Showing results by narrator "Robin Miles" in All Categories

The waters rose, submerging New York City. But the residents adapted, and it remained the bustling, vibrant metropolis it had always been. Though changed forever. Every street became a canal. Every skyscraper an island. Through the eyes of the varied inhabitants of one building, Kim Stanley Robinson shows us how one of our great cities will change with the rising tides. And how we, too, will change.

In 1949, jazz pianist Sonny-Rhett Payne left New York for Paris, to be free from racism and his family’s disapproval. Now Sonny’s grandson has come to New York for a memorial concert. There, the 8-year-old begins to understand the forces that drove Sonny into exile. Paule Marshall is an award-winning author and distinguished professor of creative writing at New York University.

Pinduli's mama has always told her that she's the most beautiful hyena ever. But Dog, Lion, and Zebra don't think so. Why else would they make her feel so rotten about her big ears, her fuzzy mane, and her wiggly stripes? Poor Pinduli just wants to disappear. But then a case of mistaken identity lets her show the creatures of the African savanna how a few tiny words can create something enormous.

Amelia Bedelia loves the house she lives in, and she really loves her neighborhood. But when her parents suggest a move, she turns it into an adventure. Together they visit open houses, explore new neighborhoods, and discover that home is where the heart is. Amelia Bedelia learns all about different types of houses in this Level 1 I Can Read full of family and adventure.

Kelly is delighted to accept the offer of a friend’s family summer place on a Louisiana lake for her much-needed vacation. On arrival, however, she discovers the house already occupied by a darkly handsome stranger named Charles, his associate, and an elderly man who appears to be their prisoner. Retreat is impossible; Kelly is forced to join the trio. Charles is charming and considerate beyond most crooks, but a ruthless captor; all attempts to escape his guard are futile.

Set against the burgeoning Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, and then just before the outbreak of the Civil War, The Freedom Maze explores both political and personal liberation, and how the two intertwine. In 1960, 13-year-old Sophie isn't happy about spending the summer at her grandmother's old house in the Bayou. But the house has a maze Sophie can't resist exploring once she finds it has a secretive and mischievious inhabitant.

Thia, her allies, and her crow, Res, are planning a rebellion to defeat Queen Razel and Illucia once and for all. Thia must convince the neighboring kingdoms to come to her aid, and Res' show of strength is the only thing that can help her. But so many obstacles stand in her way. Res excels at his training, until he loses control of his magic, harming Thia in the process. She is also pursued by Prince Ericen, heir to the Illucian throne and the one person she can't trust but can't seem to stay away from.

It is said that the Canal will be the greatest feat of engineering in history. But first, it must be built. Ada Bunting, a bold sixteen-year-old from Barbados, arrives alone in Panama as a stowaway alongside thousands of other West Indians seeking work in the grand building project of the Canal. Francisco, a local fisherman, resents the foreign nations clamouring for a slice of his country, but nothing is more upsetting for him than his son Omar’s decision to work as a digger.

On the eve of the 2020 presidential election, Trump bonds with kindred spirit Andrew Jackson. He hitches a ride with Richard Nixon in Nixon's custom 1972 Lincoln Continental presidential limo. He gets to mix it up again with the Clintons and trades barbs with JFK. He even croons along with the Roaring Twenties Republicans, a singing trio featuring Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. In Presidential Conversations, author George S. Corey has crafted a timeless and revealing work of political satire spanning more than two centuries of the American presidency.

Louisiana, 1875: in the tumultuous aftermath of Reconstruction, three young women set off as unwilling companions on a perilous quest. Louisiana, 1987: Arriving in Augustine, Louisiana, first-year teacher Benedetta Silva finds herself teaching students whose poverty-stricken lives she can scarcely comprehend. The town is impossibly set in its ways, suspicious of new ideas and new people. But amid the gnarled live oaks and ancient plantation homes lies the century-old history of three young women, a long-ago journey and a hidden book that could change everything.

A "pitch perfect" (David Sedaris) ensemble of audio talent - featuring Edoardo Ballerini, Kathleen Chalfant, Jonathan Davis, Dion Graham, George Guidall, Priscilla Holbrook, Robin Miles, Elisabeth Rodgers and Barbara Rosenblat - unite for The Face Phantom: Tales Inspired by the Mütter Museum. With music by award-winning composer Brian DuFord, this chilling, atmospheric collection of short stories is evocative of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story. Each of the 12 tales is inspired by an exhibit at the Mütter Museum.

Truth Be Told comprises three powerful narratives written by formerly enslaved women who lived long past emancipation. Each narrative offers a window into time and moves the listener along chronologically from the early years of a new nation, through the Civil War, and up through the perilous years of Reconstruction. Award-winning author and historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar provides an accessible and engaging introduction and afterword for each narrative, tying these figures’ lives to the arc of Black history.

The women in these stories live lives of privilege and of poverty, are in marriages both loving and haunted by past crimes or emotional blackmail. A pair of sisters, grown now, have been inseparable ever since they were abducted together as children and must negotiate the elder sister's marriage. A woman married to a twin pretends not to realize when her husband and his brother impersonate each other. A stripper putting herself through college fends off the advances of an overzealous customer.

It started innocently enough, with calls to celebrities' houses alongside her teenage twin sister. Soon, Tanya Smith realised she could convince utility companies to amend the balances of her friends and neighbours, clearing elderly relatives' overdue electricity bills with a single phone call. Eventually, as she tested the limits and realized she could get past any gatekeeper, this superpower, as she came to think of it, morphed into something else: she wanted access to the actual money herself.

A tragic accident: One woman is left dead after she and another woman, both running away from their marriages, collide in the fog on a highway. The survivor, Isabelle, is left to pick up the pieces, not only of her own life but of the lives of the devastated husband and fragile son that the other woman, April, has left behind. Together, they try to solve the mystery of where April was running to, and why.

The New York Times lauds Russell Banks as "the most compassionate fiction writer working today," and hails him as a novelist who delivers, "wrenching, panoramic visions of American moral life." Long celebrated for his unflinching, empathetic works that explore the unspoken but hard realities of contemporary culture, Banks now turns his keen intelligence and emotional acuity on perhaps his most complex subject yet: the shape of family in its many forms.

Haunted by scandal and secrets, Lillian Baptiste fled Dominica when she was 14, after discovering she was the daughter of Iris, the half-crazy woman whose life was told of in chanté mas songs sung during Carnival - songs about a village on a mountaintop littered with secrets, masquerades that supposedly fly and wreak havoc, and a man who suddenly and mysteriously dropped dead.

Dr. Hawa Abdi, "the Mother Teresa of Somalia" and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, is the founder of a massive camp for internally displaced people located a few miles from war-torn Mogadishu, Somalia. Since 1991, when the Somali government collapsed, famine struck, and aid groups fled, she has dedicated herself to providing help for people whose lives have been shattered by violence and poverty.

Warm morning sunlight and love fill the Neal home. And on one quiet day, playtime leads to an important realization: Trinity wants long hair like her dolls. She needs it to express who she truly is. So her family decides to take a trip to the beauty supply store, but none of the wigs is the perfect fit. Determined, Mom leaves with bundles of hair in hand, ready to craft a wig as colorful and vibrant as her daughter is.

Life is wonderful on a pretty island in the Antilles - until the seven-headed Bird of Darkness comes from behind the horizon to turn noon into midnight with its terrible black wings! The Bird of Darkness only leaves the kingdom in peace when the beautiful Princess Marie lets it take her away as its prisoner. Brave, clever Soliday decides to rescue the princess. But Salacota, his mean-spirited, cowardly twin brother, has some greedy plans of his own.