Showing results by narrator "Bahni Turpin" in All Categories

For heiress Cecilia Charity Thomas, marrying charming military lieutenant Viscount Gantry to save him from danger - and herself from mercenary suitors - was a painful mistake. Instead of a passionate life together, she's stranded at his chilly mansion with his unaccepting family. Worse, she finds he is actually a spy dedicated to duty over wedlock. So when she hears her sister has been driven to her death, Cecilia is determined to expose the powerful man responsible. Assisted by The Widow's Grace, she flees to Covent Garden with a new identity. But can she elude her formidable husband?

This debut collection is a complicated love letter to Washington, DC, and to those who call it home: a TSA agent who's never flown, a girl braving new worlds to play piano, and a teacher caught up in a mayoral race. These characters navigate life's "training school" - with lessons on gentrification and respectability - and fight to create their own sense of space and self.

Thirteen of the most accomplished YA authors deliver a label-defying anthology that includes 10 short stories, a graphic novel, and a one-act play about topics like gentrification, acceptance, untimely death, coming out, and poverty, and ranging in genre from contemporary realistic fiction to adventure and romance. This collection will inspire you to break conventions, bend the rules, and color outside the lines.

A modern-day noir featuring a twisty cat-and-mouse chase, this dark debut thriller tells the story of a woman who makes a living taking down terrible men...then finds herself in over her head and with blood on her hands. The only way out? Pull off one final con.

The Children is David Halberstam's brilliant and moving evocation of the early days of the civil rights movement, as seen through the story of the young people - the children - who met in the 1960s and went on to lead the revolution.

For Sugar, life is anything but sweet.

Ten-year-old Sugar lives on River Road Plantation along the banks of the Mississippi River. Slavery is over, but working in the sugarcane fields all day doesn’t make her feel very free. Thankfully, Sugar knows how to make her own fun, telling stories, climbing trees, and playing with forbidden friend Billy, the plantation owner’s son. Then a group of Chinese workers arrives to help harvest the cane. Sugar wants to know everything about them - she loves the way they dress, their unfamiliar language, and, best of all, the stories they tell of dragons and emperors.

Powerful, epic, and compelling, Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen shines light on a nearly forgotten figure in history. Cathy Williams was born and lived a slave - until the Union army comes and destroys the only world she’s known. Separated from her family, she makes the impossible decision - to fight in the army disguised as a man with the Buffalo Soldiers. With courage and wit, Cathy must not only fight for her survival and freedom in the ultimate man’s world, but never give up on her mission to find her family, and the man she loves.

As America plunges into the Great Depression, Marthanne Hendrix finds herself in rural Vidalia, Georgia, with no memory of how she got there.

Bewildered when the neighbors call her Oma, Marthanne is haunted by memories of another life—and another self. With the help of Comfort, a domestic worker living with her own tremendous loss, Marthanne discovers that Oma is another distinct personality inhabiting her body. In a time when mental illness is taboo, Marthanne and Oma’s simple, small-town life is fraught with complexity and danger.

With gossip running rampant, Marthanne and Oma will do anything to avoid their greatest fear: commitment to an insane asylum. Only by relying on Comfort’s kindness can they navigate their uncertain future. Friendship becomes sanctuary, and the quest for an ordinary life leads to an extraordinary bond.

Deeply moving and exquisitely wrought, Show Me a Kindness is a haunting novel of love, survival, and hiding in plain sight.

Grace has grown up in slavery. As difficult as life on the Virginia plantation is, at least she has her family: Momma; her younger brothers, Thomas and Willy; Aunt Sara; and Uncle Jim. When she overhears Master and Mistress plotting to sell her brothers, she and her family decide to run away that same night. But without time to plan their escape and go north along the Underground Railroad, their only choice is to head deep into the woods of the Dismal Swamp.

Billed as the Little Girl with the Big Voice, blues singer Lucille Arnetta Love always dreamed of life under the lights. From traveling family gospel band to lead singer in a riotous vaudeville troupe, Lucille is on the rise. But a devastating family secret, one that’s poised to shatter every dream she’s ever had, casts an inescapable shadow over Lucille’s career. Decades ago, a botched robbery ended in a suspicious death—and all signs point to Lucille’s own father as the culprit. It’s a secret that Lucille’s family is determined to keep buried—even from Lucille herself.

