Showing results by narrator "Leon Nixon" in All Categories

In his more-than-four-decade tenure as the President of Hampton University—one of 107 Historically Black Colleges and Universities in America—Dr. William R. Harvey has been a champion of the cultural impact and value of HBCUs, demonstrated by the achievements of their numerous notable alumni. Their success is no coincidence. It is the result of a faultless formula that sets HBCUs apart and helps their students thrive.

One of the first studies of the organization, life, and meaning of the Nation of Islam and, by extension, all Black Nationalist movements, this classic work dispels the still-common conception that the movement functioned primarily for political purposes. By observing the daily life of its members, Essien-Udom demonstrates that the Nation of Islam served primarily as a means for poor urban Blacks to attain a national identity, a sense of ethnic consciousness, and empowerment in a society that denied them these privileges.

Comeback Season is the uplifting, unlikely, and inspirational true story of the friendships formed between Cam Perron - a white, baseball-obsessed teenager from Boston - and hundreds of former professional Negro League players, who were still awaiting the recognition and compensation that they deserved from Major League Baseball more than 50 years after their playing days were over.

After 12 years of playing basketball at the highest professional level, Brian Grant could have been forgiven for thinking that the hardest part of his life was behind him, that he'd be able to kick back and enjoy the fruits of his considerable labors. But soon after his retirement from the NBA, Grant was diagnosed with Young-Onset Parkinson's Disease, ushering in a challenge greater than any he'd faced before. In Rebound, Grant shares his remarkable life before, during, and after those NBA years with no shortage of compassion and wit.

Cole has heard it all before - token, bougie, oreo, Blackish - the things we call the kids like him. Black kids who grow up in white spaces, living at an intersection of race and class that many doubt exists. He needed to get far away from the preppy site of his upbringing before he could make sense of it all. Through a series of personal anecdotes and interviews with his peers, Cole transports us to his adolescence and explores what it's like to be young and in search of identity.

In 1971, Eddie Conway, lieutenant of security for the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party, was convicted of murdering a police officer and sentenced to life plus 30 years. Paul Coates was a community worker at the time and didn’t know Eddie well, and the little he knew, he didn’t much like. But Paul was dead certain that Eddie’s charges were bogus. He vowed never to leave Eddie - and in so doing, changed the course of both their lives. For over 43 years, as he raised a family and started a business, Paul visited Eddie in prison, often taking his kids with him.

An African American writer's concise, heartfelt take on the state of his nation, exploring the war between the values he has always held and the reality with which he is confronted in 21st-century America.

Reagan Richardson loves planning extravagant, classy weddings as the head planner of Precious Moments Events. Though the notion of walking down the aisle has never entered her mind...considering none of her boyfriends have ever lasted long enough thanks to her. However, meeting Dr. Blake Harrison changes all of that in a glance and she finds herself in uncharted territory.

Zaria Richardson is determined to make her event planning company, Precious Moments, the most sought-after on St. Simons Island, Georgia. When Dr. Garrett Braxton approaches her with shocking information about their rendezvous last year to Las Vegas, the perfect life she’s created for herself comes crashing down. All of her mixed emotions over the suave, irresistible doctor rise to the surface, and now she’s faced with a life-changing decision.

Mixing business with pleasure leads to a passionate night. Harper Bennett’s motto is work hard, play hard. Lately, she’s forgotten the latter and has focused her time as part-owner, along with her brothers, of the hottest nightclub in Atlanta. When an intriguing client enters, Harper forgoes her promise to never date a man that doesn’t live in the same city and she finds herself playing hard to get with Hunter Arrington. The passion that has ignited between them can’t be extinguished, and she dreads the day he has to leave.

Doc’s life was perfect. Gorgeous wife, amazing son, and a beautiful home. He was living the American dream, until the day it was all taken away. He would spend the next several months in a deep depression trying to figure out what he could have done to avoid losing the life that was so dear to him. Doc endlessly reviewed his memories, mistakes, and secrets trying to find the moment in time when everything could have been saved.

Mortar rounds rained down on us continuously, starting at sunrise. We hadn’t slept the previous night because the business of life and death were upon us. Now those mortar rounds were erupting like little volcanoes. But instead of hot lava rocks, they were hot pieces of shrapnel that whizzed by us in every direction.

Set at a religious, liberal-arts university, Tabula Rasa tells a story of growing up, falling in and out of love, and forging bonds of friendship that have a lifelong effect. Told through the eyes of a young freshman named Troy Rollins, the novel is at once bitingly witty, frank, tragic, painful, but above all, hopeful. Troy begins his year at Ellis University as a blank slate: no ambition and no other desire than to finally be on his own and maybe be lucky enough to find a nice girlfriend. He is introduced to a wide variety of stimulating, albeit eccentric characters.

A nature advocate, Erin Archer, is working to restore a now-flooded and dammed-up Hetch Hetchy Valley in the Yosemite National Park to its original state. When her father, a private investigator and experienced mountaineer, dies in a rock-climbing fall, Erin doesn't believe it's an accident. Determined to find the truth, she uncovers a connection between her father's last case and Nick Oliver, a business intelligence analyst.

A mysterious plum account leads to former Army Ranger and current investment broker Lou Christopher being recruited to resurrect his military skills under a threat of losing everything he has. Colonel Christopher has to summon all of his Ranger skills to cope with this danger, and discovers a source of strength he hadn't counted on before: his wife, who matches his adroitness in planning and evading discovery when the chips are down, and outwits all those foolish enough to underestimate her.

Dan Marco, a combat veteran with a shady past, returns home after the war to find he can't reintegrate in to what society calls the "norm". Death of his childhood friend brings the horrors of combat back with a vengeance and he quickly retreats to dark-side of his mind and finds himself on Ward Seven, for the mental.

A brief history of the West Vancouver Police Department (Tiddly Cove P.D.) with an introduction to some of the characters that worked in the organization. The author then relates stories of his early days as a constable with some of the adventures he encountered which included wrestling with a cow on a local beach, investigating shoplifting gangs affiliated with the Hell's Angels outlaw biker gang.

Discreetly disguised as a boy, Brook travels to Texas with a tantalizing young army captain and his Indian guide. There she finds her father who welcomes her with open arms. But Brook's stepmother and Ram, her handsome stepbrother, resent her. When she accidently discovers Ram's underhanded schemes, she knows that her life is in danger. Isolated on the ranch, is there anywhere she can go for help? Would she dare to turn to Captain Jeremy Grant for help?

Unspoiled by her beauty or wealth, Sarah Clarke travels an arduous journey by stagecoach to inherit the Arrow C cattle ranch left to her by the grandfather she never knew. However, the ranch foreman, a half-breed Indian called Storm, also claims legal ownership.

Paul and Angelina are old friends who dated in college, briefly, years ago, and recently reconnected via email. During their correspondence, they realized that they both regretted not taking up with each other back then, especially given their difficult and tumultuous first marriages after college. When Angelina is killed, she is offered a choice of what to do next and opts to have both of them return to when she and Paul first arrived at college and do it over again.