Showing results by narrator "JD Jackson" in All Categories

When the body of N’Gana Frimbo, the African conjure-man, is discovered in his consultation room, Perry Dart, one of Harlem’s 10 Black police detectives, is called in to investigate. Together with Dr Archer, a physician from across the street, Dart is determined to solve the baffling mystery, helped and hindered by Bubber Brown and Jinx Jenkins, local boys keen to clear themselves of suspicion of murder and undertake their own investigations.

Young adults are coming of age at a time when work is temporary, underpaid, incommensurate with their education, or downright unsatisfying. Despite these challenges, media scholar S. Craig Watkins argues that this moment of precarity is rife with opportunities for innovation, and that young adults are leading the charge in turning that into an inventive and surprisingly sustainable future.

With followers numbering in the hundreds of thousands, a hot group of friends, and a famous boyfriend, the glamorous life that fitness influencer Cleo has always wanted is within her grasp. Then just before joining her boyfriend for a holiday in the mountains, Cleo and a young woman named Rebecca set off in a canoe on a deserted lake. An hour later, Rebecca is found dead in the water and Cleo has gone missing. When word gets out, Cleo is going viral, but for all the wrong reasons.

When Mr. Bro. Wiley, Bean's adopted grandfather and the last slave man around, dies in the summer of 1940, Bean and his very best friend Pole are some kind of hurt. Everyone in the Low Meadows is. Despite their grief, they are proud and excited to be included in their very first Sittin' Up - a wake for the dead. Bean and Pole know this special week will be one to remember, especially if the coming storm has its way and riles up Ole River enough to flood the Low Meadows right in the middle of Mr. Bro. Wiley's Sittin' Up.

Tony Gooden is famous for his fast cars and hot women, but his job at the radio station isn’t as sweet as it used to be, and a recent encounter with his one true love has got him thinking - what about the one that got away? A near-death experience sends him on a mission to get back the one love he knows he never should have let go. But Serena has moved on with life and she’s dealing with problems of her own: a marriage that’s falling apart and a rebellious teenager. Is it too late to pick up the pieces of their complicated relationship?

Through a series of heart-breaking and poignant letters, come explore the 20-year journey of a child longing for the love of his mentally ill mother while facing seemingly insurmountable odds. Witness Manny's transformation in this coming of age story of a forgotten and disfigured child, born into spirit-crushing poverty in Houston, Texas, and thrust into adulthood all too soon. Crying out to the world for understanding and forgiveness, Manny battles the silent and treacherous enemy of mental illness in his mother's often erratic and sometimes terrifying behavior.

The apocalypse happened, but no one knows how. All that’s left are a smattering of bizarro cities called remnants, each ruled by a grotesque potentate known as an Odd. If you wind up in hock to the Odds, they ship you to a chain-gang that stretches thousands of miles across desert, steppe, and tundra. A good-hearted drifter named Eldridge is a longtime member of the Chain.

CJ just blew the half-mile relay for his track team, but the race on his mind is the one that’s happening off the field in this short story from all-star author Jacqueline Woodson.

Texas Ranger Darren Mathews has handed in his badge. A choice made three years before, which served justice if not the law, means that he may now stand trial. And his mother - an intermittent and destructive force in his life - is the cause of his fall from grace. And yet it is his mother's reappearance that may also be his salvation. A black girl at an all-white sorority at a nearby college is missing, her belongings tossed in a dumpster. Her sorority sisters, the college police, even the girl's own family, deny that she has disappeared, but Sera Fuller is nowhere to be found.

Magic Johnson is one of the most beloved, and at times controversial, athletes in history. He lifted the dowdy sport of American pro basketball into the global spotlight, a transformation driven by his ability to eviscerate opponents with a grand sense of fun. He was a master entertainer who directed basketball to the heights of both glory and epic excess, all of it driven by his mind-blowing no-look passes and personal charm.

