Showing results by narrator "Kevin R. Free" in All Categories

In the early '80s, the music industry wrote off hip-hop as a passing fad. Few could or would have predicted that the improvised raps and raw beats busting out of New York City's urban underclass would one day become a multimillion-dollar business and one of music's most lucrative genres. Among those few were two visionaries: Russell Simmons, a young black man from Hollis, Queens, and Rick Rubin, a Jewish kid from Long Island.

On 6th June 1944, the Allied invasion began. For hours, wave after wave of soldiers, sailors, and airmen crossed the channel and stormed the Normandy coast, fighting to gain a foothold in Nazi-occupied Northwest Europe. It was the largest combined air and seaborne invasion ever, involving over 150,000 Allied troops on the ground, and its eventual success became a critical turning point in the war, spelling the beginning of the end for the Third Reich.

This anthology edited by the American writer, philosopher, and patron of the arts Alain Locke brings together some of the most influential pieces of African American works from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Featuring the voices of Zora Neale Thurston, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Langston Hughes, Locke included commentary on the emergence of the New Negro Movement, also known as the Harlem Renaissance. The New Negro is considered to be the definitive text on the movement.

After the events chronicled in Bedlam's Bard, world-saving bard and magician Eric Banyon moves into his new New York apartment hoping to settle down to the quiet life. No such luck: His building is a safe-house for a group of occultist Guardians protecting the city from supernatural evil. And there's a new evil for them to guard against....

At last! Here's an audiobook edition of an Eric Carle book that's a favorite with littlest cloud gazers everywhere! Little Cloud likes to stand out from the crowd. When all the other clouds drift up, he goes his own way, changing shapes to become a sheep, an airplane, a shark, and a funny clown. It's all lots of fun, but so is playing with friends. So this time, Little Cloud joins the crowd, gathering with his pals into one giant cloud. And then they rain!

Political activist and best-selling author Randall Robinson is a pillar of scholarship and insight within the African-American literary community. His acclaimed novel Makeda stars Gray March, a young man who, beginning in the 1950s, embarks on a journey of spiritual and historical enlightenment through stories he hears from his blind grandmother.

Lou, a young Black woman, wakes up in an alley in 1930s Los Angeles, nearly naked and with no memory of how she got there or where she’s from. Taken in by a caring foster family, Lou dedicates herself to her education while trying to put her mysterious origins behind her. She’ll go on to become the first Black female journalist at the Los Angeles Times, but Lou’s extraordinary life is about to become even more remarkable.

This treasury of titles from the World of Eric Carle features eight engaging stories in one book. And since each one can lasts five minutes or less, it's the perfect pick for bedtime or whenever time is tight.

Poetry. Literary nonfiction. Fiction. Drama. LGBTQIA studies. Women's studies. Compiled in one book for the first time, featuring both new and out-of-print pieces, the contents of The Judy Grahn Reader span four decades of work by the prominent writer and activist. This volume contains writing from every phase of Judy Grahn's career, including poems from all of her major poetry collections, a number of her groundbreaking essays, as well as selected fiction and the full-length play The Queen of Swords.

When a very lonely firefly goes out into the night searching for other fireflies, it sees a lantern, a candle, and the eyes of a dog, cat, and owl all glowing in the darkness. It even sees a surprise celebration of light. But it is not until it discovers other fireflies that it finds exactly what it's looking for! Soothingly told with a gentle rhythm and complete with a surprise sure to "light up" children's faces, The Very Lonely Firefly will fast become a story-time favorite.

Malachi and his friends are just your regular average kids from hell. The suburbs that is, not the fiery pit part. But when Hell’s Bells ring out—signaling that a soul has escaped from one of the eternal circles, Mal and his friends can’t help but take the opportunity for a little adventure. Before they know it, they’ve somehow slipped through the veil and found themselves in the middle of Salem, Massachusetts, on Halloween night. And what’s even worse, they’ve managed to bring the escaped soul with them!

For six years, Reginald Brooks - slick Disney marketing VP - has pulled off the perfect scam. He has juggled two families without the other one finding out. He stays two weeks in Miami with his wife and two young adult daughters, and the next two weeks in Orlando with his trophy mistress and their young daughter. But when the charade unravels, it’s clear there’s been a lot more pretending than anyone realized. Soon wide-ranging consequences begin to take their toll.

Celebrate Dad's special day by saying "I Love You"--with a little help from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This bright and colorful book is the ideal way to tell the person you call "Dad" how much you appreciate him. It's the perfect gift for Father's Day, Dad's birthday, or any day that you want to show Dad just how much you care.

In the series of linked stories at the heart of Filthy Animals, set among young creatives in the American Midwest, a young man treads delicate emotional waters as he navigates a series of sexually fraught encounters with two dancers in an open relationship, forcing him to weigh his vulnerabilities against his loneliness.

Four teens have dug up the time capsule that their parents buried in 1986 and never bothered to recover. But in addition to the expected ephemera of mixtapes, Walkmans, photographs, letters, toys, and assorted junk, Elayah, Liam, Marcie, and Jorja discover something sinister: a hunting knife stained with blood and wrapped with a note. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to kill anyone."

Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham have brought together this collection of work - essays, memes, dialogues, recipes, tweets, poetry, and more - to tell the story of the radical, imaginative, provocative, and gorgeous world that Black creators are bringing forth today. The audiobook presents a succession of startling and beautiful pieces that generate an entrancing rhythm: Listeners will go from conversations with activists and academics to memes and Instagram posts, from powerful essays to insightful infographics. 

In April 1968, in the wake of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, Kevin joins a protest that shuts down his Ivy League campus... In September 1995, amidst controversy over the Million Man March, Gibran challenges the “See No Color” hypocrisy of his prestigious New England prep school... As the two students, whose lives overlap in powerful ways, risk losing the opportunities their parents worked hard to provide, they move closer to discovering who they want to be instead of accepting as fact who society and family tell them they are.

There was another South in the 1960s, one far removed from the marches and bombings and turmoil in the streets that were broadcast on the evening news. It was a place of inner turmoil, where ordinary people struggled to right themselves on a social landscape that was dramatically shifting beneath their feet. This is the world of Valerie Fraser Luesse's stunning debut, Missing Isaac.

Scrappy, street smart drug dealer Reggie Marshall has never liked the simpering addict Leland Bloom-Mittwoch, which doesn’t stop Leland from looking up to Reggie with puppy-esque devotion. But when a drug deal goes dramatically, tragically wrong and a suitcase (which may or may not contain a quarter of a million dollars) disappears, the two men and their families become hopelessly entangled. It’s a mistake that sets in motion a series of events that are odd, captivating, suspenseful, and ultimately inevitable.

When Noa closes his eyes on Earth and wakes up on a spaceship called Qriosity just as it’s about to explode, he’s pretty sure things can’t get much weirder. Boy, is he wrong. Trapped aboard Qriosity are also DJ and Jenny, neither of whom remember how they got onboard the ship. Together, the three face all the dangers of space, along with murder, aliens, a school dance, and one really, really bad day. But none of this can prepare Noa for the biggest challenge—falling in love.