Showing results by narrator "Joniece Abbott Pratt" in All Categories

Raised by her beloved grandmother in tension-filled, post-segregation Virginia, Grace is barely a teenager when she loses her Maw Maw. Shellshocked, she is shipped up North to live with her formidably ambitious Aunt Hattie—a woman who firmly left behind her “undesirable” Southern roots in pursuit of upward mobility. Thrust into the world of the Black and socially ambitious, Grace finds herself trapped in a society of stifling respectability, fancy teas, and coveted debutante balls.

For fifteen years, the Wilcoxes have been a family in name only. Though never the picture of happiness, they once seemed like a typical white Jewish clan from the Upper West Side. But in the early 2000s, two events ruptured the relationships between them. First, Naomi revealed to her children that her biological father was actually Black. In the aftermath, college-age daughter Bering left home to become a radical peace activist in Palestine’s West Bank, where she was killed by an Israeli Army sniper.

After saving the world from the diabolical Ace of Anarchy, Ella, Brigit, and Jason return for year three at the Arcanum Training Institute. But the heroes' return is far from welcoming. Ella’s big reveal last year threw everything into chaos, unearthing long-buried secrets and unwinding a twisted trail of deceit. As tensions rise between Marvellers and Conjurors, Ella realizes that the only way to end the chaos is to unveil the truth about what happened to the Conjure architect once and for all. To do that, she’ll have to enlist the help of the living and the dead.

Solenne Bonet lives in Texas where choice no longer exists. An algorithm determines a Black woman’s occupation, spouse, and residence. Solenne finds solace in penning the biography of Henriette, an ancestor who’d been an enslaved concubine to a wealthy planter in 1800s Louisiana. But history repeats itself when Solenne, lonely and naïve, finds herself entangled with Bastien Martin, a high-ranking government official. Solenne finds the psychological bond unbearable, so she considers alternatives. With Henriette as her guide, she must decide whether and how to leave behind all she knows.

“There have never been as many exquisitely built stories in existence than there are now,” proclaims guest editor Lauren Groff in her introduction. This abundance led to a volume of robust stories with the nerve to push against narrative expectations. The Best American Short Stories 2024 boasts a collection of twenty stories that “buzz with their own strange logic.” Daring and resonant, the stories in this volume invite in Groff “a feeling that both the author and I were simultaneously discovering something together.”

Venus harnessed a rich blend of hard-won wisdom and core discipline to achieve her goals while keeping a simple promise to herself: to keep things fun. But after being diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune disorder that affected her emotional and physical wellness, Venus's vow was put to the test. She came up with the STRIVE strategy—a winning combination of holistic and scientific approaches to wellness and performance that focuses on making self-improvements reachable and sustainable.

April Jefferson doesn’t know why she and her friends are traveling back in time. All she knows is that she and Henry and Toad are now in Michigan! They still don’t know where their father is, and they have no idea how to get home. Can they find the missing pieces to the puzzle, or will they be stuck in history forever?

Girls like Reya Samuels always come from Prince George’s County. Reya is rich and she’s not afraid to show it—she wears designer clothes, drives a custom pink Audi, and lives in a neighborhood tucked behind a fancy cast iron gate. She works hard, but she can get anything she wants with a snap. Sommer Watkins is from Seat Pleasant, where the cast iron gates are significantly smaller—and attached to the windows, where most folks are still trying to make ends meet. Every day for Sommer is a hustle, working at her dad’s bookstore.

Award-winning author Wanda Morris returns with a powerful, haunting thriller following a lawyer who after the mysterious disappearance of a local landowner and the death of his sister just months before, uncovers a conspiracy that dates back to Reconstruction and persists in half the United States today.

Darling Seabreak cannot remember anything before the murder of her family at the hands of House Dragon, but she knows she owes her life to both the power of her Chaos Boon and House Kraken for liberating her from the sewers where she spent her childhood. So when her adoptive Kraken father is captured in battle, Darling vows to save him. Talon Goldhoard has always been a dutiful War Prince for House Dragon, bravely leading his brother's elite troops. But lately his brother’s erratic rule threatens to undo a hundred years of hard work, and factions are turning to Talon to unseat him.