Dr Jojo has it all figured out. Or so it seems to her Instagram followers, who love her no-nonsense advice about men, self-love, dating and sex. But behind the camera, it's a different story - she's in love with her best friend, Ezra, and he doesn't feel the same way. Committed to moving on, Jo soon finds the perfect distraction - sweet, shy and sexy writer Malcolm. As the pair begin to date, sparks fly, and Jo's hard exterior begins to soften.

The man known as Dewey Decimal works in a near-future Manhattan decimated by terrorism and plague, running dirty operations for the crooked Senator Howard - though he’d prefer to spend his time among the stacks at his beloved New York Public Library. When Dewey is tasked with disrupting unrest from a growing group of outcast civilians, and simultaneously given the assignment of protecting a pair of Saudi royals, he is forced to look within and make some impossible choices - and it will put him at odds with his benefactor and the powers that be....

The Narwhal and Jelly books are delightfully silly graphic novels full of heart, friendship, and playful adventure. Adapted for audio with sound effects and a full cast - including a special appearance by the author - listeners can now get the first five books (Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea, Super Narwhal and Jelly Jolt, Peanut Butter and Jelly, Narwhal's Otter Friend, and Happy Narwhalidays) in the series in one audiobook collection.

It's been a thousand years since the Rising. Earth is a wasteland, and a holy order of knights is all that stands between what remains of civilization and the brigands and demons trying to bring it all down. When the oldest of these knights, Abe, isn't trying to keep his brothers in line, he's tirelessly attempting to decode the riddles that have guided the Knights Eternal for the past two centuries. The visions Abe's been having aren't helping matters.

Craig Suder, third baseman for the Seattle Mariners, is in a slump. His batting average is shocking, his marriage somehow worse, and he secretly fears he’s inherited his mother’s insanity. Ordered to take a midseason rest, Suder instead takes his LP of Charlie Parker’s “Ornithology” and flees. A dazzling tale of madness, confinement and the need for escape, Suder introduced Percival Everett to the world as a writer already fully capable of conjuring whole lives and worlds on the page.

Nicknamed Dewey Decimal for his obsessive attempts to bring order to the New York Public Library in the wake of disastrous events in the city, the hero of this series earns his keep as a bagman and enforcer for unscrupulous politicians and underworld figures. Now, he’s stumbled upon information concerning the gruesome murder of a prostitute that involves a prominent US senator - and finds himself chasing ghosts and fighting for his life, pursued by private military contractors and the ever-present specter of his own past....

This story was going to begin like all the best stories. With a school bus falling from the sky. But no one saw it happen. They were all too busy - Jason Reynolds conjures 10 tales (one per block) about what happens after the dismissal bell rings and brilliantly weaves them into one wickedly funny, piercingly poignant look at the detours we face on the walk home, and in life.

As the daughter of a Library god, Freida has spent her life exploring the Library's ever-changing tunnels and communing with the gods. Her unparalleled access makes her unique – and dangerous. When Freida meets Joshua, a mortal boy desperate to save his people, and Nergüi, a Disciple from a persecuted religious minority, Freida is compelled to break ranks with the gods and help them. But in order to do so, she will have to venture deeper into the Library than she has ever known. There she will discover the atrocities of the past, the truth of her origins, and the impossibility of her future.

The victory over the Soultaker fractured the Knights Eternal. Shade has broken his vows, abandoning his brothers to trek over the northern mountains in search of a god. Instead, he finds Darkenwood, a sprawling hamlet in an isolated valley, populated with strange creatures trapped in an endless cycle of oppression. His desire to free them from their shackles sends him on another journey, one that will test his faith in humanity.

When Bryan, Jaidee, Victor and Jane team up to compete at a full-contact escape room, it seems simple. Hold your nerve through six terrifying challenges, collect all the red envelopes, win a huge cash prize. But the real horror is unfolding outside of the game, in a series of deceits and misunderstandings fuelled by obsession and prejudice. And by the end of the night, one of the contestants will be dead.