Showing results by narrator "Karen Chilton" in All Categories

Four people on a backpacking trip in the Sierra Nevada find more adventure than they ever imagined. They are drawn to the mountains for reasons as diverse as their own lives. Gwen Foster, a counselor for at-risk youths, is struggling with burnout from the demands of her job. Real estate agent Oscar Barajas is adjusting to the fall of the housing market and being a single parent. Todd Harris, an attorney, is stuck in a lucrative but unfulfilling career-and in a failing marriage. They are all brought together by their trainer, Tracy Cole, a former athlete with a taste for risky pursuits.

Here's an endearing story of life-altering events. Chantell has it all: a great career, beautiful clothes, lots of spending money, a cool car, and a picture-perfect fiancé. So why is she so unhappy? She promises God that she will become a better person as her father lays on his deathbed. But keeping that promise unravels Chantell's seemingly perfect life.

In a nation caught in the crosscurrents of progress and backlash, Weathering the Storm offers both a wake-up call and a balm for the weary. Psychologist and educator Dr. Tiffany G. Townsend draws from her decades of leadership in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), blending personal stories, historical analysis, and psychological expertise to equip us with tools for resistance and resilience.

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST "A stunning exposé of why Black people in our society 'live sicker and die quicker'—an eye-opening game changer."—Oprah Daily From an award-winning writer at the New York Times Magazine and a contributor to the 1619 Project comes a landmark book that tells the...

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST From the acclaimed author of Netherland (a New York Times Book Review Best Book of the year): the odyssey of two brothers crossing the world in search of an African soccer prodigy who might change their fortunes...

In Punished for Dreaming Dr. Bettina Love argues forcefully that Reagan’s presidency ushered in a War on Black Children, pathologizing and penalizing them in concert with the War on Drugs. New policies punished schools with policing, closure, and loss of funding in the name of reform, as white savior, egalitarian efforts increasingly allowed private interests to infiltrate the system. These changes implicated children of color, and Black children in particular, as low performing, making it all too easy to turn a blind eye to their disproportionate conviction and incarceration.

In Profit and Punishment, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist exposes the tragedy of modern-day debtors prisons, and how they destroy the lives of poor Americans swept up in a system designed to penalize the most impoverished. “Intimate, raw, and utterly scathing” — Heather Ann Thompson...

When Breezy, as she came to call herself, hit the streets of Chicago as a prostitute in 1973 she was barely a teenager. But she was pretty and funny as hell, and determined to support her daughters and make a living. For the next 25 years, she moved across the country, finding new pimps, parties, drugs, and endless, profound heartache. And she also — astonishingly — managed to find the strength to break from a brutal world and not only save herself but save future Breezys.

Vern - seven months pregnant and desperate to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised - flees for the shelter of the woods. There, she gives birth to twins, and plans to raise them far from the influence of the outside world. But even in the forest, Vern is a hunted woman. Forced to fight back against the community that refuses to let her go, she unleashes incredible brutality far beyond what a person should be capable of, her body wracked by inexplicable and uncanny changes.

The riveting second book in the #1 New York Times bestselling Door of No Return trilogy stars Kofi’s granddaughter, Charley, who’s set on becoming the first female pitcher to play professional ball but who soon has to contend with the tensions about to boil over in her segregated town.You...

Editor Angela P. Dodson brings together the voices of more than thirty-five accomplished women writers on the topic of violence and injustice against Black men. These writers are journalists, authors, scholars, ministers, psychologists, counselors, and other experts. They are also wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, aunties, and friends. Each lends her voice to shine a new light on the injustices and dangers Black men face daily, and how women feel about the vulnerability of our sons, husbands, brothers, fathers, uncles, friends, and other males we care about.

Meet Jelaya (jeh-LAY-uh.) She hates wash day. The tugs! The scrubs! The pinching and pulling! Jelaya can't think of a worse way to spend the day—that is, until her big sister Jasmine explains that this wash day will be different. Jelaya is going to wash Jasmine's hair instead! Wash Day is a sweet and honest exploration of the beauty and tradition of wash days.

A writing companion, inspirational guide to the craft, and anthology featuring interactive multi-genre work from the acclaimed organization on its twenty-fifth anniversary. We all have stories to tell, but not everyone gets the mentoring and training or encouragement to become a great...

The acclaimed author’s first collection of stories, reissued to coincide with the paperback publication of her second and latest, Butter “Gayl Jones’s work represents a watershed in American literature. From a literary standpoint, her form is impeccable . . . and as a Black woman writer...

Inspired by the #1 New York Times bestseller She Persisted by Chelsea Clinton and Alexandra Boiger, a chapter book series about women who spoke up and rose up against the odds—including Opal Lee! Opal Lee grew up as a Black girl in Texas at a time when Black and white people were kept separate...

The Grimke sisters, Sarah and Angelina, have been highly revered figures in American history, lauded for leaving behind their lives as elite slave-owning women on a plantation in South Carolina to become firebrand abolitionists in the North. Yet the focus on their story has obscured the experiences of their Black relatives, the progeny of their brother, Henry, and one of the enslaved people he owned, a woman named Nancy Weston.

There is an African proverb, “Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi,” which translates as “It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.” This is why we continue to remember the tales of struggle and tales of perseverance, even as we look to tales of hope. What a people choose to remember about their past, the stories they pass down, informs who they are and sets the boundaries of their identity. We remember the pain of our past to mourn, to heal, and to learn. Only in that way can we ensure the same mistakes are not repeated. 

As the civil rights movement and the fight for voter rights unfold in Selma, Alabama, many things happen inside and outside the Brown family’s home that do not have anything to do with the landmark 1965 march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Yet the famous outrages which unfold on that span form an inescapable backdrop in this collection of stories. In one, Willie Mae takes it upon herself to offer summer babysitting services to a glamorous single white mother—a secret she keeps from her parents that unravels with shocking results.

(Her)oics: Women’s Lived Experiences During the Coronavirus Pandemic draws together the stories of 52 women across the US during the Covid-19 pandemic. The collection encompasses the perspectives of women who are: frontline responders and recovering patients; going out to work, staying home to work, and losing their jobs; living with multiple generations and living in isolation; women grieving loved ones and celebrating new love; women preparing to give birth and supporting the dying.

In a small seaside city on the Jersey Shore, three half-siblings confront the death of a distant and bullying patriarch. They now have the chance to imagine new relationships and new futures, ones that would have been near-unthinkable while their father was alive. Caught in their crossfire are the conservative religious communities that border Asbury Park, the longtime locals who have been pushed to the fringe by the shore’s revitalization, and the legendary town upon which the whole world seems to converge.