Bahni Turpin has narrated 249 audiobooks on Listento.it by 241 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 7,522 ratings. The most-rated is The Hate U Give.
A Kind of Freedom
Summary
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.
©2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc. (P)2017 Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
Golden Poppies
Summary
From the best-selling author of Yellow Crocus and Mustard Seed comes the empowering novel of two generations of American women connected by the past and fighting for a brighter future. It's 1894. Jordan Wallace and Sadie Wagner appear to have little in common. Jordan, a middle-aged black teacher, lives in segregated Chicago. Two thousand miles away, Sadie, the white wife of an ambitious German businessman, lives in more tolerant Oakland, California. But years ago, their families intertwined on a plantation in Virginia. There, Jordan's and Sadie's mothers developed a bond stronger than blood, despite the fact that one was enslaved and the other was the privileged daughter of the plantation’s owner. With Jordan's mother on her deathbed, Sadie leaves her disapproving husband to make the arduous train journey with her mother to Chicago. But the reunion between two families is soon fraught with personal and political challenges. As the harsh realities of racial divides and the injustices of the Gilded Age conspire to hold them back, the women find they need each other more than ever. Their courage, their loyalty, and the ties that bind their families will be tested. Amid the tumult of a quickly changing nation, their destiny depends on what they're willing to risk for liberation.
©2020 by Laila Ibrahim. (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Rise
Summary
Dark pasts and forbidden romances haunt three ambitious sisters as they fight to inherit the throne in this sequel to Rule, which New York Times best-selling author Elly Blake called "dazzling" and "pulse-pounding". Sisters Akeylah, Ren, and Zofi are all a step closer to their dying father's throne, a step closer to the crown that will allow one of them to rule over Kolonya. But the sisters' pasts continue to haunt them. Each hides a secret marked with blood and betrayal, and now their blackmailer is holding nothing back. When King Andros discovers the sisters' traitorous pasts, the consequences will shake the entire kingdom to its core. As Kolonya's greatest threat stalks closer and closer, weaving a web of fear and deceit around Ren, Zofi, and Akeylah, even the people they love are under suspicion. If the sisters are going to survive, they'll have to learn to trust each other above all else and work together, not only to save themselves, but to protect everyone and everything they hold dear. With shocking reveals and suspenseful storytelling, this breathtaking sequel to Rule will keep you guessing until the very last minute.
©2019 Ellen Goodlett (P)2019 Little, Brown Young Readers
Trinidad Noir
Summary
Trinidad Noir reveals the Caribbean island’s darkness and its appeal with an unexpected and gratifying result. Features brand-new stories by Robert Antoni, Elizabeth Nunez, Lawrence Scott, Ramabai Espinet, Shani Mootoo, Kevin Baldeosingh, Vahni Capildeo, Willi Chen, Lisa Allen-Agostini, Keith Jardim, Reena Andrea Manickchand, Tiphanie Yanique, and more.
©2008 Akashic Books (P)2019 Audible, Inc.
Unholy Magic
Summary
For freewheeling ghost hunter Chess Putnam, finding herself near-fatally poisoned by a con psychic and then stopping a murderous ghost is just another day on the job. An agent for the Church of Real Truth, she investigates claims of harassment by the undead. But Chess has been extra busy these days, coping with a new “celebrity” assignment while trying on her own time to help some desperate prostitutes. Someone’s taking out the hookers of Downside in the most gruesome way, and Chess is sure the rumors that it’s the work of a ghost are way off base. But proving herself right means walking in the path of a maniac, not to mention standing between the two men in her life just as they are moving closer to a catastrophic showdown. Someone is dealing in murder, sex, and the supernatural, and once again Chess finds herself right in the crossfire.