How do bees fly? Why does a spider weave a web? And why are bugs so important to our world? Ada Twist, Scientist: The Why Files is the perfect nonfiction resource for all these questions and more.

After a betrayal ends in tragedy, Katy seeks refuge from her abusive husband, Hank, in her quiet hometown of Cedar Branch, North Carolina. Taking up residence on the old family farm and landing a job at the local Quaker Café, she hopes to leave her troubled past behind. At the café, Katy finds allies, kind people willing to protect her and offer advice. There's the gracious owner who insists that manners prevail, the no-nonsense cook who tackles life with a cast iron frying pan, a Yankee transplant who doesn't bow to convention....

At Hurston Middle School, best friendship is a big deal. And Zariah Brown makes the best best friendship bracelets in town. Business is booming; Zariah can hardly keep up with orders. The problem is, Zariah doesn’t have a best friend of her own. As the entire seventh grade gears up for their big Pajama Jam weekend, it seems as if everyone else is paired up except her.

Following echoes between generations which defy normal time and space, a multilayered narrative celebrates the Rougeaux family triumphs while exposing the injustices of their trials. It begins with Iya, born in Africa in the 1700s, and brought to the Caribbean island of Martinique as a slave, and her two children, Adunbi and Abeje, who grow up on a sugar estate. The siblings endure because of the kindness of fellow bondsmen and their uncommon abilities.

Ever since her mother’s death, Kela feels every bit as broken as the shards of glass, known as “mermaid’s tears,” that sparkle on the Caribbean beaches of St. Rita. So when Kela and her friend Lissy stumble across an ancient-looking comb in a coral cave, with all she’s already lost, Kela can’t help but bring home her very own found treasure.

In Mighty Justice, trailblazing African American civil rights attorney Dovey Johnson Roundtree recounts her inspiring life story that speaks movingly and urgently to our racially troubled times. From the streets of Charlotte, North Carolina, to the segregated courtrooms of the nation’s capital; from the male stronghold of the army where she broke gender and color barriers to the pulpits of churches where women had waited for years for the right to minister - in all these places, Dovey Johnson Roundtree sought justice.

At the historic Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, Anita Hill spoke out courageously about workplace sexual harassment. Now she turns to the topic of home. As our country reels from the subprime mortgage meltdown and the resulting devastation of so many families and communities, Hill takes us inside this “crisis of home” and exposes its deep roots in race and gender inequities, which continue to imperil every American’s ability to achieve the American Dream. In this period of recovery and its aftermath, what is at stake is the inclusive democracy the Constitution promises.

The bling is brighter, the drama is amped up, and the delicious beauties from Tu-Shonda L. Whitaker’s Millionaire Wives Club are back for a second season of backstabbing, divorce parties, and family sagas. Lights, camera, action! Milan, Jaise, and Chaunci are the gorgeous, high-rolling divas starring in the hit reality show Millionaire Wives Club. As they struggle with love, lies, lust, and the pressures of sudden fame, their friendships turn into catfights that keep the cameras following all their malicious moves.

In The Northside, Johnson brings the untold story of Atlantic City's black community vividly to life, from the arrival of the first African Americans to Absecon Island in the early 19th century through the glory days of the "World's Playground". Drawing on dozens of personal interviews and painstaking archival research, he reveals long-forgotten details about the people on whose backs the gambling mecca was built and offers a wide-ranging survey of the accomplishments of more recent generations.

In Tu-Shonda L. Whitaker’s steamiest novel yet, we meet the four deliciously dramatic, designer-clad divas from prime time’s new hit reality show, The Millionaire Wives Club. When these starlets’ private lives run as wild as their emotions, their relationships with one another inevitably turn into high-profile catfights. Through it all, the cameras never stop rolling on TV’s guiltiest pleasure, where power - and diamonds - are always a girl’s best friend.