Showing results by narrator "Adenrele Ojo" in All Categories

Good things never happen in November—at least not for the Reynolds women. It was the month they lost their patriarch. And the month when fourteen-year-old Trinity went missing during a tropical storm. So Hope Reynolds isn’t surprised when it becomes the month she walks in on her boyfriend kissing another woman. Or when she receives a panicked call from her mother about a mistake that could cost the family their treasured beach house.

Stable, safe, predictable—all words that aptly describe Professor Nadia Day’s life. An existence she’s carefully crafted for herself despite her unconventional upbringing and what, to her, is an unseemly past. The last thing she would ever do is rock the boat when it comes to her life and livelihood. When retired football player and single dad, Nathan Moore, walks into her psychology classroom, all fine and dreadlocked, he does more than rock her boat—he rocks her world and causes her to question her buttoned-up existence.

For best friends Lola Poole and Joan Proctor-Riley, there's never too much when it comes to online dating rich, no-commitment lovers. It's a fantasy come true and makes their unhappy lives bearable. But there's no escape when Lola's vicious relatives cheat her out of everything that's hers and Joan's husband pulls a devastating betrayal. With nothing to lose, the two will do everything and anything to lock down Mr. Right and lifetime satisfaction.

Brooklyn Dembélé is still piecing her life together after her divorce and the loss of a lifestyle she’d dreamed of since childhood. The single mother’s time is filled with work at the prestigious Historically Black University Romey U. But despite her focus on rebuilding her life, she can’t seem to forget the mistakes of her past.

Years ago, I fell in love with a man named Maximilian Grant: tall, smooth talking, and handsome as hell. He was my everything. Then, he did the one thing he promised he’d never do...he broke my heart. Now, nearly seven years later, I’m happily married to a man who has completely changed my life. But with my health hanging in the balance, I often wonder what his future entails, because I know there is a possibility that he’ll have to live without me. John, my husband, is the love of my life, and I have never questioned our love. Until my past came knocking at the door.

After a bad breakup, Maggie wants to find her Prince Charming, but all she’s finding are frogs. When her best friends, Savvy and Joan, apply pressure and demand she find a date worthy of attending their respective weddings, she agrees to take her own advice and try online dating. Since she's the maid of honor for both weddings, her bridal party duties are massive, but both brides insist that Maggie prioritize finding a date. After an onslaught of maybes, noes and hell noes, she’s close to giving up, when she meets a handsome doctor at the gym who just might be the one.

Why have White supremacists and Black activists been so focused on Black mobility? From Plessy v. Ferguson to #DrivingWhileBlack, African Americans have fought for over a century to move freely around the United States. Curious as to why so many cases contesting the doctrine of "separate but equal" involved trains and buses, Mia Bay went back to the sources with some basic questions: How did travel segregation begin?

Years after his tragic death, Trayvon Martin’s name is still evoked every day. He has become a symbol of social justice activism, as has his hauntingly familiar image: the photo of a child still in the process of becoming a young man, wearing a hoodie and gazing silently at the camera. But who was Trayvon Martin, before he became, in death, an icon? And how did one Black child’s death on a dark, rainy street in a small Florida town become the match that lit a civil rights crusade?

What does it mean to call a place home? Who is allowed to become a member of a community? When can we say that we truly belong? These are some of the questions of place and belonging that renowned cultural critic Bell Hooks examines in Belonging: A Culture of Place. Traversing past and present, Belonging charts a cyclical journey in which Hooks moves from place to place, only to end where she began—her old Kentucky home.

bell hooks reflects on the ways in which the emotional health of black women has been and continues to be impacted by sexism and racism. Desiring to create a context where black females could both work on their individual efforts for self-actualization while remaining connected to a larger world of collective struggle, hooks articulates the link between self-recovery and political resistance. Both an expression of the joy of self-healing and the need to be ever vigilant in the struggle for equality, Sisters of the Yam continues to speak to the experience of black womanhood.

It's 1924 in Branchville, South Carolina, and three women have come to a crossroads. Gertrude, a mother of four, must make an unconscionable decision to save her daughters. Retta, a first-generation freed slave, comes to Gertrude's aid by watching her children, despite the gossip it causes in her community. Annie, the matriarch of the influential Coles family, offers Gertrude employment at her sewing circle, while facing problems of her own at home.

A wide range of women—actors, athletes, academics, CEOs, writers, small-business owners, birth workers, physicians, and activists—share their experiences of becoming mothers in this multifaceted, moving, and revealing collection.

Carter University: “The Harvard of the South.” Annie Stoddard was the smartest girl in her small public high school in Georgia, but now that she’s at Carter, it feels like she’s got “Scholarship Student” written on her forehead. Bea Powers put aside misgivings about attending college in the South as a biracial student to take part in Carter’s Justice Scholars program. Their lives - and barista Stayja York's - intersect unexpectedly when Annie accuses fourth-year student Tyler Brand of sexual assault, and Bea is assigned as Tyler’s student advocate.

Alice had her whole summer planned. Nonstop all-you-can-eat buffets while marathoning her favorite TV shows (best friends totally included) with the smallest dash of adulting - working at the library to pay her share of the rent. The only thing missing from her perfect plan? Her girlfriend (who ended things when Alice confessed she's asexual). Alice is done with dating - no thank you, do not pass go, stick a fork in her, done. But then Alice meets Takumi and she can't stop thinking about him or the rom com-grade romance feels she did not ask for.

In the years following the Civil War, Mariah Reddick, former slave to Carrie McGavock - the "Widow of the South" - has quietly built a new life for herself as a midwife to the women of Franklin, Tennessee. But when her ambitious, politically minded grown son, Theopolis, is murdered, Mariah - no stranger to loss - finds her world once more breaking apart. How could this happen? Who wanted him dead?

For those who could read between the lines, the censored news out of China was terrifying. But the president insisted there was nothing to worry about. Fortunately, we are still a nation of skeptics. Fortunately, there are those among us who study pandemics and are willing to look unflinchingly at worst-case scenarios. Michael Lewis’ taut and brilliant nonfiction thriller pits a band of medical visionaries against the wall of ignorance that was the official response of the Trump administration to the outbreak of COVID-19.

Odder spends her days off the coast of central California, practicing her underwater acrobatics and spinning the quirky stories for which she’s known. She’s a fearless daredevil, curious to a fault. But when Odder comes face-to-face with a hungry great white shark, her life takes a dramatic turn, one that will challenge everything she believes about herself—and about the humans who hope to save her.

When Jovani Higgs shows up as the latest artist in residence at Romey University, Professor Sharla London can’t believe his resemblance to the gorgeous fantasy man she’s been dreaming about. She wants to write it off as her mind playing tricks, but the mysterious artist seems just as drawn to her.

From early on, children are looking to discover their place in the world and longing to understand how their personalities, traits, and talents fit in. The assurance that they are deeply loved and a unique creation in our big universe is certain to help them spread their wings and fly.

Tenderness and cruelty, loyalty and betrayal, ambition and regret - Alexia Arthurs navigates these tensions to extraordinary effect in her debut collection about Jamaican immigrants and their families back home. Sweeping from close-knit island communities to the streets of New York City and midwestern university towns, these 11 stories form a portrait of a nation, a people, and a way of life.