
Happy Land
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Narrated by:
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Bahni Turpin
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Ashley J. Hobbs
About this listen
A woman learns the incredible story of a real-life American Kingdom—and her family’s ties to it—in this enthralling novel from the New York Times bestselling, NAACP Image Award-winning author of Take My Hand.
As featured in The Washington Post ∙ People ∙ Harper's Bazaar ∙ NPR ∙ TODAY ∙ ELLE ∙ PopSugar ∙ Reader's Digest ∙ SheReads ∙ Woman’s World ∙ Real Simple ∙ BookBrowse ∙ and more!
Nikki hasn’t seen her grandmother in years. So when the elder calls out of the blue with an urgent request for Nikki to visit her in the hills of western North Carolina, Nikki hesitates only for a moment. After years of silence in her family, due to a mysterious estrangement between her mother and grandmother, she’s determined to learn the truth while she still can.
But instead of answers about the recent past, Mother Rita tells Nikki an incredible story of a kingdom on this very mountain, and of her great-great-great grandmother, Luella, who would become its queen.
It sounds like the makings of a fairy tale—royalty among a community of freed people. But the more Nikki learns about the Kingdom of the Happy Land, and the lives of those who dwelled in the ruins she discovers in the woods, the more she realizes how much of her identity and her family’s secrets are wrapped up in these hills. Because this land is their legacy, and it will be up to her to protect it before it, like so much else, is stolen away.
Inspired by true events, Happy Land is a transporting multi-generational novel about the stories that shape us and the dazzling courage it takes to dream.
©2025 Dolen Perkins-Valdez (P)2025 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"An intergenerational epic with urgent contemporary stakes. . . Replete with confounding human dilemmas, intricately nuanced characters, and startlingly original romance, this intimate family drama subtly weaves into a national indictment of ongoing predatory property law and the history of Black land loss."—Oprah Daily
“Perkins-Valdez writes of this land with admiration, awe, and precision, weaving a triumphant story that will stir readers to attention."—ELLE
"Picture a time when a kingdom existed inside the confines of the Carolinas—a time when freedpeople were royalty. What if that was your history, instead of the trauma of enslavement and generational poverty? As Dolen Perkins-Valdez says in this astonishing, historical-based novel—a family tree isn’t just something you draw on paper. It’s only when you’re rooted in the soil that your family once inhabited that your imagination can brush the sky.”—Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author of By Any Other Name
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Story
Spanning over a hundred and fifty years, Morgan Jerkins’s extraordinary novel intertwines the stories of these star-crossed lovers and their descendants. As Tirzah's family moves across the country during the Great Migration, they challenge authority with devastating consequences, while of the legacy of heartbreak and loss continues on in the lives of Harrison's progeny.
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Couldn't Stop
- By 253 on 05-28-25
By: Morgan Jerkins
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When the Harvest Comes
- A Novel
- By: Denne Michele Norris
- Narrated by: L Morgan Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The venerated Reverend Doctor John Freeman did not raise his son, Davis, to be touched by any man, let alone a white man. He did not raise his son to whisper that man’s name with tenderness. But on the eve of his wedding, all Davis can think about is how beautiful he wants to look when he meets his beloved Everett at the altar. Never mind that his mother, who died decades before, and his father, whose anger drove Davis to flee their home in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, for a freer life in New York City, won’t be there to walk him down the aisle.
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Absolutely Beautiful
- By Elizabeth on 04-18-25
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Atmosphere
- A Love Story
- By: Taylor Jenkins Reid
- Narrated by: Kristen DiMercurio, Julia Whelan, Taylor Jenkins Reid
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.
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The Evin Prison Bakers’ Club
- Surviving Iran's Most Notorious Prisons in 16 Recipes
- By: Sepideh Gholian
- Narrated by: Ashraf Shirazi
- Length: 3 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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How do you cheer up a woman who has spent hours cleaning prison toilets with a broken mop? The secret is in a tres leches cake. In Iran’s prisons, women endure horrors: they are beaten, interrogated, and humiliated in a thousand ways. Even a whisper to a fellow inmate can be punished. Yet—in spite of anything and everything—they resist: they bake. They console each other, cry together, dance together. The Evin Prison Bakers’ Club is a call to stand up for Woman, Life, Freedom by a woman still fighting for a free Iran.
