Showing results by narrator "Allyson Johnson" in All Categories

From the pulpy pages of Black Mask Magazine in the 1920s and '30s, through the film noir era of the 1940s, to today, noir fiction has lured many a reader and movie-goer away from the light and into the dark underbelly of society. Names such as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and James M. Cain; titles like The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, The Postman Always Rings Twice...these have inhabited our collective consciousness for decades. Humanity, it seems, loves the dark. And within the dark, one figure stands out: that of the femme fatale.

From the introduction by Jonathan Santlofer: "Like film, literature has been no stranger to marijuana and hashish, going back to Charles Baudelaire's 1860 Artificial Paradises, in which the French poet not only describes the effects of hashish but postulates it could be an aid in creating an ideal world.

Learn how to develop your intuition safely and effectively for joy and personal empowerment with best-selling author and psychic Karen Frazier as your guide. Psychic ability is the capacity to know the unknowable. We are all born with this gift—but we need to know how to access it. The...

Phillis Wheatley was just another child kidnapped into slavery from Senegal, until she began to show enormous intellectual promise, eventually shocking a room of Boston scholars by translating Ovid at the age of 14. Wheatley would go on to become a major voice in the American literary scene and would pave the way for African American writers to come.

This new South End Press edition makes available the full text of this out-of-print classic - along with a new foreword by Manning Marable, interviews with participants in DRUM, and reflections on political developments over the past three decades by Georgakas and Surkin.

In Coming to Our Senses, cognitive scientist Viki McCabe argues that prevailing theories of perception, cognition, and information cannot explain how we know the world around us. Using scientific studies and true stories, McCabe shows that the ecological disasters, political paralysis, and economic failures we now face originate in our tendency to privilege cognitive processes and products over the information we access with our perceptual systems.

Twelve science fiction stories about the oncoming future, each of them representing a possible glimpse of what could be just around the corner... or much further down the corridor. These stories previously appeared in places like Clarkesworld Magazine, The Year's Best SF, Subterranean Magazine, and in various anthologies. They deal with the future of war, our climate, and technology's effect on our lives.

Black women have higher rates of premature birth than other women in America. This cannot be simply explained by economic factors, with poorer women lacking resources or access to care. Even professional, middle-class Black women are at a much higher risk of premature birth than low-income White women in the United States. Dána-Ain Davis looks into this phenomenon, placing racial differences in birth outcomes into a historical context, revealing that ideas about reproduction and race today have been influenced by the legacy of ideas which developed during the era of slavery.

Eva Forge is the last paladin of the dead God, Morgan. Eva, forsaken by her parents and forgotten by her family, was the last child dedicated to the Cult of Morgan. Morgan, God of battle and champion of the Fraterdom, was assassinated by his jealous brother, Amon. Over time, the Cult of Morgan has been surpassed by other Gods, his blessings ignored in favor of brighter technologies and more mechanical miracles. Now, Eva watches as her new family, her Cult, crumbles around her.

Six months ago her three daughters walked out and left Charlotte Rodgers to fend for herself in her small home in Murphy, Kansas. Charlotte is left resentful and bitter toward her children—Clarice, Connie, and especially Camille—for abandoning her when all she wanted was to return home, finally, to Denver and escape from the memories of her painful past. What Charlotte doesn’t know is that the past is hot on her trail and, to her horror, will soon catch up with her once again.

New Suns 2 brings you fresh visions of the strange, the unexpected, the shocking-breakthrough stories, stories shining with emerging truths, stories that pierce stale preconceptions with their beauty and bravery.

A women’s boxing class is the perfect place for betrayed wife Katherine to work out her aggressions. Ideal too for Geneva, a teacher disgraced and ruined by a vengeful ex, and Luz, a software engineer battling an unjust system. Maggie, their instructor and mentor, guarantees she can right the wrongs they’ve endured. And if Katherine, Geneva, and Luz really want to unleash their rage, they must do what Maggie says.

Becoming a new teacher is one of the most fun, exciting, and challenging experiences you'll encounter in your life. Who wouldn't want a little help getting ready before sitting down behind the teacher's desk for the first time? That's where First-Year Teaching For Dummies comes in. You'll find easy-to-follow strategies and techniques to help you navigate the politics of education in your community, develop fun and fulfilling relationships with your students, and refine your own instructional style.

To Inquisitor Angel Xia, it was just another corporate killing on a backwater planet. But as the bodies begin to pile up and she finds herself a target, she realizes she's stepped on one toe too many. Barely escaping attempts on her life by powerful agents with seemingly limitless reach and influence, Angel senses even her co-Inquisitors can't be trusted. But as the web tightens, she receives a cryptic message from a computer program claiming to be a little girl in desperate need of her help.

An industrial hell. The foulest and most decrepit slum on Parsephon. A nest of human misery, where hope is word long forgotten, and the dead are carted away every day. It is the worst pit in the Confederation’s great industrial machine known as the Iron Belt. Among the millions born into misery, poverty, and despair under the dark and smoky haze that covers the planet, Andromeda Lafarge is unique. One lost soul among billions, she is tough, relentless, determined to get out, to escape, to blaze her own trail, and to make a name for herself across the stars.

On the distant world of Cersi, Om'ray Aryl Sarc and her supporters have been exiled from the rest of their people. Finding refuge in the mountains, they work to rebuild the ruined village of Sona, even as they try to discover what happened to the original Sona Clan. But Sona has a history among all three of Cersi's races - a history that may soon threaten the future of Aryl's newly founded clan....

The Excoms specialize in dealing with problems others can’t solve. Kidnappings, human exploitation, oppression. They’ve dealt with them all and earned the gratitude of the overlooked and the disadvantaged. But not everyone is happy with their work. After finishing their most recent assignment, they’re rudely awakened in the middle of the night by an explosive situation that changed the team forever. Some may think Ananke and her friends are no longer a threat. Some would be making a mistake. You may knock The Excoms down, but you can never count them out.

The word cowboy conjures up vivid images of rugged men on saddled horses - men lassoing cattle, riding bulls, or brandishing guns in a shoot-out. White men, as Hollywood remembers them. What is woefully missing from these scenes is their counterparts: the Black cowboys who made up one-fourth of the wranglers and rodeo riders. This book tells their story. 

Another powerful story in the Logan Family Saga and companion to Mildred D. Taylor's Newbery Award-winning Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. With the depression bearing down on her family, there isn’t much that Cassie Logan can count on anymore. But there is one thing that hasn’t changed—the...

Violet Comes to Stay is the first in a series of storybooks inspired by Cynthia Coppersmith, Father Tim's wife from Jan Karon's bestselling Mitford Years series. Jan Karon's legions of fans will love this timeless story about the endearing white kitten named Violet, charmingly written by Melanie...