Allende, Isabel. (2010). Island Beneath the Sea.
Born on the island of Saint-Domingue, Zarité—known as Tété—is the daughter of an African mother she never knew and one of the white sailors who brought her into bondage. Though her childhood is one of brutality and fear, Tété finds solace in the traditional rhythms of African drums and the voodoo loa she discovers through her fellow slaves.
When twenty-year-old Toulouse Valmorain arrives on the island in 1770, it’s with powdered wigs in his trunks and dreams of financial success in his mind. But running his father’s plantation, Saint Lazare, is neither glamorous nor easy. Although Valmorain purchases young Tété for his bride, it is he who will become dependent on the services of his teenaged slave.
Against the merciless backdrop of sugarcane fields, the lives of Tété and Valmorain grow ever more intertwined. When the bloody revolution of Toussaint Louverture arrives at the gates of Saint Lazare, they flee the brutal conditions of the French colony, soon to become Haiti, for the raucous, free-wheeling enterprise of New Orleans. There, Tété finally forges a new life, but her connection to Valmorain is deeper than anyone knows and not easily severed. With an impressive richness of detail, and a narrative wit and brio second to none, Allende crafts the riveting story of one woman’s determination to find love amid loss, to offer humanity though her own has been so battered, and to forge a new identity in the cruelest of circumstances.

Alvarez, J. (1994). In the Time of Butterflies.
In this work of historical fiction, Alvarez, relates a fictionalized account of the Mirabal sisters during the time of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. The book is written in the first and third person, by and about the Mirabal sisters

Carpentier, Alejandro. (1949). The Kingdom of this World.
The story unfolds mainly from the point of view of a plantation slave, Ti Nöel, starting on a quiet day when he and his master buy a horse for stud. Soon Ti is swept up in the frenzy of the coming mutiny. Magical realism, Vodou, and snake worship energize and unite the slaves. Imagined events blend with reality. Slaughter, looting and burning follow after the oppressed attack their oppressors and install their own ruler—who abuses them just as badly as had their European masters. Episodes of unchecked brutality on both sides are interspersed with scenes of normalcy—sharing drinks at a tavern, modest theatre performances, and ship passages back to Europe.
Carpentier avoids detailed battle strategies, dates, places, and body counts and stays away from exploring French, British, and Spanish roles in this symbolically important colony. Instead he digs into the emotions and feelings brought on by racism on both sides, the jungle terrain, disease, powerful weather, and the aftermath of unchecked slaughter where the only certainties are the earth, the sky, the sea, and death. Even in translation, the prose is literary, often lyrical. The whole novel unfolds in less than 130 pages but packs disturbing messages about colonial exploitations, culture divides, and man’s darker impulses.

Danticat, Edwidge. (2019). Everything Inside: Stories.
In these eight powerful, emotionally absorbing stories, a romance unexpectedly sparks between two wounded friends; a marriage ends for what seem like noble reasons, but with irreparable consequences; a young woman holds on to an impossible dream even as she fights for her survival; two lovers reunite after unimaginable tragedy, both for their country and in their lives; a baby's christening brings three generations of a family to a precarious dance between old and new; a man falls to his death in slow motion, reliving the defining moments of the life he is about to lose.

Danticat, Edwidge. (1998) Farming of Bones.
It is 1937 and Amabelle Désir, a young Haitian woman living in the Dominican Republic, has built herself a life as the servant and companion of the wife of a wealthy colonel. She and Sebastian, a cane worker, are deeply in love and plan to marry. But Amabelle's world collapses when a wave of genocidal violence, driven by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, leads to the slaughter of Haitian workers. Amabelle and Sebastian are separated, and she desperately flees the tide of violence for a Haiti she barely remembers.

Already acknowledged as a classic, this harrowing story of love and survival—from one of the most important voices of her generation—is an unforgettable memorial to the victims of the Parsley Massacre and a testimony to the power of human memory.

Gay, Roxane. (2014). Untamed State.
A novel of privilege in the face of crushing poverty, and of the lawless anger that corrupt governments produce. The story of a willful woman attempting to find her way back to the person she once was, and of how redemption is found in the most unexpected of places.

