Myra Lucretia Taylor has narrated 35 audiobooks on Listento.it by 32 authors, with an average listener rating of 3.8★ across 18 ratings. The most-rated is The Revisioners.
Copper Sun
Summary
Fifteen-year-old Amari witnesses the murder of her family and the destruction of her remote African village. She endures countless humiliations as she is beaten, branded, and forced to board a slave ship. The atrocities continue as she struggles through endless days of backbreaking work and daily degradation on a plantation. Somehow, through it all, Amari's hopes and dreams survive, because there are moments of kindness from an indentured white girl, Polly, and the gentle wife of the plantation owner. Amari and Polly find that by working together, freedom could be possible. In this well-researched novel, award-winning author and educator Sharon M. Draper successfully embarks upon historical fiction to explore plantation life.
©2006 Sharon M. Draper (P)2006 Recorded Books, LLC
The Revisioners
Summary
Following her National Book Award-nominated debut novel, A Kind of Freedom, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton returns with this equally elegant and historically inspired story of survivors and healers, of black women and their black sons, set in the American South. In 1925, Josephine is the proud owner of a thriving farm. As a child, she channeled otherworldly power to free herself from slavery. Now, her new neighbor, a white woman named Charlotte, seeks her company, and an uneasy friendship grows between them. But Charlotte has also sought solace in the Ku Klux Klan, a relationship that jeopardizes Josephine's family. Nearly 100 years later, Josephine's descendant, Ava, is a single mother who has just lost her job. She moves in with her white grandmother, Martha, a wealthy but lonely woman who pays her grandchild to be her companion. But Martha's behavior soon becomes erratic, then even threatening, and Ava must escape before her story and Josephine's converge. The Revisioners explores the depths of women's relationships: powerful women and marginalized women, healers and survivors. It is a novel about the bonds between a mother and a child, and the dangers that upend those bonds. At its core, The Revisioners ponders generational legacies, the endurance of hope, and the undying promise of freedom.
©2019 Margaret Wilkerson Sexton (P)2019 Blackstone Publishing
Things I Wish I Knew Before My Mom Died
Summary
The grieving process: Ty Alexander of Gorgeous in Grey is one of the top bloggers today. She has a tremendous personal connection with her listeners. This is never more apparent than when she speaks about her mother. The pain of loss is universal. Yet, we all grieve differently. For Alexander, the grieving process is one that she lives with day-to-day. Learning from her pain, Alexander connects with her listeners on a deeply emotional level in her debut audiobook Things I Wish I Knew before My Mom Died: Coping with Loss Every Day. From grief counseling to sharing insightful true stories, Alexander offers comfort, reassurance, and hope in the face of sorrow. Coping with loss: In her early 20s reality smacked Ty in the face. She was ill-equipped to deal with the emotional and intellectual rollercoaster of dealing with her mom's illness. Through her own trial and error, she found a way to be a caregiver, patient advocate, researcher, and a grieving daughter. She wrote Things I Wish I Knew before My Mom Died: Coping with Loss Every Day to help others find the "best" way to cope and move on; however, one personally decides what that means. Mourning and remembrance: In the chapters of this soul-touching audiobook, mourners will find meaning and wisdom in grieving and the love that will always remain. Each chapter is a study and lesson in coping with loss: Chapter 1: We've been duped, everyone dies! Chapter 2: When fragmented families grieve Chapter 3: The art of losing Chapter 4: The how of grieving Chapter 5: How to be obsessively grateful Chapter 6: Things every mother should tell her daughter Chapter 7: Dear Mommy
©2018 Ty Alexander (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Prisoner's Wife
Summary
In her senior year of college, asha bandele and a group of other writers went to a prison to read their works for a Black History Month program. There, she met Rashid, a man who was serving 20 to life for murder, a man who spoke softly and wisely, a man who would become asha’s soul mate. This is her account of a relationship that has thrived despite terrific odds.
©1999 Asha Bandele (P)2004 Recorded Books, LLC
The Preacher's Son
Summary
Carl Weber is an Essence® best-selling author and recipient of the African-American Bookseller of the Year Award. His stories are intoxicating dramas with smart, sexy characters. The Preacher's Son captivates with all the intensity expected of a Weber novel. Bishop T.K. Wilson is a pillar of the community, pastor of the largest African-American church in Queens, NY, and has always tended to he needy. Running for borough president, he faces one shocking revelation after another that could not only derail his campaign, but also force him to reevaluate his family values.
©2005 Carl Weber (P)2005 Recorded Books,LLC
The Warmest December
Summary
The Warmest December is the incredibly moving story of one Brooklyn family and the alcoholism that determined years of their lives. Narrated by Kenzie Lowe, a young woman reminiscent of Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John, as she visits her dying father and finds that choices she once thought beyond her control are very much hers to make. Bernice L. McFadden is the author of seven critically acclaimed novels.
