Showing results by narrator "Myra Taylor" in All Categories

Recipient of the Zora Neale Hurston Society Award and a national best-selling author, Bernice L. McFadden returns with her sequel to Sugar. Sugar Lacey comes back home to a past she hoped to forget. She must face many obstacles and deal with secret truths about her family. This Bitter Earth is a striking novel about strength and victory.

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 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.

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.

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.

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?

Meet Mare, a grandmother with flair and a fascinating past. Octavia and Tali are dreading the road trip their parents are forcing them to take with their grandmother over the summer. After all, Mare isn’t your typical grandmother. She drives a red sports car, wears stiletto shoes, flippy wigs, and push-up bras, and insists that she’s too young to be called Grandma. But somewhere on the road, Octavia and Tali discover there’s more to Mare than what you see.

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.

After divorcing her faithless husband, Bernadine Brown put her newfound millions to good use reviving the small Kansas town of Henry Adams. Now a local diner named the Dog and Cow could use a facelift, but Bernadine has plenty of other distractions to worry about. Chief among these, her former husband has rolled into town looking for a second chance.

Wearing her shades, a black Stetson, and snakeskin cowboy boots, security agent Maxine "Max" Blake is the baddest thing walking. Ex-marine, ex-cop, and a whole lot of 'tude, Max doesn't have time for anything but her job. Her latest assignment: to protect Dr. Adam Gary. Her problem: He doesn't want her there.

The beautiful daughter of a prominent Michigan doctor, Narice has never strayed anywhere near the wrong side of the law. Then her father is brutally murdered - and suddenly federal agents are swarming around her like flies, making accusations about a stolen North African diamond. But before they can interrogate her, she is wrested from their grasp at gunpoint by a shadowy figure - and Narice Jordan is on the run.

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.

Jewell Parker Rhodes follows up her acclaimed Voodoo Dreams with a present-day mystery surrounding the gifts of an ancestor of the Voodoo Queen. Doctor Marie Levant can't explain why she's drawn to New Orleans, or why it's comforting and unsettling at the same time. And she can't shake her haunting dreams. But when she delivers a dead woman's baby, Marie knows malevolent forces are at work, and it's up to her to stop them.

Essence best-selling author of Redemption, Jacquelin Thomas tells the Biblical story of Jezebel as a riveting modern drama. All her life, small-town Georgia girl Jessie Belle Holt has known how to use men. Her ticket out of Mayville isTraynor Deveraux, a trusting pastor with a brilliant career ahead. Seduced by the trappings of position and power, Jessie Bell uses her wiles to nudge her unwitting husband into national prominence. But how far will she go to sustain and expand her power?

Mayor Trent July and his wife, Lily, are enjoying life as newlyweds and embracing the challenges and joys that come with being adoptive parents to two wonderful boys. But being a father has inevitably forced him to think about his own birth mother. Raised by his grandmother, Tamar - and, in many ways, the good people of Henry Adams - Trent was blessed with a childhood full of love.

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.

Working in the ER, Dr. Marie Lavant sees the darkest side of New Orleans. But the bloody wounds of patients are not the only things that haunt her. As the descendent of a legendary voodoo queen, Marie is cursed with the ability to communicate with spirits of the dead.

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.

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.

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.