Showing results by narrator "Allyson Johnson" in All Categories

Lilly Etta didn't know the men, but she knew those yellow chairs. They were Tanya's, and they were being taken out of her building. Tanya was being put out - Tanya, her mother, her six brothers and sisters. Their things would be piled on the sidewalk and left there to be had for the taking. It didn't matter if nobody else in the city cared; Lilly Etta did. She knew what friendship was, and she wasn't going to let her friend be thrown out without a fight.

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.

In a city full of police controversies, hippie artist punk houses, and overzealous liberals, Portland, Oregon, is a place where even its fiction blurs with its bizarre realities. Brand-new stories by: Gigi Little, Justin Hocking, Christopher Bolton, Jess Walter, Monica Drake, Jamie S. Rich (illustrated by Joelle Jones), Dan DeWeese, Zoe Trope, Luciana Lopez, Karen Karbo, Bill Cameron, Ariel Gore, Floyd Skloot, Megan Kruse, Kimberly Warner-Cohen, and Jonathan Selwood.

These 75 flash nonfiction pieces, written by internationally celebrated women authors and dazzlingly hilarious newcomers, are no flashes in the pan: They provide a feast of insights, generously garnished with wit, spice, and an exhilarating attention to craft. In Fast Funny Women, you'll find everything you want from thoughtful essays in a short, delicious form. Perfect for students of writing, writers of humor, and all fans who welcome laughter, insight, and perspective into their lives.

Mari N. Crabtree traces the long afterlife of lynching in the South through the traumatic memories it left in its wake. African American victims and survivors had to find a way to live through and beyond the horrors of lynching. Crabtree offers a theory of African American collective trauma and memory rooted in a strategy for “working through” trauma that has long existed within the African American cultural tradition: the ironic spirit of the blues sensibility—a spirit of misdirection and cunning that blends joy and pain.

Lost in Language & Sound is a vibrant and vital collection that celebrates the three most important muses in the life and work of Ntozake Shange - language, music, and dance. In this deeply personal book, the celebrated writer reflects on what it means to be an artist, a woman, and a woman of color through a beautiful combination of memoir and essay. She describes where her love for creative forces began - in her childhood home, a place where imagination reigned and boredom wasn't allowed.

Getting a handle on personal finance can be confusing and stressful. Get unstuck and start saving now with this streamlined, holistic plan for financial wellness. Smart Money makes it simple to ditch debt and jump-start your wealth in nine practical steps. Learn how to avoid money pitfalls, correct any wrong turns, and save and spend the right way to build wealth.

Stranded humans must adapt alien technology to survive on a dangerous planet. Lost in the dark, half a year into their journey to the colony world of Tantalus, Sakura Kimei, her family, and her best friend, the alien "Bemmie" nicknamed Whips, are torn from the safety of their colony ship. In a crippled lifeboat, they have one chance to find a habitable world. But even then they will find that their apparent salvation is a world of a thousand secrets.

Some locales seem to come with their own soundtrack. Don Ho and his tiny bubbles provide the background music for Hawaii, Edith Piaf for Paris. The reggae of Bob Marley evokes Jamaica. The soundtrack for Alabama is without question provided by our troubled troubadour Hank Williams. The 2016 biography Hank by Mark Ribowsky paints a dark picture of the musician's short, alcoholic, drug-filled life: a life of loneliness and pain. He goes so far as to call Hank's life story "noir-ish"....

Farrah Grant knew one thing when she opened the Vampire Matchmaking Agency. Her life as a vampire was nothing like the movies. Limited in options by the Order of the Immortals' laws, the dating pool had become increasingly narrow. To remedy this, she opened the VMA. Although she helped dozens of supernatural beings find love, she was beginning to think her own love situation was hopeless.

River Bend, Michigan, is the kind of small town most can't imagine leaving, but three women couldn't wait to escape. When each must return - Linda Williams, never sure what she wants; her mother, Paula, always too sure; and Beth DeWitt, one of River Bend's only black daughters, now a mother of two who'd planned to raise her own children anywhere else - their paths collide under Beth's father's roof. As one town struggles to contain all of their love affairs and secrets, a local scandal forces Beth to confront her own devastating past.

Libby and her friends are put in charge of the science booth at their school fair. There’s only one problem: no one is visiting their booth! Does everyone think science is boring? Libby and her friends use teamwork, creativity, and just a bit of chemistry to turn things around and prove that science is for everyone.

The editors who brought us Unsettling America and Identity Lessons have compiled a short-story anthology that focuses on themes of racial and ethnic assimilation. With humor, passion, and grace, the contributors lay bare poignant attempts at conformity and the alienation sometimes experienced by ethnic Americans. But they also tell of the strength gained through the preservation of their communities, and the realization that it was often their difference from the norm that helped them to succeed.

They were sent to investigate the first extraterrestrial signal. What they found was beyond anything they could have imagined - or feared. On a voyage to a mysterious moon in the Alpha Centauri system, the UEA Centaurus meets with disaster. Only the quick thinking of the flight engineer, Rachel Terman, saves some of the crew. Crash-landing on the moon, trillions of kilometers from Earth, they struggle to carry out their mission and try to survive. But nothing has prepared them for what they will face.

Buffalo, New York, is still the second-largest metropolis in the state, but in recent years its designation as the Queen City has been elbowed aside by a name that's pure noir: The City of No Illusions. Presidents came from here; and in 1901 a president was killed here while visiting the Pan-American Exposition, by a man who checked into a hotel under a name that translates as Nobody.

Eleven-year-old Jane Grandison, tormented by her stutter, sits in the back seat of a car, letter in hand inviting her to live and study at the Sybil Joines Vocational School for Ghost Speakers & Hearing-Mouth Children. Founded in 1890 by Headmistress Sybil Joines, the school - at first glance - is a sanctuary for children seeking to cure their speech impediments. Inspired by her haunted and tragic childhood, the Headmistress has other ideas.

Kira Solomon's life has never been simple. Battling against the Fallen, serving the Egyptian goddess Maat, becoming romantically involved with a 4,000-year-old Nubian warrior - these are now everyday realities. But something is changing. Kira's magic is becoming dangerously unpredictable, tainted by the Shadow she has been trained to destroy.

As a Shadowchaser, Kira Solomon has been trained to serve the Light, dispatch the Fallen, and prevent the spread of chaos. Its a deadly job, and Kira knows the horror of spilling innocent blood. But now she has a new role, as the Hand of Maat, the Egyptian Goddess of Truth and Order, and an assignment that might just redeem her.

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.

Have you heard of the Star Maiden, Old Sally Cato, or Sweet Betsey from Pike? Everyone knows about Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed, and Davy Crockett, But have you heard of these larger-than-life women? From Bess Call, who wrestles any and all challengers, to Molly Cottontail, who can outwit any critter in the woods, to Hekeke, who slays a giant singlehandedly, here are 15 funny, stormy, and always entertaining tall tales of legendary American women. They're as difference as can be, but still cut from the same cloth.