Showing results by narrator "Machelle Williams" in All Categories

Camille Bell never wanted to raise her husband’s mistake. RJ, the son of Ryan’s most public betrayal, was a constant reminder of everything she lost—the picture-perfect life, the adoring husband, the future she was promised. But instead of casting him aside, she did what no one expected. She made him hers.

Keyara Henderson's life takes an unexpected turn when more than half of her vision deteriorates due to diabetes. In an effort to regain her independence, Keyara opts to attend Georgia Southern University, a prestigious university with a drive long enough to prevent her from having anyone to fall back on. Although he has reservations, Keyara's father relents under two conditions: one being that she must stay in an assisted-living facility and the other requiring her to employ a chauffeur.

Often blamed for the rising rates of obesity and diabetes among black Americans, fast food restaurants like McDonald's have long symbolized capitalism's villainous effects on our nation's most vulnerable communities. But how did fast food restaurants so thoroughly saturate black neighborhoods in the first place? In Franchise, acclaimed historian Marcia Chatelain uncovers a surprising history of cooperation among fast food companies, black capitalists, and civil rights leaders, who believed they found an economic answer to the problem of racial inequality.

Eric Jerome Dickey strides boldly over the minefield that is modern marriage. The central couple's biggest challenge is timing: He works days; she works nights. Instead of growing together, they're rapidly drifting apart, coexisting on stolen phone calls from work, punctuated by occasional bedroom encounters that leave them both feeling even emptier and more alone. When she finds out about his affair - and starts her own - the delicate fabric of their marriage is torn irrevocably asunder. Or is it?

The first entry in Llewellyn's exciting new Elements of Witchcraft series, Water Magic reveals the amazing possibilities of using water in your modern practice. Once you learn to access the enormous depths of this life-giving and powerful element, it will enhance your magic and help you grow into a better version of yourself.

When the organizing committee for her upcoming high school reunion needs a caterer, Halia agrees to help out. Soon she's serving up her signature macaroni and cheese and famous chicken wings to a host of appreciative ex-classmates. Some folks have blossomed since graduation. Others, like manipulative Raynell Rollins, currently married to a former football star, haven't changed nearly enough. When Raynell is found dead the morning after the reunion, the role call of possible suspects could fill the school gymnasium. Extramarital affairs, mega-church scandals and sports secrets...

While Karyn served four years in prison for an unthinkable crime, she embraced salvation through the Crowns for Christ outreach ministry. After her release, Karyn stays strong and confident, despite the stigma society places on ex-offenders. Levi Tolliver, for the most part, is a practicing Christian. One contradiction is he doesn't believe in turning the other cheek. He's steadfast there is a price to pay for every sin committed, especially after the untimely death of his wife during a robbery. Then Karyn enters Levi's life.

Halia Watkins has her hands full cooking, hosting, and keeping her boisterous young cousin, Wavonne, from getting too sassy with customers. Having fast-talking entrepreneur Marcus Rand turn up in her kitchen is annoying enough when he's alive - but finding his dead body face-down on her ceramic tile after hours is much worse. Marcus had his enemies, and the cast iron frying pan beside his corpse suggests that at last, his shady business deals went too far. Halia is desperate to keep Sweet Tea's name out of the sordid spotlight but her efforts only make Wavonne a prime suspect.

In a long overdue contribution to geography and social theory, Katherine McKittrick offers a new and powerful interpretation of Black women's geographic thought. In Canada, the Caribbean, and the United States, Black women inhabit diasporic locations marked by the legacy of violence and slavery. Analyzing diverse literatures and material geographies, McKittrick reveals how human geographies are a result of racialized connections and how spaces that are fraught with limitation are underacknowledged but meaningful sites of political opposition.

Kenny and Tashena were born into the struggle, separated by a few blocks of concrete and heavy doses of pain, somehow finding their way back to each other after life and its perils pushed them apart. The truth needed to be told before either of their hearts could mend. Healing was needed on both ends before reception was an option. Trust needed to be established before love was a possibility. Such heavy burdens to bare for souls that were already carrying too much.

