Dion Graham has narrated 146 audiobooks on Listento.it by 149 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 2,171 ratings. The most-rated is Washington Black.
There Are No Children Here
Summary
This New York Public Library selection, as one of the 150 most important books of the 20th century, is a true-life portrait of growing up in the Chicago projects. This national best-seller chronicles the true story of two brothers coming of age in the Henry Horner public housing complex in Chicago. Lafeyette and Pharoah Rivers are 11 and nine years old when the story begins in the summer of 1987. Living with their mother and six siblings, they struggle against grinding poverty, gun violence, gang influences, overzealous police officers, and overburdened and neglectful bureaucracies. Immersed in their lives for two years, Kotlowitz brings us this classic rendering of growing up poor in America’s cities.
©1991 Alex Kotlowitz (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Shaq Uncut
Summary
Superman. Diesel. The Big Aristotle. Shaq Fu. The Big Daddy. The Big Shaqtus. Wilt Chamberneezy. The Real Deal. The Big Shamrock. Shaq. You know him by any number of names, and chances are you know all about his legendary basketball career: Shaquille "Shaq" O'Neal is a four-time NBA champion and a three-time NBA Finals MVP. After being an All-American at Louisiana State University, he was the overall number one draft pick in the NBA in 1992. In his 19-year career, Shaq racked up 28,596 career points (including 5,935 free throws!), 13,099 rebounds, 3,026 assists, 2,732 blocks, and 15 All-Star appearances. These are statistics that are almost as massive as the man himself. His presence - both physically and psychologically - made him a dominant force in the game for two decades. But if you follow the game, you also know that there's a lot more to Shaquille O'Neal than just basketball. Shaq is famous for his playful, and at times, provocative personality. He is, literally, outsize in both scale and persona. Whether rapping on any of his five albums, challenging celebrities on his hit television show Shaq Vs., studying for his PhD or serving as a reserve police officer, there's no question that Shaq has led a unique and multi-dimensional life. And in this rollicking new autobiography, Shaq discusses his remarkable journey, including his candid thoughts on teammates and coaches like Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, Phil Jackson, and Pat Riley. From growing up in difficult circumstances and getting cut from his high school basketball team to his larger-than-life basketball career, Shaq lays it all out in Shaq Uncut: My Story.
©2011 Shaquille O'Neal (P)2011 Hachette
The Laws of Our Fathers
Summary
In Kindle County, a woman is killed in an apparent random drive-by shooting. The woman turns out to be the ex-wife of a prominent state senator and an old acquaintance of Judge Sonia Klonsky, on whose desk the case lands. As the pursuit of justice takes bizarre and unusual turns, Judge Klonsky is brought face-to-face with a host of extraordinary personalities and formidable enemies bent on her destruction.
©2010 Scott Turow (P)2010 Hachette
Finding Gideon
Summary
A professional job turns personal for jet-setting contract killer Gideon in this sexy, thrilling pause resister by New York Times best-selling author Eric Jerome Dickey. As a hit man from the time he was very young, money, women, and danger have always ruled Gideon's life; but for the first time, the job is taking its toll. Neither Gideon nor the city of Buenos Aires has recovered from the mayhem caused during Gideon's last job. But before the dust has settled and the bodies have been buried, Gideon calls in backup - including the lovely Hawks, with whom Gideon has heated memories - to launch his biggest act of revenge yet...one he believes will destroy his adversary, Midnight, once and for all. Yet Midnight and his second-in-command, the beautiful and ruthless Señorita Raven, are launching their own revenge, assembling a team of mercenaries the likes of which the world has never seen...and Gideon isn't their only target. Gideon will need all of his skills if he is to save not only his team but his family as well. Dickey's new novel stirs up a whirlwind of sex and violence that spans the globe...and leaves no moral boundary uncrossed.
©2017 Eric Jerome Dickey (P)2017 Random House Audio
Daredevil
Summary
An arsonist's twisted handiwork claims hundreds of lives in the roughest neighborhood in New York - Daredevil's turf. Daredevil digs up the root of the problem and comes up with a ruthless crime boss bent on brutally wrestling control of New York's underworld from the corrupt clutches of the Kingpin of Crime. The new crime boss' enforcer? The bloodthirsty Bullseye, master assassin with a pathological enmity for Daredevil. Bullseye takes to his work with deadly efficiency, killing his way toward the Man Without Fear. Daredevil is forced to ask for help from the Kingpin - his deadliest foe - before Bullseye's fatal obsession and an explosive gang war destroy the city he's sworn to protect.
