Showing results by narrator "Willis Mirron" in All Categories

Among many legendary episodes from the life and career of men's basketball coach Dean Smith, few loom as large as his recruitment of Charlie Scott, the first African American scholarship athlete at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Drawn together by college basketball in a time of momentous change, Smith and Scott helped transform a university, a community, and the racial landscape of sports in the South.

In Mississippi Noir, literary crime fiction master Tom Franklin has assembled a phenomenal short-story collection that highlights a mesmerizing and diverse set of styles and subject matter. Urban, suburban, and rural settings alike unveil new shades of darkness that fall upon Mississippi's past and present.

A city equal parts darkness and hope. A scarred city. An often violent one. But a resilient city, too. That's our Memphis. Like many cities we have a namesake - in Egypt, Men-nefer became Menfe became Memphis, enduring and beautiful, on the banks of the Nile. Centuries later, another continent, another people, another river: Memphis, Tennessee, the soul of the Mississippi Delta, was formed.

The once mighty kingdom of Jorsk is in decline, its borders beset by enemies, both worldly and otherworldly. The king has retreated to the capital, abandoning the far-flung provinces. The only hope of the people lies in their Chosen One, blessed by the gods as defender of the realm. But of late every Chosen One has died, targeted by the harshest of the enemy attacks. Only the most desperate of men now seek that post. Devlin Stonehand is a desperate man....

In the summer of 1952, 20 prominent men gather at a secret meeting on Martha's Vineyard and devise a plot to manipulate the President of the United States. Soon after, the body of one of these men is found by Eddie Wesley, Harlem's rising literary star. When Eddie's younger sister mysteriously disappears, Eddie and the woman he loves, Aurelia Treene, are pulled into what becomes a 20-year search for the truth.

"Volunteers needed for a very private, very elegant S/M party for a discreet group of ladies and gentlemen to be held in San Francisco. Only the very willing and the experienced need apply…" And only a virtuoso of erotic fiction could build a spellbinding novel from the planning and preparation for an S/M party.

In Entertainment for a Master, acclaimed author John Preston follows a skilled and respected dom as he interviews and personally inspects the men who respond to his unusual ad. Carl, a former Marine, will drop and give his master fifty, kissing his boots at each dip to the floor.

Barlowe, a single African-American in his 40s, shares a ramshackle house with his 20-something nephew in the old Fourth Ward of downtown Atlanta. When Sean and Sandy, a white married couple from Philadelphia, buy and renovate the house next door in anticipation of a neighborhood "turnaround", everyone tries at first to go about their daily business. But fear and suspicion begin to build as more and more new whites move in and make changes, and once familiar people and places disappear.

For nearly 15 years NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture has been a leading scholarly journal of baseball history. Covering the cultural and historical implications of America’s national pastime, NINE has explored baseball from the earliest matches and little-known players of the 1800s to the modern billion-dollar industry and its superstars of today. Here, gathered for the first time, are the best essays from NINE that center on the complex and multifaceted topic of African Americans in baseball.

His shipmates dead, star rigger Gev Carlyle is adrift in the Flux, the subjective hyperdimensional sea that carries ships between the stars. His lone companion, and sole hope for survival, is a suicidal catlike alien named Cephean. Only a compatible rigger team, their visions meshed in psychic unity, can safely harness the turbulent currents of the Flux - and Carlyle's ship is sailing inexorably toward the deadly maelstrom of the Hurricane Flume. For even a chance at survival, he needs Cephean's help. But the price for that is a complete merging of minds and memories.

On an average day in America, seven young people aged 19 or under will be shot dead. In Another Day in the Death of America, award-winning Guardian journalist Gary Younge tells the stories of the lives lost during the course of a single day in the United States. It could have been any day, but Younge has chosen November 23, 2013. Far from a dry account of gun policy in the United States or a polemic about the dangers of gun violence, the book is a gripping chronicle of an ordinary but deadly day in American life.

