Showing results by narrator "Mela Lee" in All Categories

Travis Devine has become a pro at accomplishing any mission he's given. But this time it’s not his skills that send him to Seattle to aid the FBI in escorting orphaned, twelve-year-old Betsy Odom to a meeting with her uncle, who’s under federal investigation. Instead, he’s hoping to lay low and keep off the radar of an enemy–the girl on the train. But as Devine gets to know Betsy, questions begin to arise around the death of her parents.

Every day without fail, Travis Devine puts on a cheap suit, grabs his faux-leather briefcase, and boards the 6:20 commuter train to Manhattan, where he works as an entry-level analyst at the city’s most prestigious investment firm. In the mornings, he gazes out the train window at the lavish homes of the uberwealthy, dreaming about joining their ranks. In the evenings, he listens to the fiscal news on his phone, already preparing for the next grueling day in the cutthroat realm of finance. Then one morning Devine’s tedious routine is shattered by an anonymous email: She is dead.

The year 1996 was the one that changed everything for Maggie Dawes. Sent away at 16 to live with an aunt she barely knew in Ocracoke, a remote village on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, she could think only of the friends and family she left behind...until she met Bryce Trickett, one of the few teenagers on the island. Handsome, genuine, and newly admitted to West Point, Bryce showed her how much there was to love about the wind-swept beach town - and introduced her to photography, a passion that would define the rest of her life. By 2019, Maggie is a renowned travel photographer.

Eva Mercy is a single mom and bestselling erotica writer who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award‑winning novelist, who, to everyone's surprise, shows up in New York. When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their buried traumas, but the eyebrows of the Black literati. What no one knows is that 15 years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love.

To thousands of Instagram followers, Josephine Boateng is the dazzling Dr. Jojo, and her opinions on health and self-love matter. Her message: Be smart, be significant, and do not put up with foolish men. Off-camera, Jo’s story is more complicated. She’s grappling with depression and the pressures of her career, and her love life is nonexistent, thanks to a decade-long unrequited crush on her best friend, rom-com heartthrob Ezra Adelman. But when Ezra shows up to his thirtieth birthday party with her childhood bully on his arm, Jo realizes it’s time to take her own advice.

Ricki Wilde has many talents, but being a Wilde isn’t one of them. As the impulsive artistic daughter of a powerful Atlanta dynasty, she’s the opposite of her famous socialite sisters. Where they’re long-stemmed roses, she’s a dandelion: an adorable bloom that’s actually a weed, born to float wherever the wind blows. In her bones, Ricki knows that somewhere, a different, more exciting life awaits her. When regal nonagenarian Ms. Della invites her to rent the bottom floor of her Harlem brownstone, Ricki jumps at the chance for a fresh beginning.

When Dwayne and Alice Odom are killed, the police report states clearly that it was a drug overdose. So why is their daughter, who was there when they died, claiming that's not the truth? Betsy Odom doesn't trust the police but when she finds herself in their custody after her parents' death, she knows she has to be careful. Her uncle wants to adopt her and as he is a very rich and powerful man, she wants to let him. His criminal connections, however, mean the police aren't so sure.

On the night of her husband Matt’s fortieth birthday, Rachel Abbott receives a sexy, explicit text from her husband that she quickly realizes was meant for another woman. Divorce is inevitable, and Rachel is determined not to leave her thirteen-year marriage empty handed. Meanwhile, Matt, a rising star mayor with his eye on the White House, can’t afford a messy split in the middle of his reelection campaign. They strike a deal: Rachel gets one million dollars and lavish house in the wealthy DC suburb of Oasis Springs, as long as she keeps playing the ideal Black trophy wife until the election.

With Christmas around the corner, Ramona Tucker is desperate to get away. She has been lying to her family about her engagement to Malik, her (ex) fiancé. But breakups are fickle, and Ramona is convinced that she can make her pretend wedding real again—but only if she can avoid everyone discovering her secret at her mother’s over-the-top Christmas Eve party.

