Showing results by narrator "Nathan Hinton" in All Categories

Lenny Duncan is the unlikeliest of pastors. Formerly incarcerated, he is now a black preacher in the whitest denomination in the United States: the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Shifting demographics and shrinking congregations make all the headlines, but Duncan sees something else at work - drawing a direct line between the church's lack of diversity and the church's lack of vitality. The problems the ELCA faces are theological, not sociological. But so are the answers.

In her new collection of stories, award-winning New York Times Notable author Leila Aboulela offers us a rich tableau of life as an immigrant abroad. Shuttling between the dusty, sunbaked streets of Khartoum and the university halls and cramped apartments of Aberdeen and London, Elsewhere, Home explores, with subtlety and restraint, the profound feelings of yearning, loss, and alienation that come with leaving one’s homeland in pursuit of a different life.

When the news of her mother’s death reaches Jocelyn Morrow, it stirs up memories of her traumatic childhood. She is a mother herself now, to six-year-old Lucy; living a life of privilege in Southern California with her husband Conrad; moving in a world of wealthy white women, even though she is not white; as far away from her past as she can get. Her designer clothes cover a net of scars across her back, and she hides an even deeper mark - something she believes invited her abuse. She also has a blossoming secret: She is becoming obsessed with Kate, her tennis coach.

Horror, humor, and science fiction collide in this collection of weird tales about possible futures, warped present-day realities, and alternate history. Unreliable narrators run rampant alongside aliens, ghosts, bullies, cannibals, home invaders, heroes, villains, unimaginable creatures, and gifted individuals of all ages. Paranoia, fear, and bizarre situations abound in these reality-bending stories guaranteed to take you places you've never been.  

Kofi doesn't care for the backbreaking work of the farm. He would rather be back in the village of mud huts, Lavié, building cars from tin cans, dancing to the rhythms of the nightly drum circle or bathing in the town's stream. But every day when he is not in school, he and his six siblings must make the two-hour trip in flip-flops to clear the African soil and plant the crops his family needs to eat.