Showing results by narrator "Willis Mirron" in All Categories

This original audio play is based on the life and writings of freed slave William Wells Brown. William’s Leap for Freedom is a two-part drama; a play within a play beginning with a fictionalized conversation between William Wells Brown and Mr. Polite. This audio drama then introduces Part Two of the play, which features selected portions of Well's The Escape or Leap for Freedom, as it relates to the tale of three slaves.

A dozen years after his last visit, Jeebleh returns to his beloved Mogadiscio to see old friends. He is accompanied by his son-in-law, Malik, a journalist intent on covering the region's ongoing turmoil. What greets them at first is not the chaos Jeebleh remembers, however, but an eerie calm enforced by ubiquitous white-robed figures bearing whips.

Mark Binelli turns his sharp, forceful prose to fiction in an inventive retelling of the outrageous life of Screamin' Jay Hawkins, a bluesman with one hit and a string of inflammatory guises. He came onstage in a coffin, carried by pallbearers, drunk enough to climb into his casket every night. Onstage he wore a cape, clamped a bone to his nose, and carried a staff topped with a human skull.

Liar [ˈlī(-ə)r] (n): 1. A person who tells lies. 2. A writer. In this gripping new audio collection you’ll find 15 tales of deceit and deception, perjury and prevarication, falsehoods and fibs, spun by some of the finest liars in the business.

With Stanley Crouch's untimely death in 2020, American literature lost "a critic without peer" (Ta-Nehisi Coates). Born in Los Angeles in 1945, Crouch—a towering stylist, fearless columnist, and without question, one of the finest jazz critics of all time—was Rabelaisian both in stature and in intellectual appetite. Beloved yet cantankerous, Crouch delighted and enflamed the passions of his readers in equal measure, whether writing about race, politics, literature, or music.

Blackstone Audio presents An American Family Shakespeare Entertainment: Based on Charles & Lamb's 20 Tales From Shakespeare, augmented by miscellaneous scenes and soliloquies from Shakespeare's plays. Featuring Elizabethan songs and dances in new arrangements for stringed instruments.

Paralyzed from birth, young Innowen is given the power to walk between sunset and dawn - with only one condition. He must dance every night, in a seemingly harmless homage to the sorceress patron who gave him the gift of mobility. However, Innowen soon discovers that this gift does come with a price.

The general public has never heard of Jack O'Dell. But many of those who worked with him in the '50s and '60s consider him the unsung hero of the Black Freedom Movement. Victor Navasky, the longtime editor of The Nation and author of the acclaimed book Kennedy Justice, drawing on secret government files and interviews with O'Dell himself, seeks to correct that historical oversight.

A survival guide to being a guy. Lots of guys talk the big talk, but what's really going on with sex? That's what a group of young men sat down to figure out for The Little Black Book for Guys. To get behind the hype, they talked to other teens and collected stories, poems, essays and art about personal experiences. They also interviewed health professionals to get the facts they need to make healthy choices.

Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, and was raised by his grandmother, who told him many stories of the Black American experience and taught him to be proud of his race from a young age. With her guidance, Langston went on to become a talented writer in high school, creating dramatic plays, poetry, and articles for the school paper. His career as a writer would continue to blossom. Langston pioneered Jazz Poetry and published nearly twenty poetry books during his lifetime as well as novels, books for children, nonfiction books, and plays.

A history of the activism and achievement of African American athletes from Jesse Owens to Serena Williams to Colin Kaepernick, who advanced the cause of social justice through their outspokenness, commitment, and integrity. Muhammad Ali refused to fight in a war he believed was immoral. Wilma Rudolph retired from track and field to campaign for civil rights. Taking a Knee, Taking a Stand tells their stories and the stories of other prominent African American male and female athletes who often risked their careers to fight racial discrimination and promote social justice.

Generations collide, families break and are remade, languages and cultures intertwine, and lovers find their ways to futures; from childhood through adulthood; on university campuses, city centres, and neighbourhoods where church bells mingle with the morning call to prayer.

The human condition is one riddled with complexities about the path we yearn for, who we are, and what we believe. We have become so dogmatic in our own beliefs that when they don’t come to fruition or we find them to be a hoax, our journey can come crashing down with doubt, fear, and uncertainty. Many individuals think they know why they are doing what they do, where they will end up, or who they wish to be in three to seven years until a catastrophic event called life occurs.

Former bodyguard D Hunter has moved to Los Angeles to become a talent manager. Business is good: He has signed a hot Atlanta rapper named Lil Daye for management and negotiated a lucrative endorsement with a liquor band. However, when D learns of the liquor CEO's unsavory sexual habits and reactionary political views, he worries that he has sold his soul. Back in Brooklyn, a body has been found in the waters near the Canarsie Pier, a body that connects D and the retired hit man Ice to incidents from back in The Plot Against Hip Hop, the second book in the series.

Caribbean-born disc jockey Terry Lee Barrett works in Philadelphia as DJ Terry Love (TL). On a trip home to Jamaica, TL learns the legend of Kata and the Iron Thorn, a mighty warrior and his supernatural sword, a man who fought against ghosts and pirates in 1655. TL also discovers that he’s the youngest descendent of Kata―a family secret his Father never wanted him to learn. But when TL meets his Uncle Wilvo, he’s persuaded that he must find Kata’s sword and other magical items for fighting against the violence, greed, ignorance, and prejudice still thriving.

The Playbook is an exposé of the extraordinary lengths that corporations will go to in order to deny the scientific facts—around climate change, public health risks and worker safety—when they don't suit their agenda. Written in the form of a corporate handbook for tobacco, oil and pharmaceutical company executives, it is a litany of obfuscation techniques, denial, delays and outright lies.

Brendan Buckley is headed to middle school on a whole new adventure. When his alternative energy idea gets him paired with new girl Morgan Belcher for the national science competition, Brendan is skeptical. But their partnership clicks, and they embark on a methane-producing experiment involving bottles, balloons, and the freshest cow manure they can find. As Brendan spends more time on the experiment, he has a lot of big questions: Does his police detective dad really think he’s a science-nerd whimp?

It's 1951 in Sedalia, Missouri, and ragtime is making a comeback. When Brun Campbell, the old Ragtime Kid, learns of a journal kept by Scott Joplin, he hopes to acquire it and use it to convince Sedalia's movers and shakers to set up a ragtime museum. But plenty of other people also want that journal, including a historian who wants to publish it, an old friend of Joplin’s who wants to suppress it, and two Klansmen who don't care if they have to kill someone to get it.

Originally published in 1897, The Eye of Istar follows Zafar-Ben-A’Ziz on his return from London to his home in Omdurman, Sudan. While traveling through the Sahara, Zafar is taken prisoner by the “Veiled Men of the Desert”, and it is at the start of his imprisonment that he meets Azala, a Sultan’s daughter. They fall in love, and Zafar is determined to free Azala from her isolated life in a harem. But he soon discovers a dark power connected to a mysterious mark shared by the pair that complicates his mission.