Showing results by narrator "Deanna Anthony" in All Categories

Roberto Fratelli is the meanest man in Marthasville, Virginia. So when he puts his antiques store up for sale, the other merchants in town are overjoyed. And now the business has a prospective buyer: local resident and the newly elected mayor's mother, Camille Benson. During a celebration in honor of Camille’s new venture, her best friend, Opal, tells her about finding a letter, purportedly from Sally Fairfax to George Washington, dated 1756, hidden under a chair in the shop. When they return to retrieve the cache, they find Roberto’s lifeless body on the floor—and no letter.

In this updated and revised edition of Take a Lesson: Today's Black Achievers on How They Made It and What They Learned Along the Way, award-winning journalist and author Caroline Clarke once again compels a dynamic list of Black business heroes and role models to openly share their own goals, hits, and misses, exploring what they overcame and what they’re still working to overcome, not just for themselves, but for their peers and would be peers, who the equity odds are still against.

One could argue the story begins the night Allegra Douglass is awarded Distinguished Chair in Philosophy at her top-tier university in New York—the same night her grandmother dies—or before that: the day Allie left Birmingham and never looked back. Or even before that: the day her mother disappeared. But for our purposes Allie’s story begins at the end, when she is finally ready to tell her version of what happened with a white supremacist named Matthew Strong.

Barack Obama famously said that the purpose of social movements is to get a seat at the table. However, as Deva Woodly argues in Reckoning—a sweeping account of the meaning and purpose of the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL)—the value of such movements is something much more profound: they are necessary for the health and survival of democracy. Drawing from on-the-ground interviews with activists in the movement, Woodly analyzes the emergence of the M4BL, its organizational structure and culture, and its strategies and tactics.

After losing her parents in high school, Ryan Landry grew up fast, solely focusing on supporting her younger twin sisters. With the twins now preparing for college, the financial stakes are raised so Ryan enters a restaurant-manager-of-the-year contest. Her chances for the grand prize are strong—after all, she’s the executive manager of Everheart Bar and Fine Dining, which is as famous for its exemplary service as it is for its mouth-watering food. The only thing standing in her way? The restaurant’s Michelin star patriarch chef.

How often do you wake up and ask yourself: “How can I be better today than I was yesterday?" Black Excellence: 20 Stories About Rising from Ordinary to Extraordinary will inspire you to expand and broaden the range of phenomenal goals you want to achieve in life. Author L. Jeff Shafer II celebrates Black culture through interviews, research, and his personal journey to show there are endless examples of Black excellence today in many different industries.

In the past, being a “difficult bitch” was bad. Girls weren’t supposed to call people out for their BS, stand up for themselves, or do their own thing. This book embraces the insult with irreverent humor, encouraging listeners to be themselves no matter what, including an exploration of the ways this phrase can be interpreted differently among people of different backgrounds.

Kasi Blythewood has spent most of her life in the shadow of her famous film producer father, who’s deliberately kept her under his thumb with tough love. Ready to make a name for herself, she secretly heads to Austin for a film conference to rustle up some financing for her dream project - an indie series that showcases cuisine from around the world. When Kasi meets chef Declan Everheart, it’s instant lust spiced with an intriguing business opportunity. Declan’s father, a Michelin-starred chef, is interested in funding her film, but there is a sexy string attached....

New York Times best-selling author Kristen Green draws on years of research to tell the extraordinary and little-known story of young Mary Lumpkin, an enslaved woman who blazed a path of liberation for thousands. She was forced to have the children of a brutal slave trader and live on the premises of his slave jail, known as the “Devil’s Half Acre”. When she inherited the jail after the death of her slaveholder, she transformed it into “God’s Half Acre”, a school where Black men could fulfill their dreams.

After years of secrecy and silence, Rowan McCandless leaves an abusive relationship and rediscovers her voice and identity through writing. She was never to lie to him. She was never to leave him; and she was never supposed to tell.