By: Sepideh Gholian
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People of Means
- A Novel
- By: Nancy Johnson
- Narrated by: Nancy Johnson, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In the fall of 1959, Freda Gilroy arrives on the campus of Fisk University full of hope, carrying a suitcase and the voice of her father telling her she’s part of a family legacy of greatness. Soon, the ugliness of the Jim Crow South intrudes, and she’s thrust into a movement for social change. Freda is reluctant to get involved, torn between a soon-to-be doctor her parents approve of and an audacious young man willing to risk it all in the name of justice.
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Beautifully Told
- By Dr. Judy A. Alston on 02-19-25
By: Nancy Johnson
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The Names
- A Novel
- By: Florence Knapp
- Narrated by: Dervla Kirwan
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In the wake of a catastrophic storm, Cora sets off with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register her son's birth. Her husband, Gordon, a local doctor, respected in the community but a terrifying and controlling presence at home, intends for her to name the infant after him. But when the registrar asks what she'd like to call the child, Cora hesitates...
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Truly Exceptional
- By debhud on 05-28-25
By: Florence Knapp
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The Float Test
- A Novel
- By: Lynn Steger Strong
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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The Kenner siblings are at odds. Jenn is a harried mom struggling under the weight of family obligations. Fred is a novelist who can’t write, maybe because she’s lost faith in storytelling itself. Jude is a recovering corporate lawyer with her own story to tell, and a grudge against her former favorite sister, Fred. George, the baby, is estranged from his wife and harboring both a secret about his former employer and an ill-advised crush on one of his sisters’ friends. Gathered after a major loss, each sibling needs the others more than ever—if only they could trust each other.
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The Devil Three Times
- A Novel
- By: Rickey Fayne
- Narrated by: James Fouhey, Robin Miles, Joniece Abbott-Pratt
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Yetunde awakens aboard a slave ship en route to the United States with the spirit of her dead sister as her only companion. Desperate to survive the hell that awaits her at their destination, Yetunde finds help in an unexpected form—the Devil himself. The Devil, seeking a way to reenter the pearly gates of heaven, decides to prove himself to an indifferent God by protecting Yetunde and granting her a piece of his supernatural power. In return, Yetunde makes an incredible sacrifice.
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Very hard to follow
- By Amazon Customer on 05-24-25
By: Rickey Fayne
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Deluge
- Good Intentions Collection
- By: Charmaine Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Kristyl Dawn Tift
- Length: 54 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Interesting Story
- By Bailey Rose on 05-21-23
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The Filling Station
- A Novel
- By: Vanessa Miller
- Narrated by: Angel Pean
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Sisters Margaret and Evelyn Justice have grown up in the prosperous Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma--also known as Black Wall Street. In Greenwood, the Justice sisters had it all--movie theaters and entertainment venues, beauty shops and clothing stores, high-profile businesses like law offices, medical clinics, and banks. While Evelyn aspires to head off to the East Coast to study fashion design, recent college grad Margaret plans to settle in Greenwood, teaching at the local high school and eventually raising a family.
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Filling Station - Resilience and determination to rebuild what was destroyed
- By Anonymous User on 04-30-25
By: Vanessa Miller
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Blonde Dust
- By: Tatiana de Rosnay
- Narrated by: Caroline Hewitt
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Pauline, a young chambermaid who works at the legendary Mapes Hotel in Reno, Nevada, is asked to step in for a colleague and clean Suite 614. Although she was told the rooms were empty, a dazed, sleepy woman appears before her. This is Mrs. Miller, aka Marilyn Monroe, whose stay in Reno coincides with the breakdown of her marriage to Arthur Miller and the filming of what was to be her last film, The Misfits.
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Harlem Rhapsody
- By: Victoria Christopher Murray
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 15 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1919, a high school teacher from Washington, D.C arrives in Harlem excited to realize her lifelong dream. Jessie Redmon Fauset has been named the literary editor of The Crisis. The first Black woman to hold this position at a preeminent Negro magazine, Jessie is poised to achieve literary greatness. But she holds a secret that jeopardizes it all. W. E. B. Du Bois, the founder of The Crisis, is not only Jessie’s boss, he’s her lover. And neither his wife, nor their fourteen-year-age difference can keep the two apart.
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Horrible Representation
- By Kwana Nicholas on 04-05-25
What an incredible story!!! A must read!!!
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The family knowledge
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History and Legacy
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North Carolina Pride
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Family stories
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Relatable
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excellent
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Loved it
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Excellent read!
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I love this story and its truths.
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