©2010 Stacia Kane (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Tropic of Kansas
Summary
Acclaimed short-story writer and editor of the World Fantasy Award nominee Three Messages and a Warning eerily envisions an American society unraveling and our borders closed off - from the other side - in this haunting and provocative novel that combines Max Barry's Jennifer Government, Philip K. Dick's classic Man in the High Castle, and China Mieville's The City & the City. The United States of America is no more. Broken into warring territories, its center has become a wasteland DMZ known as the Tropic of Kansas. Though this gaping geographic hole has no clear boundaries, everyone knows it's out there - that once-bountiful part of the heartland, broken by greed and exploitation, where neglect now breeds unrest. Two travelers appear in this arid American wilderness: Sig, the fugitive orphan of political dissidents, and his foster sister, Tania, a government investigator whose search for Sig leads her into her own past - and towards an unexpected future. Sig promised those he loves that he would make it to the revolutionary redoubt of occupied New Orleans. But first he must survive the wild edgelands of a barren mid-America policed by citizen militias and autonomous drones, where one wrong move can mean capture...or death. One step behind, undercover in the underground, is Tania. Her infiltration of clandestine networks made of old technology and new politics soon transforms her into the hunted one and gives her a shot at being the agent of real change - if she is willing to give up the explosive government secrets she has sworn to protect. As brother and sister traverse these vast and dangerous badlands, their paths will eventually intersect on the front lines of a revolution whose fuse they are about to light.
©2017 Christopher Brown (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Color Me In
Summary
A powerful coming-of-age novel pulled from personal experience about the meaning of friendship, the joyful beginnings of romance, and the racism and religious intolerance that can both strain a family to the breaking point and strengthen its bonds. Growing up in an affluent suburb of New York City, 16-year-old Nevaeh Levitz never thought much about her biracial roots. When her Black mom and Jewish dad split up, she relocates to her mom's family home in Harlem and is forced to confront her identity for the first time. Nevaeh wants to get to know her extended family, but because she inadvertently passes as white, her cousin thinks she's too privileged, pampered, and selfish to relate to the injustices African Americans face on a daily basis. In the meantime, Nevaeh's dad decides that she should have a belated bat mitzvah instead of a sweet 16, which guarantees social humiliation at her posh private school. But rather than take a stand, Nevaeh does what she's always done when life gets complicated: she stays silent. Only when Nevaeh stumbles upon a secret from her mom's past, finds herself falling in love, and sees firsthand the prejudice her family faces that she begins to realize she has her own voice. And choices. Will she continue to let circumstances dictate her path? Or will she decide once for all who and where she is meant to be?
©2019 Natasha Diaz (P)2019 Listening Library
Lot
Summary
One of Barack Obama’s “Favorite Books of the Year” "Phenomenal." (Justin Torres, author of We the Animals) "Brilliant." (Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of Here Comes the Sun) “A profound exploration of the true meaning of borders.” (The New York Times Book Review) Named One of The 10 Best Books of 2019 in the New York Times by Dwight Garner A New York Times Notable Book of 2019 In the city of Houston - a sprawling, diverse microcosm of America - the son of a black mother and a Latino father is coming of age. He's working at his family's restaurant, weathering his brother's blows, resenting his older sister's absence. And discovering he likes boys. Around him, others live and thrive and die in Houston's myriad neighborhoods: a young woman whose affair detonates across an apartment complex, a ragtag baseball team, a group of young hustlers, hurricane survivors, a local drug dealer who takes a Guatemalan teen under his wing, a reluctant chupacabra. Bryan Washington's brilliant, viscerally drawn world vibrates with energy, wit, raw power, and the infinite longing of people searching for home. With soulful insight into what makes a community, a family, and a life, Lot explores trust and love in all its unsparing and unsteady forms.
