Showing results by narrator "Ron Butler" in All Categories

When Green Crayon claims that green is the only color for Christmas, other crayons let him know that there would be no Christmas without them either. No candy canes or Santa without Red, no snow without White, no bells or stars without Silver, and no cookies or reindeer without Tan! The crayons agree that they all need to come together to make Christmas special.

A striking mosaic of prose, poetry, and dramatic dialogue, Jean Toomer’s Cane has come to be considered a masterpiece of the Harlem Renaissance. Structured as a series of vignettes ripe with longing, passion, violence, and revenge, the haunting novel gives a powerful voice to the interior lives of African Americans in the rural South and urban North. Championed for its unsparing honesty and psychological insight by such luminaries as Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Alice Walker, and Maya Angelou, Cane shines as a beacon to generations of African-American writers.

Trinidad Noir reveals the Caribbean island’s darkness and its appeal with an unexpected and gratifying result. Features brand-new stories by Robert Antoni, Elizabeth Nunez, Lawrence Scott, Ramabai Espinet, Shani Mootoo, Kevin Baldeosingh, Vahni Capildeo, Willi Chen, Lisa Allen-Agostini, Keith Jardim, Reena Andrea Manickchand, Tiphanie Yanique, and more.

Something sure looked tempting, and Chase knew it wasn’t on his restaurant’s menu. His new neighbor Jessica Claiborne was as deliciously enticing as the confections she created - so enticing, Chase was finding it difficult to concentrate on anything but the curve of her lips.

Evidence indicates President Barack Obama has been tremendously successful and effective by objective measures. On economic indicators alone, he is credited with the longest streak of job growth in US history, a two-thirds reduction in the federal budget deficit, and the rebounding of the stock market to record highs following the record lows of the recession under his predecessor.

The celebration of Washington, DC basketball is long overdue. The DC metro area stands second to none in its contributions to the game. Countless figures who have had a significant impact on the sport over the years have roots in the region, including E. B. Henderson, the first African American certified to teach public school physical education, and Earl Lloyd, the first African American to take the court in an actual NBA game.

V. S. Naipaul's legendary command of broad comedy and acute social observation is on abundant display in these classic works of fiction - two novels and a collection of stories - that capture the rhythms of life in the Caribbean and England with impressive subtlety and humor.

Defiant, eloquent, and thoroughly modern, Claude McKay’s early collection of celebrated poems is widely recognized as having helped to spark the Harlem Renaissance. In Harlem Shadows, McKay gives precise and poignant expression to the injustices of white oppression in many forms. He also paints a vivid picture of Harlem at the dawn of its rebirth and shows the tremendous vitality of the neighborhood as well as the many threats it faced.

Ever since George Washington used them to help topple the British, spies and their networks have helped and hurt America at key moments in history. In this fascinating collection, Paul B. Janeczko probes such stories as that of Elizabeth Van Lew, an aristocrat whose hatred of slavery drove her to be one of the most successful spies in the Civil War; the "Choctaw code talkers," Native Americans who were instrumental in sending secret messages during World War I; and more.

Operation Treadstone has nearly ruined Adam Hayes. The top-secret CIA Black Ops program trained him to be a nearly invincible assassin, but it also cost him his family and any chance at a normal life. Which is why he was determined to get out. Working as a cabinet-maker in rural Oregon, Adam thinks he has left Treadstone in the past, until he receives a mysterious email from a former colleague, and soon after is attacked by an unknown hit team at his job site.

New Orleans, 1836. When free Black musician and surgeon Benjamin January attends the funeral of a friend, an accident tips the dead man out of his coffin - only to reveal an unexpected inhabitant. Just one person recognizes the corpse of the White man: Hannibal Sefton, fiddle-player and one of January’s closest friends. But he seems unwilling to talk about his connection to the dead man....

When a man finds a beautiful woman asleep in his bed...he has only one choice. To seduce her with a night of lovemaking she'll never forget. Trouble is, Donovan Steele's sultry new housekeeper is just as determined not to become the legendary playboy's latest conquest. Trading the Ivy League for down South, Natalie Ford is helping out with her ailing aunt's housecleaning service. But she finds that this powerful, potent man of Steele ignites a different kind of chemistry - one that defies every law of attraction the science professor ever learned.

With this inspiring book of meditations, every day brings a reminder of "the wholeness and beauty of our nature, of the glad spirit that dances in each one of us". Addressing the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, Glad Day speaks to the issues that touch everyone, regardless of sexual orientation: change, fear, self-disclosure, faith in a power greater than ourselves, success and failure, openness to ourselves and others.

All she has to do is be his lover for a week. And when the man is gorgeous Galen Steele, what woman could possibly say no? Brittany Thrasher has her own hidden motives for accepting Galen's proposal. Only the savvy businesswoman draws the line at actually falling for the sexy playboy. Even if he is the incredible lover of her most taboo fantasies. The moment their paths crossed again at an auction, Galen knew Brittany was special. If she wants the house he just won so badly, how far is she willing to go to get it?

Weeks ago, Andre Cobb received a much-needed liver transplant. He's ready for his life to finally begin, until one night, when he passes out and wakes up somewhere totally unexpected - in 1969, where he connects with a magnetic boy named Michael. And then, just as suddenly as he arrived, he slips back to present-day Boston, where the family of his donor is waiting to explain that his new liver came with a side effect - the ability to time travel. And they've tasked their youngest son, Blake, with teaching Andre how to use his unexpected new gift.

When Hollywood screenwriter Chris Easterly's wife came clean about her affair, his mind went blank. And so began the long, unimaginably difficult reconstruction of his life after marriage. Relentlessly honest and profoundly moving, 'Falling Forward' explores the emotional journey of one man's divorce, from his wife's affair to the seemingly bottomless grief that followed to his eventual healing and the realization that he would survive.

Many believe that a lot of spirits are uneasy and that a curse lingers around Lazarus and Hawthorne County because of the crass circumstances that surround the whiskey house. There's an old saying around Lazarus, Once you enter the whiskey house, if you should ever come out, your life goes south. There is also an eerie prophecy tied to the whiskey house that no one wants to acknowledge; they keep quiet about it hoping it will just disappear.

On an unnamed Caribbean Island, political tensions provoked by race and poverty are high. Jimmy Ahmed, a young mixed-race man, has been hailed as a revolutionary leader of the people. Roche, imprisoned for activities against South Africa's apartheid regime, and Jane, a feckless English rich girl wanting to feel a part of something bigger, get sucked into the turmoil and world of Ahmed. But does anyone achieve anything by causing unrest? Do any of them really want freedom in a new society or just the old society with themselves at the helm of power?

At a Caribbean resort built atop a former slave plantation, Myrna works as a maid by day; by night she trespasses on the resort's overgrown inland property, secretly excavating the plantation ruins that her island community refuses to acknowledge. Rapt by the crumbling walls of the once slave owner's estate, she explores the unspoken history of the plantation - a site where her ancestors once worked the land, but which the resort now uses as a lookout point for tourists.

For over 50 years, Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., a Baptist minister, activist, and organizer, has worked for civil rights, peace, and the promise of true democracy. From his years in the Civil Rights movement, his work as founder of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, and as an international ambassador for human rights, he has left an indelible impression on the history of our time. These speeches and sermons include the famous speeches he delivered at the Democratic Party conventions of 1984 and 1988 following his historic campaigns for the presidential nomination.