Showing results by narrator "J.D Jackson" in All Categories

Experience the height of the Jazz Age through the eyes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of the most notable authors in American literature. This collection includes: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and the Damned, The Great Gatsby.

Zelda is stuck in a dream, a very strange dream where people can fly, bears sneeze money, and her childhood cat, Patches, is somehow alive—despite being run over years ago. Things only get stranger when Zelda meets Langston, a sweet if overly timid guy who feels more real to her than anyone she’s ever met. As Zelda and Langston explore the far reaches of the dreamscape together, they find themselves growing closer and closer. But what they uncover along the way pushes them towards a truth neither of them wants to face.

This is the inspiring story of an African American whose athletic and entrepreneurial achievements - from being the first Black quarterback and head coach in the National Football League to founding one of the first all-Black investment securities companies - were equaled by his courage in confronting racial barriers.

All six of the Narwhal and Jelly books available as an audio collection!

A beautiful book for fathers and their sons. I Love You, My Beautiful Boy is written from a father's perspective, as he watches his son grow from birth to adulthood. This heartfelt story shows the beautiful connection of a father to his son while sharing the joys of watching him grow up, following the son from birth to adulthood in this heartfelt story.

As slaves relentlessly toiled in an unjust system in 19th-century Louisiana, they all counted down the days until Sunday, when, at least for half a day, they were briefly able to congregate in Congo Square in New Orleans. There, they were free to set up an open market, sing, dance, and play music. They were free to forget their cares, their struggles, and their oppression. This is a poetic, nonfiction story about this little-known piece of African-American history.

Diana Wolf likes to think she has it all: a rock-god husband, an empty nest, a wine cellar, and a dream home in the woods. Life is good. It has to be. But when she hires a cartographer, Kerry Perkins, to survey and map her estate in rural Tennessee, she pulls back a frayed corner of the lie that is her fairytale life. On his first night at Wolf Hollow, Kerry stumbles across a young girl's skeleton buried in the woods. But what really scares Diana is a familiar symbol carved into the girl’s skull: two wolves.

Among these biographies, listeners will find aviators and artists, politicians and pop stars, athletes and activists. The exceptional men featured include artist Aaron Douglas, civil rights leader John Lewis, dancer Alvin Ailey, filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, musician Prince, photographer Gordon Parks, tennis champion Arthur Ashe, and writer James Baldwin.

When Macadoo is just a colt, he challenges his father, a huge Belgian stallion, in order to protect his mother and the rest of the herd. From that moment on, Mac knows that his purpose in life is to help and serve others however he can. Though Macadoo endures much adversity - leaving the only home he’s ever known, being separated from his dam, and surviving an auction that for many horses is their final stop before the slaughterhouse - he finds the courage to "walk on" through even the most difficult circumstances.

The city of Austin, Texas, "is fearfully dull", wrote young Will Porter to a friend in the spring of 1885, "except for the frequent raids of the Servant Girl Annihilators, who make things lively in the dead of night." Years later Will Porter would become the most famous writer in America - O. Henry, the toast of New York. The long-ago Austin servant girl murders would remain unsolved. But behind the O. Henry pen name, Will Porter was a man with secrets.

You know the Super Soaker. It's one of the top 20 toys of all time. And it was an accidental discovery that brought it into being. Trying to create a new cooling system for refrigerators and air conditioners, inventor Lonnie Johnson instead created the mechanics for the iconic toy. A love of rockets, robots, and inventions and a mind for creativity were present in Lonnie Johnson's early life.

To ex-detective John Barnes, the machine is a dangerous and abhorrent addiction. The criminal thoughts it embedded in his brain helped him stop a serial killer, but they left him dazed - with pounding, murderous impulses. Having turned in his badge to salvage what’s left of his psyche, Barnes must return to the darkness at the request of his former partner. A little girl has gone missing. So has Adrian Flaherty, the detective in the kidnapper’s shadow. And only Barnes can hear the clues. But the trail is more dizzying and more personal than he feared.

The last scion of a once-powerful political family, Worcester mayor John O'Toole has his sights set on vastly higher aspirations. When night-shift paramedic Thomas Archer uncovers a secret that could upend the mayor's career, O'Toole is set on silencing him and sends Eamon Conroy, a brutal former cop, to ensure the truth remains under wraps.

Washington, D.C., 1972. Derek Strange has left the police department and set up shop as a private investigator. His former partner, Frank "Hound Dog" Vaughn, is still on the force. When a young woman comes to Strange asking for his help recovering a cheap ring she claims has sentimental value, the case leads him onto Vaughn's turf, where a local drug addict's been murdered, shot point-blank in his apartment. Soon both men are on the trail of a ruthless killer: Red Fury, so called for his looks and the car his girlfriend drives, but a name that fits his personality all too well.

Nine-year-old "Skid" Beaumont's family is stuck in the mud. Following his father's decision to relocate and build a new home, based on a drunken vision that New Orleans would rapidly expand eastwards into the wetlands as a result of the Seventies oil boom, Skid and his brothers grow up in a swampy area of Louisiana. But the constructions stop short, the dream fizzles out, and the Beaumonts find themselves sinking in a soggy corner of 1980s Cold War America.

Moved by the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., Lorenzo "Guts" Tolliver decides to abandon his career as a professional leg breaker and pursue a life of quiet moments and generous helpings of banana pudding in the company of his new, sensuous lover.

On the night Chancey is born, a fire star gallops across the sky. But many years of hardship will pass before the orphaned albino Appaloosa can believe the prophecy his dam foretold - that his fire star was a beacon for a horse of profound wisdom and extraordinary potential, one who will eventually change the lives of two children forever. Told through Chancey's eyes in the classic tradition of great horse stories, here is a tale about bravery, destiny, and hope - and about sharing the magic of a second chance.

Imagine a world devoid of violence - a world where fists can’t hit, guns don’t kill, and bombs can’t destroy. In this tantalizing novel of possibility, this has - suddenly and inexplicably - become our new reality. The US president must find a new way to wage war. The pope ponders whether the Commandment “Thou Shalt Not Kill” is still relevant.

Southern fables usually go the other way around. A white woman is killed or harmed in some way, real or imagined, and then, like the moon follows the sun, a black man ends up dead. But when it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules - a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger working the backwoods towns of Highway 59, knows all too well. Deeply ambivalent about his home state, he was the first in his family to get as far away from Texas as he could. Until duty called him home.

In Rebuild the Dream, green economy pioneer Van Jones reflects on his journey from grassroots outsider to White House insider. For the first time, he shares intimate details of his time in government – and reveals why he chose to resign his post as a special advisor to the Obama White House. Jones puts his hard-won lessons to good use, proposing a powerful game plan to restore hope, fix our democracy and renew the American Dream.