story make this book worthwhile. 218 pp.

New York: Riverhead Books, 2014. dj. Hardcover first edition - The fifth novel by this award-winning writer, who was named one of Grantas Best Young British Novelists in 2013. In the winter of 1953, "after escaping the cruel wrath of her abusive father, Boy Novak finds comfort in a small Massachusetts suburb and a widower named Arturo, whom she later marries. Boy is quite taken with Arturo's daughter Snow, but it's the daughter she has with Arturo that complicates their quiet lives - Bird's birth reveals that Arturo is a light-skinned African-American passing for white. . . The perception of Arturo's race is threatened by Bird. But it's the psychological conflicts that are the most devastating. Arturo was raised with "the idea that there was no need to ever say, that if you knew who you were then that was enough, that not saying was not the same as lying." Is passing dishonest if it isn't an active decision?" 308 pp. ISBN: 978-1594631399.