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.
Dying for Revenge
Summary
International hit man Gideon never misses his target, but when a job in Detroit goes bad, he should have killed his client - a cold-blooded woman who hired him to kill her husband - when he had the chance. Now the city's mayor and with money and power to spare, this woman will stop at nothing to see that Gideon gets what he deserves.
Gideon soon finds himself in the crosshairs of two hired assassins: a seasoned killer known as El Matador and his voluptuous but ruthless wife, who dons Manolo Blahniks for even the dirtiest jobs. But when Gideon proves himself an impossible target, the lady from Detroit sets her sights on those closest to him.
On the exotic island of Antigua, Gideon enlists the help of his friend and fellow assassin Hawks to square off against his deadliest adversary yet. Amid palm trees and white sands, sparks and bullets fly as Gideon must outsmart and defeat his pursuers before it's too late.
Featuring Dickey's trademark blend of passion and suspense, Dying for Revenge is a pulse-pounding and deliciously sexy thrill-ride through a Caribbean island paradise.
©2008 Eric Jerome Dickey (P)2008 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Clean Getaway
Summary
From number one New York Times best-selling author Nic Stone comes a timely middle-grade road-trip story through landmarks of the Civil Rights movement and the map they lay for contemporary race relations. How to go on an unplanned road trip with your grandma: Grab a suitcase: prepacked from the big spring break trip that got cancelled. Fasten your seatbelt: G'ma's never conventional, so this trip won't be either. Use the green book: G'ma's most treasured possession. It holds history, memories, and most important, the way home. What not to bring: A cell phone: Avoid contact with Dad at all costs. Even when G'ma starts acting stranger than usual. Set against the backdrop of the segregation history of the American South, take a trip with this New York Times best seller and an 11-year-old boy who is about to discover that the world hasn't always been a welcoming place for kids like him, and things aren't always what they seem - his G'ma included. "Truly a delight." (Christopher Paul Curtis, author of Newbery Medal winner Bud, Not Buddy)
©2020 Nic Stone (P)2020 Listening Library
Say You're One of Them
Summary
Each story in this jubilantly acclaimed collection pays testament to the wisdom and resilience of children, even in the face of the most agonizing circumstances. A family living in a makeshift shanty in urban Kenya scurries to find gifts of any kind for the impending Christmas holiday. A Rwandan girl relates her family's struggles to maintain a facade of normalcy amid unspeakable acts. A young brother and sister cope with their uncle's attempt to sell them into slavery. Aboard a bus filled with refugees - a microcosm of today's Africa - a Muslim boy summons his faith to bear a treacherous ride across Nigeria. Through the eyes of childhood friends the emotional toll of religious conflict in Ethiopia becomes viscerally clear. Uwem Akpan's debut signals the arrival of a breathtakingly talented writer who gives a matter-of-fact reality to the most extreme circumstances in stories that are nothing short of transcendent.
©2009 Uwem Akpan (P)2009 Hachette
This Year You Write Your Novel
Summary
No more excuses. "Let the lawn get shaggy and the paint peel from the walls," best-selling novelist Walter Mosley advises. Anyone can write a novel now, and in this essential book of tips, practical advice, and wisdom, Walter Mosley promises that the writer-in-waiting can finish it in one year. Mosley tells how to: Create a daily writing regimen to fit any writer's needs - and how to stick to it. Determine the narrative voice that's right for every writer's style. Get past those first challenging sentences and into the heart of a story. Intended as both inspiration and instruction, This Year You Write Your Novel provides the tools to turn out a first draft painlessly and then revise it into something finer.
©2007 Walter Mosley (P)2019 Hachette Audio
The Crazy Kill
Summary
Outside the apartment where a wake is going on, the manager of the A&P across the street is robbed. Reverend Short, a storefront preacher addicted to opium and brandy, is watching from a bedroom window in the flat. He leans out too far and falls, but a huge bread basket, sitting outside the bakery below, saves him. Back inside, he says he sees a vision of a dead man. Outside, in the very basket Short landed in, lies the body of Valentine Haines. Who murdered Val? It is up to Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson to find out.