©2019 Bryan Washington (P)2019 Penguin Audio
The Parking Lot Attendant
Summary
A mesmerizing, indelible coming-of-age audiobook about a girl in Boston's tightly-knit Ethiopian community who falls under the spell of a charismatic hustler out to change the world A haunting story of fatherhood, national identity, and what it means to be an immigrant in America today, Nafkote Tamirat's The Parking Lot Attendant explores how who we love, the choices we make, and the places we’re from combine to make us who we are. The story begins on an undisclosed island where the unnamed narrator and her father are the two newest and least-liked members of a commune that has taken up residence there. Though the commune was built on utopian principles, it quickly becomes clear that life here is not as harmonious as the founders intended. After immersing us in life on the island, our young heroine takes us back to Boston to recount the events that brought her here. Though she and her father belong to a wide Ethiopian network in the city, they mostly keep to themselves, which is how her father prefers it. This detached existence only makes Ayale’s arrival on the scene more intoxicating. The unofficial king of Boston’s Ethiopian community, Ayale is a born hustler - when he turns his attention to the narrator, she feels seen for the first time. Ostensibly a parking lot attendant, Ayale soon proves to have other projects in the works, which the narrator becomes more and more entangled in to her father’s growing dismay. By the time the scope of Ayale’s schemes - and their repercussions - become apparent, our narrator has unwittingly become complicit in something much bigger and darker than she ever imagined.
©2018 Nafkote Tamirat (P)2018 Macmillan Audio
Black Enough
Summary
Edited by National Book Award finalist Ibi Zoboi and featuring some of the most acclaimed best-selling black authors writing for teens today - Black Enough is an essential collection of captivating stories about what it’s like to be young and black in America. A selection of the Schomburg Center's Black Liberation Reading List. Black is...sisters navigating their relationship at summer camp in Portland, Oregon, as written by Renée Watson. Black is...three friends walking back from the community pool talking about nothing and everything, in a story by Jason Reynolds. Black is...Nic Stone’s high-class beauty dating a boy of whom her momma would never approve. Black is...two girls kissing in Justina Ireland’s story set in Maryland. Black is urban and rural, wealthy and poor, mixed race, immigrants, and more - because there are countless ways to be Black enough. Contributors: Justina Ireland Varian Johnson Rita Williams-Garcia Dhonielle Clayton Kekla Magoon Leah Henderson Tochi Onyebuchi Jason Reynolds Nic Stone Liara Tamani Renée Watson Tracey Baptiste Coe Booth Brandy Colbert Jay Coles Ibi Zoboi Lamar Giles
©2019 Ibi Zoboi (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers
The Travelers
Summary
"American history comes to vivid, engaging life in this tale of two interconnected families (one white, one black) that spans from the 1950s to Barack Obama’s first year as president.... The complex, beautifully drawn characters are unique and indelible." (Entertainment Weekly) "An astoundingly audacious debut." (O: The Oprah Magazine) "A gorgeous generational saga." (New York Post) Named one of the Best Books of the Year by Esquire Finalist for The Pen/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel Meet James Samuel Vincent, an affluent Manhattan attorney who shirks his modest Irish-American background but hews to his father’s meandering ways. James muddles through a topsy-turvy relationship with his son, Rufus, which is further complicated when Rufus marries Claudia Christie. Claudia’s mother - Agnes Miller Christie - is a beautiful African-American woman who survives a chance encounter on a Georgia road that propels her into a new life in the Bronx. Soon after, her husband, Eddie Christie, is called to duty on an air craft carrier in Vietnam, where Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead becomes Eddie’s life anchor, as he grapples with mounting racial tensions on the ship and counts the days until he will see Agnes again. These unforgettable characters’ lives intersect with a cast of lovers and friends - the unapologetic black lesbian who finds her groove in 1970s Berlin; a moving man stranded in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, during a Thanksgiving storm; two half-brothers who meet as adults in a crayon factory; and a Coney Island waitress whose Prince Charming is too good to be true. With piercing humor, exacting dialogue, and a beautiful sense of place, Regina Porter’s debut is both an intimate family portrait and a sweeping exploration of what it means to be American today. Praise for The Travelers “[A] kaleidoscopic début...Porter deftly skips back and forth through the decades, sometimes summarizing a life in a few paragraphs, sometimes spending pages on one conversation. As one character observes, ‘We move in circles in this life.’” (The New Yorker) "Porter's electric debut is a sprawling saga that follows two interconnected American families. . . . Readers will certainly be drawn in by Porter’s sharp writing and kept hooked by the black-and-white photographs interspersed throughout the book, which give faces to the evocative voices." (Booklist)
©2019 Regina Porter (P)2019 Random House Audio
The Truth About Grace
Summary
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.
