“Creepy and fascinating.” —Stephen King, #1 New York Times bestselling author
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- Borne
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Read by Bahni Turpin
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Release Date: 8/25/20
Formats: Digital Audy
In Borne, a young woman named Rachel survives as a scavenger in a ruined city half destroyed by drought and conflict. The city is dangerous, littered with discarded experiments from the Company―a biotech firm now derelict―and punished by the unpredictable predations of a giant bear. Rachel ekes out an existence in the shelter of a run-down sanctuary she shares with her partner, Wick, who deals his own homegrown psychoactive biotech.
One day, Rachel finds Borne during a scavenging mission and takes him home. Borne as salvage is little more than a green lump―plant or animal?―but exudes a strange charisma. Borne reminds Rachel of the marine life from the island nation of her birth, now lost to rising seas. There is an attachment she resents: in this world any weakness can kill you. Yet, against her instincts―and definitely against Wick’s wishes―Rachel keeps Borne. She cannot help herself. Borne, learning to speak, learning about the world, is fun to be with, and in a world so broken that innocence is a precious thing. For Borne makes Rachel see beauty in the desolation around her. She begins to feel a protectiveness she can ill afford.
But as Borne grows, he begins to threaten the balance of power in the city and to put the security of her sanctuary with Wick at risk. For the Company, it seems, may not be truly dead, and new enemies are creeping in. What Borne will lay bare to Rachel as he changes is how precarious her existence has been, and how dependent on subterfuge and secrets. In the aftermath, nothing may ever be the same.
- Borne
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Read by Bahni Turpin
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Release Date: 8/25/20
Formats: Digital Audy
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- The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires
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Read by Bahni Turpin
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Release Date: 4/07/20
Formats: Digital Audy
Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias meet Dracula in this Southern-flavored supernatural thriller set in the ’90s about a women’s book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious and handsome stranger who turns out to be a real monster.
Patricia Campbell’s life has never felt smaller. Her ambitious husband is too busy to give her a goodbye kiss in the morning, her kids have their own lives, her senile mother-in-law needs constant care, and she’s always a step behind on thank-you notes and her endless list of chores. The one thing she has to look forward to is her book club, a close-knit group of Charleston women united by their love of true crime and paperback fiction. At these meetings they’re as likely to talk about the Manson family as they are marriage, motherhood, and neighborhood gossip.
This predictable pattern is upended when Patricia meets James Harris, a handsome stranger who moves into the neighborhood to take care of his elderly aunt and ends up joining the book club. James is sensitive and well-read, and he makes Patricia feel things she hasn’t felt in twenty years. But there’s something off about him. He doesn’t have a bank account, he doesn’t like going out during the day, and Patricia’s mother-in-law insists that she knew him when she was a girl—an impossibility.
When local children go missing, Patricia and the book club members start to suspect James is more of a Bundy than a Beatnik—but no one outside of the book club believes them. Have they read too many true crime books, or have they invited a real monster into their homes?
- The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires
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Read by Bahni Turpin
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Release Date: 4/07/20
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Cane
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By Jean Toomer
Directed by Stefan Rudnicki
Read by Bahni Turpin, Mirron Willis, and Lisa Reneé Pitts
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Release Date: 6/25/19
Formats: Digital Audy
The Harlem Renaissance writer’s innovative and groundbreaking novel depicting African American life in the South and North
Jean Toomer’s Cane is one of the most significant works to come out of the Harlem Renaissance, and is considered to be a masterpiece in American modernist literature because of its distinct structure and style. First published in 1923 and told through a series of vignettes, Cane uses poetry, prose, and play-like dialogue to create a window into the varied lives of African Americans living in the rural South and urban North during a time when Jim Crow laws pervaded and racism reigned. While critically acclaimed and known today as a pioneering text of the Harlem Renaissance, the book did not gain as much popularity as other works written during the period. Fellow Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes believed Cane‘s lack of a wider readership was because it didn’t reinforce the stereotypes often associated with African Americans during the time, but portrayed them in an accurate and entirely human way, breaking the mold and laying the groundwork for how African Americans are depicted in literature.