©2001, 2012 Bernice L. McFadden (P)2001 Recorded Books
Sugar
Summary
Blackboard best seller Sugar is the superb first novel by Bernice L. McFadden. An emotional journey from grief and suffering to understanding and forgiveness, Sugar will keep you listening until its graceful conclusion. Sugar arrives in the small town of Bigelow, Arkansas, like an ominous storm. She saunters down the street in a blonde wig and spiked heels, cigarette dangling between red-painted lips. Without even speaking to her, the women in town hate her. But when she moves in next door to Pearl, a woman who tragically lost her daughter 15 years earlier, the two women bond over tragic pasts. In this remarkably vivid novel read by gifted narrator Myra Lucretia Taylor, you can almost smell the blooming magnolias in this 1950s-era town.
©2000 Bernice L. McFadden (P)2001 Recorded Books, LLC
Land of Love and Drowning
Summary
A major debut from an award-winning writer - an epic family saga set against the magic and the rhythms of the Virgin Islands. In the early 1900s an important ship sinks into the Caribbean Sea, just as the Virgin Islands are transferred from Danish to American rule. Orphaned by the sunk vessel are two sisters and their half-brother, now faced with an uncertain identity and future. Each of them is unusually beautiful, and each is in possession of a particular magic that will either sink or save them. Chronicling three generations of an island family from 1916 to the 1970s, Land of Love and Drowning is a novel of love and magic, set against the emergence of Saint Thomas into the modern world. Wholly unique, with echoes of Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and the author's own Caribbean family history, the story is told in a language and rhythm that evokes an entire world and way of life and love. Following the Bradshaw family through 60 years of fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, love affairs, curses, magical gifts, loyalties, births, deaths, and triumphs, Land of Love and Drowning is a gorgeous, vibrant debut by an exciting, prize-winning young writer.
©2014 Tiphanie Yanique (P)2014 Recorded Books
Lord of Misrule
Summary
National Book Award, Fiction, 2010 At the rock-bottom end of the sport of kings sits the ruthless and often violent world of cheap horse racing, where trainers and jockeys, grooms and hotwalkers, loan sharks and touts are all struggling to take an edge, or prove their luck, or just survive. Equal parts Nathanael West, Damon Runyon and Eudora Welty, Lord of Misrule follows five characters -- scarred and lonely dreamers in the American grain -- through a year and four races at Indian Mound Downs, downriver from Wheeling, West Virginia. Horseman Tommy Hansel has a scheme to rescue his failing stable: He'll ship four unknown but ready horses to Indian Mound Downs, run them in cheap claiming races at long odds, and then gut out fast before anyone notices. The problem is, at this rundown riverfront half-maile racetrack in the Northern Panhandle, everybody notices -- veteran groom Medicine Ed, Kidstuff the blacksmith, old lady "gyp" Deucey Gifford, stall superintendent Suitcase Smithers, eventually even the ruled-off "racetrack financier" Two-Tie and the ominous leading trainer, Joe Dale Bigg. But no one bothers to factor in Tommy Hansel's go-fer girlfriend, Maggie Koderer. Like the beautiful, used-up, tragic horses she comes to love, Maggie has just enough heart to wire everyone's flagging hopes back to the source of all luck.
©2010 Jaimy Gordon (P)2011 Recorded Books, LLC
The Edge of Midnight
Summary
Blackboard best-selling author Beverly Jenkins launches her first contemporary romantic suspense with this exciting sizzler. Sparks fly when Mykal Chandler, the head of a covert government agency, fights to protect the woman he has fallen in love with. Sarita Grayson is desperate. That’s the only explanation for her late-night rendezvous with a bag of stolen diamonds. But then a handsome stranger stands between her and a clean getaway. In the struggle for freedom, she accidentally shoots him. Mykal Chandler, head of a covert government agency NIA, can’t believe he’s been shot. He’s shocked, he’s furious, but he’s also attracted to this sassy woman. Unfortunately, Sarita has stumbled unto a smuggling plot and he’ll need to protect her, even if he has to kidnap her to do it. But Sarita isn’t one to go quietly into the night....
©2009 Beverly Jenkins (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers
Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night
Summary
Acclaimed author Joyce Sidman has received multiple awards for her books of poetry, including a Caldecott Honor for Red Sings from Treetops. Itself a Newbery Honor, Book, Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night features several spellbinding poems about "the feast of sound and spark" that awakens with the raccoons, snails, owls, and crickets each night after sunset.
©2010 Joyce Sidman (P)2011 Recorded Books
Selected Shorts
Summary
Selected Shorts: Travel Tales presents a collection of travel experiences, including: N.M. Kelby's "Jubilation, Florida", read by Joanne Woodward Max Steele's "The Hat of My Mother", read by Paul Hecht Nadine Gordimer's "The Ultimate Safari", read by Myra Lucretia Taylor Joan Didion's "Goodbye to All That", read by Mia Dillon Jason Brown's "Afternoon of the Sassanoa", read by Bradley Whitford Ring Lardner's "Liberty Hall", read by Christina Pickles Selected Shorts is an award-winning series of classic and contemporary short fiction read by acclaimed actors. The series originates at Peter Norton Symphony Space in New York City. The Selected Shorts radio series is a co-production of Symphony Space and WNYC, New York Public Radio, and is heard on public radio stations nationwide.
