
Red Clay
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Narrated by:
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Dion Graham
About this listen
An astounding multigenerational saga, Red Clay chronicles the interwoven lives of an enslaved Black family and their white owners as the Civil War ends and Reconstruction begins.
In 1943, when a frail old white woman shows up in Red Clay, Alabama, at the home of a Black former slave—on the morning following his funeral—his family hardly knows what to expect after she utters the words “… a lifetime ago, my family owned yours.” Adelaide Parker has a story to tell—one of ambition, betrayal, violence, and redemption—that shaped both the fate of her family and that of the late Felix H. Parker.
But there are gaps in her knowledge, and she’s come to Red Clay seeking answers from a family with whom she shares a name and a history that neither knows in full. In an epic saga that takes us from Red Clay to Paris, to the Côte d’Azur and New Orleans, human frailties are pushed to their limits as secrets are exposed and the line between good and evil becomes ever more difficult to discern. Red Clay is a tale that deftly lays bare the ugliness of slavery, the uncertainty of the final months of the Civil War, the optimism of Reconstruction, and the pain and frustration of Jim Crow.
With a vivid sense of place and a cast of memorable characters, Charles B. Fancher draws upon his own family history to weave a riveting tale of triumph over adversity, set against a backdrop of societal change and racial animus that reverberates in contemporary America. Through seasons of joy and unspeakable pain, Fancher delivers rich moments as allies become enemies, and enemies—to their great surprise—find new respect for each other.
©2025 Charles B. Fancher (P)2025 Blackstone PublishingListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Laure Mesny is a perfectionist with an axe to grind. Despite being constantly overlooked in the elite and cutthroat world of the Parisian ballet, she will do anything to prove that a Black girl can take center stage. To level the playing field, Laure ventures deep into the depths of the Catacombs and strikes a deal with a pulsating river of blood. The primordial power Laure gains promises influence and adoration, everything she’s dreamed of and worked toward. With retribution on her mind, she surpasses her bitter and privileged peers, leaving broken bodies behind her on her climb to stardom.
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Phenomenal
- By Anonymous User on 09-06-23
By: Jamison Shea
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Junie
- A Novel
- By: Erin Crosby Eckstine
- Narrated by: Angel Pean
- Length: 13 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Sixteen years old and enslaved since she was born, Junie has spent her life on Bellereine Plantation in Alabama, cooking and cleaning alongside her family, and tending to the white master’s daughter, Violet. Her daydreams are filled with poetry and faraway worlds, while she spends her nights secretly roaming through the forest, consumed with grief over the sudden death of her older sister, Minnie. When wealthy guests arrive from New Orleans, hinting at marriage for Violet and upending Junie’s life, she commits a desperate act.
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Great read! Really enjoyed the storytelling!
- By Summer on 05-26-25
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Blues Highway
- A Migration Journey from the South to Chicago
- By: Carla D. Williams
- Narrated by: Drama Simpson
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Blues Highway is one migration story of Blacks from the American South, aided initially by the Pullman porters broad reach into the world beyond. Moving on to the next generation, the porter Sidney sets up his daughter Janet to take hold of his barber shop. As she navigates her life, opportunities and social conditions shift. The power of Janet and Frank's relationship moves the saga forward, touching honestly and deeply on the forces of change.
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Awesome Narration!
- By Sonja R😁 on 02-29-24
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Beauty in the Blood
- A Novel
- By: Charlotte Carter
- Narrated by: Marie-Francoise Theodore
- Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Sarah Toomey is a successful young black lawyer, lovely but straitlaced–and afraid that she is losing her mind. Since the death of her mother, a force she can neither understand nor control is manipulating her memory and driving her to unexplained acts of violence and destruction. At the same time, Sarah is swept up in a highly charged relationship with a work colleague that portends a danger of its own. As she moves through her privileged life in New York, Sarah comes to learn how her past—her haunted history—is intertwined with America’s.
By: Charlotte Carter
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Standing Heavy
- By: Gauz', Frank Wynne - translator
- Narrated by: Diontae Black
- Length: 3 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
All over the city, they are watching: Black men paid to stand guard, invisible among the wealthy flâneurs and yet the only ones who truly see. From Les Grands Moulins to a Sephora on the Champs-Élysees, Ferdinand, Ossiri, and Kassoum find their way as undocumented workers amidst political infighting and the ever-changing landscape of immigration policy. Fast-paced and funny, poignant and sharply satirical, Standing Heavy is a searing deconstruction of colonial legacies and capitalist consumption and an unforgettable account of everything that passes under the security guards' all-seeing eyes.