It’s time to go beyond saying “I’m not racist.” It’s time to take action. It’s time to become a color-courageous Christian and stand up to racism wherever you see it—in your school, in your community, and in your own heart and mind. In Color-Courageous Discipleship Student Edition, Michelle T. Sanchez shows you how racial righteousness was God’s idea in the first place.

As infants, twin sisters Charlie Yates and Magnolia Heathwood were secretly separated after the brutal lynching of their parents, who died for loving across the color line. Now, at the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement, Charlie is a young Black organizer in Harlem, while White-passing Magnolia is the heiress to a cotton plantation in rural Georgia. Magnolia knows nothing of her racial heritage, but secrets are hard to keep in a town haunted by the ghosts of its slave-holding past.

In As I Ascend, Sina not only gives listeners an intimate, unfiltered look into her own experiences with romantic love and heartbreak; she also explores self-love and love for her culture – Black culture. She examines the lunacy of what it means to be Black in America in the poem "The Evolution of Woke" while also celebrating the unmatched characteristics of her people in poems such as "Sunflowers" and "Superheroes".

Buxom motorcycle cop Chastity “Cha-Cha” Rinaldi has a tough reputation to live up to. On her first day as a rookie for the Mobile, Alabama, police department, Cha-Cha pulled over a pickup hauling a trailer with a busted taillight and unwittingly stumbled upon an international human-smuggling ring. But now, the three creeps she put behind bars have busted out of prison. Have they fled the country, or could they be coming for her as they’d vowed upon receiving their life sentences?

As those halls make her skin crumble with self-hate, she is trying not to kill herself - at least until she can get her degree and get out. However, surviving feels near impossible when fuelled by cheap vodka, lines and toxic friendships. Using her thesis as a means of documenting her experiences - and giving out advice to the next generation of those lucky enough to attend university - Sahara reveals the truth about what it’s like to live inside her head while Black students are disappearing and dying, racism is thriving and her depression is living inside her head rent free.

The sash. The tears. The glittering crown. And of course, that soaring song. For all of its pomp and kitsch, the Miss America pageant is indelibly written into the American story of the past century. From its giddy origins as a summer’s-end tourist draw in Prohibition-era Atlantic City, it blossomed into a televised extravaganza that drew tens of millions of viewers in its heyday and was once considered the highest honor that a young woman could achieve.

Join us on a journey through the life of Rosa Parks, the woman who changed history with a single act of courage. From her childhood in Alabama to her role as a leader in the civil rights movement, Rosa Parks' story is one of determination, resilience, and a deep commitment to justice. Along the way, you'll learn about the segregation laws of the time, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the impact of the civil rights movement on the world we live in today.

If you are a person of color who has experienced repeated trauma from the toxic stress of—discrimination, racialized violence, racial stigmatization, traumatic grief, legacies of intergenerational trauma, poverty, sexual trauma, interpersonal violence, or the remnants of colonial and historical trauma—you may struggle with feelings of anger, rage, mistrust, fear, anxiety, depression, or shame. You may feel unsafe or uncomfortable in your own body, or find it difficult to build and keep close relationships. Sometimes you may feel alone in your pain. But you are not alone.

Pocket Portraits: Jane Austen takes you through the moments of Jane Austen’s life—some well-known and some which may be unexpected. These are the moments that shaped her six published novels, which draw deeply on themes of family, agency, philosophy, and love. From excerpts of her swoon-worthy tales like Pride and Prejudice and Emma to insight into Austen’s social commentary and why her works still leave their mark on contemporary pop culture, this book paints a vivid portrait of the complicated woman behind the quill.

Carter Harper may have created an award-winning app and have a 3.93 grade point average, but her successes are overshadowed by brutal bullying, depression, and loneliness. Tired of being treated as the popular girls’ plaything, Carter thinks her only choice is to die by suicide. Abby Wallace is one of the most popular girls in school, subordinate only to Kelsey, her best friend with benefits. The ambitious poet destroys reputations without care to prove how cool, cruel, and strong she is, all while pushing down her past trauma and secret guilt.