Leger, D.E. (2015). God Loves Haiti.
A native of Haiti, Dimitry Elias Léger makes his remarkable debut with this story of romance, politics, and religion that traces the fates of three lovers in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and the challenges they face readjusting to life after an earthquake devastates their city. Reflecting the chaos of disaster and its aftermath, God Loves Haiti switches between time periods and locations, yet always moves closer to solving the driving mystery at its center: Will the artist Natasha Robert reunite with her one true love, the injured Alain Destiné, and live happily ever after?

Llosa, Mario Vargas. (2001). The Feast of the Goat.
Haunted all her life by feelings of terror and emptiness, forty-nine-year-old Urania Cabral returns to her native Dominican Republic - and finds herself reliving the events of l961, when the capital was still called Trujillo City and one old man terrorized a nation of three million. Rafael Trujillo, the depraved ailing dictator whom Dominicans call the Goat, controls his inner circle with a combination of violence and blackmail. In Trujillo's gaudy palace, treachery and cowardice have become a way of life. But Trujillo's grasp is slipping. There is a conspiracy against him, and a Machiavellian revolution already underway that will have bloody consequences of its own.

Rosario, Nelly. (2002). Song of the Water Saints.
A tale of generations of Dominican women. Graciela is an adventuress who comes of age during the U.S. occupation but is too poor to live her dreams. Her daughter Mercedes grows up to manage a shop during the Trujillo dictatorship and emigrates to New York with her husband and granddaughter Leila. Leila has inherited Graciela's recklessness, but her freedom carries its own obligations and dangers.

Troulite, E. (2003). The Infamous Rosalie
Lisette, a Saint-Domingue-born Creole slave and daughter of an African-born bossale, has inherited not only the condition of slavery but the traumatic memory of the Middle Passage as well. The stories told to her by her grandmother and godmother, including the horrific voyage aboard the infamous slave ship Rosalie, have become part of her own story, the one she tells in this haunting novel by the acclaimed Haitian writer velyne Trouillot. Inspired by the colonial tale of an African midwife who kept a cord of some seventy knots, each one marking a child she had killed at birth, the novel transports us back to Saint-Domingue, before it became Haiti. The year is 1750, and a rash of poisonings is sowing fear among the plantation masters, already unsettled by the unrest caused by Makandal, the legendary Maroon leader. Through this tumultuous time, Lisette struggles to maintain her dignity and to imagine a future for her unborn child. In telling Lisette’s story, Trouillot gives the revolution that will soon rock the island a human face and at long last sheds light on the invisible women and men of Haitian history.

Ulysse, K. D. (2014). Drifting.
Katia D. Ulysse’s debut provides the rare opportunity to peer into the private lives of four secretive Haitian families. The interwoven narrative spans four decades—from 1970 through 2010—and drifts among various provinces in Haiti, the United States, churches, vodun temples, schools, strip clubs, and the grave. Ulysse introduces us to a childless Haitian American couple risking it all for a baby to call their own; a Florida-based predatory schoolteacher threatening students with deportation if they expose him; and the unforgettable Monsieur Boursicault, whose chain of funeral parlors makes him the wealthiest man in Haiti. This daring work of fiction is a departure from the standard narrative of political unrest on the island. Ulysse’s characters are everyday people whose hopes for distant success are constantly challenged—but never totally swayed—by the hard realities accompanying the immigrant’s journey.

Ulysse, K. D. (2017). Mouths Don’t Speak.
No one was prepared for the massive earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010, taking over a quarter-million lives, and leaving millions more homeless. Three thousand miles away, Jacqueline Florestant mourns the presumed death of her parents, while her husband, a former US Marine and combat veteran, cares for their three-year-old daughter as he fights his own battles with acute PTSD.
Horrified and guilt-ridden, Jacqueline returns to Haiti in search of the proverbial “closure.” Unfortunately, the Haiti she left as a child twenty-five years earlier has disappeared. Her quest turns into a tornado of deception, desperation, and more death. So Jacqueline holds tightly to her daughter–the only one who must not die.