Showing results by narrator "Debra Michaels" in All Categories

It used to be the most WONDERFUL time of the year, but for years Christmas has been taken over by Winterzone. All the things that made Christmas special are gone. Instead, Christmas is run by robots, while 3D holograms of Santa Claus called Santavatars check if you’ve been naughty or nice—and on Christmas Eve, all of the presents are delivered by ZoneDrones instead of Santa’s reindeer! But when they stumble on a curious clue, eleven-year-old Etta and her friend Monty find themselves thrown into a fight to bring back Christmas.

Myrtun Dammergot, leader for the Kindred of the Eternal Starforge, is in her element, exploiting the unending conflict and living a life of adventure, without the unwanted burden of responsibility. But when a messenger from her Kindred’s Hold ship brings news that upends everything she knows, responsibility, challenges, and opportunity come knocking.

In 1948 the former troop ship Windrush made the 30-day journey across the Atlantic from Jamaica. The arrival of its 500 passengers, the first generation of Caribbean migrants in the UK, was the initial step in the formation of a new identity: the black Briton. Fifty years later, Mike and Trevor Phillips spoke to those on the Windrush itself, as well as those who followed, to tell the story of Britain in the second half of the twentieth century through the eyes of the outsiders who became insiders.

Have you ever spent all day looking after your baby or young child—and ended up feeling that you have 'done nothing all day'? Do you sometimes find it hard to feel pleased with what you are doing, and tell yourself you should achieve more with your time? Maybe it's because you can't see how much you are doing already. In this unique and perceptive look at mothering, Naomi Stadlen draws on many years' work with hundreds of other mothers of a wide variety of ages and backgrounds.

Elemental spirits – the fiery Dragons, the airy Fumis, the watery Chads and the earthbound Magogs – have existed peacefully alongside humans for hundreds of years. Until today. A sleeping sickness hangs heavy in the air and monsters stir in dark corners...but who is to blame? Marisee and Robert are the Elemental Detectives chasing clues to avoid catastrophe, facing a riddling dragon, a tentacled plague monster from the deep and the ghosts of Hyde Park in their race-against-time mission to solve the mystery of the millennium.

Glasgow, 2025. Dr Amanda Maclean is called to treat a young man with a mild fever. Within three hours, he dies. The mysterious illness sweeps through the hospital with deadly speed. This is how it begins. The victims are all men. Dr Maclean raises the alarm, but the sickness spreads to every corner of the globe. Threatening families. Governments. Countries. Can they find a cure before it’s too late? Will this be the story of the end of the world - or its salvation?

Others Like Me is the story of fourteen women around the world, from different walks of life, who don't have children. It's also the story of why Nicole Louie had to find them and what they taught her. Part memoir, part exploration of childlessness through candid conversations, this book showcases the many ways in which people find fulfilment outside of parenthood.

Recognising Black British experience within the Black Lives Matter movement, 19 prominent Black figures explain why Black lives should be celebrated when too often they are undervalued. Drawing from personal experience, they stress how Black British people have unique perspectives and experiences that enrich British society and the world; how Black lives are far more interesting and important than the forces that try to limit it.

Georgian England had a large and distinctive black community. Yet all of them, prosperous citizens or newly freed slaves, ran the risk of kidnap and sale to plantations. Their dramatic, often moving story is told in this audiobook. The idea that Britain became a mixed-race country after 1945 is a common mistake. Even in Shakespeare's England, black people were numerous enough for Queen Elizabeth to demand their expulsion. She was, perhaps, the first to fear that whites would lose their jobs, yet her order was ignored without ill effects.

Mary Grace, Micah, Thomas Augustus, Cherry Jane and Mercy. These are the names of her children. The five who survived, only to be sold to other plantations. The faces Rachel cannot forget. It's 1834, and the law says her people are now free. But for Rachel freedom means finding her children, even if the truth is more than she can bear. With fear snapping at her heels, Rachel keeps moving. From sunrise to sunset, through the cane fields of Barbados to the forests of British Guiana and on to Trinidad, to the dangerous river and the open sea.

Nicole Oruwari has the perfect life: a handsome husband, a palatial house in the heart of Lagos and a glamorous group of friends. She left London and a troubled family past behind to become part of a community of expat wives. But when Nicole disappears without a trace after a boat trip, the cracks in her so-called perfect life start to show. As the investigation turns up nothing but dead ends, her aunt Claudine flies to Nigeria to take matters into her own hands. As she digs into her niece's life, she uncovers a hidden truth.

Mary Jane Seacole (1805­-1881) was a British Jamaican nurse, author, world traveler, and businesswoman renowned for her work with the soldiers of the Crimean War.

A leading new exploration of the Windrush generation featuring David Lammy, Lenny Henry, Corinne Bailey Rae, Sharmaine Lovegrove, Hannah Lowe, Jamz Supernova, Natasha Gordon and Rikki Beadle-Blair. For the pioneers of the Windrush generation, Britain was 'the Mother Country'. They made the long journey across the sea, expecting to find a place where they would be be welcomed with open arms; a land in which you were free to build a new life, eight thousand miles away from home.

Miss Hortense uses her skills to investigate the investments of the Pardner network - a special community of Black investors, determined to help their people succeed. But when an unidentified man is found dead in one of the Pardner's homes, a bible quote noted down beside his body, Miss Hortense's long buried past comes rushing back to greet her, bringing memories of the worst moment of her life, one which her community has never let her forget.

In 1952, Beryl Gilroy moved from British Guiana to London. Her new life wasn't what she had expected - but her belief in the power of education resulted in a revolutionary career. Inspiring and unflinching, Gilroy's memoir Black Teacher is a rediscovered classic: not only a rare firsthand insight into the Windrush generation but a testament to how one extraordinary woman's dignity, ambition and spirit transcended her era.

Homecoming draws on over a hundred firsthand interviews, archival recordings and memoirs by the women and men who came to Britain from the West Indies between the late 1940s and the early 1960s. In their own words, we witness the transition from the optimism of the first postwar arrivals to the race riots of the late 1950s. We hear from nurses in Manchester; bus drivers in Bristol; seamstresses in Birmingham; teachers in Croydon; dockers in Cardiff; inter-racial lovers in High Wycombe, and Carnival Queens in Leeds.

It is 1797, and the African kingdom of Segu, born of blood and violence, is at the height of its power. Yet Dousika Traore, the king's most trusted advisor, feels nothing but dread. Change is coming. From the East, a new religion, Islam. From the West, the slave trade. These forces will tear his country, his village and the lives of his beloved sons apart, in Maryse Condé's glittering epic.

That only happens to other people's kids, right? Wrong. In this compelling book, written by one of Britain's top experts in youth justice, Aika Stephenson reveals the extraordinary cases she deals with daily. From the obviously vulnerable to the A-grade student from a stable upbringing, Just for Kids Law, the campaigning charity co-founded by Stephenson in 2007, has helped thousands of children and young people overcome the

An uncompromising wake-up call. Joy White tells uncomfortable truths and blows apart our understanding of racism, crime, and policing in our inner cities. Since the 1980s, austerity, gentrification, and structural racism have wreaked havoc on inner-city communities, widening inequality and entrenching poverty.

Revolutions hold a distinct place in the popular imagination. This may be because their rhetoric, such as ‘liberty, fraternity, equality’, articulates aspirations with which we identify; or because we are shocked by the destructive forces unleashed when social conventions break down. Yet each revolution is unique, and the outcomes vary dramatically, from liberal reform to cruel dictatorship. Twenty-four leading historians, each writing about their country of origin, consider revolutions from England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688 to the Arab Spring of 2011.