- Cane
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By Jean Toomer
Directed by Stefan Rudnicki
Read by Bahni Turpin, Mirron Willis, and Lisa Reneé Pitts
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Release Date: 6/25/19
Formats: Digital Audy
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- The Truth about Grace
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Read by Suzanne Toren, Bahni Turpin, Janina Edwards, and Kevin Kenerly
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Release Date: 11/06/18
Formats: Digital Audy
In this sequel to The Pecan Man, Eldred Mims has died in prison after serving time for a crime he did not commit. When Ora Lee Beckworth decides to set the record straight, her confession leaves Blanche Lowery’s daughters, Patrice and Grace, to grapple with the aftermath of a lifetime of lies. Now the sisters must reframe everything they thought they knew about their mother, their brother, and the man they knew as Eddie.
- The Truth about Grace
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Read by Suzanne Toren, Bahni Turpin, Janina Edwards, and Kevin Kenerly
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Release Date: 11/06/18
Formats: Digital Audy
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- When You Find Me
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By P. J. Vernon
Read by Amy McFadden and Bahni Turpin
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Release Date: 10/09/18
Formats: Digital Audy
For fans of S. J. Watson and A. S. A. Harrison comes a chilling look at marriage and madness from a talented new voice in psychological suspense.
Her husband is missing.
Visiting her family’s South Carolina estate, socialite Gray Godfrey wakes from a night out to an empty bed. Her husband, Paul, is gone, and a thrashing hangover has wiped her memory clean. At first, she’s relieved for the break from her tumultuous marriage; perhaps Paul just needed some space. But when his car is found abandoned on the highway, Gray must face the truth: Paul is gone. And Gray may not want him found.
Her life is unraveling.
When a stranger named Annie calls claiming to know Paul’s whereabouts, Gray reluctantly accepts her help. But this ally is not what she seems: soon Annie is sending frightening messages and revealing disturbing secrets only Gray could know. As Annie’s threats escalate and Gray’s grip on reality begins to slip, the life she thought she had and the dark truth she’s been living begin to merge, leaving an unsettling question: What does Annie want? And what will she do to get it?
A chilling look at marriage, madness, and the lives we think we lead, When You Find Me is a daring debut from a talented new voice in psychological suspense.
- When You Find Me
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By P. J. Vernon
Read by Amy McFadden and Bahni Turpin
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Release Date: 10/09/18
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Training School for Negro Girls
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Read by Bahni Turpin and Janina Edwards
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Release Date: 10/09/18
Formats: Digital Audy
This debut collection is a complicated love letter to Washington, DC, and to those who call it home: a TSA agent who’s never flown, a girl braving new worlds to play piano, and a teacher caught up in a mayoral race. These characters navigate life’s “training school”―with lessons on gentrification and respectability—and fight to create their own sense of space and self.
- Training School for Negro Girls
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Read by Bahni Turpin and Janina Edwards
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Release Date: 10/09/18
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Flygirl
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Read by Bahni Turpin
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Release Date: 4/24/18
Formats: Digital Audy
All Ida Mae Jones wants to do is fly. Her daddy was a pilot, and years after his death she feels closest to him when she’s in the air. But as a young black woman in 1940s Louisiana, she knows the sky is off limits to her, until America enters World War II, and the Army forms the WASP—Women Airforce Service Pilots.
Ida has a chance to fulfill her dream if she’s willing to use her light skin to pass as a white girl. She wants to fly more than anything, but Ida soon learns that denying one’s self and family is a heavy burden, and ultimately it’s not what you do but who you are that’s most important.
- Flygirl
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Read by Bahni Turpin
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Release Date: 4/24/18
Formats: Digital Audy
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- House of Rougeaux
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Read by Bahni Turpin
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Release Date: 4/24/18
Formats: Digital Audy
Following echoes between generations which defy normal time and space, a multilayered narrative celebrates the Rougeaux family triumphs while exposing the injustices of their trials. It begins with Iya, born in Africa in the 1700s, and brought to the Caribbean island of Martinique as a slave, and her two children, Adunbi and Abeje, who grow up on a sugar estate. The siblings endure because of the kindness of fellow bondsmen and their uncommon abilities. A grandchild becomes emancipated in Quebec City, great-grandchildren find their way in Montreal, a great-great-grandchild runs off to Philadelphia, and another risks everything in New York City. As each new member of the family takes the spotlight, a fresh piece of the puzzle is illuminated until at last, a homecoming uplifts them all. In skillful prose, award-winning author Jenny Jaeckel masterfully blends genres of coming-of-age, folklore, magical realism, and historical fiction with explorations of gender, race, and sexuality, creating a wondrous and harrowing tale of hope and healing.