Like Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place, Sidik Fofana’s electrifying collection of eight interconnected stories showcases the strengths, struggles, and hopes of one residential community in a powerful storytelling experience. Each short story follows a tenant in the Banneker Homes, a low-income high rise in Harlem where gentrification weighs on everyone’s mind. We root for these characters and more as they weave in and out of each other’s lives, endeavoring to escape from their pasts and blaze new paths forward for themselves and the people they love.

Devon is always being left behind by her genius twin sister, Drew. At this point, it’s a fact of life. But Devon has one last plan before Drew leaves for college a whole year early—The Best Summer Ever. After committing to the bit a little too much, the twins and their chaotic circle of friends learn why you don’t ever mess with a Ouija board if you want to actually survive the Best Summer Ever, and soon find themselves being hunted down by…a demon?

A rich, dark urban fantasy debut following a teen witch who is given a horrifying task: sacrificing her first love to save her family’s magic. The problem is, she’s never been in love - she’ll have to find the perfect guy before she can kill him.

Genevieve Francis, a 25-year-old Black reporter, assumed she’d go into her fourth year at her newspaper job with a bigger story than the latest seasonal ice cream flavor. Instead, she’s relegated to doing copy edits and sensitivity reads on the articles her white colleagues write. So when Gen finally gets the opportunity to cover a prominent CEO’s gala, she leaps at the chance—this will be her biggest assignment to date. The only problem: The CEO is her ex, Jude, whose marriage proposal she publicly rejected four years prior.

A cinematic and unforgettable debut novel, Gulf casts a harsh desert light on often overlooked stories from the Arabian Gulf through the voices of five diverse women whose lives collide with devastating and profound consequences. Written with unsettling intimacy and determined empathy, Gulf exposes the stark realities of what happens when a woman’s agency is stripped away and asks how far we will go in order to survive.

Danielle Evans is widely acclaimed for her blisteringly smart voice and X-ray insights into complex human relationships. With The Office of Historical Corrections, Evans zooms in on particular moments and relationships in her characters’ lives in a way that allows them to speak to larger issues of race, culture, and history. She introduces us to Black and multiracial characters who are experiencing the universal confusions of lust and love, and getting walloped by grief - all while exploring how history haunts us, personally and collectively.

Endometriosis is a physically and mentally debilitating disease that has tortured women for centuries. Symptoms of heavy periods and excruciating pain most often begin in middle school or high school, yet doctors take an average of 12 years to diagnose it in a patient. As a result, these undiagnosed and misdiagnosed women suffer into at least their mid-20s or early 30s, repeatedly told that the pain is in their minds, that it’s simply part of becoming a woman, or that it’s caused by some other disease or condition. That nonsense must stop, and it must stop now!

Prince Jones is the guy with all the answers—or so it seems. After all, at seventeen, he has his own segment on Detroit’s popular hip-hop show, Love Radio, where he dishes out advice to the brokenhearted. Prince has always dreamed of becoming a DJ and falling in love. But being the main caretaker for his mother, who has multiple sclerosis, and his little brother means his dreams will stay just that and the only romances in his life are the ones he hears about from his listeners. Until he meets Dani Ford.

Sparks fly when Orion and Ray meet for the first time at a roller rink in Memphis. But these star-crossed souls have a past filled with secrets that threaten to tear them apart before their love story even begins. Found poetry, grief, and fate collide in this powerful debut.

Cristina and Clement Trudeau have conjured the impossible: justice. They took back their family’s stolen throne to lead New Orleans’ magical community into the brighter future they all deserve. But when Cris and Clem restored their family power, Valentina Savant lost everything. Her beloved grandparents are gone and her sovereignty has been revoked—she will never be Queen. Unless, of course, someone dethrones the Trudeaus again. And lucky for her, she’s not the only one trying to take them down.