By: Gauz', and others
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The Life of Herod the Great
- By: Zora Neale Hurston, Deborah G. Plant - editor
- Narrated by: Blair Underwood, Robin Miles
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
In the 1950s, as a continuation of Moses, Man of the Mountain, Zora Neale Hurston penned a historical novel about one of the most infamous figures in the Bible, Herod the Great. In Hurston’s retelling, Herod is not the wicked ruler of the New Testament who is charged with the “slaughter of the innocents,” but a forerunner of Christ—a beloved king who enriched Jewish culture and brought prosperity and peace to Judea.
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like the lion needs no weapon but himself
- By william t. on 03-25-25
By: Zora Neale Hurston, and others
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The Unexpected Diva
- A Novel
- By: Tiffany L. Warren
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 15 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Born into slavery on a Mississippi plantation, Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield has been raised in the safety of Philadelphia’s Quaker community by a wealthy adoptive mother. Sheltered and educated, Eliza’s happy childhood always included music lessons to nurture her unique gift: a glorious three octave singing voice that leaves listeners in awe. But on the eve of her twenty-fourth birthday, young Eliza’s world is thrown into a tailspin when her mother dies.
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Such a well written book. I could not stop listening to it.
- By BERNITA SYKES on 02-01-25
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Pretty
- A Memoir
- By: KB Brookins
- Narrated by: KB Brookins
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
By a prize-winning young Black trans writer of outsized talent, a fierce and disciplined memoir about queerness, masculinity, and race, Pretty is as much a powerful and tender love letter as it is a call for change.
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Love
- By Brie on 02-11-25
By: KB Brookins
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House of Hunger
- By: Alexis Henderson
- Narrated by: Jeanette Illidge
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Marion Shaw has been raised in the slums, where want and deprivation are all she knows. Despite longing to leave the city and its miseries, she has no real hope of escape until the day she spots a peculiar listing in the newspaper seeking a bloodmaid. Though she knows little about the far north—where wealthy nobles live in luxury and drink the blood of those in their service—Marion applies to the position. In a matter of days, she finds herself the newest bloodmaid at the notorious House of Hunger. There, Marion is swept into a world of dark debauchery.
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Definetely was a letdown.
- By LPST on 02-07-23
By: Alexis Henderson
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Good Dirt
- A Novel
- By: Charmaine Wilkerson
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When ten-year-old Ebby Freeman heard the gunshot, time stopped. And when she saw her brother, Baz, lying on the floor surrounded by the shattered pieces of a centuries-old jar, life as Ebby knew it shattered as well. The crime was never solved—and because the Freemans were one of the only Black families in a particularly well-to-do enclave of New England—the case has had an enduring, voyeuristic pull for the public. The last thing the Freemans want is another media frenzy splashing their family across the papers, but when Ebby's high profile romance falls apart, that's exactly what they get.
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Moments of brilliance
- By MyLastRomanceNovel on 03-01-25
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Tell My Horse
- Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica
- By: Zora Neale Hurston
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Based on Zora Neale Hurston’s personal experiences in Haiti and Jamaica, where she participated as an initiate rather than just an observer of voodoo practices during her visits in the 1930s, this travelogue into a dark world paints a vividly authentic picture of the ceremonies, customs, and superstitions of voodoo.
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American Negra
- A Memoir
- By: Natasha S. Alford
- Narrated by: Natasha S. Alford
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Award-winning journalist Natasha S. Alford grew up between two worlds as the daughter of an African American father and Puerto Rican mother. In American Negra, a narrative that is part memoir, part cultural analysis, Alford reflects on growing up in a working-class family from the city of Syracuse, NY. In smart, vivid prose, Alford illustrates the complexity of being multiethnic in Upstate New York and society’s flawed teachings about matters of identity.
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Relatable to those who grew up in America
- By Oronde Creal on 03-24-24
Great narrator!
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A Book I’ll long remember!
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I also felt like by the end, the narrator was somewhat overemphatic, over enunciating as though having a difficult time speaking a characters name. For example, especially when having to say “Felix said” at the end of a passage, it was clipped and stressed to a fault.
Good story, strong characters
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Loved every minute
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I highly recommend it.
Great book!
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A 5-Star Epic!
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Very enjoyable!
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great story, great narrator
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