©1959 Chester Himes, copyright renewed 1987 by Lesley Himes (P)2011 Audible, Inc.
The Cut
Summary
Spero Lucas has a new line of work. Since he returned home after serving in Iraq, he has been doing special investigations for a defense attorney. He's good at it, and he has carved out a niche: recovering stolen property, no questions asked. His cut is 40 percent. A high-profile crime boss who has heard of Lucas's specialty hires him to find out who has been stealing from his operation. It's the biggest job Lucas has ever been offered, and he quickly gets a sense of what's going on. But before he can close in on what's been taken, he tangles with a world of men whose amorality and violence leave him reeling. Is any cut worth your family, your lover, your life? Spero Lucas is George Pelecanos's greatest creation, a young man making his place in the world one battle and one mission at a time. The first in a new series of thrillers featuring Spero Lucas, The Cut is the latest confirmation of why George Pelecanos is "perhaps America's greatest living crime writer" (Stephen King).
©2011 George Pelecanos (P)2011 Hachette
Divided Soul
Summary
In this intimate biography of the Prince of Soul, David Ritz provides a candid look at a star and a friend. Ritz had been collaborating with Marvin Gaye on his story for several years before the singer's tragic death and had conducted a series of extraordinary interviews in which Gaye discussed his deepest secrets. What emerges is a full-scale portrait of a charming but tortured artist, a brilliant singer with a divided soul. Here is Marvin's story, from his early years in the slums of Washington, D.C. to his rise to the top of the Motown industry, his fall from grace, his comeback, and finally his sudden, shocking end at the hands of his own father. It is also the story of his glorious music and the music of Black America over the past 50 years, an epic tale whose cast of characters includes Diana Ross, Berry Gordie, Smokey Robinson, and Stevie Wonder.
©1991 David Ritz (P)1995 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Flying Lessons & Other Stories
Summary
Whether it is basketball dreams, family fiascos, first crushes, or new neighborhoods, this bold anthology - written by the best children's authors - celebrates the uniqueness and universality in all of us. In a partnership with We Need Diverse Books, industry giants Kwame Alexander, Soman Chainani, Matt de la Peña, Tim Federle, Grace Lin, Meg Medina, Walter Dean Myers, Tim Tingle, and Jacqueline Woodson join newcomer Kelly J. Baptist in a story collection that is as humorous as it is heartfelt. This impressive group of authors has earned among them every major award in children's publishing and popularity as New York Times best sellers. From these distinguished authors comes 10 distinct and vibrant stories. Table of contents and cast of narrators: "Foreword", written and read by Ellen Oh "How to Transform an Everyday Hoop Court into a Place of Higher Learning and You at the Podium" by Matt de la Peña, read by Dion Graham "The Difficult Path" by Grace Lin, read by Samantha Quan "Sol Painting, Inc.", written and read by Meg Medina "Secret Samantha" by Tim Federle, read by Julia Whelan "The Beans and Rice Chronicles of Isaiah Dunn" by Kelly J. Baptist, read by Adam Lazarre-White "Choctaw Bigfoot, Midnight in the Mountains", written and read by Tim Tingle "Main Street" by Jacqueline Woodson, read by Abigail Revasch "Flying Lessons" by Soman Chainani, read by Sunil Malhotra "Seventy-Six Dollars and Forty-Nine Cents", written and read by Kwame Alexander "Sometimes a Dream Needs a Push" by Walter Dean Myers, read by Dominic Hoffman "About We Need Diverse Books", read by Ellen Oh
©2016 Ellen Oh (P)2016 Listening Library
We Own This City
Summary
