Showing results by narrator "JD Jackson" in All Categories

When the roar of a low-flying plane awakens him in the middle of the night, Sheriff Winston Barnes knows something strange is happening at the nearby airfield on the coast of North Carolina. But nothing can prepare him for what he finds: a large airplane has crash-landed and is now sitting sideways on the runway, and there are no signs of a pilot or cargo. When the body of a local man is discovered—shot dead and lying on the grass near the crash site—Winston begins a murder investigation that will change the course of his life.

President/CEO of Franklin Entertainment and former Sony Pictures executive DeVon Franklin and award-winning actress Meagan Good have learned sometimes all we can do is wait for "the one" to come into our lives. They spent years crossing paths, but it wasn't until they were thrown together while working on the film Jumping the Broom that their storybook romance began.

A man seeks to prove himself as a hero. A monster seeks silence in his territory. A warrior seeks to avenge her murdered son. A dragon ends it all. The familiar elements of the epic poem are seen with a novelist’s eye toward gender, genre, and history - Beowulf has always been a tale of entitlement and encroachment, powerful men seeking to become more powerful, and one woman seeking justice for her child, but this version brings new context to an old story.

We should have known the end was near. So begins Imbolo Mbue’s powerful second novel, How Beautiful We Were. Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, it tells of a people living in fear amid environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of cleanup and financial reparations to the villagers are made - and ignored. The country’s government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interests.

From NBA legend Bill Russell, Go Up for Glory is a basketball memoir that transcends time. First published in 1965, this narrative traces Russell's childhood in segregated America and details the challenges he faced as a Black man, even when he was a celebrated NBA star. And while some progress has been made, this book serves as an urgent reminder of how far we still have to go in the fight for human rights and equality.

When a deadly plague reaches the small fish camp where he lives, an orphan named Leif is forced to take to the water in a cedar canoe. He flees northward, following a wild, fjord-riven shore, navigating from one danger to the next, unsure of his destination. But the deeper into his journey he paddles, the closer he comes to his truest self as he connects to “the heartbeat of the ocean...the pulse of the sea”.

For many, it can feel like change takes too long, and it might seem that we have not moved very far. But political activist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar believes that public protest is a vital part of affecting change, even if that change doesn’t come “right now.” In We All Want to Change the World, he examines the activism of people of all ages, ethnicities, and socio-economic backgrounds that helped change America, documenting events from the Free Speech Movement through the movement for civil rights, the fight for women’s and LGBTQ rights, and, of course, the protests against the Vietnam War.

For much of history, societies have violently oppressed ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities. It is no surprise that many who passionately believe in social justice came to believe that members of marginalized groups need to take pride in their identity to resist injustice.

God has a plan for your life. More often than not, it's a detour - one that can leave you feeling temporarily stalled and slowed down. Which nobody likes. But detours are necessary if any improvements are going to be made on the paths we travel. Or if any wreck is going to be cleaned up or a hazard avoided. Detours are designed for our own good, regardless of how we view or feel about them. Detours are a good thing that often feels bad. Tony knows a thing or two about detours.

It’s 1927, and the most devastating flood in American history has swelled the Mississippi River to a width of eighty miles. In an attempt to save a family trapped by the rising water, four men in a tiny rowboat battle the treacherous flow: three are convicts, on loan from the local prison and pressed into service; the fourth, the leader of the team, is driven by his own hidden motives. But to their surprise upon arrival at Ballymore, an ancestral home protected by a high, circular levee, not everyone in the family feels the need to be saved.

In its first four months of operation, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture surpassed one million visits and quickly became a cherished, vital monument to the African American experience. And yet this accomplishment was never assured. In A Fool's Errand, founding director Lonnie Bunch tells his story of bringing his clear vision and leadership to realize this shared dream of many generations of Americans.

The summer of 1898 is filled with ups and downs for 11-year-old Moses. He's growing apart from his best friend; his superstitious Boo-Nanny butts heads constantly with his pragmatic, educated father; and his mother is reeling from the discovery of a family secret. Yet there are good times, too. He's teaching his grandmother how to read. For the first time she's sharing stories about her life as a slave. And his father and his friends are finally getting the respect and positions of power they've earned. But not everyone is happy with the political changes at play....

As a conductor for the Underground Railroad - the covert resistance network created to aid and protect slaves seeking freedom - William Still helped as many as 800 people escape enslavement. He also meticulously collected the letters, biographical sketches, arrival memos, and ransom notes of the escapees. The Underground Railroad Records is an archive of primary documents that trace the narrative arc of the greatest, most successful campaign of civil disobedience in American history.

First published in 1993, on the one-year anniversary of the Los Angeles riots, Race Matters became a national best seller that has gone on to sell more than half a million copies. This classic treatise on race contains Dr. West's most incisive essays on the issues relevant to black Americans, including the crisis in leadership in the Black community, Black conservatism, Black-Jewish relations, myths about Black sexuality, and the legacy of Malcolm X.

James Baldwin’s critique of American society at the height of the civil rights movement brings his prescient thoughts on social isolation, race, and police brutality to a new generation of listeners.

Thomas E. Ricks offers an utterly new perspective on America’s greatest moral revolution—the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s—and its legacy today. While the Movement has become synonymous with Martin Luther King Jr.’s ethos of nonviolence, Ricks draws on his deep knowledge of tactics and strategy to advance a surprising but revelatory idea: the greatest victories for Black Americans of the past century were won not by idealism alone, but through recruiting, training, discipline, and organization—the hallmarks of any successful military campaign.

They call it the Taskforce. Commissioned at the highest level of the U.S. government. Protected from the prying eyes of Congress and the media. Designed to operate outside the bounds of U.S. law. Trained to exist on the ragged edge of human capability. Pike Logan was the most successful operator on the Taskforce, his instincts and talents unrivalled–until personal tragedy permanently altered his outlook on the world.

Dangerous Rhythms tells the symbiotic story of jazz and the underworld: a relationship fostered in some of 20th century America’s most notorious vice districts. For the first half of the century mobsters and musicians enjoyed a mutually beneficial partnership. By offering artists like Louis Armstrong, Earl “Fatha” Hines, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, and Ella Fitzgerald a stage, the mob, including major players Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, and Charlie “Lucky” Luciano, provided opportunities that would not otherwise have existed.

In 1945, Willie McGee, a young African-American man from Laurel, Mississippi, was sentenced to death for allegedly raping Willette Hawkins, a white housewife. At first, McGee's case was barely noticed, covered only in hostile Mississippi newspapers and far-left publications such as the Daily Worker. Then Bella Abzug, a young New York labor lawyer, was hired by the Civil Rights Congress—an aggressive civil rights organization with ties to the Communist Party of the United States—to oversee McGee's defense.

In 1968, Bruce Tucker, a Black man, went into Virginia’s top research hospital with a head injury, only to have his heart taken out of his body and put into the chest of a White businessman. Now, in The Organ Thieves, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist Chip Jones exposes the horrifying inequality surrounding Tucker’s death and how he was used as a human guinea pig without his family’s permission or knowledge.