American Places

Cops can make mistakes, even when they're not rookies. Deeply traumatized by a shooting incident, Cass Raines resigned from the Chicago PD, leaving one less female African-American on the force. Now she's the head of a one-woman private investigation agency. She also plays chess with the only father figure she's ever known, Father Ray Heaton. When Father Ray asks Cass to look into a recent spate of vandalism at his church, she readily agrees to handle the case. But only hours later she's horrified to discover his murdered body in the church confessional, a dead gangbanger sprawled out nearby.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An epic, mesmerizing oral history of Hollywood and Los Angeles from the author of the contemporary classic Edie Jean Stein transformed the art of oral history in her groundbreaking book Edie: American Girl, an indelible portrait of Andy Warhol “superstar” Edie...

GOLD MEMBER WINNER — LIVING NOW BOOK AWARD: SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP and eLIT BOOK AWARD: BUSINESS AUDIOBOOK A timely resource for Black professionals on how to rise to the top of their organizations or industries and, just as importantly, to stay there. Black Faces in High Places is the essential...

Bloomsbury presents Some Places More Than Others by Renée Watson, read by Bahni Turpin. From Newbery Honor- and Coretta Scott King Author Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author Renée Watson comes a heartwarming and inspiring novel for middle schoolers about finding deep roots and...

COLBY AWARD WINNER “One of the most important books to come out of the Afghanistan war.”—Foreign Policy “A saga of courage and futility, of valor and error and heartbreak.”—Rick Atkinson, author of the Liberation Trilogy and The British Are Coming Of the many battlefields on...

Brought to you by Penguin. Romance, glamour, ambition and power . . . meet the Washingtons - the most scandalous royal family ever! HRH Princess Samantha has always been a royal rebel. She's the spare not the heir, so no one minds too much who she dates or how hard she parties. It helps that her...

Brought to you by Penguin. The New York Times bestselling series returns! Your favourite royal family are back for another thrilling instalment of gossip, drama and romance . . . Beatrice Washington now rules America as its first ever queen, but her family are more concerned about rushing...

'If you have time for only one book this summer, pick this one' New York Times 'An ambitious, immersive novel from the author of In Her Shoes' Red Magazine 'Engrossing' Sunday Mirror ____________________________ From the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of That Summer comes another...

After nuclear strikes destroy most of the United States, EMT Ellena Reed—stripped of her license for freezing when it mattered most—leads a group of survivors west toward a rumored bunker in the Rockies. Her stepsister, Button, is ailing. Nuclear winter is setting in. And there's a rumor that Yellowstone is about to erupt. Every encounter forces impossible choices: trust armed strangers or risk the journey alone, travel west while other survivors head east, hold onto humanity or do what it takes to survive. Ellena must decide who lives and who dies—and find a way to live with those decisions.

Brian Isaac’s powerful debut novel All the Quiet Places is the coming-of-age story of Eddie Toma, an Indigenous (Syilx) boy, told through the young narrator’s wide-eyed observations of the world around him.

Nothing can mend a broken heart quite like family. Sherry has struggled all her life to understand who she is, where she comes from, and, most important, why her mother slapped her cheek one summer afternoon. The incident has haunted Sherry, and it causes her to dig into her family's past. Like many family histories, it is fractured and stubbornly reluctant to reveal its secrets. But Sherry is determined to know the full story. In a few days' time, her extended family will gather for a reunion, and Sherry sets off across the country with her mother, Dumpling, to join them.

Told in a series of essays that balance memoir with fieldwork, Heaven Is a Place on Earth is an idiosyncratic study of American utopian experiments—from the Shakers to the radical faerie communes of Short Mountain to the Bronx rebuilding movement—through the lens of one woman’s quest to create a more communal life in a time of unending economic and social precarity.

Dating back to slavery, Edgefield County, South Carolina - a place "easy to pass by on the way somewhere else" - has been home to generations of Lanhams. In The Home Place, listeners meet these extraordinary people, including Drew himself, who over the course of the 1970s falls in love with the natural world around him. As his passion takes flight, however, he begins to ask what it means to be "the rare bird, the oddity".   

In The Last Empty Places, bestselling author Peter Stark takes the listener to four of the most remote, wild, and unpopulated areas of the United States outside of Alaska, and mainly not part of protected wilderness: the rivers and forests of Northern Maine; the rugged, unpopulated region of Western Pennsylvania, that lies only a short distance from the East's big cities; the haunting canyons of Central New Mexico; and the vast, arid basins of Southeast Oregon.

A fascinating history that examines how real estate, gentrification, community and the highs and lows of New York City itself shaped the city’s music scenes from folk to house music. Take a walk through almost any neighborhood in Manhattan and you’ll likely pass some of the most significant...

Discover how African-American professionals can combine their personal strengths with the wisdom of others to plant the seeds of a positive, lasting legacy in the workplace. Randal Pinkett was the first African-American winner on The Apprentice. When he won, he also became the only contestant to...

Growing up in rural Oregon, Brandon Wolf grappled with the devastating loss of his supportive mother and with the embedded racism and homophobia of a community that made him feel like an unwelcome stranger. After the lack of connection and role models led him down a spiral of risky behavior, Wolf escaped to survive. In Orlando, he found what he’d been searching for: belonging—in a community that was a safe space with people he’d come to call his chosen family.

"A delightful Southern story extolling the deep bond of sisters, Lauren Denton’s?A Place to?Land?has a heartwarming tone as it unravels a 40-year-old mystery coming back to haunt a cast of small-town characters whose lives are entwined in Sugar Bend, Alabama." --New York Journal of Books...

One of NPR’s Great Reads of 2016 “A lively assemblage and smart analysis of dozens of haunting stories…absorbing…[and] intellectually intriguing.” —The New York Times Book Review From the author of The Unidentified, an intellectual feast for fans of offbeat history that takes readers...

Two hundred years ago, slavery had the Southern United States firmly in its evil grip. Around four million African Americans languished in the most appalling of living conditions, their lives controlled by people who saw them as objects. They were starved, whipped, and put to work despite being pregnant, sick, or so young that they could barely walk.