Showing results by narrator "Dion Graham" in All Categories

Team Dragon is facing their most challenging adventure yet! Luca, Yazmine, and Zane have been dropped in the ancient dragon city of Dracopolis. They have only one more Thunder Egg to return before the prophecy can come true, and dragons can return to Imperia. The people of Dracopolis are counting on Team Dragon to win, but the evil ruler Dartsmith never plays fair. Luca, Yazmine, and Zane will need all the help they can get if they're going to defeat him for good and finally bring peace to Imperia.

In the 1950s, Ruby Walker boarded the Illinois Central from Mississippi to the Promised Land—Chicago. She became one of the greatest blues singers the city has ever known, only to lose everything when she was convicted of murdering her lover and producer, Billy Lyons, in 1959. She's been locked in a prison cell ever since. Now, a flickering hope emerges for Walker in the form of letters from a Tulane University blues historian named Nick Travers. She agrees to an interview only in exchange for him checking out what she calls the truth behind Lyons's last hours.

The stories in this anthology range from quietly strange to ambitiously speculative. Humans transform into cosmic energy or sentient algae. A man wakes up in a new body in a world with continents cut out, months absent from the calendar year, and souls misplaced. Students at a high school regularly vanish without a trace. A woman descends into the depths of the ocean and encounters all-knowing creatures who may have the answers to her deepest questions.

Since Shelbi enrolled at Windward Academy as a senior and won’t be there very long, she hasn’t bothered making friends. What her classmates don’t know about her can’t be used to hurt her. Andy Criddle is not okay. At all. He’s had far too much to drink. Again. Which is bad. And things are about to get worse. When Shelbi sees Andy at his lowest, she can relate. So she doesn’t resist reaching out. And there’s no doubt their connection has them both seeing stars...but the closer they get, the more the past threatens to pull their universes apart.

Beginning with his childhood growing up in Chicago’s Cabrini Green neighborhood, Ramsey Lewis recounts his memories of the music in his parents’ church and his early piano lessons. As he learned classical technique, Lewis also absorbed countless jazz records and heard gospel music weekly, finally becoming a performer himself in his teenage years. With his coauthor and collaborator, Aaron Cohen, Lewis describes his early steps in jazz from joining the Clefs in the ’50s, to eventually establishing the Ramsey Lewis Trio. This memoir provides an evocative tour of Lewis’s life.

Colum McCann's first novel goes back to the years before the Spanish Civil War, following the adventures of a peripatetic Irish photographer from the war-strewn shores of Europe to the exotic plains of Mexico. The story is told in the words of the photographer's only son, a wanderer himself, who uses his father's unreliable memories and the fading remnants of his art to piece together his family history and explain the mystery surrounding his mother—a Mexican beauty brought back by his father to Ireland.

Maya Angelou: A Glorious Celebration offers an unusual and irresistible look at her life and her myriad interests and accomplishments. Created by the people who know her best - her longtime friends Marcia Ann Gillespie and Richard A. Long, and her niece, Rosa Johnson Butler - it captures Angelou at home, at work, and in the public eye.

Malcolm Little's parents have always told him that he can achieve anything, but from what he can tell, that's nothing but a pack of lies - after all, his father's been murdered, his mother's been taken away, and his dreams of becoming a lawyer have gotten him laughed out of school. There's no point in trying, he figures, and lured by the nightlife of Boston and New York, he escapes into a world of fancy suits, jazz, girls, and reefer.

Company culture influences the roles and responsibilities of every employee within the organization, from executive leadership down to the front lines. A strong, healthy company culture drives productivity and raises profitability, and disengaged employees cost companies billions, yet many executives rarely associate their culture with their bottom line. Today, employee engagement stakes are higher than ever because executives have to consider the impact their company culture has on external stakeholders as well.

