Showing results by narrator "Kristyl Dawn Tift" in All Categories

Fifteen-year-old Diamond stopped going to school the day she was expelled for lashing out at peers who constantly harassed and teased her for something everyone on the staff had missed: she was being trafficked for sex. After months on the run, she was arrested and sent to a detention center for violating a court order to attend school. Just 16 percent of female students, Black girls make up more than one-third of all girls with a school-related arrest.

Some truths are carefully concealed; others merely forgotten. In this spellbinding collection, seven acclaimed fantasy authors create characters who venture into the depths where others fear to tread. But when forbidden knowledge is the ultimate power, how far can they go before the darkness consumes them?

When her husband dies unexpectedly, Maggie Royal is struck with sinister visions that foretell danger for her and for her five-year-old daughter. Her mother and grandmother were said to have “the sight,” but it was never like this. With no one alive to turn to, Maggie must move quickly to uncover the meaning of her visions before her candle is snuffed out.

In Colonize This!, Daisy Hernandez and Bushra Rehman have collected a diverse, lively group of emerging writers who speak to the strength of community and the influence of color, to borders and divisions, and to the critical issues that need to be addressed to finally reach an era of racial freedom. With prescient and intimate writing, Colonize This! will reach the hearts and minds of listeners who care about the experience of being a woman of color, and about establishing a culture that fosters freedom and agency for women of all races.

One year after her mother’s death, a woman prepares to celebrate her fortieth birthday. Digging through a trunk in the attic, looking for keepsakes for the occasion, she discovers photographs that call into question everything she believed about her life. The truth is a different story—one of a little girl in danger, a lie, and a mother’s love so fierce it led her to do the unimaginable.

Acclaimed author Elise Hooper explores the gripping, real-life history of female athletes, members of the first integrated women’s Olympic team, and their journeys to the 1936 summer games in Berlin, Nazi Germany. In the 1928 Olympics, Chicago’s Betty Robinson competes as a member of the first-ever women’s delegation in track and field. Destined for further glory, she returns home feted as America’s golden girl until a nearly fatal airplane crash threatens to end everything.

A sharecropper, a warrior, and a truth-telling prophet, Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977) stands as a powerful symbol not only of the 1960s Black freedom movement, but also of the enduring human struggle against oppression. This is a rhetorical biography that tells the story of Hamer's life by focusing on how she employed symbols - images, words, and even material objects such as the ballot, food, and clothing - to construct persuasive public personae, to influence audiences, and to effect social change.

Motherhood isn’t always what’s expected. One woman may delight in navigating the unknowable, while another may look to the past to chart the course ahead. Still another may have the urge to redefine the relationship between mother and child. For each, the journey can be heartwarming and heartbreaking, ever changing and challenging. In these provocative stories, acclaimed authors probe the growing pains that can change the lives of both mother and child in ways they never imagined.

Despite a lifetime of breaking the rules, twelve-year-old Issa Igwe never expected to land in witch prison. At least that’s what she calls The Siren School outside of its hallowed halls. It’s actually the country’s most prestigious boarding school for magically gifted girls, and Issa’s parents insist that she attend . . . even though the school’s creepy history is the stuff of legend.

From this “master of the genre,” Christina Dodd, comes three suspenseful short stories of this “remarkable, mesmerizing series” (Library Journal starred review) set in the quaint—and deadly—coastal town of Virtue Falls.

In the early morning of June 1, 1921, a White mob marched across the train tracks in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and into its predominantly Black Greenwood District - a thriving, affluent neighborhood known as America's Black Wall Street. They brought with them firearms, gasoline, and explosives. In a few short hours, they'd razed 35 square blocks to the ground, leaving hundreds dead. The Tulsa Race Massacre is one of the most devastating acts of racial violence in US history. But how did it come to pass?

On a New Orleans morning in 1900, a young Black man named Robert Charles dared to fight back after an unprovoked assault by three white officers. The officers had first approached Charles on the grounds that he looked “suspicious” in a predominantly white neighborhood, and began to attack him after he stood up. After shots were fired, Charles fled on foot, and legal sanction was granted to anyone who sought to kill the “desperado” (as the white newspapers of the time quickly labeled him). In the days that followed, riotous mobs overtook New Orleans.

In the United States at the turn of the nineteenth century, crusading African American journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett bravely reported on the scourge of white supremacist violence that had personally impacted her own life and work. Her reporting exposed and riled the South, enlightened uninformed Northerners, and captured international attention. Southern Horrors and The Red Record offer extensive accounts of the lynching, cruelty, and hate that African Americans faced in the early years of the Jim Crow South.

Her dream came true and ruined everything. Emily Benoit left her small ranching community in Idaho to become the art director for a large New York City department store. In the process she broke her heart, as well as Devlin Camp's, the love of her life. Emily's back for Christmas and there are no tidings of comfort and joy from Devlin because he can't begin to forgive her. Besides, he's gotten married. Emily knows too well what she gave up but getting it back is impossible.

In an era when women are adornments, northerner Emma Mansfield finds it challenging to fit the mold. It becomes an impossible task when her country is torn apart by civil war. Knowing she must take action, Emma finds herself in the midst of danger and intrigue when she takes up the guise of a young artillery soldier for the Union Army. Desperately trying to find out if her two brothers are alive, Emma must maintain her anonymity as she fights for survival.