©2007 The Symphony Space, Inc. (P)2007 The Symphony Space, Inc.
Something Old, Something New
Summary
Award-winning author Beverly Jenkins has been named one of the Top Fifty Favorite African-American Writers of the 20th Century by the African American Literature Book Club (AALBC). In Something Old, Something New, Lily Fontaine and Trent July are finally planning their wedding. But when well-intentioned neighbors - including Bernadine, the town fairy godmother - insist on inflating the intimate gathering into the event of the decade, Lily and Trent start wishing they'd simply eloped.
©2011 Beverly Jenkins (P)2012 Recorded Books
Wonder Tales from Around the World
Summary
Traditional stories endure generation after generation because, although they are not literal, they resound in truths on a human scale. Folktales remind us of wisdom so elemental it is often lost in the rush of everyday life - sometimes common sense makes no sense at all.
©1995 Heather Forest (P)2010 Recorded Books
Sweet Sanctuary
Summary
A CBA best-selling author and Inspirational Readers Choice Award winner, Kim Vogel Sawyer effortlessly blends romance, faith and intrigue. Set in World War II New York, Sweet Sanctuary introduces Lydia Eldridge, her young son Nicky, and Dr. Micah Hatcher, a man from Lydia's past. Lydia is desperate to protect Nicky from his drug-addicted father. Leaning on Micah, who's hiding secrets of his own, they are seeking refuge and safety -- for themselves, for Nicky, and for those around them. But will they ever find it?
©2013 Kim Vogel Sawyer (P)2013 Recorded Books
Blues Dancing
Summary
During the 1970s, Verdi’s relationship with street-smart Johnson leads her to heroin and the brink of destruction. Rescued by a conservative professor willing to give up everything for her, she lives a quiet, comfortable life for 20 years--until Johnson returns to re-ignite old passions. Pulled uncontrollably toward the reckless appetites of her youth, Verdi struggles to understand her desires and to decide where she wants life to take her next. Best-selling author Diane McKinney-Whetstone fills this lush, lyrical novel with the steamy intensity of great jazz music. Myra Lucretia Taylor adds a rich, rhythmic voice to Verdi’s dangerous, intoxicating, and utterly unforgettable dance of self-discovery.
©1999 Diane McKinney-Whetstone (P)2001 Recorded Books
Who Am I Without Him?
Summary
Guys and girls get together, get played, and get real. Who Am I Without Him? is a Booklist Top 10 Romance Novel for Teens and is "breaking new and necessary ground" in 12 short stories about guys and girls falling in and out of love and relationships, testing out ways to communicate with one another, respect each other - and respect themselves. This is a complex, often humorous, and always on-point exploration of today's teens determined to find love and self-worth...any way they know how.
©2005 Sharon G. Flake (P)2011 Recorded Books
Deadly Sexy
Summary
Though her Lexus may be broken down on the California freeway, Jessi Teresa Blake is no damsel in distress. Rich, smart, and beautiful, JT, or "Lady Blake", as she is called, is one of the toughest sports agents around. She's negotiated megabucks contracts for every superstar in the business, and only the most confident of men can match wits with her. Men like Reese Anthony, the impossibly sexy trucker who gives her a lift back to Oakland. But Reese isn't just a truck driver - he's a partner in his family's multi-million-dollar company, a lawyer, and a former cop. He's been asked to quietly investigate a murder in the world of LA football, a job he's thrilled to discover brings him closer to the beautiful woman he found stranded on the highway. And when he detects a bitter enemy threatening JT's life, he's willing to protect her - and pleasure her - all night long.
©2009 Beverly Jenkins (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers
The Road to Paris
Summary
Popular author Nikki Grimes won the Coretta Scott King Award for Bronx Masquerade. When Paris' mother snaps again, beloved brother Malcolm is carted off to a boys' home, and Paris is sent to another foster home. There, biracial Paris finally finds someone else to trust. But when her mother comes back into her life, she must decide where home really is.
©2006 Nikki Grimes (P)2007 Recorded Books, LLC
Mama's Boy
Summary
When her son is accused of a violent crime, church first lady Gloria Jones finds herself battling his prosecutor - as well as her own inner demons - to save him in this drama-filled novel from best-selling, award-winning author ReShonda Tate Billingsley. Gloria Jones is living a mother's worst fear. There's a massive manhunt for her son after a regular night out with friends escalated into the fatal shooting of a police officer. Her husband, esteemed minister Elton Jones, is humiliated by the news, complicating an already strained relationship with his son. And everyone in Jasper, Texas, a town already ripe with racial tension, is up in arms. But the killer they're searching for isn't the son Gloria knows, and now she must decide whether to turn him in or help him run. As the 17-year-old battles for his life, Gloria turns to the woman hell-bent on bringing him to justice - prosecutor Kay Christiansen. Kay has built a solid record putting criminals behind bars, and now, as she's about to ride the record to the city's top spot - mayor of Houston - this new case could threaten everything she's worked for. But a mother's love knows no boundaries, and Gloria will have to face an ugly past and tackle painful secrets in an effort to save her son.
©2015 ReShonda Tate Billingsley (P)2015 Recorded Books