Showing results by narrator "Sean Crisden" in All Categories

Southern civility turns savage when Hank Whitaker’s dying words reveal the unimaginable. No one - not his socialite wife, Maggie, or young son, Lance - suspected the successful businessman, husband, and father they loved and thought they knew was a black man passing for white. In 1931, in the segregated South, marriage between whites and blacks is illegal. Maggie, now a criminal, faces jail. When Lance receives death threats to atone for his father’s betrayal, the family flees the US for a new life in Paris.

At the age of 16, R. Dwayne Betts - a good student from a lower-middle-class family - carjacked a man with a friend. He had never held a gun before, but within a matter of minutes he had committed six felonies. A bright young kid, he served his nine-year sentence as part of the adult population in some of the worst prisons in the state. A Question of Freedom chronicles Betts's years in prison, reflecting back on his crime, and looking ahead to how his experiences and the books he discovered while incarcerated would define him.

Cole Vargas has battled the demons that have plagued his nightmares, but winning the heart of the woman he destroyed is going to be the fight of his life. When Cole returns home wounded from his latest mission, his only thoughts are of the woman who still owns his heart and getting strong enough to stand on his own two feet in front of her, to beg for her forgiveness. Olivia Lafierre had her own nightmares to deal with since Cole said good-bye to her.

Maddy and Reid have seen their fair share of trials and tribulations, of love and loss. Facing down the biggest challenges of their young lives, they managed to survive and endure. With the future stretching out before them, they must learn to navigate new and unfamiliar paths.

Milo is trouble. He lives it, breathes it. He embraces anything that numbs and takes his mind somewhere else, a world where his mother is herself and not just a shell, and his brother didn't almost kill her, severing any relationship they had. But more importantly, Milo drowns out the guilt for leaving his mother and not being able to forgive his brother. He drowns his pride and moves on to another girl and another party, pretending that life isn't moving on around him and he's stuck in the same place. He's stuck in the past and doesn't know how to let go.

At the turn of the eighteenth century, John Morehead Tripoli is marooned on the unspoiled Caribbean island of St. Renard. There, he lives for an idyllic year in a community of Carawak Indians. Three hundred years later, the Carawak are gone, St. Renard is carpeted with banana plantations and sugarcane fields, and Tripoli himself is remembered only through his grandson, founder of New Hampshire’s Tripoli College, which maintains a branch campus on the island.

Narrated by young Jamie O'Day, who is beginning to understand that, like his daddy says, "every story is about sex or death, or sometimes both, The Winter Helen Dropped By is a story of growing up, of loss, of laughter and of characters both sexy and dead. Helen is the young, pregnant Indian woman who drops into Jamie's life one freeze-the-balls-off-a-brass-monkey snow-storming night.

Following the sudden death of Sebby’s mother, his father takes Sebby to live in the family’s summerhouse, hoping it will give them both time and space to recover. But Sebby’s father deteriorates in this new isolation, leaving Sebby struggling to understand his mother’s death alone, dreaming and even reliving moments of her life. He ultimately reaches out to a favorite teacher back home and to two nearby children who force him out of the void of the past and help him to exist in the present.

Young Daniel Arabus and his mother are slaves in the house of Captain Ivers of Stratford, Connecticut. By law they should be free, since Daniel's father fought in the Revolutionary army and earned enough in soldiers' notes to buy his family's freedom. But now Daniel's father is dead, and Mrs. Ivers has taken the notes from his mother. When Daniel bravely steals the notes back, a furious Captain Ivers forces him aboard a ship bound for the West Indies - and certain slavery.

Joseph’s sophomore year is about to begin, but his new start is a false one. At his father’s request, Joseph has moved in with his aunt and uncle to avoid the toxic environment surrounding his drug-addicted mother. But efforts to keep Joseph safe have tragic results for the family. When their community is shattered, Joseph must contend with his own grief, his mother’s persistent pleas for money, and the distance between himself and his father, stationed in Iraq - not to mention schoolwork, making the tennis team, and a new relationship.

Willy Freeman's life changes forever when she witnesses her father's death at the hands of the Redcoats and returns home to find that the British have taken her mother as a prisoner to New York City. Willy, disguised as a boy, begins her long search for her mother and luckily finds a haven at the famous Fraunces Tavern. But even with the help of Sam Fraunces and her fellow worker, Horace, Willy knows that to be Black, female, and free leaves her open to danger at every turn. What will tomorrow bring?

An explosive election campaign sets off a dangerous crisis in the strange world of the Simes and Gens. Laneff Farris grew up believing she had not inherited any of the special talents or strengths of the Farris family mutation. Yet she did inherit the idealism, the aspiration to unite humanity. Through science, she has almost found a way. But a storm of politics complete with secret factions and frightful conspiracies sweeps her into an underworld where the line between Science and Magic blurs.

Sexy bad boy shapeshifter Michael O'Dare grew up on the streets. When government soldiers finally captured and imprisoned him, he became a lab rat and a collared slave, never again allowed to be human. His escape allowed him to return to human form and head for freedom in the Western Territories.

Something about the country brings out the best - and the sexiest - in a man, and country boys are a special breed. These tobacco-chewin', cattle-ropin' icons in temptingly baggy overalls or skin-tight wranglers rank with cops and soldiers as one of the most potent symbols of the naturally masculine male. Sweating and sensual not from the gym but from honest, hard work (and play), they come in all shapes, sizes, and erotic potential. City homos hike the wilds to commune with nature and nature boys. Gay pioneers enjoy rural living and loving. Lonesome queers meet for moonlight trysts in the cornfields.

Honky-Tonk Street--a dark, lonely, sordid edge of town--a place where Johnny Nickles and his jazz band are playing hot sets in seedy clubs and rundown bars. But a killer is stalking Johnny's band, and Johnny finds himself trapped in a deadly game of chicken with a local power broker, a corrupt sheriff, and a professional thug for hire.

In this second classic novel, published in 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald tells us the story of Anthony Patch, a 1920s socialite and presumptive heir to a tycoon's fortune; his relationship with his wife, Gloria; his service in the Army; and his alcoholism. The novel provides an excellent portrait of the Eastern elite as the Jazz Age began its ascent.

In 1849, Henry David Thoreau argued in his essay “Civil Disobedience” that people should not allow governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that people have the right to avoid such submission to permit the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was partly motivated by his abhorrence with slavery and the Mexican-American War. His work has inspired great leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Martin Buber.

Women call him "the perfect storm", and Jayla Cole knows that Atlanta fire chief Storm Westmoreland lives up to his devastating reputation. A business trip to New Orleans sparks a chance reunion and a scorching, five-alarm weekend. But Jayla has already made plans for a child of her own - and a man famous for blazing affairs that burn out quickly doesn’t figure into it. Now Storm has one chance to prove that together they have the makings of a perfect family.

Stone Westmoreland had an eye for the ladies. And charm that never failed. He was an experienced player who played for keeps. So who would have guessed that prim and proper Madison Winters could rattle his nerves without even trying? She had him feeling all protective, and all sexed up, too. Before he knew it, Stone had volunteered to help Madison find her mother, who'd gone missing in the mountains.

Every family has a fixer. The person who is always expected to solve every problem. Even as a kid, I knew the role I had in my Crowne family would force me to live a life in solitude, surrounded by people, yet alone in many ways. After convincing myself that I was fine on my own, I finally found my person. A man buried so deep in my soul that it broke me a little inside every time we connected. As I was always reminded though, my role was to fix others. Not become the one who needs fixing.