In a rising Saudi Arabian city, far from weary, recession-scarred America, a struggling businessman pursues a last-ditch attempt to stave off foreclosure, pay his daughter's college tuition, and finally do something great. In A Hologram for the King, Dave Eggers takes us around the world to show how one man fights to hold himself and his splintering family together in the face of the global economy's gale-force winds. This taut, richly layered, and elegiac novel is a powerful evocation of our contemporary moment - and a moving story of how we got here.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Nathan Walker comes to New York City to take the most dangerous job in the country: digging the tunnel far beneath the Hudson that will carry trains from Brooklyn to Manhattan. In the bowels of the riverbed, the workers—black, white, Irish and Italian—dig together, the darkness erasing all differences. But above ground, the men keep their distance until a dramatic accident on a bitter winter's day welds a bond between Walker and his fellow workers that will both bless and curse three generations.

In Dr. Diane Hamilton’s provocative new book, she uncovers what could foreseeably be the next movement to enhance human performance, a critical and direct link to improving motivation and communication-based issues that challenge organizations. Drawing on decades of research and incorporating interviews from some of the top leaders of our time, Hamilton examines the factors that influence curiosity including fear, assumptions, technology, and environment (FATE). Her ground-breaking research provides an action plan to transform individuals and organizations.

The unique business problems we face today have rendered the old corporate playbook obsolete. Without it, executives scramble for guidance, only to discover everyone around them is just as lost. JeVon’s people-first mindset guides his service as CEO of Scribe Media, a multimillion-dollar publishing company Entrepreneur magazine ranked America’s #1 Top Company Culture. The son of a Black pimp father and a White orphan mother on welfare, JeVon’s experiences demonstrate more than the old playbook’s issues—he’s living proof that we should throw it out.

Hidden beneath the floorboards in a house he's remodelling, Christopher Flynn discovers something very tempting - and troubling. Summoning every bit of maturity and every lesson he's learned the hard way, Chris leaves what he found where he found it and tells his job partner to forget it, too. Knowing trouble when he sees it - and walking the other way-is a habit Chris is still learning. Chris's father, Thomas Flynn, runs the family business where Chris and his friends have found work.

Since his headline-grabbing speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, Barack Obama has come to represent the promise of unity among groups of all types: blacks and whites; Democrats, Republicans, and moderates; the upper, middle, and lower classes. In this groundbreaking biography, veteran journalist and Obama chronicler David Mendell gives an in-depth, comprehensive portrait of a man whose name has become a catchphrase for hope in a politically jaded society desperate for a new star.

Pages magazine says this collection represents “the absolute best in short literary fiction.” This installment exhibits a fresh batch of immensely talented writers, all of whom exemplify the level of accomplishment that has kept this acclaimed series running strong since 1985. Comprising 20 stories, this rich and varied collection features everything from a fresh take on the classic Southern gothic to a velvet-smooth work of erotic suspense.

Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort During the Time of COVID-19 is a collection of essays, poems, and interviews to serve as a lifeline for negotiating how to connect and thrive during this stressful time of isolation as well as a historical perspective that will remain relevant for years to come.

When Lucien flees Haiti with his wife, Marie-Ange, and their three children to New York City’s South Ozone Park, he does so hoping for reinvention, wealth, and comfort. He buys a run-down house in a quickly changing community, and begins life anew. Lucien and Marie-Ange call their home La Kay—“my mother’s house”—and it becomes a place where their fellow immigrants can find peace, a good meal, and necessary legal help.

If you had to name a statue, any statue, odds are good you'd mention the Statue of Liberty. Have you seen her? She's in New York. She's holding a torch. And she's in mid-stride, moving forward. But why? In this fascinating and fun take on nonfiction, Dave Eggers investigates a seemingly small trait of America's most emblematic statue. What he finds is about more than history, more than art. What he finds in the Statue of Liberty's right foot is the powerful message of acceptance that is essential of an entire country's creation.

Winner of the Sonja H. Stone Prize in Literature, Preston L. Allen’s Jesus Boy was listed by O, the Oprah Magazine as one of “Ten More Titles to Read Now.” Sixteen-year-old Elwyn Parker is dedicated to God. But when the one he loves marries another man, Elwin gets involved with a much older woman. Soon, his lust will test his devotion - and may alienate him from his congregation.