The story of the Combahee River Raid, one of Harriet Tubman's most extraordinary accomplishments, based on original documents and written by a descendant of one of the participants: Edda L. Fields-Black shows how Tubman commanded a ring of spies, scouts, and pilots and participated in military expeditions behind Confederate lines. On June 2, 1863, Tubman and her crew piloted two regiments of Black US Army soldiers, the Second South Carolina Volunteers, and their white commanders up coastal South Carolina's Combahee River in three gunboats.

As it had for generations before her, a heaviness hung over Monica A. Coleman throughout her young life. As an adult, this rising star in the academy saw career successes often fueled by the modulated highs of undiagnosed bipolar disorder, as she hid deep depression that even her doctors skimmed past in disbelief. Serendipitous encounters with Black intellectuals like Henry Louis Gates Jr., Angela Davis, and Renita Weems were countered by long nights of stark loneliness. Only as Coleman began to face her illness was she able to live honestly and faithfully in the world.

I never planned on selling weed to make ends meet while juggling medical school. I certainly didn’t plan on catching feelings for Jordin "Mercy"—a street-smart charmer with a past darker than his flawless caramel skin. He’s got power, money, and enemies, yet somehow, his world feels safer than my own. But loving a man like Jordin isn’t simple. It’s a tightrope walk between devotion and destruction, secrets and survival.

For hopeless romantic Sylvie Gates, there's nothing quite as magical as a New Year's Eve kiss. So as the clock nears midnight at her best friend's party, Sylvie makes a beeline for the sexiest guy in the room. A happily-ever-after would be nice of course, but Sylvie's trying to live in the moment. Plus, she's about to begin the biggest project of her interior design career, so she better just enjoy her last night of freedom...

Cydney Sanders thought she knew God's plan for her life. She'd marry, have kids, and then snap her body back into shape with exercise. But she's celebrating her 40th birthday as the maid of honor at her little sister's wedding...and still single. Now her life is suddenly complicated by the best man. He's the opposite of what she wants in a husband...and yet, he keeps defying her expectations. Starting with a lavender rose - symbolizing enchantment - each rose he sends her reflects his growing love for her.

Equipped with a burner phone and a new job, Cassie Peters has left her hectic life in New York City for the refuge of her hometown of Mammoth Lakes, California. There, she begins working again with Yosemite Search and Rescue, though she is still haunted by a case she worked on a decade ago. She quickly falls into old patterns, joining a group of fellow seasonal workers and young adventurers who have made Yosemite their home during the summer. There, she meets Petal, a young woman living in a trailer with her much older wife, and Jada, a recent college graduate.

Daily we are asked to move toward bravery, to stretch in the direction of goodness, kindness, forgiveness, patience, and vulnerability. Yet life's tender fragility, fear, anxiety, and our own practiced self-sabotage can derail us from growing and thriving, leaving us fractured and afraid.

Between its founding in 1966 and its formal end in 1980, the Black Panther Party blazed a distinctive trail in American political culture. Here Alondra Nelson deftly recovers an indispensable but lesser-known aspect of the organization's broader struggle for social justice: health care. The Black Panther Party's health activism was an expression of its founding political philosophy and also a recognition that poor Blacks were both underserved by mainstream medicine and overexposed to its harms.

Known as the godfather of the civil rights movement, Howard Thurman served as a spiritual adviser to Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders and activists in the 1960s. Thurman championed silence, contemplation, common unity, and nonviolence as powerful dimensions of social change. But Dr. Lerita Coleman Brown didn't learn about him during her years of spiritual-direction training. Only when a friend heard of her longing to encounter the work of Black contemplatives did she finally learn about Thurman, his mystical spirituality, and his liberating ethic.

As the owner of Mahalia’s Sweet Tea, Halia Watkins is famous in Maryland’s Prince George’s County for her down-home cuisine. But when she has the chance to showcase her talents on national TV, she becomes the star of a murder mystery that’s too hot to handle!