Showing results by narrator "Bahni Turpin" in All Categories

Magic-wielding Churchwitch and secret addict Chess Putnam knows better than anyone just how high a price people are willing to pay for a chemical rush. But when someone with money to burn and a penchant for black magic starts tampering with Downside’s drug supply, Chess realizes that the unlucky customers are paying with their souls—and taking the innocent with them, as the magic-infused speed compels them to kill in the most gruesome ways possible.

Invisible No More is a timely examination of how Black women, Indigenous women, and women of color experience racial profiling, police brutality, and immigration enforcement. By placing the individual stories of Sandra Bland, Rekia Boyd, Dajerria Becton, Monica Jones, and Mya Hall in the broader context of the twin epidemics of police violence and mass incarceration, Andrea Ritchie documents the evolution of movements centered around women’s experiences of policing.

Fern seeks refuge from her mother’s pill-popping and boyfriends via Soul Train; Gwen finds salvation in the music of Prince much to her congregation’s dismay; and Jessenia, miles ahead of her classmates at her gifted and talented high school, is a brainy and precocious enigma. None of this matter to Boss Man, the monster who abducts them and holds them captive in a dilapidated house in Queens. On the night they are finally rescued, throngs line the block gawking and claiming ignorance.

Nora Watts has a talent for seeing what lies beneath strangers’ surfaces, and for knowing what they’re working hard to keep hidden. Somehow, it’s the people closest to her she has trouble truly connecting with. In the case of Bonnie, the teenage daughter Nora gave up for adoption, she has to keep trying. For Bonnie has a target on her back - and it’s all because of Nora.

“People do mysterious things when they think they have found paradise,” reflects Shay, the heroine of Red Island House. When Shay, an intrepid Black American professor, marries Senna, a brash Italian businessman, she doesn’t imagine that her life’s greatest adventure will carry her far beyond their home in Milan: to an idyllic stretch of beach in Madagascar where Senna builds a flamboyant vacation villa. Before she knows it, she becomes the reluctant mistress of a sprawling household.

Witches! Whether you know them from Shakespeare or from Wicked, there is no staple more beloved in folklore, fairy tale, or fantasy than these magical beings. Witches are everywhere, and at the heart of stories that resonate with many people around the world. This dazzling, otherworldly collection gathers new stories of witches from all walks of life, ensuring a Halloween readers will never forget. Whether they be maiden, mother, crone, or other; funny, fierce, light and airy, or dark and disturbing; witches are a vital part of some of the greatest stories we have, and new ones start here!

In 1904 Ota Benga, a young Congolese "pygmy" - a person of petite stature - arrived from central Africa and was featured in an anthropology exhibit at the St. Louis World's Fair. Two years later the New York Zoological Gardens displayed him in its Monkey House, caging the slight 103-pound, 4-foot 11-inch tall man with an orangutan. The attraction became an international sensation, drawing thousands of New Yorkers and commanding headlines across the nation and in Europe.

There is a grisly murder in your neighborhood. You stand outside with your neighbors and watch, or maybe you peek out your curtains. Hours pass, then days, maybe years. Then one day there is a knock at your door, and the police take you in for questioning. Do you remember what happened? Do you have an alibi? Can you take countless hours of interrogation without breaking? This can happen to you. And it happens to more people than you think.

This debut collection is a complicated love letter to Washington, DC, and to those who call it home: a TSA agent who's never flown, a girl braving new worlds to play piano, and a teacher caught up in a mayoral race. These characters navigate life's "training school" - with lessons on gentrification and respectability - and fight to create their own sense of space and self.

In the hills of Appalachia, there once existed a land ruled by a king and queen. Inspired by memories of African kingdoms, a community of formerly enslaved men and women grasped freedom on mountain land they owned. But freedom doesn't always last forever . . .Today, after years of silence, Nikki has been summoned to North Carolina by her estranged grandmother. But instead of revealing answers about their recent past, Mother Rita tells Nikki a shocking story about her great-great-great grandmother, Queen Luella, and the very land they stand on.

