Showing results by narrator "Uma Jackson" in All Categories

“Without stories, we cannot live well,” shares guest editor Min Jin Lee, describing how storytelling affects and nurtures readers. The Best American Short Stories 2023 features twenty pieces of short fiction that reflect a world full of fractured relationships, but also wondrous hope. A lifelong friendship may become a casualty of the Russia-Ukraine war. Rejected by his lover, a man seeks to reconcile with his family. Twitter users miraculously muster enough empathy to help a lost cat find a forever home.

After traveling to the seaside kingdom of Lilah's betrothed prince, Lulath, Celie and her companions are busy training griffins, enjoying wedding festivities and finishing construction of a grand ship. But on their maiden voyage, the ship steers them far off course into uncharted waters. Celie and Lilah hope that the ship is taking them to the ancient island where unicorns once roamed, but as the journey grows longer and supplies run low, they realise they are in trouble....

For years, Margaret Maldonado Jackson was a celebrant of the good life, living with her Prince Charming - Jermaine - at the Jackson family estate in Encino, California. A former teenage runaway who had barely survived life in the fast lane, she had felt fortunate to be welcomed into the Jackson clan. So why, in 1993, was she running for her life with her children? What had happened to this young woman to make her feel so threatened and so alone?

Wally Roux is a teenage genius with a big imagination and a big heart, who just moved to Savannah, GA, from Maine with his mom, who adopted him when he was an infant. In this charming and sweet solo performance, Wally investigates what is causing a number of strange events and occurrences. He explores and gets lost within space-time - an infinite, indefinable, and mysterious void that you can’t see but when you slice into it you can feel it.

From one of our sharpest political thinkers, a brilliant big-picture vision of how to bridge the bitter divides within diverse democracies. Never in history has a democracy succeeded in being both diverse and equal, treating different ethnic or religious groups fairly. And yet achieving that goal is now central to the democratic project.

When the struggle to save oil-soaked birds and restore blackened beaches left him feeling frustrated and helpless, John Francis decided to take a more fundamental and personal stand: He stopped using all forms of motorized transportation. Soon after embarking on this quest that would span two decades and two continents, the young man took a vow of silence that endured for 17 years.

When iron clears leather, anything can happen. In Frank Morgan's case, a sudden duel with an assassin has left an innocent woman with a bullet in her back - and a friendship between Frank and a young Texas Ranger in tatters. Wanting to make up for his part in the tragedy, Frank rides to central Texas to help Ranger Tyler Beaumont put down the so-called Fence-Cutting War. But as big ranchers battle small ones, an outlaw gang has hellish plans of its own.

Using an old cannon that once belonged to Napoleon's army, an outlaw gang has been bringing trains to a halt and then robbing them. Now Edward Sheffield - one of the owners of the railroad - wants to hire Conrad Morgan, known as The Loner, to wipe the gang off the map. The Loner isn't interested, especially when Sheffield's hot-blooded wife tries to seduce him into going after the gang's leader, Gideon Black - a renegade ex-colonel-turned-outlaw.

A thousand years into the future, a Black elite class reigns while the underclass toils at their feet. With her society’s future hanging in the balance, young Avi Jore enters into an arranged marriage. But the ceremony turns violent when the servants rebel and kill Avi’s father. In the aftermath of General Jore’s death, Avi and her sister Jade vie for power in a vicious contest. As the rightful heir, Avi has no choice but to defend what’s hers—at any cost. With her loyalties tested and her enemies closing in, Avi must rely on her sister Saige, who searches for allies outside the Union’s walls.

T'Challa faces the gods of his parents. Vampires stalk Shuri and a Dora Milaje in voodoo-laced New Orleans. Erik Killmonger grapples with racism, Russian spies, and his own origins. Here are 18 brand-new tales of Wakanda, its people, and its legacy.

In 2001, the face of the Earth changed forever in a nuclear firestorm. Generations after the apocalypse, Ryan Cawdor leads a courageous struggle for survival in a brutal world, striving to make a difference in the battle raging between good and evil. On sacred aboriginal land, Ryan Cawdor and his band of warrior survivalists discover Mount Rushmore still standing, a symbol of a long-gone power. Here, a charismatic baron and his followers force Ryan to breach the icy fastness of the mountain stronghold, which harbors a cache of 20th-century technology.

