Showing results by narrator "Leon Nixon" in All Categories

Los Angeles, 1963: African American Korean War veteran Harry Ingram earns a living as a news photographer and occasional process server: chasing police radio calls and dodging baseball bats. With racial tensions running high on the eve of Martin Luther King’s Freedom Rally, Ingram risks ending up one of the victims at every crime scene he photographs. When Ingram hears a call over the police scanner to the scene of a deadly automobile accident, he recognizes the vehicle described as belonging to his good friend and old army buddy, the white jazz trumpeter Ben Kinslow.

On February 11, 2012, Whitney Houston was found submerged in the bathtub of her suite at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. In the decade since, the world has mourned her death amid new revelations about her relationship to her Blackness, her sexuality, and her addictions. Didn’t We Almost Have It All is author Gerrick Kennedy’s exploration of the duality of Whitney’s life as both a woman in the spotlight and someone who often had to hide who she was. This is the story of Whitney’s life, her whole life, told with both grace and honesty.

It was an age of hope and possibility, of accomplishment and expansion. Europe's High Middle Ages spanned the Crusades, the building of Chartres Cathedral, Dante's Inferno, and Thomas Aquinas. Buoyant, confident, creative, the era seemed to be flowering into a true renaissance - until the disastrous 14th century rained catastrophe in the form of plagues, famine, and war. In Europe in the High Middle Ages, William Chester Jordan paints a vivid, teeming landscape that captures this lost age in all its glory and complexity.

Blaise Cansino has always been an attractive girl, using her looks to make a coin for as long as she could remember. After experiencing the ultimate heartbreak at the hands of her malicious and deceitful child's father, Blaise swears to only take a man as seriously as the deepness of his pockets. Things take a dramatic turn when she crosses paths with the sexy, cocky, audacious, yet charming Belly. He's far from the men that the beautiful Blaise is used to in personality and bank account status, but she still finds herself drawn to the rugged gentleman.

After a close friend commits suicide, Faith, Monique, and Shannon head to the beach cottage on Hilton Head Island. Determined to heed her advice and make the most of their lives, they make a pact to spend the summer embracing new adventures. They also embrace new men and a new best friend along the way.

There is no position in pro sports more important than an NFL quarterback. But quarterbacking was the exclusive domain of white players for many years, and when Doug Williams and Vince Evans arrived in the league in the late 1970s, they got death threats, faced racist questions, and knew that a single mistake could end their careers. The Great Black Hope tells the twin stories of Vince Evans, an electrifying dual-threat quarterback ahead of his time, and of Doug Williams, the first Black quarterback to become a champion.

Every Moment Holy, Volume III: The Work of the People is a book of over 100 new liturgies for daily life, drawing on a range of writers, artists, poets, songwriters, pastors, and illustrators (with Douglas Kaine McKelvey both writing and editing). With prayers by Malcolm Guite, Ellie Holcomb, Philip Yancey, Ruth Chou Simons, Sho Baraka, Andrew Peterson and more, this collection represents a community of believers engaged in the work of reminding all of us that our lives are shot through with sacred purpose and eternal hopes even in the midst of the everyday moments that make up our lives.

In The Circuit: A Tennis Odyssey, the award-winning poet - and Paris Review sports columnist - Rowan Ricardo Phillips chronicles 2017 as seen through the unique prism of its pivotal, revelatory, and historic tennis season. The annual tennis schedule is a rarity in professional sports in that it encapsulates the calendar year. And like the year, it's divided into four seasons, each marked by a final tournament: the Grand Slams.

Hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and inspiring, Conversations in Black offers sage wisdom for navigating race in a radically divisive America, and, with help from his mighty team of Black intelligentsia, veteran journalist Ed Gordon creates hope and a timeless new narrative on what the future of Black leadership should look like and how we can get there.

After 12 years of playing basketball at the highest professional level, Brian Grant could have been forgiven for thinking that the hardest part of his life was behind him, that he'd be able to kick back and enjoy the fruits of his considerable labors. But soon after his retirement from the NBA, Grant was diagnosed with Young-Onset Parkinson's Disease, ushering in a challenge greater than any he'd faced before. In Rebound, Grant shares his remarkable life before, during, and after those NBA years with no shortage of compassion and wit.

A birder strolling in Central Park. A college student lounging on a university quad. Two men sitting in a coffee shop. Perfectly ordinary actions in ordinary settings—and yet, they sparked jarring and inflammatory responses that involved the police and attracted national media coverage. Why? In essence, Elijah Anderson would argue, because these were Black people existing in white spaces. In this book, Anderson brings his immense knowledge and ethnography to bear in this timely study of the racial barriers that are still firmly entrenched in our society at every class level.

In this Very Short Introduction, Philip N. Jefferson explores how the answers to these questions lie in the social, political, economic, educational, and technological processes that impact all of us throughout our lives. The degree of vulnerability is all that differentiates us. He shows how a person's level of vulnerability to adverse changes in their life is very much dependent on the circumstances of their birth, including where their family lived, whether it was peacetime or wartime, whether they had access to clean water, and whether they are male or female.

Colton "Cole" Eubanks is laser-focused on building wealth and settling down with a special woman before he turns forty. Accomplishing one out of two isn't bad. Unfortunately, there's no "love of his life" on the horizon, unless he counts the one woman who's been starring in his nightly dreams—Malaya Radcliff.

When COVID-19 began spreading rapidly, the world was taken by surprise. As the ensuing pandemic raged, we faced one constant—a lack of consistent, scientifically sound, and trusted information about dangers, risks, and mitigation strategies that the average person could understand and put into practice to keep themselves and their families safe. Now, the former Surgeon General of the United States—freed from the many constraints he worked under in public office—reveals critical lessons learned from both mistakes and successes overlooked during the pandemic.

A. C. Arthur presents Book 3 in the Legion series. Contains mature themes.

Westmoreland Legacy: The Outlaws Complete Collection has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.

March Madness is in full swing, and there are only four teams let in the NCAA basketball championship. The heavily favored Michigan Spartans and the underdog Troy Trojans meet in the first game in the seminfinals, and it's there that the fates of Malcolm, Roko, Crispin, and M.J. intertwine. As the last moments tick down on the game clock, you'll learn how each player went from being a kid who loves to shoot hoops to a powerful force in one of the most important games of the year. Which team will leave the Superdome victorious?

They promised to love one another deeply, madly, and unconditionally, forever and ever.

Born a dream reaper, Steele Ezo, a powerful half-dragon, half-human, is struggling to find his place in the Drakon hierarchy. He is ready to accept his fate until he realizes the next victim on the Reaper's hit list is the sexy thief that's caught his eye. She's supposed to die. He's forbidden stop it. But their inexplicable connection makes it impossible to step aside. Abandoned by her family and abused by local enforcers, Ravyn Walsh lives life on her own terms. She's created an underground sanctuary for the oppressed citizens of Burgess, and she needs funds to keep it running.

The first full and definitive narrative of one of the most shocking and largely unknown events of racial injustice in US history: the execution of nineteen Black soldiers in Texas.