Showing results by narrator "Dion Graham" in All Categories

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.

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.

One fateful afternoon, classmates Luca, Yazmine, and Zane stumble upon a strange-looking rock called a geode in one of the rooms at school. To their surprise, a touch of this geode transports them to a magical land named Imperia. The geode is actually a dragon egg! It’s one of three Thunder Eggs that needs to be returned home to secret locations in Imperia. Once these eggs hatch, the dragons born from them will restore peace to the land. In order to return the first egg, the kids must face off against the evil ruler of Imperia in a dangerous game.

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.

In his first work for the theater, James Baldwin brought all the fervor and majestic rhetoric of the storefront churches of his childhood along with an unwavering awareness of the price those churches exacted from their worshipers. For years Sister Margaret Alexander has moved her Harlem congregation with a mixture of personal charisma and ferocious piety. But when Margaret's estranged husband, a scapegrace jazz musician, comes home to die, she is in danger of losing both her standing in the church and the son she has tried to keep on the godly path.

When music mogul Teddy Paris, a former teammate from the New Orleans Saints, visits Nick Travers and asks him to help find $700,000 taken from a rap prodigy, Nick can't turn down his friend. The missing money will pay a bounty on Paris's head that was set by a crosstown rival, a street-hard thug named Cash. Nick soon finds himself lost in the world of Gucci-lined Bentleys and endless bottles of Cristal champagne. He sets out with fifteen-year-old rap star ALIAS, seeking a team of grifters that conned the kid.

With a precise eye for detail, Atkins takes Nick Travers on a journey into the hidden pockets of New Orleans, the battered roadhouses and truck stops of Mississippi, and the streets of Memphis that only an insider could know. The plan is simple. All Nick Travers, a former professional football player turned professor, has to do is drive up Highway 61 from New Orleans to Memphis and track down the lost brother of one of his best friends. But as Travers knows, these simple jobs seldom turn out smoothly.

The story of one of the most controversial figures in all of hip-hop history, Dummy Boy tells the tale of Tekashi 6ix9ine and his meteoric rise to fame.

Thirteen-year-old T'Challa can't wait to go back to America to visit his friends Sheila and Zeke, who are staying with Sheila's grandmother in Beaumont, a small Alabama town, over their summer break. He's thrilled to be on vacation away from his duties as the Prince of Wakanda for a few weeks, and he's taking full advantage of his access to the amazing food and the South's rich history.

Milo is on a long subway ride with his older sister. To pass the time, he studies the faces around him and makes pictures of their lives. There's the boy in the suit with the bright white sneakers; Milo imagines him arriving home to a castle with a drawbridge and a butler. But when the boy in the suit gets off on the same stop as Milo - walking the same path, going to the exact same place - Milo realizes you can't really know anyone just by looking at them.

Lymon's father is, for the time being, at Parchman Farm - the Mississippi State Penitentiary - and his mother, whom he doesn't remember all that much, has moved North. Fortunately, Lymon is being raised by his loving grandparents. Together, Lymon and his grandpops share a love of music, spending late summer nights playing the guitar. But Lymon's world as he knows it is about to dissolve. He will be sent on a journey to two Northern cities far from the country life he loves - and the version of himself he knows.

Henry Brown came to be known as Box; he "entered the world a slave". He was put to work as a child and passed down from one generation to the next - as property. When he was an adult, his wife and children were sold away from him out of spite. Henry Brown watched as his family left bound in chains, headed to the deeper South. What more could be taken from him? But then hope - and help - came in the form of the Underground Railroad. Escape!

This companion title to Trombone Shorty - Caldecott Honor, Coretta Scott King Award, and Odyssey Honor winner - is a well-tuned, beautiful exploration of a beloved community as Shorty visits the streets of New Orleans to find answers on how to be a leader in his band.

Lucas Baird never got much of a break when he was a child, but by his early 20s, his good looks and easy manner allow him to skate through life without having to put in much effort. On the cusp of manhood in years yet still a boy, what Anthony Trollope called a hobbledehoy, charming Luke has enjoyed his extended adolescence of drinking and small-time cons.

Harbor chief Cormack O'Connell has lived his life close to the wire - above and below the law. He knows every movement on his waterfront, and that's why someone wants him out of the way, fast. Homeland security agent Kit Steele is committed to avenge terrorism. Also known as The Hunter, she's got her eye on the prize. This time it's personal, and she has nothing left to lose. Her prey is Vincente Carpio, one of the world's most dangerous criminals. He is clever, calculating and he's biding his time.

A Hologram for the King 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. 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 May of 1942, at the age of 18, Ashley Bryan was drafted to fight in World War II. For the next three years, he would face the horrors of war as a black soldier in a segregated army. For the next 40 years, Ashley would keep his time in the war a secret. But now, he tells his story. The story of the kind people who supported him. The story of the bright moments that guided him through the dark. And the story of his passion for art that would save him time and time again.

This is a story about America during and after Reconstruction, one of history's most pivotal and misunderstood chapters. In a stirring account of emancipation, the struggle for citizenship and national reunion, and the advent of racial segregation, the renowned Harvard scholar delivers a book that is illuminating and timely. Real-life accounts drive the narrative, spanning the half century between the Civil War and Birth of a Nation.

A "pitch perfect" (David Sedaris) ensemble of audio talent - featuring Edoardo Ballerini, Kathleen Chalfant, Jonathan Davis, Dion Graham, George Guidall, Priscilla Holbrook, Robin Miles, Elisabeth Rodgers and Barbara Rosenblat - unite for The Face Phantom: Tales Inspired by the Mütter Museum. With music by award-winning composer Brian DuFord, this chilling, atmospheric collection of short stories is evocative of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story. Each of the 12 tales is inspired by an exhibit at the Mütter Museum.

The loamy black "muck" that surrounds Belle Glade, Florida once built an empire for Big Sugar and provided much of the nation's vegetables, often on the backs of roving, destitute migrants. Many of these were children who honed their skills along the field rows and started one of the most legendary football programs in America. Belle Glade's high school team, the Glades Central Raiders, has sent an extraordinary number of players to the National Football League - 27 since 1985, with five of those drafted in the first round.