©2019 Marvel (P)2019 Marvel
We Cast a Shadow
Summary
"An incisive and necessary" (Roxane Gay) debut for fans of Get Out and Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, about a father’s obsessive quest to protect his son - even if it means turning him white "Stunning and audacious...at once a pitch-black comedy, a chilling horror story and an endlessly perceptive novel about the possible future of race in America." (NPR) Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Pen/Open Book Award, and the Pen/Faulkner Award • Named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR and The Washington Post "You can be beautiful, even more beautiful than before." This is the seductive promise of Dr. Nzinga’s clinic, where anyone can get their lips thinned, their skin bleached, and their nose narrowed. A complete demelanization will liberate you from the confines of being born in a Black body - if you can afford it. In this near-future Southern city plagued by fenced-in ghettos and police violence, more and more residents are turning to this experimental medical procedure. Like any father, our narrator just wants the best for his son, Nigel, a biracial boy whose black birthmark is getting bigger by the day. The darker Nigel becomes, the more frightened his father feels. But how far will he go to protect his son? And will he destroy his family in the process? This electrifying, hallucinatory novel is at once a keen satire of surviving racism in America and a profoundly moving family story. At its center is a father who just wants his son to thrive in a broken world. Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s work evokes the clear vision of Ralph Ellison, the dizzying menace of Franz Kafka, and the crackling prose of Vladimir Nabokov. We Cast a Shadow fearlessly shines a light on the violence we inherit, and on the desperate things we do for the ones we love.
©2019 Maurice Carlos Ruffin (P)2019 Random House Audio
Cotton Comes to Harlem
Summary
Black flim-flam man Deke O'Hara is no sooner out of Atlanta's state penitentiary than he's back on the streets, working the scam of a lifetime. As sponsor of the Back-to-Africa movement, he's counting on the big Harlem rally to produce a big collection - for his own private charity. But the take ($87,000) is hijacked by white gunmen and hidden in a bale of cotton that suddenly everyone wants to get his hands on. With Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones on everyone's trail and piecing together the complexity of the scheme, Cotton Comes to Harlem (made into a film in 1970) is one of Himes's hardest-hitting and most entertaining thrillers.
©1965 Chester Himes; copyright renewed 1993 by Lesley Himes (P)2011 Audible, Inc.
Sleeping with Strangers
Summary
A powerful hit man, Gideon is the master of the game in a jet-setting world dominated by money, women, and violence. Living off the grid, making love on the run, he makes his living as a contract killer by enacting the revenge of the brokenhearted...for a price.
One woman taught him to kill, another motivates him to succeed in the business of revenge. If he can amass a million dollars, the woman he desires has promised to run away with him.
For her sake, Gideon takes a high-profile job that earns him dangerous enemies, and hops a plane to London hoping to escape the aftermath. On the plane he meets two mysterious women - have they been sent to bring him down? Have his past transgressions caught up with him at last? Or will one of these strangers help him choose a life of love over a life of violence?
In this underworld of grifters and killers, brokenhearted squares and streetwalkers, loyal fans will spot some familiar faces from Dickey's previous books. A thrilling ride through extremes of love and danger, Sleeping with Strangers thrives on the darker passions of revenge and desire.
©2007 Eric Jerome Dickey (P)2007 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
The Corner
Summary
The crime-infested intersection of West Fayette and Monroe Streets is well-known - and cautiously avoided - by most of Baltimore. But this notorious corner's 24-hour open-air drug market provides the economic fuel for a dying neighborhood. David Simon, an award-winning author and crime reporter, and Edward Burns, a 20-year veteran of the urban drug war, tell the chilling story of this desolate crossroad. Through the eyes of one broken family - two drug-addicted adults and their smart, vulnerable 15-year-old son, DeAndre McCollough, Simon and Burns examine the sinister realities of inner cities across the country and unflinchingly assess why law-enforcement policies, moral crusades, and the welfare system have accomplished so little. This extraordinary book is a crucial look at the price of the drug culture and the poignant scenes of hope, caring, and love that astonishingly rise in the midst of a place America has abandoned.
©1998 David Simon and Edward Burns (P)2020 Random House Audio
Going to Meet the Man
Summary
"There's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it." The men and women in these eight short fictions grasp this truth on an elemental level, and their stories, as told by James Baldwin, detail the ingenious and often desperate ways in which they try to keep their heads above water. It may be the heroin that a down-and-out jazz pianist uses to face the terror of pouring his life into an inanimate instrument. It may be the brittle piety of a father who can never forgive his son for his illegitimacy. Or it may be the screen of bigotry that a redneck deputy has raised to blunt the awful childhood memory of the day his parents took him to watch a black man being murdered by a gleeful mob.