The astonishing true story of "one of the most startling police corruption scandals in a generation" (The New York Times), from the Pulitzer Prize-nominated reporter who exposed a gang of criminal cops and their years-long plunder of an American city. "A work of journalism that not only chronicles the rise and fall of a corrupt police unit but can stand as the inevitable coda to the half-century of disaster that is the American drug war." (David Simon, author of Homicide, coauthor of The Corner, and creator of The Wire) Baltimore, 2015. Riots are erupting across the city as citizens demand justice for Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man who has died under suspicious circumstances while in police custody. Drug and violent crime are surging, and Baltimore will reach its highest murder count in more than two decades: 342 homicides in a single year, in a city of just 600,000 people. Facing pressure from the mayor’s office - as well as a federal investigation of the department over Gray’s death - Baltimore police commanders turn to a rank-and-file hero, Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, and his elite plainclothes unit, the Gun Trace Task Force, to help get guns and drugs off the street. But behind these new efforts, a criminal conspiracy of unprecedented scale was unfolding within the police department. Entrusted with fixing the city’s drug and gun crisis, Jenkins chose to exploit it instead. With other members of the empowered Gun Trace Task Force, Jenkins stole from Baltimore’s citizens - skimming from drug busts, pocketing thousands in cash found in private homes, and planting fake evidence to throw Internal Affairs off their scent. Their brazen crime spree would go unchecked for years. The result was countless wrongful convictions, the death of an innocent civilian, and the mysterious death of one cop who was shot in the head, killed just a day before he was scheduled to testify against the unit. In this urgent book, award-winning investigative journalist Justin Fenton distills hundreds of interviews, thousands of court documents, and countless hours of video footage to present the definitive account of the entire scandal. The result is an astounding, riveting feat of reportage about a rogue police unit, the city they held hostage, and the ongoing struggle between American law enforcement and the communities they are charged to serve.
©2021 Justin Fenton (P)2021 Random House Audio
Furious Cool
Summary
Audie Award, Non-Fiction, 2015 Richard Pryor was arguably the single most influential performer of the second half of the twentieth century, and certainly he was the most successful black actor/comedian ever. Controversial and somewhat enigmatic in his lifetime, Pryor's performances opened up a new world of possibilities, merging fantasy with angry reality in a way that wasn't just new - it was heretofore unthinkable. His childhood in Peoria, Illinois, was spent just trying to survive. Yet the culture into which Richard Pryor was born - his mother was a prostitute; his grandmother ran the whorehouse - helped him evolve into one of the most innovative and outspoken performers ever, a man who attracted admiration and anger in equal parts. Both a brilliant comedian and a very astute judge of what he could get away with, Pryor was always pushing the envelope, combining anger and pathos, outrage and humor, into an art form, laying the groundwork for the generations of comedians who followed, including such outstanding performers as Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, and Louis C.K. Now, in this groundbreaking and revelatory work, David and Joe Henry bring him to life both as a man and as an artist, providing an in-depth appreciation of his talent and his lasting influence, as well as an insightful examination of the world he lived in and the influences that shaped both his persona and his art.
©2013 David Henry and Joe Henry (P)2013 Tantor
The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
Summary
Ethiopian émigré Dinaw Mengestu is a skilled observer of people who offers a colorful debut work of fiction. Insightful and swiftly paced, this novel evokes past and present in the course of its compelling narrative. It's the `70s, and one D.C. neighborhood is undergoing big changes. In the mix is Ethiopian grocery owner Sepha Stephanos - a man with a complex past who fled his homeland after seeing his father brutalized by themilitary. He hopes for new prospects in D.C.'s gentrification process, but his store is struggling. Next door to his apartment building lives Judith, a successful white woman working to renovate her house. As Sepha bonds with Judith and her biracial, 11-year-old daughter Naomi, he is inevitably subject to the mounting pressures of race and class that are in flux around them.
©2007 Dinaw Mengestu (P)2008 Recorded Books
Coming Through Slaughter
Summary
Many readers still claim this haunting, atmospheric novel of Michael Ondaatje's as their first love - a novel as sensual and erotic today as ever it was.
