Showing results by narrator "Debra Michaels" in All Categories

It is 1797, and the African kingdom of Segu, born of blood and violence, is at the height of its power. Yet Dousika Traore, the king's most trusted advisor, feels nothing but dread. Change is coming. From the East, a new religion, Islam. From the West, the slave trade. These forces will tear his country, his village and the lives of his beloved sons apart, in Maryse Condé's glittering epic.

Georgian England had a large and distinctive black community. Yet all of them, prosperous citizens or newly freed slaves, ran the risk of kidnap and sale to plantations. Their dramatic, often moving story is told in this audiobook. The idea that Britain became a mixed-race country after 1945 is a common mistake. Even in Shakespeare's England, black people were numerous enough for Queen Elizabeth to demand their expulsion. She was, perhaps, the first to fear that whites would lose their jobs, yet her order was ignored without ill effects.

Pyn-Poi's mother Marak wants her to grow up to be the matriarch of the tribe, learning how to cook, to make medicines, how to care for everyone, but Pyn-Poi would rather be out among the trees like her father Sook-Sook, learning how persuade tree roots into bridges, to feel when shoots are too crowded, when drooping leaves need attention. Then something starts going wrong in The Real: when the rains come, instead of nourishment, they bring a noxious stench that's poisoning people and plants alike.

Mary Grace, Micah, Thomas Augustus, Cherry Jane and Mercy. These are the names of her children. The five who survived, only to be sold to other plantations. The faces Rachel cannot forget. It's 1834, and the law says her people are now free. But for Rachel freedom means finding her children, even if the truth is more than she can bear. With fear snapping at her heels, Rachel keeps moving. From sunrise to sunset, through the cane fields of Barbados to the forests of British Guiana and on to Trinidad, to the dangerous river and the open sea.

A laugh-out-loud, feelgood read for fans of Gill Sims, Sophie Ranald and Tracy Bloom by the author of The Pissed-off Parents Club and Just Another Manic Mum Day. It’s Annie Beaton’s 50th birthday! But instead of getting roses and perfume, she gets sacked; her son, Ben, tells her that she’s growing a beard and her husband Joe tells her he wants a divorce. Moving to the countryside to stay in her eccentric aunt’s house, Annie must find her mojo again - and fast.

A moving, inspiring and thought-provoking collection of 50 coming-out stories from around the world. From the good, the sad, the surprising and the funny, no two stories are the same, yet all are by people who share the courage to be vulnerable, take huge risks to find love and acceptance and are brave enough to be their authentic selves. Whether you have any experience of coming out or not, these stories are incredibly powerful and moving.

Enjoy this collection of stories for children about life on the farm. In "Hector Helps Out", Calliope the hen enlists the help of Hector the rooster in an effort to retain her egg. They work to pull a fast one on Farmer Bean. Also included are nine other stories about animals and living on the farm: "Hatch!", "Fresh from the Farm", "Grandpa Drives a Milk Truck", "Mem and Grandpa at the Farm Stand", "Diggory Dog", "Fleece Fiber, Yarn Sweater", "Harvest Time with Papa", "Herbert, Hurry Up", and "A Rootin' Tootin' Cowboy".

In 1948 the former troop ship Windrush made the 30-day journey across the Atlantic from Jamaica. The arrival of its 500 passengers, the first generation of Caribbean migrants in the UK, was the initial step in the formation of a new identity: the black Briton. Fifty years later, Mike and Trevor Phillips spoke to those on the Windrush itself, as well as those who followed, to tell the story of Britain in the second half of the twentieth century through the eyes of the outsiders who became insiders.

Private investigator Olivia Knightley has finally pressed pause on her busy schedule and regained some work-life balance - for the next three weeks. The ink on her divorce papers is barely dry, so she promises to take her sixteen-year-old daughter Amy travelling across the US. But no sooner than they arrive at a campground populated with other 'van lifers' and nomads, they discover a violent murder scene that shakes the community.

