Results narrated by "Allyson Johnson" in All categories

Born in the mid-nineteenth century, Sophie Lyons was a master thief, con artist, blackmailer and smuggler. Much of her success as a criminal was due to the fact that she was fearless, reckless, sharp and cunning—everything a woman of her time was not supposed to be. As a young child, Sophie’s parents forced her to steal when she showed a talent for pickpocketing. Strong-willed and smart, she blossomed into a beautiful teenager who caught the eye of many men in the underworld of New York City.  

Eliza Jacobson has always been the black sheep of her mega-successful family. She loves volunteering to work with the dogs at Pretty Paws, especially Athena, a Great Dane whose high-anxiety habits make her nearly unadoptable. She thinks she may have finally found her Prince Charming and the fairytale life she’s always dreamed of. But when he adopts Athena to use as a mascot, Eliza finds herself shielding the dog from Tony’s temper, and the Great Dane’s anxious behavior mirrors Eliza’s own growing unease. Will Athena’s friendship give Eliza the courage to stand up to Tony?

In Black Utopias, Jayna Brown takes up the concept of utopia as a way of exploring alternative states of being, doing, and imagining in Black culture. Musical, literary, and mystic practices become utopian enclaves in which Black people engage in modes of creative worldmaking.

The Excoms specialize in dealing with problems others can’t solve. Kidnappings, human exploitation, oppression. They’ve dealt with them all and earned the gratitude of the overlooked and the disadvantaged. But not everyone is happy with their work. After finishing their most recent assignment, they’re rudely awakened in the middle of the night by an explosive situation that changed the team forever. Some may think Ananke and her friends are no longer a threat. Some would be making a mistake. You may knock The Excoms down, but you can never count them out.

She turned her back on her people and shifted her allegiance to the very Empire she was sent to betray. Now head spymaster, Lyre's loyalty lies with Sabine, the Empress she has loved since childhood. But when Sabine visits the secretive Cloud Vault, the floating citadel home that Lyre betrayed, Lyre's elaborate web of lies starts to untangle. Her very presence threatens Sabine's future, and Lyre will do whatever it takes to protect her lover . . . even if that means sacrificing herself.

Though her progeny was a hopeless romantic, the concept of a forever mate was lost on Leila. She'd gone down that path once before decades ago and was in no hurry to do it again. She'd presumed she was over the hurt and pain - that is, until the male who'd destroyed her heart, her very spirit, walked back into her bar. She'd thought if she never saw him again, it would be too soon. That was until one touch set her soul ablaze with desire. But could she trust him with her heart when he'd already destroyed once before?

Yvonne Durant was one of the few Black women writing ads for major brands in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Ambitious and determined, she ultimately won a position at a global ad agency in Milan, Italy. While her career was exciting, it was a challenge to be self-defining in a Mad Men world that had little experience with or respect for Black experience.

The word cowboy conjures up vivid images of rugged men on saddled horses - men lassoing cattle, riding bulls, or brandishing guns in a shoot-out. White men, as Hollywood remembers them. What is woefully missing from these scenes is their counterparts: the Black cowboys who made up one-fourth of the wranglers and rodeo riders. This book tells their story. 

Farrah Grant knew one thing when she opened the Vampire Matchmaking Agency. Her life as a vampire was nothing like the movies. Limited in options by the Order of the Immortals' laws, the dating pool had become increasingly narrow. To remedy this, she opened the VMA. Although she helped dozens of supernatural beings find love, she was beginning to think her own love situation was hopeless.

For Olivia Shaw, the danger of her assignments as a deadly Whisper agent is matched only by that of her hidden status: Liv is one of the caricae, extremely rare women capable of bearing children and therefore controlled by the Syndicate's government. When her handler sends her into the Quillian Empire, her mission is complicated by stumbling upon a kidnapping in progress.

Leslie Durant, owner of Pretty Paws, doesn't care that she's always giving all of her time and attention to others: It's worth the joy of helping abandoned animals find loving forever homes. But if she can't find a way to bring more money into the struggling shelter, the sacrifices she's made will all be for nothing. Then her brother leaves her with an inheritance, with two stipulations: She must work with her estranged mother to host a successful charity event and find a loving home for Peter's dog, Kiwi. 

A loving wife and a mother of three accomplished children, forty-six-year-old Trudy Marino has an uncomplicated life—until she’s blindsided by her husband’s affair. But in Trudy’s close-knit neighborhood, she’s not alone in navigating the sudden surprises in a woman’s life. Her neighbor Roberta has just lost her husband of sixty-two years and struggles with bittersweet memories and grief. Roberta’s granddaughter Jade is a divorcée who has taken up a cathartic new hobby to get over her cheating ex. And there’s Shannelle, whose creative aspirations are fracturing her marriage.

Single dad of Seattle Dr. Mark Herron can't believe anyone would celebrate their divorce. The dissolution of his marriage left him and his son with a huge hole to fill in their home - and their hearts. So when he overhears a lovely stranger and her friends celebrating the end of her marriage, he's mystified - and then intrigued - by her determination to put the past behind her. But when he learns that Tori Jones needs a job, he knows this can't be a coincidence.

The Kimei family and a second group of castaways, led by Sergeant Campbell, had finally joined forces after both had been forced to land on the bizarre planet Lincoln, whose continents were huge floating coral colonies, inhabited by even stranger lifeforms. They had survived crash-landings and venom-filled bites and disease, their own despair, and even the destruction - and consumption! - of one of their floating islands, and had learned to live, even prosper, in their strange new home.

What is the reality of policing in the United States? Do the police keep anyone safe and secure other than the very wealthy? How do recent police killings of young Black people in the United States fit into the historical and global context of anti-blackness? This collection of reports and essays explores police violence against Black, Brown, Indigenous, and other marginalized communities, miscarriages of justice, and failures of token accountability and reform measures.

Delve deeper into the world of the Earthsinger Chronicles with these prequel novellas full of magic, adventure, destiny, and love.

Some locales seem to come with their own soundtrack. Don Ho and his tiny bubbles provide the background music for Hawaii, Edith Piaf for Paris. The reggae of Bob Marley evokes Jamaica. The soundtrack for Alabama is without question provided by our troubled troubadour Hank Williams. The 2016 biography Hank by Mark Ribowsky paints a dark picture of the musician's short, alcoholic, drug-filled life: a life of loneliness and pain. He goes so far as to call Hank's life story "noir-ish"....

Despite all good intentions, the lure of the Talent to move through space using the M'hir dimension is too much for the Om'ray of Cersi to resist. As the awareness of this talent spreads, all those Om'ray who are capable converge on the settlement at Sona. To prevent the disruption of the Agreement and the destruction that it would unleash, the M'hiray, as they now call themselves, agree to leave Cersi forever and try to establish their own haven within the Trade Pact worlds - only to learn that not everybody wants peace.

On the distant world of Cersi, Om'ray Aryl Sarc and her supporters have been exiled from the rest of their people. Finding refuge in the mountains, they work to rebuild the ruined village of Sona, even as they try to discover what happened to the original Sona Clan. But Sona has a history among all three of Cersi's races - a history that may soon threaten the future of Aryl's newly founded clan....

This new South End Press edition makes available the full text of this out-of-print classic - along with a new foreword by Manning Marable, interviews with participants in DRUM, and reflections on political developments over the past three decades by Georgakas and Surkin.