Showing results by narrator "Dion Graham" in All Categories

Seventeen-year-old Samuel Sooleyman comes from a village in South Sudan, a war-torn country where one third of the population is a refugee. His great love is basketball: his prodigious leap and lightning speed make him an exceptional player. And it may also bring him his big chance: he has been noticed by a coach taking a youth team to the United States. If he gets through the tournament, Samuel's life will change beyond recognition. But it's the longest of long shots.

Maya Angelou: A Glorious Celebration offers an unusual and irresistible look at her life and her myriad interests and accomplishments. Created by the people who know her best - her longtime friends Marcia Ann Gillespie and Richard A. Long, and her niece, Rosa Johnson Butler - it captures Angelou at home, at work, and in the public eye.

Hidden away from a harsh outside world, five young people have improvised a home in an abandoned airplane, a relic of their country's tumultuous past. Elimane, the bookworm, is as street-smart as he is wise. Clever Khoudiemata maneuvers to keep the younger kids - athletic, pragmatic Ndevui, thoughtful Kpindi, and especially their newest member, Namsa - safe and fed. But then Khoudi comes under the spell of the "beautiful people" - the fortunate sons and daughters of the elite.

Lymon's father is, for the time being, at Parchman Farm - the Mississippi State Penitentiary - and his mother, whom he doesn't remember all that much, has moved North. Fortunately, Lymon is being raised by his loving grandparents. Together, Lymon and his grandpops share a love of music, spending late summer nights playing the guitar. But Lymon's world as he knows it is about to dissolve. He will be sent on a journey to two Northern cities far from the country life he loves - and the version of himself he knows.

In the year leading up to the Iowa caucuses, few thought a freshman senator named Barack Hussein Obama would be able to win the Democratic nomination - not to mention become the most popular leader in the world. But something was stirring. Hundreds of young people from all over the country began assembling first in Iowa. These "kids" became the foundation of one of the most improbable presidential campaigns of the modern era. Chris Liddell-Westefeld was one of those kids. He and thousands of other staff and volunteers dedicated their time, intelligence, and resources to help elect Barack Obama.

A Hologram for the King takes us around the world to show how one man fights to hold himself and his splintering family together in the face of the global economy’s gale-force winds. In a rising Saudi Arabian city, far from weary, recession-scarred America, a struggling businessman pursues a last-ditch attempt to stave off foreclosure, pay his daughter’s college tuition, and finally do something great.

Spero Lucas has a new line of work. Since he returned home after serving in Iraq, he has been doing special investigations for a defense attorney. He's good at it, and he has carved out a niche: recovering stolen property, no questions asked. His cut is 40 percent. But is any cut worth your family, your lover, your life?

Frantz Fanon (1925 - 1961) fought to free Algeria from French rule and rallied against the oppressive grip of colonialism. In this fictionalized view of the revolutionary's life, an African-American writer travels the world to do research for a biography of Fanon. In a tale that is part love story, mystery, and biography, Fanon examines how a political radical's views apply in a post-9/11 world.

Nineteen-year-old refugee Alephonsion Deng, from war-ravaged Sudan, had great expectations when he arrived in America three weeks before two planes crashed into the World Trade Towers. Suburban mom Judy Bernstein assumed the teenaged "Lost Boys of Sudan" needed a little mothering and a change of scenery. Partnered through a mentoring program in San Diego, these two individuals from opposite sides of the world began an eye-opening journey that radically altered each other's vision and life. Disturbed in Their Nests recounts the first year of this heartwarming partnership. 

The New York Times best-selling series reaches an epic climax! James Dashner returns to the series he began - just in time for Dak, Sera, and Riq to make their final stand in ancient Greece alongside a young Alexander the Great. Fix the past. Save the future. It's now or never!

Voting is foundational in a democracy, yet over six million American citizens remain stripped of their ability to participate in elections. Once convicted of a felony, people who complete their sentences reenter society, but no longer with the civil rights they once had. They may return to school, secure employment to provide for their families, and become law-abiding, tax-paying citizens―sometimes for decades―and still be denied the voting rights afforded to every other citizen.

The New York Times best-selling series returns - and so does Matt de la Peña! Dak, Sera, and Riq have fixed the Great Breaks in history - but the SQ isn't beaten yet, and the biggest, boldest Infinity Ring adventure of all time has just begun!

Dak, Sera, and Riq return to the United States in the year 1850 when the nation is divided over the issue of slavery. The Underground Railroad provides a light of hope, helping runaway slaves escape to freedom. But the SQ has taken control of the Underground Railroad from within. Now Dak and Sera are left wondering who to trust...

What marvels and mysteries await Dak, Sera, and Riq in the Golden Age of Baghdad? Europe is in the grip of the Dark Ages, but there is a light in the dark: Baghdad. The great city has become a center of learning, populated by scholars, merchants, and explorers from all across the known world. But danger lurks in the desert...and Dark, Sera, and Riq must act fast to save the world's greatest library from utter destruction.

Whether they're cops or conmen, savage killers or creative types, gangsters or God-fearing citizens, George Pelecanos's characters are always engaged in a fight for their lives. They fight to advance or simply to survive; they fight against odds, against enemies, even against themselves. In this, his first collection of stories, the acclaimed novelist introduces readers to a vivid and eclectic cast of combatants.

A partially decomposed body of a young woman is discovered in a park in Pasadena, California. The woman was strangled but not sexually assaulted. The police suspect she might be a missing heiress who disappeared over a year ago, but dental records prove them wrong. But who is she? And is there a link between the heiress and this corpse? The celebrated detective Virgil Tibbs reshapes the known facts regarding these two women and discovers astonishing connections.

A powerful telling of the first African-American heavyweight champion, this story portrays how a shy, fearful young man learned to fight back and become one of history's more compelling personalities. Children will be awed and inspired by the boxer's energy and drive which is duly reflected through the rhythmic text and excellent narration.

On June 2, 1892, in the small, idyllic village of Port Jervis, New York, a young Black man named Robert Lewis was lynched by a violent mob. The twenty-eight-year-old victim had been accused of sexually assaulting Lena McMahon, the daughter of one of the town's well-liked Irish American families. The incident was infamous at once, for it was seen as a portent that lynching, a Southern scourge, was about to extend its tendrils northward. Philip Dray revisits this time and place to consider its significance and to show how justice cannot be achieved without an honest reckoning.

Dark, profane, and hilarious, yet ultimately humane, these ten stories are the latest and best of Robin McLean’s reports from the eternal battlefront that is the United States. Ranging across the continent, from Alaska to Missouri, from the flatlands to the mountains, each tale is a snapshot of the political, racial, and sexual undercurrents roiling contemporary life, and each finds a way into the nerves and blood that pulse beneath the question of how to live a decent life.

The Wild Things - based very loosely on the storybook by Maurice Sendak and the screenplay cowritten with Spike Jonze - is about the confusions of a boy, Max, making his way in a world he can't control. His father is gone, his mother is spending time with a younger boyfriend, his sister is becoming a teenager and no longer has interest in him. At the same time, Max finds himself capable of startling acts of wildness: He wears a wolf suit, bites his mom, and can't always control his outbursts.