©2018 Cassie Dandridge Selleck (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Red River
Summary
April 13, 1873. What happened that day in the small Southern town of Colfax, Louisiana, was called "the Colfax Riot." But it was something far more devastating.... Weaving together history and the story of her own family, Lalita Tademy, author of the acclaimed New York Times best seller Cane River, has written an epic work of fiction: the dramatic, intertwining story of two families struggling to survive and thrive in an America deeply divided after the Civil War. For the newly freed black residents of Colfax, Louisiana, the beginning of reconstruction promised them the right to vote, own property, and, at last, control their own lives. But in the space of a day, angry whites would take back Colfax in one of the deadliest incidents of racial violence in Southern history. In the bitter aftermath, the Tademys and the Smiths will have to deal with the wreckage, push on, and build a better life for their sons and daughters over the next 70 years. A unique accomplishment, this is history never before told, brought to life through the unforgettable lives of three generations of African American husbands and wives, parents and children. A saga of violence, courage, and, most of all, dreams broken, repaired, and strengthened over time, Red River explores issues that resonate to this day...as it illuminates the sometimes heartbreaking choices we all must make to claim the legacy that is ours.
©2007 Lalita Tademy (P)2007 Books on Tape
Skin Folk
Summary
In Skin Folk, with works ranging from science fiction to Caribbean folklore, passionate love to chilling horror, Nalo Hopkinson is at her award-winning best spinning tales like "Precious", in which the narrator spews valuable coins and gems from her mouth whenever she attempts to talk or sing. In "A Habit of Waste", a self-conscious woman undergoes elective surgery to alter her appearance; days later she's shocked to see her former body climbing onto a public bus. In "The Glass Bottle Trick", the young protagonist ignores her intuition regarding her new husband's superstitions - to horrifying consequences. Hopkinson's unique and vibrant sense of pacing and dialogue sets a steady beat for stories that illustrate why she received the 1999 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Entertaining, challenging, and alluring, Skin Folk is not to be missed. Contains mature themes.
©2001 Nalo Hopkinson (P)2019 Tantor
The Gone Dead
Summary
Billie James' inheritance isn't much: a little money and a shack in the Mississippi Delta. The house once belonged to her father, a renowned black poet who died unexpectedly when Billie was four years old. Though Billie was there when the accident happened, she has no memory of that day - and she hasn't been back to the South since. Thirty years later, Billie returns, but her father's home is unnervingly secluded: Her only neighbors are the McGees, the family whose history has been entangled with hers since the days of slavery. As Billie encounters the locals, she hears a strange rumor: that she herself went missing on the day her father died. As the mystery intensifies, she finds out that this forgotten piece of her past could put her in danger. Inventive, gritty, and openhearted, The Gone Dead is an astonishing debut novel about race, justice, and memory that lays bare the long-concealed wounds of a family and a country.
©2019 Chanelle Benz (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers
Who Put This Song On?