The Short Story of the Universe is a new introduction to the subject of the universe. Covering 130 key components that make it up - from dwarf galaxies and spiral arms to red giants and the planets of the solar system - and linking these to the universe's structure and the theories that help us understand it, this book simplifies this riveting yet mind-boggling subject, telling the story of how it came into being and how it will eventually be no more.

Bringing Up Race is an important audiobook, for all families whatever their race or ethnicity. Racism cuts across all sectors of society - even the queen will have to grapple with these issues, as great grandmother to a child of mixed ethnicity. It's for everyone who wants to instil a sense of open-minded inclusivity in their kids and those who want to discuss difference instead of shying away from tough questions.

Have you ever spent all day looking after your baby or young child—and ended up feeling that you have 'done nothing all day'? Do you sometimes find it hard to feel pleased with what you are doing, and tell yourself you should achieve more with your time? Maybe it's because you can't see how much you are doing already. In this unique and perceptive look at mothering, Naomi Stadlen draws on many years' work with hundreds of other mothers of a wide variety of ages and backgrounds.

An all-too-plausible terrorist plot to destroy the Houses of Parliament brings into focus much greater problems than the differences between two cultures in this gripping thriller from a former commissioned officer in the Parachute Regiment.

When Jada Jinks finds a box of magic tricks in her granny’s flat, she uncovers her granny’s secret dream of becoming a magician. Jada soon decides that she’s going to help Granny Jinks fulfil her dreams, but one thing stands in her way - her dad, Jonny Jinks, who hates magic! Will Jada be able to help Granny Jinks pass the auditions for Dalton Green Magic Society, and will she learn some tricks of her own along the way?

Elemental spirits – the fiery Dragons, the airy Fumis, the watery Chads and the earthbound Magogs – have existed peacefully alongside humans for hundreds of years. Until today. A sleeping sickness hangs heavy in the air and monsters stir in dark corners...but who is to blame? Marisee and Robert are the Elemental Detectives chasing clues to avoid catastrophe, facing a riddling dragon, a tentacled plague monster from the deep and the ghosts of Hyde Park in their race-against-time mission to solve the mystery of the millennium.

Homecoming draws on over a hundred firsthand interviews, archival recordings and memoirs by the women and men who came to Britain from the West Indies between the late 1940s and the early 1960s. In their own words, we witness the transition from the optimism of the first postwar arrivals to the race riots of the late 1950s. We hear from nurses in Manchester; bus drivers in Bristol; seamstresses in Birmingham; teachers in Croydon; dockers in Cardiff; inter-racial lovers in High Wycombe, and Carnival Queens in Leeds.

It’s 1954, and in Barbados, Ruby Haynes spots an advertisement for young women to train as nurses for the new National Health Service in Great Britain. Her sister, Connie, takes some persuading, but soon the sisters are on their way to a new country and a whole new world in terms of experiences. As they start their training in Hertfordshire, they discover England isn’t quite the promised land—for every door that’s opened to them, the sisters find many slammed in their faces.

Professor Hakim Adi draws on a variety of published works in Black Voices on Britain, all of which describe powerful experiences: James Gronniosaw and his family endure poverty, illness and unemployment; Mary Prince is driven out by her cruel owners and turns to London charities for help; Frederick Douglass, on a lecture tour around Britain, reveals how the Christian clergy built churches with slave-owners’ money and William Wells Brown gives his impressions of England as he travels around a country which welcomes him more readily than America.

In 1952, Beryl Gilroy moved from British Guiana to London. Her new life wasn't what she had expected - but her belief in the power of education resulted in a revolutionary career. Inspiring and unflinching, Gilroy's memoir Black Teacher is a rediscovered classic: not only a rare firsthand insight into the Windrush generation but a testament to how one extraordinary woman's dignity, ambition and spirit transcended her era.

Professor Hakim Adi draws on a variety of published works in Black Voices on Britain, all of which describe powerful experiences: James Gronniosaw and his family endure poverty, illness and unemployment; Mary Prince is driven out by her cruel owners and turns to London charities for help; Frederick Douglass, on a lecture tour around Britain, reveals how the Christian clergy built churches with slave-owners’ money and William Wells Brown gives his impressions of England as he travels around a country which welcomes him more readily than America.