- House of Rougeaux
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Read by Bahni Turpin
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Release Date: 4/24/18
Formats: Digital Audy
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- So You Want to Talk about Race
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By Ijeoma Oluo
Read by Bahni Turpin
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Release Date: 1/16/18
Formats: Digital Audy
In this #1 New York Times bestseller, Ijeoma Oluo offers a revelatory examination of race in America
A current, constructive, and actionable exploration of today’s racial landscape, offering straightforward clarity that readers of all races need to contribute to the dismantling of the racial divide
In So You Want to Talk about Race, editor-at-large of the Establishment Ijeoma Oluo offers a contemporary, accessible take on the racial landscape in America, addressing head-on such issues as privilege, police brutality, intersectionality, micro-aggressions, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the “N” word. Perfectly positioned to bridge the gap between people of color and white Americans struggling with race complexities, Oluo answers the questions readers don’t dare ask, and explains the concepts that continue to elude everyday Americans.
Oluo is an exceptional writer with a rare ability to be straightforward, funny, and effective in her coverage of sensitive, hyper-charged issues in America. Her messages are passionate but finely tuned, and crystallize ideas that would otherwise be vague by empowering them with aha-moment clarity. Her writing brings to mind voices like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Roxane Gay, and Jessica Valenti in Full Frontal Feminism, and a young Gloria Naylor, particularly in Naylor’s seminal essay “The Meaning of a Word.”
- So You Want to Talk about Race
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By Ijeoma Oluo
Read by Bahni Turpin
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Release Date: 1/16/18
Formats: Digital Audy
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- A Kind of Freedom
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Read by Kevin Kenerly, Bahni Turpin, and Adenrele Ojo
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Release Date: 8/15/17
Formats: Digital Audy
Evelyn is a Creole woman who comes of age in New Orleans at the height of World War II. Her family inhabits the upper echelon of black society, and when she falls for no-name Renard, she is forced to choose between her life of privilege and the man she loves.
In 1982, Evelyn’s daughter Jackie is a frazzled single mother grappling with her absent husband’s drug addiction. Just as she comes to terms with his abandoning the family, he returns, ready to resume their old life. Jackie must decide if the promise of her husband is worth the near certainty that he will leave again.
Jackie’s son T. C. loves the creative process of growing marijuana more than the weed itself. He finds something hypnotic about training the seedlings, testing the levels, trimming the leaves, and drying the buds. He was a square before Hurricane Katrina, but the New Orleans he knew didn’t survive the storm, and in its wake he was changed too. Now, fresh out of a four-month stint for possession with the intent to distribute, he decides to start over―until an old friend convinces him to stake his new beginning on one last deal.
For Evelyn, Jim Crow is an ongoing reality, and in its wake new threats spring up to haunt her descendants. A Kind of Freedom is an urgent novel that explores the legacy of racial disparity in the South through a poignant and redemptive family history.
- A Kind of Freedom
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Read by Kevin Kenerly, Bahni Turpin, and Adenrele Ojo
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Release Date: 8/15/17
Formats: Digital Audy
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- When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost
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By Joan Morgan
Foreword by Brittney Cooper
Afterword by Dr. Treva B. Lindsey
Read by Joy Bryant and Bahni Turpin
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Release Date: 4/04/17
Formats: Digital Audy
Joan Morgan offers a provocative and powerful look into the life of the modern black woman: a complex world in which feminists often have not-so-clandestine affairs with the most sexist of men, where women who treasure their independence frequently prefer men who pick up the tab, where the deluge of babymothers and babyfathers reminds black women who long for marriage that traditional nuclear families are a reality for less than forty percent of the population, and where black women are forced to make sense of a world where truth is no longer black and white but subtle, intriguing shades of gray.