Summary
"Unflinchingly irreverent, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartbreakingly honest." (Elizabeth Acevedo, National Book Award winner and New York Times best-selling author of The Poet X) In the vein of powerful stories like The Hate U Give and The Poet X comes poet Morgan Parker's pitch-perfect novel about a black teenage girl searching for her identity when the world around her views her depression as a lack of faith and blackness as something to be politely ignored. Trapped in sunny, stifling, small-town suburbia, 17-year-old Morgan knows why she's in therapy. She can't count the number of times she's been the only non-white person at the sleepover, been teased for her "weird" outfits, and been told she's not "really" black. Also, she's spent most of her summer crying in bed. So there's that, too. Lately, it feels like the whole world is listening to the same terrible track on repeat - and it's telling them how to feel, who to vote for, what to believe. Morgan wonders, when can she turn this song off and begin living for herself? Loosely based on her own teenage life and diaries, this incredible debut by award-winning poet Morgan Parker will make listeners stand up and cheer for a girl brave enough to live life on her own terms - and for themselves. "Morgan Parker put THIS song on - and I hope it never turns off." (Nic Stone, New York Times best-selling author of Dear Martin and Odd One Out) “A triumphant first impression in the YA space.” (Entertainment Weekly) “An incredibly heartfelt, deep story about a girl's coming of age.” (Refinery29)
©2019 Morgan Parker (P)2019 Listening Library
Black Girl Lost
Summary
In this shocking novel of a young girl alone on the streets, Donald Goines delves into yet another facet of the ghetto experience - the dark, despair-ridden world of a black girl's soul. Sandra took to the streets when she was eight years old and tried to fight off the hunger pangs by shoplifting and moving into the profits of drug pushing. Then she met Chink, and with him she discovered love and affection...as well as rape and murder.
©1973, 2001 Donald Goines (P)2014 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Precious
Summary
For Precious Jones, 16 and pregnant with her father's child, miraculous hope appears and the world begins to open up for her when a courageous, determined teacher bullies, cajoles, and inspires her to learn to read, to define her own feelings and set them down in a diary.
©2009 Sapphire (P)2009 Random House
Unbound
Summary
From the award-winning author of All the Broken Pieces and Serafina's Promise comes a new novel-in-verse that is a gripping, transcendent story about a little-known piece of slave history. Grace has grown up in slavery. As difficult as life on the Virginia plantation is, at least she has her family: Momma; her younger brothers, Thomas and Willy; Aunt Sara; and Uncle Jim. When she overhears Master and Mistress plotting to sell her brothers, she and her family decide to run away that same night. But without time to plan their escape and go north along the Underground Railroad, their only choice is to head deep into the woods of the Dismal Swamp - a remote wilderness filled with wild animals; daily searches for food, water, and shelter; and the ever-present anxiety of being caught. Historians have recently discovered evidence of the Dismal Swamp and a community of slaves who sought refuge there. Ann Burg's unflinching story, written in her signature luminous verse, sheds light on this little-known story and the courage of a people who risked everything for the chance to be free.
©2016 Ann E. Burg (P)2016 Scholastic Inc.
It All Falls Down
Summary
The brilliant, fearless, deeply flawed Nora Watts - introduced in the "utterly compelling" (Jeffery Deaver) atmospheric thriller The Lost Ones - finds deadly trouble as she searches for the truth about her late father in this immersive thriller that moves from the hazy Canadian Pacific Northwest to the gritty, hollowed streets of Detroit. Growing up, Nora Watts only knew one parent - her father. When he killed himself, she denied her grief and carried on with her life. Then a chance encounter with a veteran who knew him raises disturbing questions Nora can’t ignore - and dark emotions she can’t control. To make her peace with the past, she has to confront it. Finding the truth about her father’s life and his violent death takes her from Vancouver to Detroit where Sam Watts grew up, far away from his people and the place of his birth. Thanks to a disastrous government policy starting in the 1950s, thousands of Canadian native children like Sam were adopted by American families. In the Motor City, Nora discovers that the circumstances surrounding Sam’s suicide are more unsettling than she’d imagined. Yet no matter how far away Nora gets from Vancouver, she can’t shake trouble. Back in the Pacific Northwest, former police detective turned private investigator Jon Brazuca is looking into the overdose death of a billionaire’s mistress. His search uncovers a ruthless opiate ring and a startling connection to Nora, the infuriatingly distant woman he’d once tried to befriend. He has no way to warn or protect her, because she’s become a ghost, vanishing completely off the grid. Focused on the mysterious events of her father’s past and the clues they provide to her own fractured identity and that of her estranged daughter, Nora may not be able to see the danger heading her way until it’s too late. But it’s not her father’s old ties that could get her killed - it’s her own.
©2018 Sheena Kamal (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers