Showing results by narrator "Allyson Johnson" in All Categories

She turned her back on her people and shifted her allegiance to the very Empire she was sent to betray. Now head spymaster, Lyre's loyalty lies with Sabine, the Empress she has loved since childhood. But when Sabine visits the secretive Cloud Vault, the floating citadel home that Lyre betrayed, Lyre's elaborate web of lies starts to untangle. Her very presence threatens Sabine's future, and Lyre will do whatever it takes to protect her lover . . . even if that means sacrificing herself.

Though her progeny was a hopeless romantic, the concept of a forever mate was lost on Leila. She'd gone down that path once before decades ago and was in no hurry to do it again. She'd presumed she was over the hurt and pain - that is, until the male who'd destroyed her heart, her very spirit, walked back into her bar. She'd thought if she never saw him again, it would be too soon. That was until one touch set her soul ablaze with desire. But could she trust him with her heart when he'd already destroyed once before?

The word cowboy conjures up vivid images of rugged men on saddled horses - men lassoing cattle, riding bulls, or brandishing guns in a shoot-out. White men, as Hollywood remembers them. What is woefully missing from these scenes is their counterparts: the Black cowboys who made up one-fourth of the wranglers and rodeo riders. This book tells their story.

Leslie Durant, owner of Pretty Paws, doesn't care that she's always giving all of her time and attention to others: It's worth the joy of helping abandoned animals find loving forever homes. But if she can't find a way to bring more money into the struggling shelter, the sacrifices she's made will all be for nothing. Then her brother leaves her with an inheritance, with two stipulations: She must work with her estranged mother to host a successful charity event and find a loving home for Peter's dog, Kiwi.

The Kimei family and a second group of castaways, led by Sergeant Campbell, had finally joined forces after both had been forced to land on the bizarre planet Lincoln, whose continents were huge floating coral colonies, inhabited by even stranger lifeforms. They had survived crash-landings and venom-filled bites and disease, their own despair, and even the destruction - and consumption! - of one of their floating islands, and had learned to live, even prosper, in their strange new home.

Some locales seem to come with their own soundtrack. Don Ho and his tiny bubbles provide the background music for Hawaii, Edith Piaf for Paris. The reggae of Bob Marley evokes Jamaica. The soundtrack for Alabama is without question provided by our troubled troubadour Hank Williams. The 2016 biography Hank by Mark Ribowsky paints a dark picture of the musician's short, alcoholic, drug-filled life: a life of loneliness and pain. He goes so far as to call Hank's life story "noir-ish"....

Fourteen-year-old Susan Backstrom seems to have a charmed life - she's smart and beautiful, the only child of wealthy, attentive parents. But there are secrets inside her expensive house that Susan would never tell. One day, at the library, she overhears their housekeeper's son talking with some friends about sneaking into a nearby abandoned house. Much to her own surprise, Susan very much wants to join them - and soon, she's part of the best secret of all. The house has a resident teenage ghost. More important than that, the house itself is a living, supernatural thing.

Black women have higher rates of premature birth than other women in America. This cannot be simply explained by economic factors, with poorer women lacking resources or access to care. Even professional, middle-class Black women are at a much higher risk of premature birth than low-income White women in the United States. Dána-Ain Davis looks into this phenomenon, placing racial differences in birth outcomes into a historical context, revealing that ideas about reproduction and race today have been influenced by the legacy of ideas which developed during the era of slavery.

In our era of mass incarceration, gun violence, and Black Lives Matters, a handbook showing how racial justice and restorative justice can transform the African American experience in America.

For Black Americans, the food system is broken. When it comes to nutrition, Black consumers experience an unjust and inequitable distribution of resources. Black Food Matters examines these issues through in-depth essays that analyze how Blackness is contested through food, differing ideas of what makes our sustenance "healthy", and Black individuals' own beliefs about what their cuisine should be.

New Yorker Jasmine Washington had a successful interior design business, a high-powered marriage, and a chance at motherhood - until her perfect husband betrayed her bigtime. Now starting from scratch, the Asian and African American stunner is tackling a lifetime opportunity: comanaging her friend's new luxury inn about to open in the Garden District. The last thing Jasmine needs is romance. New Orleans' most eligible bachelor, investment banker Cameron Singleton, begs to differ.

South Carolina, 1862. Emily Jarvie is determined to send her family's slave-owning history to its grave. When the Union Army captures the Sea Islands, she returns to the south to teach the former slaves, part of the Army's unusual experiment in racial equality. Despite her loyalty to the Union cause, her Southern heritage raises a brick wall of Yankee suspicion.

A Charleston belle with slavery on her conscience. A slave with rebellion in her heart. In South Carolina in 1858, no friendship could be more dangerous.

The half-century before the Civil War was beset with conflict over equality as well as freedom. Beginning in 1803, many free states, claiming the authority to maintain the domestic peace, enacted laws that discouraged free African Americans from settling their boundaries and restricted the rights to testify in court, move freely from place to place, work, vote, and attend public school. But over time, African American activists and their white allies, often facing mob violence, courageously built a movement to fight these racist laws.

These 75 flash nonfiction pieces, written by internationally celebrated women authors and dazzlingly hilarious newcomers, are no flashes in the pan: They provide a feast of insights, generously garnished with wit, spice, and an exhilarating attention to craft. In Fast Funny Women, you'll find everything you want from thoughtful essays in a short, delicious form. Perfect for students of writing, writers of humor, and all fans who welcome laughter, insight, and perspective into their lives.

With an extraordinary gift for suspense, McKissack brings us 10 original, spine-tingling tales inspired by African-American history and the mystery of that eerie half hour before nightfall—the dark-thirty.

Despite all good intentions, the lure of the Talent to move through space using the M'hir dimension is too much for the Om'ray of Cersi to resist. As the awareness of this talent spreads, all those Om'ray who are capable converge on the settlement at Sona. To prevent the disruption of the Agreement and the destruction that it would unleash, the M'hiray, as they now call themselves, agree to leave Cersi forever and try to establish their own haven within the Trade Pact worlds - only to learn that not everybody wants peace.

On the distant world of Cersi, Om'ray Aryl Sarc and her supporters have been exiled from the rest of their people. Finding refuge in the mountains, they work to rebuild the ruined village of Sona, even as they try to discover what happened to the original Sona Clan. But Sona has a history among all three of Cersi's races - a history that may soon threaten the future of Aryl's newly founded clan....

This prequel to the Trade Pact Universe series begins in a time before the Clan had learned how to manipulate the M'hir to travel between worlds. Aliens have begun to explore the world of Cersi, upsetting the delicate balance between the Clan and the two other powerful races who coexist by set rules. And one young woman is on the verge of finding the forbidden secret of the M'hir - a discovery that could prove the salvation or ruin of her entire species.

In Red Right Hand, Charlie Tristan Moore became the unwilling acolyte of the Man in Black, a treacherous elder god also known as Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos. In Black Goat Blues, Charlie fought her way past bloodthirsty gods and demons to rescue her lover’s stolen soul. Now she must stop the Man in Black from achieving his ultimate goal: freeing his dread father, Azathoth, from endless confinement to feast upon humanity for all eternity. But before she can confront her inhuman mentor for the final time, Charlie must make her way to the heart of a hellish prison.