Showing results by narrator "January LaVoy" in All Categories

I had it all: a fantastic husband, two great kids, an exciting career. And then, at the age of forty-three, I found out I would be dead before my next birthday. My mother also died at forty-three. I was seventeen, and she warned me that women would flock to my suddenly single father like stray cats to an overturned milk truck. They did. And one absolutely evil woman practically destroyed his life, mine, and my sister’s. I am not letting that happen to my family. I have three months, and I plan to spend every waking minute searching for the perfect woman to take my place.

Ever since she was a child, Cléo, the French-American daughter of two academics, has had only one obsession: becoming a famous singer. Over the years, to everyone’s surprise but her own, she overcomes every obstacle and becomes a global superstar with millions of dollars, countless awards, and several Los Angeles villas to her name. But as any celebrity will tell you, getting to the top is one thing; staying there is another. Now thirty-three years old, Cléo is taking her first real vacation in years, on a remote island with no one else in sight.

For Dell Fletcher, life isn’t complicated. He is the Roadrunner, a major-league baseball star who seems to have it all. He’s married to his college sweetheart, Leah, and they have two children and a dream home in Los Angeles. But an injury has sidelined his hot career and prescription medication and depression are pulling him into a downward spiral of self-pity and loneliness, leaving Leah feeling emotionally distanced and sad. Her growing frustration ends in an ultimatum: “Get help, or get out.”

From one of America's most transformative politicians and activists, a powerful and inspiring memoir that sheds light on a harrowing personal journey and reveals how urgently we need our political leadership to prioritize meeting the needs of our most marginalized communities.

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.

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.

Neuropsychiatrist Cristina Silva cannot escape her past. The voice in her head of her former identity won’t let her. Cristina also can’t quite manage to force herself to forget the ex-boyfriend she dumped: handsome police detective Gary Wilson. Soon after beginning her new job at the Longwood Memory Center, Cristina receives a startling phone call from her contact at the FBI: an assassin is crisscrossing the country, killing anyone connected to the now-defunct pharmaceutical company ReMind—people like Cristina. The shadowy criminal enterprise Zero Dark is back.

Single divorce attorney Alex Turner is watching reality TV when she sees her latest ex’s new fiancée picking out her wedding dress. Yet again, the guy she dumped went on to marry (or at least seriously commit to) the next person he dates after her. Fed up with being the precursor to happily ever after, she decides to interview all her exes to find out why.

Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort During the Time of COVID-19 is a collection of essays, poems, and interviews to serve as a lifeline for negotiating how to connect and thrive during this stressful time of isolation as well as a historical perspective that will remain relevant for years to come.

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.

Redwood, an African American woman, and Aidan, a Seminole Irish man, journey from Georgia to Chicago, from haunted swampland to a "city of the future". They are gifted performers and hoodoo conjurors, struggling to call up the wondrous world they imagine, not just on stage and screen but on city streets, in front parlors, in wounded hearts. The power of hoodoo is the power of the community that believes in its capacities to heal and determine the course of today and tomorrow.

Dorothy Butler Gilliam, whose 50-year-career as a journalist put her in the forefront of the fight for social justice, offers a comprehensive view of racial relations and the media in the US.

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.

Jae is a slave in a dying desert world. Once verdant with water from a magical Well, the land is drying up, and no one remembers the magic needed to keep the water flowing. If a new source isn't found soon, the people will perish. Jae doesn't mind, in a way. By law she is bound by a curse to obey every order given her, no matter how vile. At least in death, she'll be free.

One night Tila stumbles home, terrified and covered in blood. She's then arrested for murder, the first by a civilian in decades. The San Francisco police suspect involvement with Verve, a powerful drug, and offer her twin sister, Taema, a chilling deal. Taema must assume Tila's identity and gather information to bring down the drug syndicate. The police may then let her sister live. However, Taema's investigation raises ghosts from the twins' past.

Wally was adopted from a Russian orphanage as a child and grew up in a wealthy New York City family. At 15, her obsessive need to rebel led her to life on the streets. Now the 16-year-old is beautiful and hardened, and she's just stumbled across the possibility of discovering who she really is. She'll stop at nothing to find her birth mother before Klesko - her dark-eyed father - finds her. Because Klesko will stop at nothing to reclaim the fortune Wally's mother stole from him long ago.

For fans of Tana French and Gillian Flynn, The Gates of Evangeline is the addictive first book in a fantastic new crime series that will have you guessing until the very end. When grieving mother and New York journalist Charlie Cates begins to experience vivid dreams about children after her only son passes away, she’s sure that she’s lost her mind. Yet she soon realizes these are not the hallucinations of a bereaved mother.

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.

It started with a haunting image: a Ford Explorer, iridiscent in the moonlight and alone on a desolate stretch of beach. Its owner, Melissa Gibbons, has gone missing. Her husband says she flew the coop. But Los Angeles Deputy DA Rachel Knight is convinced otherwise: Melissa Gibbons has been murdered. So begins the confounding case that Rachel must present before a disbelieving jury. A dissatisfied heiress and her philandering husband - what really happened?

Rachel Price’s one happy memory from her childhood is of playing outside with her father, Mitch, on a cold and snowy day. In that moment he took her hands in his and called her his angel. She felt safe, loved, and protected. Rachel’s mother dies in a car crash a few years later - a sudden and unresolved ending to a complicated relationship. Mitch’s reaction to certain realities surrounding the death pushes Rachel away and confirms her fear that Mitch never truly loved her at all. Years later, Rachel’s daughter, Lily, is the only light in her dark life.