Prentice Onayemi has narrated 47 audiobooks on Listento.it by 46 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.7★ across 1,365 ratings. The most-rated is The Rage of Dragons.
Pillar of Fire
Summary
From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch, the second part of his epic trilogy on the American civil rights movement.
In the second volume of his three-part history, a monumental trilogy that began with Parting the Waters, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Taylor Branch portrays the civil rights movement at its zenith, recounting the climactic struggles as they commanded the national stage.
©2007 Taylor Branch (P)2019 Simon & Schuster Audio
Crown of Thunder
Summary
In the sequel to the acclaimed Beasts Made of Night, Taj has escaped Kos, but Queen Karima will go to any means necessary - including using the most deadly magic - to track him down. Taj is headed west, but the consequences of leaving Kos behind confront him at every turn. Innocent civilians flee to refugee camps as Karima's dark magic continues to descend on the city. Taj must return, but first he needs a plan. With Arzu's help, Taj and Aliya make it to the village of her ancestors, home of the tastahlik - sin-eaters with Taj's same ability to both battle and call forth sins. As Taj comes to terms with his new magic, he realizes there are two very different groups of tastahlik - one using their powers for good, the other for more selfish ends. Aliya is struggling with her own unique capabilities. She's immersed in her work to uncover the secret to Karima's magic, but her health begins to mysteriously deteriorate. With the help of a local western mage, Aliya uncovers her true destiny - a future she's not sure she wants. As Taj and Aliya explore their feelings for each other and Arzu connects with her homeland, the local Westerners begin to question Taj's true identity. Karima is on his heels, sending dark warnings to the little village where he's hiding. Taj will have to go back and face her before she sends her mostly deadly weapon - Taj's former best friend, Bo.
©2018 Tochi Onyebuchi (P)2018 Listening Library
A Father First
Summary
Dwyane Wade, the eight-time All-Star for the Miami Heat, has miraculously defied the odds throughout his career and his life. In 2006, in just his third season in the NBA, Dwyane was named the Finals' MVP, after leading the Miami Heat to the Championship title, basketball's ultimate prize. Two years later, after possible career-ending injuries, he again rose from the ashes of doubt to help win a gold medal for the United States at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. As co-captain, he helped lead the Heat to triumph in the 2012 NBA Championship. Little wonder that legendary coach Pat Riley has called Dwyane "B.I.W." - Best In the World. As incredible as those achievements have been, it's off the court where Dwyane has sought his most cherished goal: being a good dad to his sons, Zaire and Zion, by playing a meaningful role in their lives. Recounting his fatherhood journey, Dwyane begins his story in March 2011 with the news that after a long, bitter custody battle, he has been awarded sole custody of his sons in a virtually unprecedented court decision. A Father First chronicles the lessons Dwyane has learned as a single dad from the moment of the judge's ruling that instantly changed his life and the lives of his boys, and then back to the events in the past that shaped his dreams, prayers, and promises. As the son of divorced parents determined to get along so that he and his sister Tragil could have loving relationships with both of them, Dwyane's early years were spent on Chicago's South Side. With poverty, violence, and drugs consuming the streets and their mom descending into addiction, Tragil made the heroic decision to take her younger brother to live with their father. After moving his household to suburban Robbins, Illinois, Dwyane Wade Sr. became Dwyane's first basketball coach. While this period laid the groundwork for Dwyane's later mission for fathers to take greater responsibility for their kids, he was also inspired by his mother's miraculous victory over addiction and her gift for healing others. Both his mother and his father showed him that the unconditional love between parents and children is a powerful guiding force. In A Father First, we meet the coaches, mentors, and teammates who played pivotal roles in Dwyane's stunning basketball career—from his early days shooting hoops on the neighborhood courts in Chicago, to his rising stardom at Marquette University in Milwaukee, to his emergence as an unheralded draft pick by the Miami Heat. This book is a revealing, personal story of one of America's top athletes, but it is also a call to action - from a man who had to fight to be in his children's lives - that will show mothers and fathers how to step up and be parents themselves.
©2012 Dwyane Wade (P)2012 HarperCollins Publishers
True Legend
Summary
Number-one New York Times best seller Mike Lupica makes his return to the basketball court! There's a reason teammates call him "True". Because for basketball phenom Drew Robinson, there is nothing more true than his talent on the court. It's the kind that comes along once in a generation and is loaded with perks - and with problems. Before long, True buys in to his own hype, much to the chagrin of his mother, who wants to keep her boy's head grounded - and suddenly trouble has a way of finding him. That is, until a washed-up former playground legend steps back onto the court and takes True under his wing. In this age of street agents promising riches to kids barely out of elementary school and college programs being taken down because of recruiting violations, True Legend is a resonant and inspiring novel in the Lupica tradition.