At the turn of the century, the Storyville district of New Orleans had some 2000 prostitutes, 70 professional gamblers, and 30 piano players. But it had only one man who played the cornet like Buddy Bolden - he who cut hair by day at N. Joseph's Shaving Parlor, and at night played jazz, unleashing an unforgettable wildness and passion in crowded rooms. Self-destructively in love with two women, he embodied all the dire claims that music places on its acolytes. At the age of 31, Buddy Bolden went mad. From these sparse facts, Michael Ondaatje has created a story as beautiful and chilling as a New Orleans funeral procession, where even the mourners dance.
"Coming Through Slaughter...is so stuffed full of the dolour and lust that both buoys and blemishes a life, it reads like a story dying to be told." (Books in Canada)
©1976 Michael Ondaatje (P)2020 Knopf Canada
Cracking the Curiosity Code
Summary
In Dr. Diane Hamilton’s provocative new book, she uncovers what could foreseeably be the next movement to enhance human performance, a critical and direct link to improving motivation and communication-based issues that challenge organizations. Drawing on decades of research and incorporating interviews from some of the top leaders of our time, Hamilton examines the factors that influence curiosity including fear, assumptions, technology, and environment (FATE). Her ground-breaking research provides an action plan to transform individuals and organizations. The organization that can stimulate its workers' curiosity can enhance employee engagement, emotional intelligence, innovation, productivity, and the many other by-products that come with that intrinsic, but under-utilized attribute. By developing curiosity and the ability to communicate without fear of repercussions, second-guessing, or judgmental responses, employees can be better aligned and emotionally committed to their jobs, which in turn, can lead to improved productivity. Foreword by former Chairman and CEO of DocuSign, Keith Krach. Dr. Diane Hamilton is a nationally syndicated radio show host, consultant, and speaker. She writes and speaks on business, leadership, curiosity, emotional intelligence, personality assessment, career, and education. She is the author of multiple books including It’s Not You It’s Your Personality.
©2019 Diane Hamilton (P)2019 Diane Hamilton
How to Escape from a Leper Colony
Summary
Like Gabriel García Márquez, Edwidge Danticat, and Maryse Condé before her, Tiphanie Yanique has crafted a debut collection that is heartbreaking, hilarious, and mesmerizing. Set mostly in the U.S. Virgin Islands, these lyrical and haunting stories are part oral history, part postcolonial narrative - but ultimately a loving portrait of a wholly unique place.
©2010 Tiphanie Yanique (P)2011 Recorded Books, LLC
Alone Together
Summary
Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort During the Time of COVID-19 is a collection of essays, poems, and interviews to serve as a lifeline for negotiating how to connect and thrive during this stressful time of isolation as well as a historical perspective that will remain relevant for years to come. Ms. Haupt rallied a diverse roster of more than 90 authors to contribute their work to Alone Together, free of charge, including Kwame Alexander, Jenna Blum, Andre Dubus III, Jamie Ford, Nikki Giovanni, Pam Houston, Jean Kwok, Major Jackson, Caroline Leavitt, Ada Limón, Dani Shapiro, David Sheff, Garth Stein, Luis Alberto Urrea, Steve Yarbrough, and Lidia Yuknavitch. Alone Together is divided into five sections: What Now?, Grieve, Comfort, Connect, and Don't Stop. The overarching theme is how this age of isolation and uncertainty holds the possibility of changing us as individuals and a society. Narrated by a full cast, including Edoardo Ballerini, January LaVoy, Dion Graham, Julia Whelan, Adenrele Ojo, Emily Woo Zeller, Thérèse Plummer, Ron Butler, Adjoa Andoh, Christian Barillas, Almarie Guerra, Cynthia Farrell, and Dawn Harvey.
