Showing results by narrator "Myra Lucretia Taylor" in All Categories

Frustrated by the limitations of cross-race communication in her predominantly white town, a young African American girl teaches herself to sign. Years later, Laurel uproots her husband and daughters from their downwardly mobile, overeducated, and underpaid life in the South End of Boston for Cortland County, Massachusetts. The Freemans are to take part in an experiment: They've been hired by a private research institute to teach sign language to a chimpanzee.

The Warmest December is the incredibly moving story of one Brooklyn family and the alcoholism that determined years of their lives. Narrated by Kenzie Lowe, a young woman reminiscent of Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John, as she visits her dying father and finds that choices she once thought beyond her control are very much hers to make.

In 1957, Melba Beals was one of the nine African American students chosen to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. But her story of overcoming didn't start - or end - there. While her white schoolmates were planning their senior prom, Melba was facing the business end of a double-barreled shotgun, being threatened with lynching by rope-carrying tormentors, and learning how to outrun white supremacists who were ready to kill her rather than sit beside her in a classroom. Only her faith in God sustained her.

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.

Sarita Grayson is desperate. That's the only explanation for her late-night rendezvous with a bag of stolen diamonds. But then a handsome stranger stands between her and a clean getaway. In the struggle for freedom, she accidentally shoots him. Mykal Chandler, head of a covert government agency NIA, can't believe he's been shot. He's shocked, he's furious, but he's also attracted to this sassy woman. Unfortunately, Sarita has stumbled onto a smuggling plot and he'll need to protect her, even if he has to kidnap her to do it. But Sarita isn't one to go quietly into the night....

During the 1970s, Verdi’s relationship with street-smart Johnson leads her to heroin and the brink of destruction. Rescued by a conservative professor willing to give up everything for her, she lives a quiet, comfortable life for 20 years--until Johnson returns to re-ignite old passions. Pulled uncontrollably toward the reckless appetites of her youth, Verdi struggles to understand her desires and to decide where she wants life to take her next.

New York Times best-selling author Connie Briscoe finally delivers the novel fans have waited 10 years to have. The sequel to Sisters & Lovers, Sisters & Husbands picks up with Beverly well into her 30s and finally engaged to the perfect man. But when her sister's marriage falls apart days before Beverly's wedding, she starts to fear that marriage just doesn't work. Can Beverly pull herself together, or is she destined to call off yet another engagement?

Essence best-selling author of Redemption, Jacquelin Thomas tells the Biblical story of Jezebel as a riveting modern drama. All her life, small-town Georgia girl Jessie Belle Holt has known how to use men. Her ticket out of Mayville isTraynor Deveraux, a trusting pastor with a brilliant career ahead. Seduced by the trappings of position and power, Jessie Bell uses her wiles to nudge her unwitting husband into national prominence. But how far will she go to sustain and expand her power?

The third novel in Jewell Parker Rhodes' acclaimed Voodoo series, Yellow Moon finds New Orleans' preeminent voodoo practitioner hunting an African vampire - a wazimamoto. Marie Levant is tired of seeing corpses drained of blood arrive at the hospital each night, and tired of being haunted by their ghosts. It'll take all her skills to expel the deadly spirit in this.

Reba Freeman has loved two men in her life. Her current husband, Carl, has supported her through their 20-year marriage and given her all the material wealth a suburban wife could hope for. Reba is comfortable, if not necessarily content, in her life with Carl and their blossoming teenage daughter, Marisa, until she learns that her first love and first husband, Joseph Thomas, has been detained by the World Court of Human Rights.

Both Noon and Herbie have secrets. Because of this she can’t be intimate with her husband, and he sneaks out to a hot jazz singer named Ethel - who has a secret of her own. When the city proposes to build a road through their neighborhood, Noon begins a crusade to keep it from happening - and maybe save her marriage in the process. Tumble into this amazing novel and feel the love and warmth of a special block in South Philly. This is an extraordinary depiction of the true meaning of family and fellowship.

Meet Mare, a grandmother with flair and a fascinating past. Octavia and Tali are dreading the road trip their parents are forcing them to take with their grandmother over the summer. After all, Mare isn’t your typical grandmother. She drives a red sports car, wears stiletto shoes, flippy wigs, and push-up bras, and insists that she’s too young to be called Grandma. But somewhere on the road, Octavia and Tali discover there’s more to Mare than what you see.

Shante is an internationally known conference speaker and best-selling author who just received the shock of her life. Deandrea is an aggressive psychologist with two doctoral degrees who is struggling to keep her family together with her husband's busy schedule. Misha is a soft-spoken teacher who is in a battle to keep her child from being taken from her. All of them are facing challenges in their marriages and ministries. After a chance meeting at a First Ladies' conference, secrets of their pasts are revealed.

Working in the ER, Dr. Marie Lavant sees the darkest side of New Orleans. But the bloody wounds of patients are not the only things that haunt her. As the descendent of a legendary voodoo queen, Marie is cursed with the ability to communicate with spirits of the dead.

Neely Jones, the only African-American member of the Taft County police force, has been elected sheriff on a write-in ballot. Her prejudiced co-workers resent her, and many in the community are intolerant. But soon, Neely is facing more than just racial slurs. Her boyfriend is murdered, and Neely must find the killer while navigating the pitfallsof her new job.

Henry Adams has had its fair share of drama ever since Bernadine Brown bought the town with her divorce settlement. Now just when things are starting to settle down, it’s about to get crazy again.... Cephas Patterson doesn’t just want to be left alone - if you dare step onto his property, he’ll meet you with a shotgun and a warning to stay away from his gold. He reminds Zoey of the lonely time she spent living on the streets, so she quietly begins leaving him small offerings. But then Cephas dies and leaves a saddlebag of gold - to Zoey.

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.

After the death of her son, Eric Garner, at the hands of New York City police officers on Staten Island went viral, Gwen Carr's life changed forever. The illegal choke hold that took Garner's life has been seared into the public consciousness forever as the large Black man struggled to breathe while a White policeman held him down on a hot concrete sidewalk. His death set the tone for a new normal where young Black men and women now automatically document police interactions with their cell phones for fear of brutality and even death.

In Something Old, Something New, Lily Fontaine and Trent July are finally planning their wedding. But when well-intentioned neighbors - including Bernadine, the town fairy godmother - insist on inflating the intimate gathering into the event of the decade, Lily and Trent start wishing they'd simply eloped.

Taut free verse tells the little-known story of the first contraband camp of the Civil War - seen by some historians as the "beginning of the end of slavery in America". One night in 1861, three escaped slaves made their way from the Confederate line to a Union-held fort. The runaways were declared "contraband of war" and granted protection. As word spread, thousands of runaway slaves poured into the fort, seeking their freedom. These "contrabands" made a home for themselves, building the first African American community in the country.