©2012 Mike Lupica (P)2012 Penguin Audio
Nigger
Summary
Comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory's million-copy-plus best-selling memoir - now in audio for the first time, and featuring an all-new exclusive foreword written and performed by Dr. Christian Gregory, son of Dick Gregory, in which he shares why that word still carries so much weight and why his father's message of activism still endures. "Powerful and ugly and beautiful...a moving story of a man who deeply wants a world without malice and hate and is doing something about it." (The New York Times) Fifty-five years ago, in 1964, an incredibly honest and revealing memoir by one of the America's best-loved comedians and activists, Dick Gregory, was published. With a shocking title and breathtaking writing, Dick Gregory defined a genre and changed the way race was discussed in America. Telling stories that range from his hardscrabble childhood in St. Louis to his pioneering early days as a comedian to his indefatigable activism alongside Medgar Evers and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Gregory's memoir riveted readers in the '60s. In the years and decades to come, the stories and lessons became more relevant than ever, and the book attained the status of a classic. The memoir has sold over a million copies and become core text about race relations and civil rights, continuing to inspire readers everywhere with Dick Gregory's incredible story about triumphing over racism and poverty to become an American legend.
©1964 Dick Gregory Enterprises, Inc. (P)2020 Audible, Inc.
And Sometimes I Wonder About You
Summary
The welcome return of Leonid McGill, Walter Mosley's NYC-based private eye, his East Coast foil to his immortal LA-based detective Easy Rawlins. As the Boston Globe raved, "A poignantly real character, [McGill is] not only the newest of the great fictional detectives, but also an incisive and insightful commentator on the American scene." In the fifth Leonid McGill novel, Leonid finds himself in an unusual pickle of trying to balance his cases with his chaotic personal life. Leonid's father is still out there somewhere, and his wife is in an uptown sanitarium trying to recover from the deep depression that led to her attempted suicide in the previous novel. His wife's condition has put a damper on his affair with Aura Ullman, his girlfriend. And his son, Twill, has been spending a lot of time out of the office with his own case, helping a young thief named Fortune and his girlfriend, Liza. Meanwhile Leonid is approached by an unemployed office manager named Hiram Stent to track down the whereabouts of his cousin, Celia, who is about to inherit millions of dollars from her father's side of the family. Leonid declines the case, but after his office is broken into and Hiram is found dead, he gets reeled into the underbelly of Celia's wealthy old-money family. It's up to Leonid to save who he can and incriminate the guilty - all while helping his son finish his own investigation; locating his own father; reconciling (whatever that means) with his wife and girlfriend; and attending the wedding of Gordo, his oldest friend.
©2015 Walter Mosley (P)2015 Random House Audio
Of Noble Family
Summary
Jane and Vincent have finally gotten some much-needed rest after their adventures in Italy - then Vincent receives word that his estranged father has passed away on one of his properties in the West Indies. His brother, who manages the estate, is overwhelmed, and no one else in his family can go. Grudgingly, out of filial duty, the couple decide to go. The sea voyage is long, and Jane spends enough time unable to perform glamour that toward the end of the trip she discovers she is with child. They are overjoyed, but when they finally arrive at the estate to complete what they expect to be routine legal tasks, they realize that nearly everything they came expecting to find was a lie. Also the entire estate is in disarray, with horrifying conditions and tensions with the local slave population so high, they are close to revolt. Jane and Vincent's sense of peril is screaming out for them to flee, but Vincent cannot stand to leave an estate connected with his family in such a condition. They have survived many grand and terrifying adventures in their time, but this one will test their skills and wits more than any they have ever encountered before, this time with a new life hanging in the balance. Mary Robinette Kowal's Of Noble Family is the final book of the acclaimed Glamourist Histories.
©2015 Mary Robinette Kowal (P)2015 Audible Inc.
Voices of a People's History of the United States, 10th Anniversary Edition
Summary
Selected testimonies to living history-speeches, letters, poems, songs-offered by the people who make history happen, but are often left out of history books: women, workers, nonwhites. Featuring introductions to the original texts by Howard Zinn. New voices featured in this 10th Anniversary Edition include Chelsea Manning, speaking after her 35-year prison sentence; Naomi Klein, speaking from the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Liberty Square; a member of Dream Defenders, a youth organization that confronts systemic racial inequality; members of the Undocumented Youth movement, who occupied, marched, and demonstrated in support of the DREAM Act; a member of the Day Laborers movement; Chicago Teachers Union strikers; and several critics of the Obama administration, including Glenn Greenwald, on governmental secrecy.
