Showing results by narrator "William DeMeritt" in All Categories

Ex-majordomo and bodyguard to an industrial tycoon-cum-US senator, Badja Adeyemi is in hiding and shortly on his way to either a jail cell or a grave, depending on who finds him first. In his final days as a free man, he hires Isaiah Coleridge to tie up a loose end: the suspicious death of his nephew four years earlier. At the time police declared it an accident, and Adeyemi isn't sure it wasn't, but one final look may bring his sister peace.

Over one million Black men and women served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in segregated units and performing unheralded but vital support jobs, only to be denied housing and educational opportunities on their return home. Without their crucial contributions to the war effort, the United States could not have won the war. And yet the stories of these Black veterans have long been ignored, cast aside in favor of the myth of the “Good War” fought by the “Greatest Generation.”

Today's world is complicated: companies are becoming more powerful than nations, the lines between public and corporate institutions grow murkier, and the internet is shredding our privacy. To combat these onslaughts, people everywhere - rich and not so rich, in business and in their personal lives - are turning away from traditional police, lawyers, and government regulators toward a new champion: the private investigator.

Carte Blanche is the alarming tale of how the right of Americans to say "no" to risky medical research is eroding at a time when we are racing to produce a vaccine and treatments for COVID-19. This medical right that we have long taken for granted was first sacrificed on the altar of military expediency in 1990 when the Department of Defense asked for and received from the FDA a waiver that permitted it to force an experimental anthrax vaccine on the ranks of ground troops headed for the Persian Gulf.

Alexander Chee, an essayist of “virtuosity and power” (Washington Post), selects twenty essays out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.

As New York came to a halt with COVID, Michael Kimmelman composed an email to a group of architects, historians, writers, and friends, inviting them to take a walk. Wherever they liked, he wrote—preferably someplace meaningful to them, someplace that illuminated the city and what they loved about it. At first, the goal was distraction. At a scary moment when everything seemed uncertain, walking around New York served as a reminder of all the ways the city was still a rock, joy, and inspiration.

In “Whispers in the Dark,” an ex-con sells his organs to ensure his brilliant nephew’s future. The boy will grow up to have the highest IQ ever recorded, but the uncle, who sold his eyes, won’t be able to see it. In “Voices,” a history professor becomes addicted to a drug called pulse, which gives him access to a world of vivid fantasy while tearing his brain to shreds. By the time the professor qualifies for a brain transplant, he’s no longer sure what’s real and what’s imagined. And in “Angel’s Island,” a convict in the world’s largest private prison reveals the facility’s chilling secrets.

Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance and Other Stories is Tobias S. Buckell's seventh short fiction collection and is comprised of 15 stories, several of which are original to the collection or were previously only available through his Patreon. This collection ranges from galactic adventures to intimate explorations of humanity—sometimes in the same story—rich with a sense of wonder and deft storytelling.

Meet the man who changed the game forever. Michael Jordan has always been competitive - even as a young boy, he fought for attention. His need to be the best made him a star player on his college basketball team and helped him become an NBA legend, both for his skills and his endorsements. His Nike contract for Air Jordan basketball shoes set an unmatched precedent for professional athletes. Author Kirsten Anderson takes listeners through each exciting moment, detailing the iconic reverse lay-ups and jump shots of Michael Jordan's storied career.

Prisoners and their families will appreciate these heartfelt and supportive stories and will feel part of a wider community of people striving to improve and reach their personal best. Hope, healing, forgiveness, and even a few laughs are delivered in the form of these personal and revealing stories.

Traffic is piling up, and strange things are headed your way in this new story collection by World Fantasy Award-winning author Tobias S. Buckell. In these twenty-four stories you’ll find inhabitants of a small town who won’t vaccinate against a zombie plague, a lone sentry keeping motorists from stumbling into something ancient and evil, a man who puts stranded ghosts to rest, an ex-soldier traveling the seas who trades his new life of hardship for a return to swords and blood, and many more tales of speculative fiction.

Darrin Bell was six years old when his mother told him he couldn’t have a realistic water gun. She said she feared for his safety, that police tend to think of little Black boys as older and less innocent than they really are. In this immersive audiobook adaptation—with wall-to-wall sound design, an expansive music soundtrack, and full-cast narration including the author and his son—Bell uses his sharp humor to examine how The Talk shaped intimate and public moments from childhood to adulthood.

Curtis finds love in Iraq as he struggles to stay alive in a war he doesn't want to fight, and Letha discovers her own beauty in the love of her child. There is the "good daughter" who realizes that there's only one way to help her brother and her family. Other stories center on the daily drama of the Curl-E-Que beauty shop, or capture the slapstick side of passion.

Lucian's father called them faraway things, those mysterious objects orphaned upon the windswept shore, their stories long lost in the shroud of ocean fog. Lucian's discovery on the beach this particular day, though, is no ordinary faraway thing. It's a cutlass: strong, shiny, and powerful. As its history comes to light, Lucian faces a choice: cling to the sword he loves or accept a gift that shines farther, wider, and deeper than he could have ever dreamed.

An new historical anthology from transatlantic slavery to the Reconstruction curated by the Schomburg Center, that makes the case for focusing on the histories of Black people as agents and architects of their own lives and ultimate liberation, with a foreword by Kevin Young.

The International Space Station suddenly loses contact with Earth. When a NASA tech devises a way to restore the feed, the images that come through are unfathomable: a scene of terrible violence, the crew unresponsive, droplets of blood hovering in zero gravity. But which of the astronauts on board would have done such a thing? And why?

Robert “Scatterboy” Williams is a small-time hustler selling bogus Cartier watches in Pacific Shores, a port city south of Los Angeles. One day, he’s gunned down in the street, seemingly at random. The police categorize Scatterboy’s murder as business as usual. But his girlfriend convinces private eye Ivan Monk to find the killer. What looks like three unrelated shootings of Black men in Southern California will put Monk on a tortuous trail unraveling a larger nefarious plan: the rise of an extremist demagogue.

Heat is building in the Rancho Tajuata Housing Projects, and not just because it’s summer in L.A. An immigrant family is firebombed and killed in their apartment. Rage threatens to explode. The pressure is on to solve the murders quickly, lest more death and destruction follow. At the request of the controversial onsite security force, P.I. Ivan Monk is called in to investigate.

How to Dodge a Cannonball is funnier than the Civil War should ever be. It follows Anders, a teenage idealist who enlists and reenlists to shape the American Future—as soon as he figures out what that is, who it includes, and why everyone wants him to die for it. Escaping his violently insane mother is a bonus. Anders finds honor as a proud Union flag twirler—until he’s captured. Then he tries life as a diehard Confederate—until fate asks him to die hard for the Confederacy at Gettysburg. Barely alive, Anders limps into a Black Union regiment in a stolen uniform.

Long ago, Marshall Spears was a hero of the ballpark. In a time when baseball—and the nation—was segregated, he played in the vaunted Negro Leagues. Decades later, Old Man Spears is living out his days as a fixture in a barbershop in South Central.