Ten-year-old orphan Libète has been hardened by the daily struggle to survive in Cité Soleil, Haiti's most infamous slum. But when she and her best friend, Jak, discover a young mother and her baby brutally murdered in a nearby marsh, it's unlike anything she's encountered before. Though initially shocked, the adults of Cité Soleil move on quickly from the event; after all, death is commonplace in this community.

Mayor Victoria Dobbs Overstreet is a Harvard-trained attorney and Spelman alum, married to a celebrated heart surgeon, mother to beautiful twin girls, and a political genius. When her mentor, ally, and friend Congressman Ezra Hawkins is gunned down in Ebenezer Baptist Church, Victoria finds a strange piece of origami - a “paper god” - tucked inside his Bible. These paper gods turn up again and again, always after someone is killed. Someone is terrorizing those who are close to Mayor Dobbs, and she can't shake the feeling that the killer is close to her, too.

Fifteen-year-old bender Kivali has had a rough time in a gender-rigid culture. Abandoned as a baby and raised by Sheila, an ardent nonconformist, Kivali has always been surrounded by uncertainty. Where did she come from? Is it true what Sheila says, that she was deposited on Earth by the mysterious saurians?

Catherine is a soldier. Fast, strong, and lethal, she is the ultimate in military technology. She’s a monster in the body of an 18-year-old girl. Bred by scientists, grown in vats, indoctrinated by the government, she and her sisters will win this war—no matter the cost.

Trinidad Noir reveals the Caribbean island’s darkness and its appeal with an unexpected and gratifying result. Features brand-new stories by Robert Antoni, Elizabeth Nunez, Lawrence Scott, Ramabai Espinet, Shani Mootoo, Kevin Baldeosingh, Vahni Capildeo, Willi Chen, Lisa Allen-Agostini, Keith Jardim, Reena Andrea Manickchand, Tiphanie Yanique, and more.

When a 14-year-old girl is the alleged victim of a terrible act of racial violence, the incident shocks and galvanizes her community, exacerbating the racial tension that has been simmering in this New Jersey town for decades. In this magisterial work of fiction, Joyce Carol Oates explores the uneasy fault lines in a racially troubled society. In such a tense, charged atmosphere, Oates reveals that there must always be a sacrifice - of innocence, truth, trust, and, ultimately, of lives.

When rising star Paris Secord (aka DJ ParSec) is found dead on her turntables, it sends the local music scene reeling. No one is feeling that grief more than her shunned pre-fame best friend, Kya, and ParSec's chief groupie, Fuse - two sworn enemies who happened to be the ones who discovered her body. The police have few leads, and when the trail quickly turns cold, the authorities don't seem to be pushing too hard to investigate further. Only no one counted on Paris's deeply loyal fans, ParSec Nation, or the outrage that would drive Fuse and Kya to work together.

Erykah was looking forward to junior year at East Prep High. She has a cute boyfriend, gets good grades, and has the best bestie. Money is tight, though that’s nothing new in her world. But everything changes when she gets pregnant. Having a baby at sixteen was definitely not part of the plan.

For Brenda Spahn, entrepreneur and businesswoman, wealth was a lifestyle - until a brush with the law threatened to send her to prison. In those dark moments, Brenda made a promise to God.

Spared incarceration, a renewed Brenda glimpsed into the lives of women serving time in one of the worst places in America - the JuliaTutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Alabama. What she saw prompted a God-inspired vision. With a heart to help and a will that couldn't be crushed, Brenda fought the system and overcame tremendous obstacles to take ex-cons into her home.

The heartbreaking story of five generations of young people from a single African-and-American family pursuing an elusive dream of freedom. Dream Country begins in suburban Minneapolis at the moment when 17-year-old Kollie Flomo begins to crack under the strain of his life as a Liberian refugee. Then listeners travel back to Liberia and back in time, to the early 20th century and the point of view of Togar Somah, an 18-year-old indigenous Liberian on the run from government militias, and to America in 1827....