Showing results by narrator "January Lavoy" in All Categories

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.

Every holiday, aunties, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and neighbors come over to eat, sing, and celebrate life. But all our main character can think about is the sweet potato pie Granny makes just for her. As tables fill with baked macaroni and cheese, chitlins, and other sides a-steaming, she and Granny move the pie to keep it intact. The task becomes trickier as the room grows with dancing and card games and pie cravings. Just when all seems lost and there’s no more pie, Granny pulls out a sweet surprise.

Critical components of the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful supercollider and largest machine ever built, have been stolen, and Delta Devlin is brought in by Interpol to investigate. At the same time, a dead body appears washed up on the shores of the East River in Delta’s hometown of New York City - one with very similar injuries to those left by the serial killer she caught to start her career.

In the Czar’s Suite of Kiev’s five-star Persian Palace, police discover a body jammed impossibly deep in a narrow ventilation duct. Security cameras reveal that no one else entered the supersecure room. An ocean away, Interpol rookie Delta Devlin witnesses an attempted assassination, but the bullet meant for the Ukrainian prime minister hits her father instead, lodging next to his heart. Investigations reveal that ex-KGB operator Yuri Korshunov smuggled a 3D-printed plastic gun into the UN Building.

Spanning 2,000 years, The Everlasting follows four characters whose struggles resonate across the centuries: an early Christian child martyr; a medieval monk on crypt duty in a church; a Medici princess of Moorish descent; and a contemporary field biologist conducting an illicit affair. Outsiders to a city layered and dense with history, this quartet separated by time grapple with the physicality of bodies, the necessity for sacrifice, and the power of love to sustain and challenge faith.

Tracing the history of African Americans in Tulsa's Greenwood district, this book chronicles the devastation that occurred in 1921 when a White mob attacked the Black community. News of what happened was largely suppressed, and no official investigation into the Tulsa Race Massacre occurred for 75 years.

In the second book in Nikki Owen's electrifying Project trilogy, it's clear that no matter how fast you run, the past always catches up with you. Dr. Maria Martinez is out of prison, exonerated of a murder she still doesn't remember. But even though she's a free woman, she's on the run. A file exists, the contents of which could mean life or death for Maria. And members of the Project, the ruthless underground organization that framed her for murder, are after her because of it.

Betrayed by the man she thought she loved and the agency that turned her into the very thing she fought against, Peri abandoned the wealth and privilege of Opti for anonymity riddled with memory gaps and self-doubt. But when a highly addictive drug promises to end her dependency on those who'd use her as a tool for their own success, she must choose to remain broken and vulnerable or return to the above-the-law power and prestige she once left.

What to believe. Who to betray. When to run. Plastic surgeon Dr. Maria Martinez has Asperger's. Convicted of killing a priest, she is alone in prison and has no memory of the murder. DNA evidence places Maria at the scene of the crime, yet she claims she's innocent. Then she starts to remember... A strange room. Strange people. Being watched. As Maria gets closer to the truth, she is drawn into a web of international intrigue and must fight not only to clear her name, but to remain alive.

With her besties, Bailey and Toni, in tow, Rachel leaves work and rainy LA behind and sets off for a much-needed vacation in Aruba. Greeted by glittering sand and a balmy breeze, the three friends can't imagine anywhere more perfect. But just minutes after hitting the beach, they're approached by a panicked young woman. A gofer on the biggest reality hit since Survivor, she's lost the show's child star and must find her, now, before anyone else realizes she's gone. Rachel, Bailey, and Toni put their dreams of paradise on hold and embark on a whirlwind search for the girl.

Ten years after Eloise Montgomery discovers her psychic abilities, she is a full-fledged working psychic, with a partner and a business. Now, in The Burning Girl, she's discovering some disturbing things: secrets about her genealogy that are, perhaps, best left in the past; that her granddaughter Finley has powers of her own; and that not all of Eloise's visitors actually want to be helped. Some of them are just looking for trouble.

Raised in the closed cult of Mana's Hearth and denied access to modern technology, conjoined sisters Taema and Tila dream of a life beyond the walls of the compound. When the heart they share begins to fail, the twins escape to San Francisco, where they are surgically separated and given new artificial hearts. From then on they pursue lives beyond anything they could have previously imagined.

Ten-year-old Eden’s quiet life is upended when she saves a paper wasp nest from destruction and discovers, to her awe and amazement, that she and its haughty queen can talk to each other. This first conversation is the start of a grand adventure, leading Eden to The Institute for Lower Learning, a secret laboratory devoted to the peaceful coexistence of humans and insects. The Institute is more fantastic and idyllic than Eden could’ve imagined but hidden deep within its tunnels is an old secret that could spell the end for all insects on earth.

On July 4, 1826, as Americans lit firecrackers to celebrate the country’s 50th birthday, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were on their deathbeds. The young nation had outlived the men who made it, but could it survive intensifying divisions over the very meaning of the land of the free? American Radicals is a dynamic, timely history of 19th-century activists - free-lovers and socialists, abolitionists and vigilantes - and the social revolution they sparked in the turbulent Civil War era.

Anthropologist Calliope Santiago awakens to find herself in a strange and sinister wasteland, a shadow of the New Mexico she knew. Empty vehicles litter the road. Everyone has disappeared - or almost everyone. Calliope, heavy-bellied with the twins she carries inside her, must make her way across this dangerous landscape with a group of fellow survivors in search of answers. Long-dead volcanoes erupt, the ground rattles and splits, and monsters come to ominous life. Calliope will be forced to reconcile the geological record with the heritage she once denied.

A descendant of Confederate General Robert E. Lee chronicles his story of growing up with the South's most honored name, and the moments that forced him to confront the privilege, racism, and subversion of human dignity that came with it.

A stunning collection of fiction, diary entries, screenplays, and scripts by the brilliant African American artist and filmmaker.

Each of these eight remarkable stories by Danzy Senna tightrope-walks tantalizingly, sometimes frighteningly, between defined states: life with and without mates and children, the familiar if constraining reference points provided by race, class, and gender. Tensions arise between a biracial couple when their son is admitted to the private school where they'd applied on a lark. A new mother hosts an old friend, still single, and discovers how each of them pities - and envies - the other. A young woman responds to an adoptee in search of her birth mother, knowing it is not she.

A genius mathematician with the ability to remember every detail she sees, Dr. Maria Martinez - Subject 375 - has finally escaped the covert Project Callidus group that's been controlling her since birth. But her escape only intensifies the project's need to retrieve its subject. The powers at the very top of the organization will stop at nothing to ensure she fulfills the mission she was born to complete. Can she trust herself enough to stop running and right the path of her own destiny - even if that means returning to the very people she has fought so hard to escape?

The foremost diverse children's authors and illustrators - including Jason Reynolds, Jacqueline Woodson, and Kwame Alexander - share answers to the question, "In this divisive world, what shall we tell our children?" in this powerful collection, published in partnership with Just Us Books.