Still fresh, funny, and irreverent, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost gives voice to the most intimate thoughts of the post–Civil Rights, post-feminist, post-soul generation.
- When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost
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By Joan Morgan
Foreword by Brittney Cooper
Afterword by Dr. Treva B. Lindsey
Read by Joy Bryant and Bahni Turpin
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Release Date: 4/04/17
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Infini
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By Krista Ritchie and Becca Ritchie
Read by Bahni Turpin and Johnathan McClain
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Release Date: 3/14/17
Formats: Digital Audy
“Don’t have a best friend that’s a girl”—this was the advice from my older cousin. I didn’t take it. Because he followed with, “friends don’t f**k friends. And you’ll want to f**k her.”
It was terrible advice.
My cousin should’ve told me that being best friends with Baylee Wright—since she was twelve—would be the best and worst decision of my life. He should have told me to protect her from what was coming. He should have told me that when a darkness crawled towards us, there’d be no safety net.
Now I’ve signed back on to the same Vegas acrobatic show as Baylee, working together for the first time in years. And she tells me that she’s having trouble in a certain “area” of her life—because of our past.
“You can help me fix it,” she says.
And then she hands me a list.
- Infini
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By Krista Ritchie and Becca Ritchie
Read by Bahni Turpin and Johnathan McClain
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Release Date: 3/14/17
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Slavery’s Capitalism
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Edited by Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman
Read by William Hughes, Kevin Kenerly, Bahni Turpin, Pam Ward, and Ron Butler
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Release Date: 3/07/17
Formats: Digital Audy
During the nineteenth century, the United States entered the ranks of the world’s most advanced and dynamic economies. At the same time, the nation sustained an expansive and brutal system of human bondage.
This was no mere coincidence. Slavery’s Capitalism argues for slavery’s centrality to the emergence of American capitalism in the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War. According to editors Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman, the issue is not whether slavery itself was or was not capitalist but, rather, the impossibility of understanding the nation’s spectacular pattern of economic development without situating slavery front and center.
American capitalism—renowned for its celebration of market competition, private property, and the self-made man—has its origins in an American slavery predicated on the abhorrent notion that human beings could be legally owned and compelled to work under force of violence.
Drawing on the expertise of sixteen scholars who are at the forefront of rewriting the history of American economic development, Slavery’s Capitalism identifies slavery as the primary force driving key innovations in entrepreneurship, finance, accounting, management, and political economy that are too often attributed to the so-called free market.
Approaching the study of slavery as the originating catalyst for the Industrial Revolution and modern capitalism casts new light on American credit markets, practices of offshore investment, and understandings of human capital. Rather than seeing slavery as outside the institutional structures of capitalism, the essayists recover slavery’s importance to the American economic past and prompt enduring questions about the relationship of market freedom to human freedom.
Contributors: Edward E. Baptist, Sven Beckert, Daina Ramey Berry, Kathryn Boodry, Alfred L. Brophy, Stephen Chambers, Eric Kimball, John Majewski, Bonnie Martin, Seth Rockman, Daniel B. Rood, Caitlin Rosenthal, Joshua D. Rothman, Calvin Schermerhorn, Andrew Shankman, Craig Steven Wilder.
- Slavery’s Capitalism
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Edited by Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman
Read by William Hughes, Kevin Kenerly, Bahni Turpin, Pam Ward, and Ron Butler
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Release Date: 3/07/17
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Women Destroy Science Fiction!
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Guest-edited by Christie Yant
Stories by Seanan McGuire, Charlie Jane Anders, Tananarive Due, Maria Dahvana Headley, and others
Read by various narrators
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Release Date: 11/18/15
Formats: Digital Audy
Guest-edited by longtime Lightspeed assistant editor Christie Yant, Women Destroy Science Fiction! contains eleven original science fiction short stories, four short-story reprints, a novella reprint, and for the first time ever, an array of flash fiction stories.
