Showing results by narrator "Machelle Williams" in All Categories

Roses are red, Violets are blue, and Olivia Rickard is officially the worst at fixing relationships. Case in point: Olivia decides the best way to go about getting her boyfriend back is to tail him around town. There’s no way daring to spy on Andrew’s date was going to end well... but Olivia didn’t expect it to end in death. Hannah Maclin, Andrew’s date, is found dead in the parking lot of the restaurant with a tacky rose sticking out of her chest and lots of suspects near the scene of the crime.

Dog-nappings are an owner's worst nightmare. When three rare, expensive, and sought after puppies go missing within a few days of each other, Olivia doesn’t even need to be asked to take the case. Her clients are like family and she can’t stand to see a family grieve over their missing canine member. But when the investigation leads her to a local jeweler’s Olivia reveals to her best friend that she’s ready to make things official with Andrew. In her shock, Jackie lets it slip that Andrew was thinking the same thing (and has a new ring to prove it!). Olivia decides to beat Andrew to the punch.

Proms, pups and deadly rumors… In the wake of her relationship’s break, Olivia is beginning to fear that she might grow old with only Goodwin and a pack of dogs by her side. But even the unconditional love of puppies can’t shield Olivia from the single most important event in Lexingburg's social calendar: Prom. The roses, romance, and ridiculously priced restaurants seem to be rubbing salt in Olivia’s romantic wounds–reminding her at every turn that Andrew is leaving her.

Some people would kill for coffee… Olivia Rickard would kill to keep everything just the way it is. She’s got a gorgeous boyfriend who loves her, a supportive sister to lean on, and a dog walking business that’s briskly barking away. But just as she’s getting comfortable her sister suddenly wants to buy an entire brownstone with her and her boyfriend looks like he’s going to pop the question at every opportunity. Changing the status quo has always been disastrous for Olivia and now everything is changing at once…

In a world filled with discrimination, racially motivated violence, and miscarriages of justice, hope and joy can feel unattainable, and lies denying your personhood try to dim the truth that you are created in the image of God. In Seeds of Racial Healing, counselor and spiritual director Sheila...

Based on ethnographic observations and interviews with prisoners, correctional officers, and civilian staff conducted in solitary confinement units, Way Down in the Hole explores the myriad ways in which daily intimate interactions between those locked up twenty-four hours a day and the correctional officers charged with their care, custody, and control produce and reproduce hegemonic racial ideologies.

A written companion and workbook for listeners seeking to reclaim their bodies as home in healing from sexual trauma. Body rites as a holistic healing journey, anchored in the practice of decolonizing healing and reclaiming body sovereignty, reaches back into indigenous roots and land-based healing. It centers remembering as a means of survival.

God created us with a supernatural capacity to interact with him in deeply spiritual ways; our genetic code is uniquely wired to sense and know him. Yet many believers shy away from this experiential knowledge, unsure how to fully engage with God, wondering what the Bible really says about it. Clearing away the confusion, prophetic leader and teacher Venner J. Alston not only gives you a biblical framework for encountering God, but also encourages you to expect it.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith and Lori Stanley Roeleveld enter a transparent and open dialogue about race, privilege, bias, and discrimination. As you witness the real-time process of meaningful discussion, you'll see how these women model healthy conversations—giving voice to pain without blame, expressing anger without ridicule, and asking questions without guilt.

Racial Opportunity Cost turns critical attention to the specific challenges faced by high-achieving students of color and gives educators a framework for recognizing and addressing these issues. Terah Venzant Chambers roots her discussion in the concept of racial opportunity cost, using a term borrowed from economics to refer to the obstacles faced and tradeoffs made by Black and Latinx students on the path to academic success.

In 1980’s Brooklyn, Key is enchanted with her world, glowing with her dreams. A charming and tender doula serving the Black women of her East New York neighborhood, she lives, like her mother, among the departed and learns to speak to and for them. Her untimely death leaves behind her mother Audrey, who is on the verge of losing the public housing apartment they once shared. Colly, Key’s grieving son, soon learns that he too has inherited this sacred gift and begins to slip into the liminal space between the living and the dead on his journey to self-realization.

Diversity Playbook offers a unique opportunity to gain a sneak peek into the world of the other. Michelle R. Loyd-Paige and Michelle D. Williams note that many diversity efforts fail simply because organizations don't share a common language as they talk about diversity. To address this problem, they offer insights within three key areas for Christian organizations.

Francis is found. Beyond Francis, a family is found—in archival material that barely deigned to notice their existence. This is the story of Francis Sistrunk and her children, from enslavement into forced migration across South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. It spans decades before the Civil War and continues into post-emancipation America. A family story full of twists and turns, Finding Francis reclaims and honors those women who played an essential role in the historical survival and triumph of Black people during and after American slavery.

For Black Catholic women and girls, embracing the celibate religious state constituted a radical act of resistance to white supremacy and the sexual terrorism built into chattel slavery and segregation. Williams shows how Black sisters—such as Sister Mary Antona Ebo, who was the only Black member of the inaugural delegation of Catholic sisters to travel to Selma, Alabama, and join the Black voting rights marches of 1965—were pioneering religious leaders, educators, healthcare professionals, desegregation foot soldiers, Black Power activists, and womanist theologians.

Discover how to make purposeful design decisions that create renewing spaces for you to enjoy with family and friends. You don't have to live in your dream house to make your living spaces feel more like home. Home is meant to be a place to belong. A place to gather and connect. A place of...

Most of the top jobs for the future require students to have a strong foundational understanding of mathematics. Our failure to mathematically educate most students in general, and students of color in particular, is bad not only for these students individually but also for our society. In Choosing to See, Pamela Seda and Kyndall Brown offer a substantive, rigorous, and necessary set of interventions to move mathematics education toward greater equity, particularly in serving the needs of Black and Brown students, who are underrepresented and underserved as math scholars. 

It is rare that we have all the training we need before we face a life-changing event in our lives. Each of the women whose stories are told in Over, Under, Around, and Through by Jill Tietjen and Ellie Greenberg, demonstrate the strength, creativity, persistence, and fortitude they used to figure out a way forward.

Includes an audiobook-exclusive interview with the author! After posting selfies in her Sunday best for fifty-two consecutive weeks during the pandemic, octogenarian Dr. La Verne Ford Wimberly became a viral sensation during Easter 2021, appearing everywhere from the Washington Post to CNN to...

France Winddance Twine provides the first book by a sociologist that "lifts the Silicon veil" to provide firsthand accounts of inequality and opportunity in the tech ecosystem. With a sharp eye for detail and compelling testimonials from industry insiders, Twine shows how the technology industry remains rigged against women, and especially Black, Latinx, and Native American women from working class backgrounds. From recruitment and hiring practices, to social and educational segregation, to academic prestige hierarchies, Twine reveals how women are blocked from entering this industry.

Aspiring author Dr. Myaisha Douglas joined the Greensboro Women of Color Writing Group hoping to publish her writing, and never expecting to play amateur sleuth in a real-life murder mystery. When someone murders a friend and member of the group, Myaisha believes she can help the police solve the crime. An avid mystery fan, she relies on the skills she gained from those stories to catch the killer. Though determined to get justice for her friend, the amateur detective soon regrets her involvement when the deceased’s corruption and illegal dealings become public.