Showing results by narrator "Curtis Michael Holland" in All Categories

After a fire consumes the Heller Home for Children, the residents of Morganville, North Carolina thought they knew evil.... They were wrong.

Josh Moore lives with his family on the "wrong side" of Hamilton, a gritty industrial city in Southwestern Ontario. As a young boy, Josh plots an escape for a better life far from the steel mills that lined the bay. But fate has other plans and Josh discovers his adult life in Toronto is just as fraught with as many insecurities and missteps as his youth, and he soon learns that no matter how far away he might run, he will never be able to leave his hometown behind.

Jacks Williams is Ritchie Ford’s one great love. Their life as the rhythm section of the band Vertical Smile is perfect—only upstaged by the one they share as lovers. Until one night Jacks locks himself in the bathroom and slices his arms open, shattering everything Ritchie knows. Ten years earlier, Jackson Williams, III appeared to lead a charmed life. In reality, it was hell. Trapped in an abusive home, Jacks acted out small rebellions and dreamed of freedom. Until Ritchie Ford rescued him like a puppy, and everything changed. He would be perfect for Ritchie—it was the least he could do.

In 2007, three Muslim university students left the Canadian Prairies, seemingly without a trace. In the ensuing months, their disappearance raised fears that the men had become "radicalized," posing a grave threat to national security. From presidential briefings and targeted drone assassinations to a politically charged trial, the men's story sheds new light not only on the figure of the "radical," but also on the "moderate" Muslim, represented by a community forever changed by the men's departure.

Clubbed Two is historical fiction, set in Philadelphia from 1982 to 1992. Club Sanctuary can be seen as a metaphor for the greater LGBTQ community, but it is written as a real place, with characters who are fabulous, funny, and flawed. The author combines historical characters and events with fictional ones, creating a story that's entertaining, informative, and emotional. The love story between the two main characters, Joey and Henry, serves as a vehicle for connecting the stories of diverse Queer characters.

James McKinney has always dreamed of having a house of his own and a place he can call home. After finding the perfect house, and ready to work to make it his home, nothing can put a damper on his happiness—even when he discovers the house is filled with the previous owner’s belongings. He focuses on the fact the house is now his and doesn’t mind at all when his cute neighbor offers to help him sort through it.

Beneath the veneer of everyday life, a clandestine world thrives in the shadows, filled with powerful telepaths who call themselves adepts. These superbeings have guarded their secrets for millennia, but when a brilliant scientist, Joe Martin, maps and prepares to publish their genome in a famous medical journal, the adepts realize they can’t hide forever and further exposure to the human world threatens their existence.

Gay bars have been closing by the hundreds. The story goes that increasing mainstream acceptance of LGBTQ+ people, plus dating apps, have rendered these spaces obsolete. Beyond that, rampant gentrification in big cities has pushed gay bars out of the neighborhoods they helped make hip. Who Needs Gay Bars? considers these narratives, accepting that the answer for some might be: maybe nobody. Greggor Mattson embarks on a journey across the country to paint a much more complex picture of the cultural significance of these spaces, inside "big four" gay cities, but also beyond them.

Following its unforgettable characters through almost two centuries of history, from the horrors of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1865 to the aftermath of a mass shooting in the early 21st century, Wandering Stars is an indelible novel of America's war on its own people. It is also the tender, shattering story of many generations of a Native American family, struggling to find ways through displacement, addiction and pain, towards home and hope.

Seventeen-year-old Mariana Villalobos's mystic gift creates a sensation in northern Mexico as hundreds of people undergo a personal religious epiphany. Even gangsters reject crime. Seeing revenues tumble in the drug trade, the Liones cartel issues a hit order on the girl.

Dispatches from the AIDS Pandemic is a unique firsthand account from three public health leaders of CDC's early response to AIDS. Drawing in part on interviews from the CDC's AIDS oral history project, the authors trace the evolution of AIDS from newly recognized disease to pandemic.

World-renowned geneticist Danica Lawson woke up to a world that had been destroyed—by her own hand. She has no recollection of the downfall of society but is determined to repair the damage. Moreover, the first face she sees is one that’s eerily familiar—and undeniable handsome—even if she doesn’t recognize the sexy soldier with the deep, soothing voice. As Dani struggles to reverse the destruction, she realizes sinister forces are at play. For, a malevolent force is sweeping through their dystopian world, and the window to defeat it narrows each day its reign strengthens…

The Box follows an impenetrable rectangle as it changes hands in a collapsing metropolis, causing confluences, conflicts, rifts, and disasters. Different narrators, each with a distinctive voice, give secondhand accounts of decisive moments in the box's life. From the anthrophobe to a newly hired curator of a renowned art collection, from a couple who own an antiquarian bookshop to a hotel bartender hiding from a terrible past, the storytellers repeat rumors and rely on faulty memories, grasping at something that continually escapes them.

One Good Story, That One is a collection steeped in native oral tradition and shot through with Thomas King's special brand of wit and comic imagination. These highly acclaimed stories conjure up Native and Judeo-Christian myths, present-day pop culture, and literature while mixing in just the right amount of perception and experience.

Years of political violence and protests against injustice have revived interest in teaching civics in schools. The problem? Civic education—as it currently exists—privileges systems, not students. It promotes incremental change within a broken democracy rather than responding to the youth-led movements that call for the abolition of inequitable social structures. What will it take to prepare young people for the just future they are fighting for?

Winner of the McNally Robinson Aboriginal Book of the Year and the Aboriginal Fiction Book of the Year—a collection of twenty short stories told in Thomas King's classic, wry, irreverent, and allegorical voice.

As a sergeant for the Apache Tribal police, Al Victor considers it his responsibility to protect traditional Apache culture while enforcing the law. But now those two duties are coming into direct conflict as he tracks a vagrant medicine man onto sacred ground.

Sgt. Bren Allred has seen all manner of criminality in beautiful Graham County, Arizona. He has managed to keep the worst of it from his wife, Monica, who is having a troubled pregnancy. But it will be difficult to keep the devils at bay as a new kind of trouble erupts across the region . When deputies Sanchez and Haley go undercover to investigate a rash of copper theft, they unwittingly stumble across a shadowy spy network. Meanwhile, Apache Police Sgt. Al Victor is confronted by a murder case involving a diplomat as he grapples with the ever-present problem of alcohol on the reservation.

Sex. Drugs. Lust. Courage. Loyalty. Betrayal. Drag divas. Hustlers. Porn. Gogo boys. Anything is possible at the gay club scene. Even love. Joey, fresh from the suburbs, gets involved in the gay club scene in Philadelphia during the late 1970s and early 1980s. He shares the stories of a diverse cast of characters, including his own special love story. Everyone at the club has a story, and every story deserves to be told.

Arianna Lawson has one goal: help her sister defeat the Sendaxa regime and live a solemn existence free from the chaos of their dystopian world. Life has taught her hard lessons about pain and loss, and she has no desire to open herself to love—even for the strong, stoic man who consumes her every thought.