This special issue includes
- Original science fiction by Seanan McGuire, N. K. Jemisin, Charlie Jane Anders, Maria Dahvana Headley, Amal El-Mohtar, Kris Millering, Heather Clitheroe, Rhonda Eikamp, Gabriella Stalker, Elizabeth Porter Birdsall, and K. C. Norton;
- Reprints by Alice Sheldon (a.k.a. James Tiptree Jr.), Eleanor Arnason, Maria Romasco Moore, Tananarive Due, and Maureen F. McHugh; and
- Original flash fiction by Carrie Vaughn, Ellen Denham, Samantha Murray, Holly Schofield, Cathy Humble, Emily Fox, Tina Connolly, Effie Seiberg, Marina J. Lostetter, Rhiannon Rasmussen, Sarah Pinsker, Kim Winternheimer, Anaid Perez, Katherine Crighton, and Vanessa Torline.
- Women Destroy Science Fiction!
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Guest-edited by Christie Yant
Stories by Seanan McGuire, Charlie Jane Anders, Tananarive Due, Maria Dahvana Headley, and others
Read by various narrators
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Release Date: 11/18/15
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Sex from Scratch
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By Sarah Mirk
Read by various narrators
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Release Date: 1/13/15
Formats: Digital Audy
With nearly half of marriages ending in divorce, an increasing number of people deciding not to have kids, and more people than ever identifying as LGBT, modern life is clearly in the need of modern relationship advice. Sex from Scratch analyzes the facets of contemporary relationships through the struggles, opinions, and experiences of a diverse group of individuals living in nontraditional relationships. Rather than telling readers how to snag a partner and find "true love," it gleans real-life knowledge from people of all sexualities and genders—including individuals trying to make open relationships work to those who have opted against having children—distilling their hard-earned wisdom. Contributions from Andi Zeisler, Stu Rasmussen, Betty Dodson, and others make this love and dating guidebook an essential, fun, and insightful resource for anyone in any type of relationship.
- Sex from Scratch
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By Sarah Mirk
Read by various narrators
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Release Date: 1/13/15
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Darkwater
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Directed by Claire Bloom
Read by Bernard K. Addison, Dion Graham, Lisa Reneé Pitts, Bahni Turpin, and Mirron Willis
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Release Date: 8/12/14
Formats: Digital Audy
The distinguished American civil rights leader, W. E. B. Du Bois first published these fiery essays, sketches, and poems individually in 1920 in the Atlantic, the Journal of Race Development, and other periodicals. Reflecting the author's ideas as a politician, historian, and artist, this volume has long moved and inspired readers with its militant cry for social, political, and economic reform. It is essential reading for all students of African American history.
- Darkwater
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Directed by Claire Bloom
Read by Bernard K. Addison, Dion Graham, Lisa Reneé Pitts, Bahni Turpin, and Mirron Willis
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Release Date: 8/12/14
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Ties That Bind
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Read by Bahni Turpin and Xe Sands
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Release Date: 4/24/12
Formats: cpid_11
In her compelling, beautifully crafted novel, New York Times bestselling author Marie Bostwick celebrates friendships old and new—and the unlikely threads that sometimes lead us exactly where we need to go.
Christmas is fast approaching, and New Bern, Connecticut, is about to receive the gift of a new pastor, hired sight unseen to fill in while Reverend Tucker is on sabbatical. Meanwhile, Margot Matthews’ friend, Abigail, is trying to matchmake, even though Margot has all but given up on romance. She loves her job at the Cobbled Court Quilt Shop and the life and friendships she’s made in New Bern, but she never thought she’d still be single on her fortieth birthday.
It’s a shock to the entire town when Philip A. Clarkson turns out to be Philippa. Truth be told, not everyone is happy about having a female pastor. Yet despite a rocky start, Philippa begins to settle in—finding ways to ease the townspeople’s burdens, joining the quilting circle, and forging a fast friendship with Margot. When tragedy threatens to tear Margot’s family apart, that bond—and the help of her quilting sisterhood—will prove a saving grace. And as she untangles her feelings for another new arrival in town, Margot begins to realize that it is the surprising detours woven into life’s fabric that provide its richest hues and deepest meaning.
- Ties That Bind
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Read by Bahni Turpin and Xe Sands
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Release Date: 4/24/12
Formats: cpid_11