©1957, 1958, 1960, 1965 James Baldwin (P)2012 AudioGO
Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site
Summary
Down in the big construction site, tough trucks work with all their might. But now it's time to say goodnight! Little truck drivers will drift off to sleep to this soothing good-bye to the day.
©2011 Chronicle (P)2012 Weston Woods
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
Cross Country
Summary
When the home of Alex Cross's oldest friend, Ellie Cox, is turned into the worst murder scene Alex has ever seen, the destruction leads him to believe that he's chasing a horrible new breed of killer. As Alex and his girlfriend, Brianna Stone, become entangled in the deadly Nigerian underworld of Washington D.C., what they discover is shocking: a stunningly organized gang of lethal teenagers headed by a powerful, diabolical man--the African warlord known as the Tiger. Just when the detectives think they're closing in on the elusive murderer, the Tiger disappears into thin air. Tracking him to Africa, Alex knows that he must follow. Alone.
©2008 James Patterson (P)2008 Hachette Audio
The Devil Finds Work
Summary
Baldwin's personal reflections on movies gathered here in a book-length essay are also a probing appraisal of American racial politics. Offering an incisive look at racism in American movies and a vision of America's self-delusions and deceptions, Baldwin challenges the underlying assumptions in such films as In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and The Exorcist. Here are our loves and hates, biases and cruelties, fears and ignorance reflected by the films that have entertained us and shaped our consciousness. And here too is the stunning prose of a writer whose passion never diminished his struggle for equality, justice, and social change.
©1976 James Baldwin (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
They Said This Day Would Never Come
Summary
The thrilling, unlikely story of Barack Obama's first presidential campaign, as told by the volunteers and staff who propelled the longshot candidate to the presidency 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 every minute of their time, intelligence, and resources to help elect Barack Obama, as what started in the midwest spread nationwide. Drawn from more than 200 interviews with alumni including David Axelrod, David Plouffe, Alyssa Mastromonaco, Dan Pfeiffer, Valerie Jarrett, Josh Earnest, Tommy Vietor, Jon Favreau, and President Obama himself, They Said This Day Would Never Come takes listeners deep inside the most inspirational presidential campaign in recent history. This audiobook is voiced by the following contributors: The Author, Chris Liddell-Westefeld, Ally Coll, Alyssa Mastromonaco, Anne Filipic, Annick Febrey, Ava Hinds Lawson, Barack Obama, Bess Evans, Brynne Craig, Carianna Suiter, Chelsea Kammerer, Chris Wyant, Cody Keenan, Dan Pfeiffer, David Axelrod, David Plouffe, Danielle Crutchfield, Dean Fluker, Elizabeth Wilkins, Emily Parcell, Esther Morales, Francis Iacobucci, Graham Wilson, Greg Degen, Howli Ledbetter, Jackie Bray, Jamal Pope, James Schuelke, Janice Rottenberg, Jason Waskey, Jeremy Bird, Joe Cupka, Joe Paulsen, Jon Carson, Jon Favreau, Josh Earnest, Kal Penn, Katherine Onyshko, Kristin Avery, Lauren Champaign, Lauren Kidwell, Maggie Thompson, MaryGrace Galston, Megan Simpson, Meghan Goldenstein, Michael Blake, Michael Halle, Mitch Stewart, Nicole Young, Patricia King, Paul Tewes, Paulette Aniskoff, Pete Rouse, Rachel Haltom-Irwin, Shannon Valley, Stephanie Speirs, Steve Dunwoody, Tom Zimmerman, Tommy Vietor, Tony Rediger, Tripp Wellde, Tyler Lechtenberg, Valerie Jarrett, Victoria McCullough, Yohannes Abraham
©2020 Chris Liddell-Westefeld (P)2020 PublicAffairs
They Called Themselves the KKK
Summary
YALSA Nonfiction Finalist, 2011 A thoroughly-documented, chilling history of one of the world’s most recognizable extremist groups, this is the true story of terrorism in America. “Boys, let us get up a club.” With these chilling words, six restless young men raided the linens at a friend’s mansion, pulled pillowcases over their heads, hopped on horses, and cavorted through the streets of Pulaski, Tennessee. They called their new club the Ku Klux Klan, and it quickly grew into the self-proclaimed Invisible Empire, with secret dens spreading across the South. Award-winning author Susan Campbell Bartoletti weaves together vivid personal accounts from oral histories, congressional documents, and diaries in this enlightening, surprising, and disquieting story, which has received a slew of starred reviews from Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, Booklist, and other esteemed publications. Her extensive research places the length of the Klan’s history into a larger context that sheds new light on the roots of hate groups. When you purchase They Called Themselves the KKK, you’ll get exclusive bonus audio from a conversation with the author and Audie Award-winning narrator Dion Graham.