©2004, 2009; 2014 Howard Zinn, Anthony Arnove; Howard Zinn Revocable Trust, Anthony Arnove (P)2018 Blackstone Publishing
Five-Carat Soul
Summary
Exciting new fiction from James McBride, the first since his National Book Award-winning novel The Good Lord Bird. The stories in Five-Carat Soul - none of them ever published before - spring from the place where identity, humanity, and history converge. They're funny and poignant, insightful and unpredictable, imaginative and authentic - all told with McBride's unrivaled storytelling skill and meticulous eye for character and detail. McBride explores the ways we learn from the world and the people around us. An antiques dealer discovers that a legendary toy commissioned by Civil War General Robert E. Lee now sits in the home of a black minister in Queens. Five strangers find themselves thrown together and face unexpected judgment. An American president draws inspiration from a conversation he overhears in a stable. And members of The Five-Carat Soul Bottom Bone Band recount stories from their own messy and hilarious lives. As McBride did in his National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird and his best-selling The Color of Water, he writes with humor and insight about how we struggle to understand who we are in a world we don't fully comprehend. The result is a surprising, perceptive, and evocative collection of stories that is also a moving exploration of our human condition.
©2017 James McBride (P)2017 Penguin Audio
Black Music
Summary
Black Music is an audiobook about the brilliant young jazz musicians of the early 1960s: John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, and others. It is composed of essays, reviews, interviews, liner notes, musical analyses, and personal impressions from 1959-1967. Also includes Amiri Baraka's reflections in a 2009 interview with Calvin Reid of Publishers Weekly. LeRoi Jones (now known as Amiri Baraka) is the author of numerous books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. He was named Poet Laureate of New Jersey from 2002 to 2004 by the New Jersey Commission on Humanities. His most recent book, Tales of the Out & the Gone (Akashic Books, 2007), was a New York Times Editors' Choice and winner of a PEN/Beyond Margins Award. He lives in Newark, New Jersey.
©2010 LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Southern Cross the Dog
Summary
An epic odyssey in which a young man must choose between the lure of the future and the claims of the past. With clouds looming ominously on the horizon, a group of children play among the roots of the gnarled Bone Tree. Their games will be interrupted by a merciless storm - bringing with it the Great Flood of 1927 - but not before Robert Chatham shares his first kiss with the beautiful young Dora. The flood destroys their homes, disperses their families, and wrecks their innocence. But for Robert, a boy whose family has already survived unspeakable pain, that single kiss will sustain him for years to come. Losing virtually everything in the storm's aftermath, Robert embarks on a journey through the Mississippi hinterland - from a desperate refugee camp to the fiery brothel Hotel Beau-Miel and into the state's fearsome swamp, meeting piano-playing hustlers, well-intentioned whores, and a family of fierce and wild fur trappers along the way. But trouble follows close on his heels, fueling Robert's conviction that he's marked by the devil and nearly destroying his will to survive. And just when he seems to shake off his demons, he's forced to make an impossible choice that will test him as never before. Teeming with language that voices both the savage beauty and the complex humanity of the American South, Southern Cross the Dog is a tour de force of literary imagination that heralds the arrival of a major new voice in fiction.
©2013 Bill Cheng (P)2013 HarperCollins Publishers
Necahual
Summary
Necahual is a short story from the collection Tides from the New Worlds. Caribbean-born novelist Tobias Buckell established himself as a gifted new voice in science fiction with his stunning first novel, Crystal Rain. Now, in his first collection, Buckell demonstrates his strengths in the short form, offering listeners a collection of stories that are compelling, smart, wonderfully imagined, and entertaining. Tides from the New Worlds contains 19 stories that range from multicultural science fiction to magical realism, some in print for the first time. "Buckell's stories, culturally informed and layered, are driven by plot, rather than character or concept; story tends to be centerpiece. He is in this sense a little like a mellowed, more pragmatic, hipper version of Octavia Butler." (Strange Horizons) "In Tides from the New Worlds, Tobias Buckell does what the best SF/F writers do: tells stories that touch our minds with wonder and endow our hearts with perception. Reading this collection, for those of us culture-bound West or East, brings science fiction and fantasy to a fresh awakening. And for those of us who miss seeing ourselves in the fiction we so often read, it's quite moving." (Tor Books)
©2010 Tobias S. Buckell (P)2015 Audible Inc.