A former Magistrate in the grim world of post-holocaust America, Kane cuts his ties to the ruling order and its launched on a reluctant quest to uncover the truth about a bitter enmity that haunts humanity. He knows the answer is out there - beyond the garrisoned cities, the Outlands' hell zones, the ancient seats of planetary power. Barely ahead of a Grudge task force, Kane and his fellow exiles venture from Cerberus redoubt to the hell zones and other global hot spots via the Mat-trans units.

In Black Eye for America: How Critical Race Theory Is Burning Down the House, Carol Swain and Christopher Schorr expose the true nature of Critical Race Theory, and they offer concrete solutions for taking back the country's stolen institutions. They describe CRT in theory and practice, accounting for its origins and weaponization within American schools and workplaces; explain how this ideology threatens traditional American values and legal doctrines, including civil rights; and equip everyday Americans with strategies to help them resist and defeat CRT's pernicious influence.

Zelda Hawkins came to Manhattan to make sandwiches, not spells—but when a mysterious vampire offers free rent on her family’s old restaurant in exchange for repairing a magical mirror, Zelda’s plans are flipped like a hot grilled cheese. With the help of a ridiculous rescue poodle, a mind-reading fire witch, a smoldering ex-boyfriend, and a hot Brooklyn hipster helping with the renovation, Zelda must use the magic she inherited from her grandmother to enter a world of witches, vampires, and fae, where masks and mirrors are only the beginning… and the stakes are higher than New York prices.

Ken Fujima, a downtrodden substitute teacher from suburban Pennsylvania, is trying to rebuild his life when his home is broken into by a pair of West Coast assassins. As part of a revenge scheme, they attack his wheelchair-bound father, forcing Ken to intervene. During the scuffle Ken picks up a mysterious revolver to defend himself. What he soon learns is that the revolver is a cursed yakuza weapon that will remain fused to his hand until he either dies or kills six other people.

I'm dying. It's not a question; it's a fact. The cancer is eating me alive. They told me I have six months to live, maybe less. I came home, back to Chancellor on Lake Erie, to die. The sunsets are vivid there, and I will relish every one. I've never seen anything more beautiful than a Lake Erie sunset, until I see her.

Setting out to teach an abusive husband a lesson, Danny Pinkerton quickly finds himself surrounded by a crime family that stretches back to Gyor in Hungary. Outgunned and outnumbered, Pinkerton turns to his closest friend, Ryan Kaine. In a story that travels across Europe and pushes Kaine and Pinkerton to the very edge of survival, On The Hunt is a test of friendship and bond that neither man is prepared to fail. Even if the outcome is fatal.

They call themselves the Stolen. Their owners call them captives. They are taught their captors’ tongues and their beliefs, but they have a language and rituals all their own. In a world that would be allegorical if it weren’t saturated in harsh truths, Cato and William meet at Placid Hall, a plantation in an unspecified part of the American South. But their relationships begin to fray when a visiting minister with a mysterious past starts to fill their heads with ideas about independence.

On April 27, 1997, four contestants make it to the final cell of the Quigley House, a full-contact haunted escape room in Lincoln, Nebraska, made famous for its monstrosities, booby-traps, and ghoulishly costumed actors. If the group can endure these horrors without shouting the safe word, “reprieve,” they’ll win a substantial cash prize - a startling feat accomplished only by one other group in the house’s long history. But before they can complete the challenge, a man breaks into the cell and kills one of the contestants.

Police Constable Matthew Riley is called to an emergency on a hot day in Langthorne. He is forced to read out words live on police radio. Then he is shot dead. Someone is killing the officers of the Langthorne Police one by one. And in a sadistic twist he makes each victim push their radio panic button before they die, thus broadcasting their last moments to the entire force. And as the police face this ruthless adversary, detective George Elms is in no fit state to help. He can barely keep his life together and is desperate to sort things out with his estranged wife and daughter.