©2010 Susan Campbell Bartoletti (P)2010 Audible, Inc.
Homeland
Summary
Homeland is the remarkable memoir of George Obama, the youngest son of the Obama clan and President Obama's Kenyan half-brother. The father that the brothers shared was as elusive a figure for George as he had been for Barack Obama; he died when George was six months old and George was raised by his mother and stepfather. But after his mother and stepfather separated, he drifted into gangs and petty crime. Arrested for robbery, restless, willful, and troubled, he lost himself in Nairobi's vast Mathare ghetto. After being framed for an armed robbery he did not commit and spending time in jail, he represented himself at trial and won the case. Vowing to turn his life around, he finished his education and set up the George Hussein Obama Homeland Foundation to help street kids overcome the miseries surrounding them. George Obama's story describes his unique struggles with family, tribe, inheritance, and redemption and the seminal influence his brother had on his own future.
©2010 George Obama (P)2010 Blackstone Publishing & Urban Audiobooks
Married Men
Summary
Carl Weber is a recipient of the Blackboard Bookseller of the Year Award. Married Men is a fresh and funny take on modern love that has been described as Waiting to Exhale on testosterone. Lifelong friends Kyle, Allen, Wil, and Jay all make mistakes in their marriages-and all get kicked to the curb by their wives. What follows is a wild ride with stops in sleazy hotels, divorce court, and even jail. In their adventure, fueled by Viagra and lovely young ladies, the four men always have each other to lean on. The complete list of narrators includes Myra Lucretia Taylor, Pat Floyd, Peter Jay Fernandez, J. D. Jackson, and Robin Miles.
©2001 Carl Weber (P)2002 Recorded Books,LLC
Waking with Enemies
Summary
New York Times best-selling author Eric Jerome Dickey sizzles in this rapid-fire sequel to Sleeping with Strangers, which finds international hit man Gideon waking up with his past haunting him and danger knocking at his door.
After a heated encounter inside a London hotel room - where he was pursued by three very different women - Gideon finds himself living in a world where there's no one to trust.
Someone has taken out a hit on the hit man - but who? Could it be the man he left alive in Tampa, the woman who taught him to kill, the scorned woman he still desires, or some other unseen enemy?
The clock is ticking as Gideon struggles to find out who from his past may have ordered the hit, while attempting to outsmart the assassin who was sent to kill him - a cold-blooded killer who isn't afraid to harm any woman involved with Gideon and is determined to make his reputation off Gideon's death.
As the hunter becomes the hunted, Gideon's hedonistic lifestyle turns into a deadly game of cat and mouse. He will need to find his friends - and also depend on his enemies - to get out of the game alive.
©2007 Eric Jerome Dickey (P)2007 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved. Recorded by arrangement with Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Romance in Marseille
Summary
The pioneering novel of physical disability, transatlantic travel, and black international politics. A vital document of black modernism and one of the earliest overtly queer fictions in the African American tradition. Published for the first time Buried in the archive for almost 90 years, Claude McKay's Romance in Marseille traces the adventures of a rowdy troupe of dockworkers, prostitutes, and political organizers - collectively straight and queer, disabled and able-bodied, African, European, Caribbean, and American. Set largely in the culture-blending Vieux Port of Marseille at the height of the Jazz Age, the novel takes flight along with Lafala, an acutely disabled but abruptly wealthy West African sailor. While stowing away on a transatlantic freighter, Lafala is discovered and locked in a frigid closet. Badly frostbitten by the time the boat docks, the once-nimble dancer loses both of his lower legs, emerging from life-saving surgery as what he terms "an amputated man." Thanks to an improbably successful lawsuit against the shipping line, however, Lafala scores big in the litigious United States. Feeling flush after his legal payout, Lafala doubles back to Marseille and resumes his trans-African affair with Aslima, a Moroccan courtesan. With its scenes of black bodies fighting for pleasure and liberty even when stolen, shipped, and sold for parts, McKay's novel explores the heritage of slavery amid an unforgiving modern economy. This first-ever edition of Romance in Marseille includes an introduction by McKay scholars Gary Edward Holcomb and William J. Maxwell that places the novel within both the "stowaway era" of black cultural politics and McKay's challenging career as a star and skeptic of the Harlem Renaissance.
©2020 The Literary Estate for the Works of Claude McKay (P)2020 Recorded Books