Empire City
Summary
The author of the “urgent and deeply moving” (The New York Times) Youngblood returns with this bold and provocative novel following a group of super-powered soldiers and civilians as they navigate an imperial America on the precipice of a major upheaval - for fans of The Fortress of Solitude and The Plot Against America. Thirty years after its great triumph in Vietnam, the United States has again become mired in an endless foreign war overseas. Stories of super soldiers known as the Volunteers tuck in little American boys and girls every night. Yet domestic politics are aflame. Violent protests erupt throughout the nation; an ex-military watchdog group clashes with police while radical terrorists threaten to expose government experiments within the veteran rehabilitation colonies. Halfway between war and peace, the Volunteers find themselves waiting for orders in the vast American city-state, Empire City. There they encounter a small group of civilians who know the truth about their powers, including Sebastian Rios, a young bureaucrat wrestling with survivor guilt, and Mia Tucker, a wounded army pilot-turned-Wall Street banker. Meanwhile, Jean-Jacques Saint-Preux, a Haitian-American Volunteer from the International Legion, decides he’ll do whatever it takes to return to the front lines. Through it all, a controversial retired general emerges as a frontrunner in the presidential campaign, promising to save the country from itself. Her election would mean unprecedented military control over the country, with promises of security and stability - but at what cost? Featuring Gallagher’s “vital” (The Washington Post), “evocative” (The Wall Street Journal) prose, Empire City is a rousing vision of an alternate - yet all too familiar - America on the brink.
©2020 Matt Gallagher (P)2020 Simon & Schuster Audio
Strong Voices
Summary
"A wide-ranging collection of speeches and a worthwhile resource for students of American history." (Booklist) "A golden celebration of the multicultural voices who demand the U.S. - and the world - do better." (Kirkus) "An important addition to American history collections." (School Library Journal) Strong Voices: Fifteen American Speeches Worth Knowing is a collection of significant speeches, made both by those who held the reins of power and those who didn’t, at significant times in American history. Listen to the original words - sometimes abridged and sometimes in their entirety - that have shaped our cultural fabric. Introductions by acclaimed writer Tonya Bolden provide historical context and critical insights to the meaning and impact of every speech. Illustrations by award-winning artist Eric Velasquez illuminate what it was really like at each moment in history. This collection includes the following: Patrick Henry, "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" George Washington, Farewell Address Red Jacket, "We Never Quarrel about Religion" Frederick Douglass, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" Sojourner Truth, "I Am a Woman’s Rights" Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address Theodore Roosevelt, "Citizenship in a Republic" Franklin Delano Roosevelt, "The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself" Lou Gehrig, "Farewell to Baseball" Langston Hughes, "On the Blacklist All Our Lives" John Fitzgerald Kennedy, "We Choose to Go to the Moon" Martin Luther King, Jr., "I Have a Dream" Fannie Lou Hamer, "I Question America" Cesar Chavez, Address to the Commonwealth Club of California, 1984 Hillary Rodham Clinton, "Women’s Rights Are Human Rights" Strong Voices includes a foreword by number one New York Times best-selling author and celebrated journalist Cokie Roberts, as well as a timeline in the back of the audiobook, along with letters to the listener from Tonya Bolden and Eric Velasquez. Strong Voices is a tremendous introduction to the extraordinary words spoken in history. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 Tonya Bolden and Cokie Roberts (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
Tuff
Summary
As fast-paced and hard-edged as the Harlem streets it portrays, Tuff shows off all of the amazing skill that Paul Beatty showed off in his first novel, The White Boy Shuffle. Weighing in at 320 pounds, Winston "Tuffy" Foshay, is an East Harlem denizen who breaks jaws and shoots dogs and dreams of millions from his idea, Cap'n Crunch: The Movie, starring Danny DeVito. His best friend is a disabled Muslim who wants to rob banks, his guiding light is an ex-hippie Asian woman who worked for Malcolm X, and his wife, Yolanda, he married from jail over the phone. Shrewdly comical as this dazzling novel is, it turns acerbically sublime when the frustrated Tuffy agrees to run for City Council. Smartly irreverent and edgily fierce, Tuff is a bona fide original. © Cover photo: Saul Fletcher
©2001 Paul Beatty (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
Amiable with Big Teeth
Summary
The unexpected discovery in 2009 of a completed manuscript of Claude McKay's final novel was celebrated as one of the most significant literary events in recent years. Building on the already extraordinary legacy of McKay's life and work, this colorful, dramatic novel centers on the efforts by Harlem intelligentsia to organize support for the liberation of fascist-controlled Ethiopia, a crucial but largely forgotten event in American history. At once a penetrating satire of political machinations in Depression-era Harlem and a far-reaching story of global intrigue and romance, Amiable with Big Teeth plunges into the concerns, anxieties, hopes, and dreams of African Americans at a moment of crisis for the soul of Harlem - and America.