When Dwayne and Alice Odom are killed, the police report states clearly that it was a drug overdose. So why is their daughter, who was there when they died, claiming that’s not the truth? Betsy Odom doesn’t trust the police but when she finds herself in the FBI’s custody after her parents’ deaths, she knows she has to be careful. Her uncle wants to adopt her and as he is a very rich and powerful man, she wants to let him. His criminal connections, however, mean the authorities aren’t so sure.

A precise killer, he always moves under the cover of darkness, flawlessly triggering no alarms, leaving no physical evidence. Cross and Sampson aren’t the only ones investigating. Also in on this most intriguing case is the world’s bestselling true-crime author, who sees patterns everyone else misses. The writer, Thomas Tull, calls the Family Man murders the perfect crime story. He believes the killer may never be caught. Cross knows there is no perfect crime. And he’s going to hunt down the Family Man no matter what it takes.

Attorney Rhonda Bird returns home after a long estrangement when she learns her father has died. There she makes two important discoveries: Her father stopped being an accountant and had opened up a private detective agency, and she has a teenage half sister named Baby. Baby brings in a client to the detective agency, a young man who claims he was abducted.

Eva Mercy is a single mother and best-selling erotica writer who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award-winning novelist, who, to everyone's surprise, shows up unexpectedly in New York. When Shane and Eva meet at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their buried traumas, but also the eyebrows of the Black literati. What no one knows is that 15 years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love.

New York Times-bestselling author Elijah Wald, one of the most wide-ranging and respected writers on blues and popular music, traces the beginnings of the music that became our national soundtrack. Using Morton’s life and songs as a connecting thread, Jelly Roll Blues suggests an alternate history of blues and jazz, surveying a world of Black and working class culture that at times seems startlingly modern.

Rhea's neighborhood is fading away—the mom-and-pop shops of her childhood forced out to make space for an artisanal kombucha brewery here, a hot yoga studio there. And everywhere, the feeling that this place is no longer meant for her. Because while their little corner of South L.A. isn't perfect, to Rhea and her two best friends, it's something even more important—it's home. And it's worth protecting. But as more white people flock to their latest edgy, urban paradise, more of Rhea's friends and family are pushed out. Until Rhea decides it's time to push back.

For the first time, John Sampson is on his own. The brilliant crime-solving duo of Washington, DC’s, Metro PD and the FBI has a proven MO: Detective Alex Cross makes his own rules. Detective John Sampson enforces them. When military-style attacks erupt, brutally sidelining Cross, Sampson is sent reeling. The patterns are too random—Sampson’s friend, his partner, his brother—have told him. Don’t trust anyone. As a shadow force advances on the nation’s capital, Sampson alone must protect the Cross family, his own young daughter, and every American, including the president.

Serena, Michelle, Kenya, and Lynette have been best friends since they were small children. And as sister friends forever, they have always been there for one another, through good times and bad, no matter what. This year is a crucial turning point for each woman. Serena, still single, is questioning why love hasn’t found her yet. Michelle is engaged and ready to walk down the aisle—until an old flame strolls back into her life. Kenya is happily married, but at the same time, her husband’s ex-wife won’t allow them or their family to live in peace.

If allowed, Neelo Emberspear would never leave the library. Reluctant to take the throne despite their mother’s faltering health, the neurodivergent bookworm craves escape from their arranged marriage to charming fae warrior Talhan Catullus. They know their duty can be put off no longer when their mother, the drug-addled queen, disastrously lights the castle on fire.

And at 32 years old, Travis Devine's swapping fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda for a different kind of danger in the cut-throat world of high finance. His daily commute on the 6.20 a.m. train into New York’s financial district, to his new job as an analyst at the minted powerhouse investment bank Cowl and Comely, takes him into a world where greed, power, jealousy and ambition result in the financial abuse of the masses and the enrichment of an elite few. But it is on this daily journey that he passes a house where he sees something that sounds alarm signals he cannot ignore.

Women including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Margaret Sanger, and Sheryl Sandberg are commonly celebrated as leaders of feminism. Yet they have fought for the few, not the many. As award-winning scholar Kyla Schuller argues, their White feminist politics dispossess the most marginalized to liberate themselves. In The Trouble with White Women, Schuller brings to life the 200-year counter-history of Black, Indigenous, Latina, poor, queer, and trans women pushing back against White feminists and uniting to dismantle systemic injustice.