Starrshima Fields, aka Starr, is a young, bodacious, and bold beauty. She is also the leader of the Double G's, a powerful and ruthless social club of plus-sized women. Starr is guided by Queen Fem, the founder of the Double G's. Queen Fem set up the group of professionals-by-day, gangster-biker-chicks-by-night to prove that this isn't just a man's world. The Double G's put the squeeze on their primary targets: men of power and privilege. Blackmail and manipulation are their choice of weapons, and they are skillful in both.

In a warehouse full of forgotten books, a man at the beginning of his adult life - and the end of his career rope - becomes involved with a woman, a language, and a great lie that will define his future. He runs across Itsik Malpesh, an old Russian immigrant who claims to be the last Yiddish poet in America. When a set of accounting ledgers in which Malpesh has written his memoirs surfaces, the young man is compelled to translate them, bringing together two paths that coincide in shocking and unexpected ways.

Christians are a large and influential voting block today. But as each governmental election approaches, an increasing polarity occurs within those claiming the Christian faith. This comes as a result of party-voting rather than voting according to Biblical mandates and authority. To refocus correctly, Dr. Tony Evans goes back to the basics and teaches about how God established government as a divine institution whose tasks include promoting the well-being of those within its realm and protection from evil.

Starr Fields sits in the Clark County jail after being released then re-arrested and held without bail. She uses her time wisely during her incarceration. After making examples out of a few of the other inmates and putting the squeeze on her unit Double Gs style, Starr recruits some new talent for a plan she intends to execute when she gets out. Queen Fem isn't happy about all of the sudden attention on the Double Gs organization.

Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. In the wake of Chicago Noir, Twin Cities Noir, and Kansas City Noir - all popular volumes in the Akashic Noir Series - comes the latest Midwest installment, St. Louis Noir. Masterfully curated by Scott Phillips, author of The Ice Harvest (adapted for film, starring John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton), this volume will chill the listener with heartland menace.

It's 1951 in Sedalia, Missouri, and ragtime is making a comeback. When Brun Campbell, the old Ragtime Kid, learns of a journal kept by Scott Joplin, he hopes to acquire it and use it to convince Sedalia's movers and shakers to set up a ragtime museum. But plenty of other people also want that journal, including a historian who wants to publish it, an old friend of Joplin’s who wants to suppress it, and two Klansmen who don't care if they have to kill someone to get it.

Chicago, 1969: The trial of eight protestors from the Democratic Convention the previous year has the whole world watching - and all of Chicagoland on edge. Smokey Dalton feels the pressure: more cops on the streets, more FBI in his neighborhood. But when the landlord at one of Sturdy Investments’ South Side properties dies alone in his apartment, Smokey agrees to investigate. He finds old human bones in the basement, along with hints of more. Smokey and his girlfriend, Sturdy’s CEO Laura Hathaway, worry that Laura’s father knew who used that basement and why.

On the run after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Private Investigator Smokey Dalton and Jimmy, the young boy he rescued, have settled under assumed names in Chicago. But history won’t leave him alone. His job in security at the Chicago Hilton places him in the center of the protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention. Worse, a killer works his South Side neighborhood, killing children. Smokey can’t ignore the crimes, any more than he can ignore the tension building in the city that hot August. He has to take action, before he loses everything.

Devlin of Duncaer has done the impossible. Desperate for death in the wake of his family's slaughter, he agreed to become the Chosen One of the neighboring Kingdom of Jorsk - the kingdom which conquered and enslaved his own native land of Duncaer. The job involved magically binding himself to Jorsk and its needs by a powerfu Geas spell, and used to come with about a three months survival time - until Devlin.

At the end of Not a Day Goes By, the terminally bisexual John Basil Henderson declares: “I’m back, in full form. And I’m out there. Roamin’. And switching lanes.” Now, in Any Way the Wind Blows, Basil, good-looking gadabout and homme fatal, is back at the top of his game (razzle-dazzling both the women and the men). All is well until Basil’s picture-perfect life starts to unravel.