©2017 The Literary Estate for the Works of Claude McKay (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Cocaine Chronicles
Summary
The Cocaine Chronicles joins The Speed Chronicles in launching Akashic's new anthology series styled after the Noir series. Nothing to snort at, this ambitious anthology of jaw-grinding criminal behavior is masterfully curated by acclaimed authors Phillips and Tervalon. Cocaine, that most troubling and fascinating of substances is the subject, the subtext, the whys and where ofs in The Cocaine Chronicles, a collection of original short stories that are funny and harrowing, sad and scary, but at all times riveting. The Cocaine Chronicles contains tough tales by a cross-section of today's most thought-provoking writers. Featuring brand-new stories by: Susan Straight, Lee Child, Laura Lippman, Ken Bruen, Jerry Stahl, Nina Revoyr, Bill Moody, Emory Holmes II, James Brown, Gary Phillips, Jervey Tervalon, Kerry E. West, Donnell Alexander, Deborah Vankin, Robert Ward, Manuel Ramos, and Detrice Jones. The complete list of narrators includes Prentice Onayemi, Christian Rummel, Lauren Fortgang, Scott Aiello, Mirron Willis, Allyson Johnson, Scott Brick, Jeff Woodman, Stephen Hoye, Joe Barrett, Christina Delaine, Elizabeth Evans, Jonathan Davis, Lisa Renee Pitts, Nick Sullivan, and Kevin Free.
©2011 Akashic Books (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Slumberland
Summary
Critical darling Paul Beatty's highly original, widely praised novel of race, identity, and underground music. After creating the perfect beat, DJ Darky goes in search of Charles Stone, a little know avant-garde jazzman, to play over his sonic masterpiece. His quest brings him to a recently unified Berlin, where he stumbles through the city's dreamy streets ruminating about race, sex, love, Teutonic gods, the prevent defense, and Wynton Marsalis in search of his artistic - and spiritual - other. Ferocious, bombastic, and laugh-out-loud funny, Slumberland is vintage Paul Beatty and belongs on the shelf next to Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead, and Junot Diaz.
©2008 Paul Beatty (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
The Fire Is upon Us
Summary
How the clash between the civil rights firebrand and the father of modern conservatism continues to illuminate America's racial divide On February 18, 1965, an overflowing crowd packed the Cambridge Union in Cambridge, England, to witness a historic televised debate between James Baldwin, the leading literary voice of the civil rights movement, and William F. Buckley Jr., a fierce critic of the movement and America's most influential conservative intellectual. The topic was "the American dream is at the expense of the American Negro", and no one who has seen the debate can soon forget it. Nicholas Buccola's The Fire Is upon Us is the first book to tell the full story of the event, the radically different paths that led Baldwin and Buckley to it, the controversies that followed, and how the debate and the decades-long clash between the men continues to illuminate America's racial divide today. Born in New York City only 15 months apart, the Harlem-raised Baldwin and the privileged Buckley could not have been more different, but they both rose to the height of American intellectual life during the civil rights movement. By the time they met in Cambridge, Buckley was determined to sound the alarm about a man he considered an "eloquent menace." For his part, Baldwin viewed Buckley as a deluded reactionary whose popularity revealed the sickness of the American soul. The stage was set for an epic confrontation that pitted Baldwin's call for a moral revolution in race relations against Buckley's unabashed elitism and implicit commitment to white supremacy. A remarkable story of race and the American dream, The Fire Is upon Us reveals the deep roots and lasting legacy of a conflict that continues to haunt our politics.
©2019 Nicholas Buccola (P)2019 Princeton University Press
The White Boy Shuffle
Summary
Paul Beatty's hilarious and scathing debut novel, The White Boy Shuffle, is about Gunnar Kaufman, an awkward, black surfer bum who is moved by his mother from Santa Monica to urban West Los Angeles. There, he begins to undergo a startling transformation from neighborhood outcast to basketball superstar, and eventually to reluctant messiah of a "divided, downtrodden people".
©1996 Paul Beatty (P)2016 Audible, Inc.