©2020 Podium Audio (P)2020 Podium Audio
Twenty-Seven Bones
Summary
The brilliant author of Fear Itself pulls readers into an intricate web of ritual killings orchestrated by an evil pair of murderers who always manage to be one step ahead of the law. Former FBI Special Agent E.L. Pender may be retired, but he jumps at the chance to help solve a particularly gruesome series of crimes in the U.S. Virgin Islands. This is no ordinary case, seeing as the right hand on each body in the string of murders is missing. The police want to keep the existence of a serial killer under wraps; they hope to solve the crime before a stampede sets in. Meanwhile, Pender is convinced the killer must be the husband of the last victim and sets out to capture him, but he's only partly right. The husband is connected to the case, but the real murderers are a cunning husband-and-wife team of archeologists who believe that if they breathe in their victim's last breath they will live forever. Never before has Pender come up against such savvy, diabolical opponents. From one trail of dead ends to another, readers will feel Pender's fever to prevent more murders from occurring, and his sheer panic when he can't. Twenty-Seven Bones is that most quintessential of thrilling reads, always providing a visceral experience of chills and excitement.
©2004 Jonathan Nasaw (P)2004 Recorded Books
All Shot Up
Summary
A golden Cadillac big enough to cross the ocean has been seen sailing along the streets of Harlem. A hit-and-run victim's been hit so hard she got embedded in the wall of a convent. A shootout with three heistmen dressed as cops has left an important politician in a coma - and a lot of money missing. And Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson are the ones who have to piece it all together. All Shot Up is chaotic, bloody - and completely unforgettable. Chester Himes wrote detective fiction darker, dirtier, and more extreme than anyone else dared.
©1960 Chester Himes (P)2011 Audible, Inc.
Peace, Locomotion
Summary
Twelve-year-old Lonnie is finally feeling at home with his foster family. But because he's living apart from his little sister, Lili, he decides it's his job to be the "rememberer" - and write down everything that happens while they're growing up. Lonnie's reflections in his letters to Lili are bittersweet. He's happy that they both have good foster families, but while his new family brings him joy, it also brings new worries: With a foster brother in the army, concepts like peace have new meaning for Lonnie. Told through letters from Lonnie to Lili, this thought-provoking companion to Jacqueline Woodson's National Book Award finalist Locomotion tackles important issues in captivating, lyrical language. Lonnie's reflections on family, loss, love, and peace will strike a note with listeners of all ages.
©2009 Jacqueline Woodson (P)2009 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
The Big Gold Dream
Summary
After arriving on the American literary scene with novels of scathing social protest like If He Hollers Let Him Go and The Lonely Crusade, Chester Himes created a pioneering pair of dangerously effective African-American sleuths: Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, Harlem's toughest detective duo, who must carry the day against an absurdist world of racism and class warfare. The Big Gold Dream is the explosive and shocking hardboiled classic that explores the shadowy underbelly of New York as a urban civil war erupts on the side streets of Harlem, pitting murderers and prostitutes against corrupt politicians and racist white detectives. Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson attempt to maintain some kind of order - in the neighborhood they have sworn to protect - in a world gone mad around them.
©1960, 1996 Chester Himes (P)2011 Audible, Inc.
Dark Sky Rising
Summary
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. presents a journey through America's past and our nation's attempts at renewal in this look at the Civil War's conclusion, Reconstruction, and the rise of Jim Crow segregation. This is a story about America during and after Reconstruction, one of history's most pivotal and misunderstood chapters. In a stirring account of emancipation, the struggle for citizenship and national reunion, and the advent of racial segregation, the renowned Harvard scholar delivers a book that is illuminating and timely. Real-life accounts drive the narrative, spanning the half century between the Civil War and Birth of a Nation. Here, you will come face-to-face with the people and events of Reconstruction's noble democratic experiment, its tragic undermining, and the drawing of a new "color line" in the long Jim Crow era that followed. In introducing young listeners to them, and to the resiliency of the African American people at times of progress and betrayal, Professor Gates shares a history that remains vitally relevant today.
©2019 Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (P)2019 Scholastic Inc.