Showing results by narrator "Allyson Johnson" in All Categories

A loving wife and a mother of three accomplished children, forty-six-year-old Trudy Marino has an uncomplicated life—until she’s blindsided by her husband’s affair. But in Trudy’s close-knit neighborhood, she’s not alone in navigating the sudden surprises in a woman’s life. Her neighbor Roberta has just lost her husband of sixty-two years and struggles with bittersweet memories and grief. Roberta’s granddaughter Jade is a divorcée who has taken up a cathartic new hobby to get over her cheating ex. And there’s Shannelle, whose creative aspirations are fracturing her marriage.

When Misa Atkinson confesses to the murder of Steven Bingham, her sister's brother-in-law, for doing the unthinkable to her son, everything is turned upside down. Misa now faces jail time and the loss of her son forever, and his drug lord brother Frankie Bingham is out for revenge. Camille drops another bomb on Frankie, telling her estranged husband (and his mistress) that she is pregnant with his child. Their friends Dominique and Toya gather around Camille and Misa in their time of need, but the storm clouds have gathered over their own lives as well.

Fearful of prison time - or lynching - for violating Indiana’s anti-miscegenation laws in the 1940s, E. Dolores Johnson's Black father and White mother fled Indianapolis to secretly marry in Buffalo. Her mother simply vanished, evading an FBI and police search that ended with the declaration to her family that she was the victim of foul play, either dead or sold into white slavery.

The Excoms specialize in dealing with problems others can’t solve. Kidnappings, human exploitation, oppression. They’ve dealt with them all and earned the gratitude of the overlooked and the disadvantaged. But not everyone is happy with their work. After finishing their most recent assignment, they’re rudely awakened in the middle of the night by an explosive situation that changed the team forever. Some may think Ananke and her friends are no longer a threat. Some would be making a mistake. You may knock The Excoms down, but you can never count them out.

Cassie Logan and her brothers have been warned never to go to the Wallace store. So they know to expect trouble there. What they don't expect is to hear Mr. Tom Bee, an elderly black man, daring to call the white storekeeper by his first name. The year is 1933, the place is Mississippi, and any child knows that some things just aren't done. Can a shared past between the two men make a difference?

A proud working-class woman, an "out" lesbian long before the Rainbow revolution, Joan Nestle has stood at the forefront of American freedom struggles from the McCarthy era to the present day. Featuring photographs and a new introduction by the author, this classic collection which intimately accounts the lesbian, feminist and civil rights movements through personal essays is available again for the first time in years.

From the introduction by Jonathan Santlofer: "Like film, literature has been no stranger to marijuana and hashish, going back to Charles Baudelaire's 1860 Artificial Paradises, in which the French poet not only describes the effects of hashish but postulates it could be an aid in creating an ideal world.

This new South End Press edition makes available the full text of this out-of-print classic - along with a new foreword by Manning Marable, interviews with participants in DRUM, and reflections on political developments over the past three decades by Georgakas and Surkin.

The story of modern management generally looks to the factories of England and New England for its genesis. But after scouring through old accounting books, Caitlin Rosenthal discovered that Southern planter-capitalists practiced an early form of scientific management. They took meticulous notes, carefully recording daily profits and productivity, and subjected their slaves to experiments and incentive strategies comprised of rewards and brutal punishment.

Ananke thought her week couldn't get worse, but as she hunts for the man who screwed up her previous job, things really go sideways. Turns out, she's not the only one having problems. Rosario can acquire anything for anyone, but can she obtain freedom for herself when her latest assignment goes awry? Dylan's sure his new gig will be a walk in the park - or rather, a drive, given that he's a courier. Unfortunately, the road is a bit bumpier than he expected.

For Olivia Shaw, the danger of her assignments as a deadly Whisper agent is matched only by that of her hidden status: Liv is one of the caricae, extremely rare women capable of bearing children and therefore controlled by the Syndicate's government. When her handler sends her into the Quillian Empire, her mission is complicated by stumbling upon a kidnapping in progress.

They were sent to investigate the first extraterrestrial signal. What they found was beyond anything they could have imagined - or feared. On a voyage to a mysterious moon in the Alpha Centauri system, the UEA Centaurus meets with disaster. Only the quick thinking of the flight engineer, Rachel Terman, saves some of the crew. Crash-landing on the moon, trillions of kilometers from Earth, they struggle to carry out their mission and try to survive. But nothing has prepared them for what they will face.

This debut science fiction novel is the story of Sira--a woman on the run from the law, from her own people, and from an unknown figure determined to use her for his own ends. Her memory taken from her by a stasis block, she must stay free long enough to regain both her identity and the full use of her telepathic powers. The price of failure may not only be the loss of her own future, but that of her entire race.

Nicolette Chamard, a woman of color in the most color-conscious city in the world, rejoices when the Union Army marches into New Orleans. At last her people will be free, and even knowing her collaboration with the Union will put her in danger, she means to help make it happen. Marcel Chamard, Nicolette's privileged white half-brother, surveys the same parade and sees conquerors, not liberators.

The Mantle dividing Elsira and Lagrimar has fallen. As the two kingdoms struggle to unify, one threat stands above them all. As desperate Lagrimari flee their barren land for a chance at a better life in Elsira, a shadowy group with ties to the Elsiran government launches an attack on their own soil. With threats of more violence, an unlikely crew is assembled to investigate. Among them are Lizvette Nirall, a disgraced socialite seeking redemption for past mistakes, and Tai Summerhawk, a foreign smuggler determined to keep a promise he made to a dead man.

In the shadows of a seismic shift in American politics comes Tom Rachman's timely and hilarious new work. Basket of Deplorables takes an incisive and satirical look at the United States in the era of Trump data breaches, liberal self-righteousness, red-hat rancor, Starbucks macchiatos, Ultimate Fighting factories, and Internet sinkholes.

Born with a deadly magic she cannot control, Kyara is forced to become an assassin. Known as the Poison Flame in the kingdom of Lagrimar, she is notorious and lethal, but secretly seeks freedom from both her untamed power and the blood spell that commands her. She is tasked with capturing the legendary rebel called the Shadowfox, but everything changes when she learns her target’s true identity.

In our era of mass incarceration, gun violence, and Black Lives Matters, a handbook showing how racial justice and restorative justice can transform the African American experience in America.

Through candid interviews with Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks, Alexis De Veaux, Nikki Giovanni, Kristin Hunter, Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Margret Walker, and Sherley Anne Williams, the book highlights the practices and critical linkages between the work and lived experiences of Black women writers whose work laid the foundation for many who have come after.

Ava Kalle's empty soul devours magic. And her hunger is deadly. She's sharp, quick and can live in shadow, making her work as a spy for the Mages a natural choice. She lives on the fringes of society and likes it that way. When the man she loves takes another woman for his mate, the darkness in her heart unravels and she'll do anything to get him back. She makes a dangerous deal with a fire elemental, Heyerdar, who has a vested interest in agreeing.