Showing results by narrator "Karen Murray" in All Categories

Joan was only a child the last time she visited Memphis. She doesn't remember the bustle of Beale Street on a summer's night. She doesn't know she's as likely to hear a gunshot ring out as the sound of children playing. How the smell of honeysuckle is almost overwhelming as she climbs the porch steps to the house where her mother grew up. But when the front door opens, she does remember Derek. This house full of history is home to the women of the North family. 

It is 2085 and Laisve is learning to use the ancient waterways to travel through water and time. Sifting through the detritus of a fallen city known as The Brook, she discovers a talisman that will connect her with people from the past two centuries, including a squad of laborers at work on a huge national monument to liberty. As waters rise and a police state encroaches, Laisve must find her way back to the early days of her imperfect country, to forge a bond that might save all their lives—and their shared dream of freedom.

The road from a high school track to an Olympic starting line is long and sometimes shadowy. Obstacles like chronic injuries, under-fueled nutrition, and coercive coaching can threaten to derail careers before they’ve even begun. Frustrated by seeing young talent burn out before reaching their potential, professional distance runner Molly Huddle and college coach Sara Slattery have teamed up with trailblazing running legends and sports medicine professionals to create an essential guide to reach your running potential.

When Nanette's mother calls with the news that her Aunt Vivian has gone missing, it's not exactly out of the ordinary. Vivacious and bohemian Aunt Vivian has never been one to play by the rules. This time, however, the circumstances surrounding Vivian's disappearance are rather troubling. Would Nanette be up to polishing her French language skills and flying to Paris, where she was last seen, to track her down? It's not a tough decision for Francophile Nanette.

In this intimate and innovative memoir, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Margo Jefferson gives us her own personal and intellectual formation. As she comes of age in an America whose freedoms are distorted by race and gender, she finds herself reflected in a cast of others—jazz luminaries, writers, artists, athletes and stars. Bing Crosby and Ike Turner are among the author’s alter egos. The sounds of a jazz LP emerge as the intimate and instructive sounds of a parent’s voice. W.E.B. Du Bois and George Eliot meet illicitly. 

Nanette's day is not off to a good start. Her on-again, off-again relationship with Walter is off...again, and when she offers a fellow busker a place to stay for the night he ends up murdered on her kitchen floor. To make matters worse, the busker turns out to have been an undercover cop. And his former partner has taken an immediate and extreme dislike to Nanette. When she finds that the dead man stashed a wad of cash in her apartment, cash that could go to help his blind girlfriend, Nanette's desire to do the right thing lands her in trouble.

The Portable Anna Julia Cooper brings together, for the first time, Anna Julia Cooper's major collection of essays, A Voice from the South, along with several previously unpublished poems, plays, journalism, and selected correspondences, including more than 30 previously unpublished letters between Anna Julia Cooper and W. E. B. Du Bois. This volume will introduce a new generation to an educator, intellectual, and activist whose prescient insights underlie some of the most important developments in modern American intellectual thought and African American activism.

Nanette is on the rocks. Heartbroken and alone in New York, she finds what comfort she can in the bottom of a bottle. But her life seems to turn around when she's given a voodoo doll, so much so that Nanette seeks out the doll's creator, Ida, to thank her. That's when Nanette's luck seems to run out, and Ida ends up with a bullet in her head. Guilt-ridden, Nanette resolves to get justice for her new friend, only to find that Ida was hiding some dark skeletons in her closet. 

The daughter of a Danish immigrant and a black G.I., Rachel survives a family tragedy only to face new challenges. Sent to live with her strict African-American grandmother in a racially divided Northwest city, she must suppress her grief and reinvent herself in a mostly black community. A beauty with light brown skin and blue eyes, she attracts much attention in her new home. The world wants to see her as either black or white, but that's not how she sees herself.

Orphaned and alone, Rachel is taken under the wing of her strict African-American grandmother and moved to a mostly black community where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and astonishing beauty start to attract a troubling level of attention. As the terrible secrets begin to emerge, Rachel learns to swallow her grief and construct her own self-image in a world that wants to see her as either black or white.

With an unconventional Christmas setting of Egypt and written in sweet, lyrical prose, Brown Baby Jesus is sure to become a holiday classic embraced by families of all races and backgrounds. 

When Oprah Winfrey was growing up, her family expected her to become a maid like her grandmother. But she had different dreams. She went after them and turned her dreams into reality, becoming a media superstar and inspiring countless other people along the way. Complete with an introduction from Chelsea Clinton! 

When Helena Andrews heard this declaration on Saturday Night Live, her first reaction was How daaare you? But after a commercial break and some thought, she decided to poke at the stereotype that says "successful" and "bitch" are synonyms. Unafraid and frank, she comes to realize that being a bitch is sometimes the best way to be—except, of course, when it's not.

Two unsung women whose power using food as a political weapon during the civil rights movement was so great it brought the ire of government agents working against them. 

Award-winning Black authors and artists come together to create a moving anthology collection celebrating Black love, Black creativity, Black resistance, and Black life.

Priscilla Joyner was born into the world of slavery in 1858 North Carolina and came of age at the dawn of emancipation. Raised by a white slaveholding woman, Joyner never knew the truth about her parentage. She grew up isolated and unsure of who she was and where she belonged—feelings that no emancipation proclamation could assuage.

Coretta Scott King is known for being the wife of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but she was a civil rights activist and leader in her own right! She was a singer and an author, too, and her work made a difference for Black Americans and for all women for decades to come. 

When Fly and Stela meet in 21st-century New York City, it seems like fate. He's a Black American musician from a mixed-religious background who knows all about heartbreak. She’s a Catholic science teacher from the Caribbean, looking for lasting love. But are they meant to be? The answer goes back decades - all the way to their parents' earliest loves.

From the number one New York Times best-selling series comes the latest title in the Who HQ Now format for trending topics. It tells the history of a political and social movement that advocates for nonviolent civil disobedience and protests against incidents of police brutality - and all racially motivated violence - against Black people.