Showing results by narrator "Allyson Johnson" in All Categories

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

The half-century before the Civil War was beset with conflict over equality as well as freedom. Beginning in 1803, many free states, claiming the authority to maintain the domestic peace, enacted laws that discouraged free African Americans from settling their boundaries and restricted the rights to testify in court, move freely from place to place, work, vote, and attend public school. But over time, African American activists and their white allies, often facing mob violence, courageously built a movement to fight these racist laws.

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.

"Mainon" was published in the anthology Blackguards: Tales of Assassins, Mercenaries, and Rogues. Author Jean Rabe has written 30 fantasy and adventure novels and more than 60 short stories. When she's not writing, which isn't often, she edits: two dozen anthologies and more than 100 magazine issues.

Elena is lost in the shuffle between her three overachieving siblings. But now that she’s on her own for a whole semester, she intends to keep the spotlight on herself - and Spain is just the place to do it. But Elena has always been more comfortable writing plays than starring in them, and she’s beginning to realize that keeping out of the spotlight has its perks, too....

These 75 flash nonfiction pieces, written by internationally celebrated women authors and dazzlingly hilarious newcomers, are no flashes in the pan: They provide a feast of insights, generously garnished with wit, spice, and an exhilarating attention to craft. In Fast Funny Women, you'll find everything you want from thoughtful essays in a short, delicious form. Perfect for students of writing, writers of humor, and all fans who welcome laughter, insight, and perspective into their lives.

Self-exile became Sira's only choice when she discovered how deeply she'd been betrayed by the leaders of her own people. Rather than allow them to continue to use her for their own ruthless purposes, Sira, the most powerful being ever born to the alien race known at the Clan, fled with the human telepath, Jason Morgan. Now, living on a distant world in an environment over which she has control, Sira is striving to carve out a new life for herself.

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....

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.

Lorna Forrester was to wed the half-witted heir to the Beau Repose estate. But the day before her wedding, she met Ramon Cazenove, a daring blockade runner, thus beginning an incredible adventure into danger and love--from the Civil War-torn South to the windswept Caribbean.

Eva Forge is the last paladin of the dead God, Morgan. Eva, forsaken by her parents and forgotten by her family, was the last child dedicated to the Cult of Morgan. Morgan, God of battle and champion of the Fraterdom, was assassinated by his jealous brother, Amon. Over time, the Cult of Morgan has been surpassed by other Gods, his blessings ignored in favor of brighter technologies and more mechanical miracles. Now, Eva watches as her new family, her Cult, crumbles around her.

What should have been a routine investigation for FBI profiler Evelyn Baine turns ominous when she's kidnapped by a dangerous cult of survivalists. As her worst nightmares become a reality, she begins to question what she's seeing. Because the longer she's inside their compound, the more she realizes this group is not what it seems to be.

Twelve science fiction stories about the oncoming future, each of them representing a possible glimpse of what could be just around the corner... or much further down the corridor. These stories previously appeared in places like Clarkesworld Magazine, The Year's Best SF, Subterranean Magazine, and in various anthologies. They deal with the future of war, our climate, and technology's effect on our lives.

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.

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"....

For Black Americans, the food system is broken. When it comes to nutrition, Black consumers experience an unjust and inequitable distribution of resources. Black Food Matters examines these issues through in-depth essays that analyze how Blackness is contested through food, differing ideas of what makes our sustenance "healthy", and Black individuals' own beliefs about what their cuisine should be.

Presenting a delightful collection of children's favorite Mother Goose rhymes by Tomie dePaola. Young listeners and their parents will enjoy meeting up with familiar friends, including Old King Cole, Little Bo-Peep, Jack and Jill, and many more in an audiobook that is sure to be a story-hour favorite.

Tender and savage, heart-breaking and hopeful, and deeply human, The Twelve Mile Straight will appeal to fans of American classics by Harper Lee, Toni Morrison and William Faulkner. Cotton County, Georgia, 1930: in a house full of secrets, two babies - one light-skinned, the other dark - are born to Elma Jesup, a white sharecropper's daughter. Accused of her rape, field hand Genus Jackson is lynched and dragged down the Twelve-Mile Straight, the road to the nearby town.

In a city full of police controversies, hippie artist punk houses, and overzealous liberals, Portland, Oregon, is a place where even its fiction blurs with its bizarre realities. Brand-new stories by: Gigi Little, Justin Hocking, Christopher Bolton, Jess Walter, Monica Drake, Jamie S. Rich (illustrated by Joelle Jones), Dan DeWeese, Zoe Trope, Luciana Lopez, Karen Karbo, Bill Cameron, Ariel Gore, Floyd Skloot, Megan Kruse, Kimberly Warner-Cohen, and Jonathan Selwood.

"Momma set me on the jukebox." So begins the personal story of Denise (Sweetie) Wooten, set between a post-civil rights era New York City and a growing but stale rural Alabama. We are thrust in the midst of a family longing for normalcy, but instead struggling with illness and all that comes with it - denial, anger, misunderstanding, and love. As cultures clash, we see the family through a child's eyes and walk with her as she makes sense of war fought far away, but with effects close to home, and a tragedy that changes her life forever.