Showing results by narrator "Kevin Kenerly" in All Categories

Life is cheap on the poor side of town. For more than two decades, young black kids have been disappearing from Richmond’s East End. No bodies have ever been found, and the missing boys haven’t received much attention from police or the media. When the uncle of the latest missing kid takes matters into his own hands and holds the daily newspaper’s publisher hostage in the paper’s lobby, Willie Black gets involved, and things start to change.

Talking about race relations is never easy. Bruce A. Jacobs has written a book that shows us how we can begin - not with lofty abstractions or policy arguments, but with practicality and directness. Completely revised and updated, this is a candid assessment of, and guide to, improving race relations, a book Kirkus Reviews called "shocking" and Publishers Weekly termed "a frank, intelligent guide".

Les Hacker doesn't seem to have an enemy in the world - other than whoever tried to kill him with a high-powered rifle while he was sitting on a park bench six floors below Willie Black's living room window. Les is the closest thing Willie has had to a father figure in a checkered life of drinking, divorces, and journalism. He certainly has better qualifications than any of the other men Willie's mother, Peggy, took in over the years. Of course, as Willie would say, that would only make him a tall midget.

Richmond is in a panic. For the fourth time in eighteen months, a young girl or woman has been brutalized and murdered. This time the body of a fourteen-year-old girl is found in Richmond’s Shockoe Bottom train station. On her ankle is the same perversely cartoonish tattoo that has led the cops and newspapers to dub the perpetrator the Tweety Bird killer.

The death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, and the ensuing trial of Derek Chauvin for murder a year later has rubbed raw the bloodiest stain on the United States’ history and its world reputation. The nine minutes and 29 seconds during which Chauvin’s knee crushed the spark of life out of Floyd was not unusual in the history of the United States. In roughly two centuries, Blacks have achieved nominal freedom. But, as this book’s opening chapter and expert essays that follow indicate, freedom has been conditional based on inequity of wealth, social, and legal discrimination.

Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. In the wake of Chicago Noir, Twin Cities Noir, and Kansas City Noir - all popular volumes in the Akashic Noir Series - comes the latest Midwest installment, St. Louis Noir. Masterfully curated by Scott Phillips, author of The Ice Harvest (adapted for film, starring John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton), this volume will chill the listener with heartland menace.

A familiar name piques Willie Black’s interest on a slow news day: Scuffletown Park. He and the first of his four wives lived next to the pocket park when they were young and still on speaking terms. Now, Scuffletown is the site of a crime scene, one that doesn’t fit the usual modus operandi for Richmond. For one thing, there’s plenty of blood but no body. Also, it seems that a knife was involved - a rarity in Willie’s gun-happy city. And Scuffletown is in the heart of the Fan, where violence is a blessedly rare occurrence.

Family means safety. Family means protection. Until it doesn't. Eleven-year-old Kate Whitby, the youngest member of her odd family, leads an invisible life. They live in their historic small-town hotel, where she is an expert at keeping everyone's secrets: Her sister's a thief, her great-grandmother isn't as crazy as people think, her mother lives in the past, and her beloved grandfather might have killed his best friend.

Told through two haunting, interwoven diaries, Mia Couto's Confession of the Lioness reveals the mysterious world of Kulumani, a village whose traditions are threatened when ghostlike lionesses begin hunting the women who live there.

Politics from A to Z provides an up-to-date, thoroughly researched glossary of political topics spanning ancient Greece to contemporary America. Featuring an introductory interview with Noam Chomsky, Politics from A to Z is ideal for anyone interested in politics, from beginners to scholars. With detailed entries and useful timelines, Politics from A to Z introduces the influential figures and ideas that have shaped politics, from the American Revolution to Zionism.

Twenty-five years after his high school graduation, David Halpert returns to a place that most people flee. But David is making his own escape - from his divorce and the death of his son. In Detroit David learns about the double shooting of his high school girlfriend, Natalie, and her black half-brother, Dirk. As David becomes involved with Natalie’s sister, he will discover that both he and his hometown have reason to hope.

Originally published in 1923 by Knopf, The Prophet is a teaching fable that has been cherished by millions for nearly 100 years. It is a book of wisdom that provides guidance on how to live a life imbued with meaning and purpose. Gibson explores all of life’s important issues - including love, marriage, the human condition, friendship, prayer, beauty, death, and much more. What makes this edition of The Prophet especially exciting is the inclusion of newly discovered Gibran material.

For the first time in a thousand years, Americans are experiencing a reversal in lifespan. Despite living in one of the safest and most secure eras in human history, one in five adults suffers from anxiety as does one-third of adolescents. Nearly half of the US population is overweight or obese and one-third of Americans suffer from chronic pain - the highest level in the world.

For rock-and-roll writer Mick Sever, another story, another deadly island paradise is all in a day’s work. This time, Mick heads to Nassau, Bahamas, home of the legendary Highland Studio. Known for pumping out hits that burn up the charts, Highland is where the magic happens - or rather, where the magic happened until a devastating fire destroyed the entire studio. No one knows how the fire started, who started it - or whose body was found among the charred ruins.

Willie Black knew he had a father, even if he didn't know where he was buried. It wasn't like Artie Lee gave his son anything but his genes. He died when Willie was 15 months old, and Artie and Peggy never married. They couldn't have, in the segregated commonwealth of Virginia in 1960. Then, in January of 2018, Artie Lee, dead almost 57 years, reinserts himself into his son's life. Philomena Slade calls Willie, the mixed-race night-cops reporter for the local daily rag, to her death bed to ask him a favor he can't refuse: Keep Artie's grave clean.

Seventeenth-century northern Nigeria. A royal messenger has died under suspicious circumstances. Tasked with investigating the death, a Durbar warrior and his young apprentice must endure trials of loyalty, betrayal, and sacrifice to solve the mystery and prevent the bitter rivalry between two kingdoms from descending into a bloody war.

As a DEA agent caught in an unwinnable drug war, Abel has spent his life with the ugliest side of humanity. It’s no wonder he’s given in to corruption, bribery, and an illegal side-hustle that has him on the run from some of the most dangerous men in South America. Then he stumbles on a deadly, abandoned alien girl who has made a home under the green canopy of the deepest part of the jungle. Her space craft crash-landed a decade ago; his life crashed and burned well before that.

The summer of 1919 is now over, and on the high prairie, a small army of men, women, and machines moves across the land, harvesting the wheat. Custom threshers, steam engineers, bindle stiffs, cooks, camp followers, and hobos join the tide. Wheat is king as people gleefully embrace the gospels of bounty and progress. But with the wheat comes a serial killer who calls himself the Windmill Man and who believes he has a holy calling to water the newly plucked earth with blood.

The Devil’s Stocking is the story of Ruby Calhoun, a boxer accused of murder in a shadowy world of low-purse fighters, cops, con artists, and bar girls. Chronicling a battle for truth and human dignity which gives way to a larger story of life and death decisions, literary grandmaster Nelson Algren’s last novel is a fitting capstone to a long and brilliant career.

This stunning novel—its power and prose evocative of such diverse writers as Faulkener, Ondaatje, Nabokov, and Coetzee—is about a young African’s international odyssey of self-discovery. At its center is Kwasi Edward Michael Dankoh—Eddie Signwriter to his clients—a 20-year-old painter of murals and billboards in the city of Accra, Ghana, who is buffeted by forces beyond his control and understanding as he is swept up by the passions and machinations of others.