Showing results by narrator "Mela Lee" in All Categories

When Dwayne and Alice Odom are killed, the police report states clearly that it was a drug overdose. So why is their daughter, who was there when they died, claiming that's not the truth? Betsy Odom doesn't trust the police but when she finds herself in their custody after her parents' death, she knows she has to be careful. Her uncle wants to adopt her and as he is a very rich and powerful man, she wants to let him. His criminal connections, however, mean the police aren't so sure.

Eva Mercy is a single mother and best-selling erotica writer who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award-winning novelist, who, to everyone's surprise, shows up unexpectedly in New York. When Shane and Eva meet at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their buried traumas, but also the eyebrows of the Black literati. What no one knows is that 15 years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love.

Rhea's neighborhood is fading away—the mom-and-pop shops of her childhood forced out to make space for an artisanal kombucha brewery here, a hot yoga studio there. And everywhere, the feeling that this place is no longer meant for her. Because while their little corner of South L.A. isn't perfect, to Rhea and her two best friends, it's something even more important—it's home. And it's worth protecting. But as more white people flock to their latest edgy, urban paradise, more of Rhea's friends and family are pushed out. Until Rhea decides it's time to push back.

With Christmas around the corner, Ramona Tucker is desperate to get away. She has been lying to her family about her engagement to Malik, her (ex) fiancé. But breakups are fickle, and Ramona is convinced that she can make her pretend wedding real again—but only if she can avoid everyone discovering her secret at her mother’s over-the-top Christmas Eve party.

When Jordyn Jones transfers to Edgewood High, it's her opportunity to forget everything that happened at her old school. To forget what she and her friends did. To forget who she used to be. That was a different person—this is a fresh start. Now, she's someone new, someone better.

Ricki Wilde has many talents, but being a Wilde isn't one of them. As the impulsive, artistic daughter of a powerful Atlanta dynasty, she's the opposite of her famous socialite sisters. Where they're long-stemmed roses, she's a dandelion: an adorable bloom that's actually a weed, born to float wherever the wind blows. In her bones, Ricki knows that somewhere, a different, more exciting life awaits her. When regal nonagenarian, Ms. Della, invites her to rent the bottom floor of her Harlem brownstone, Ricki jumps at the chance for a fresh beginning.

Death was everywhere. They all stared at me, bumping into one another and slowly coming forward. Sixteen-year-old Zharie Young is absolutely certain her mother morphed into a zombie before her untimely death, but she can't seem to figure out why. Why her mother died, why her aunt doesn't want her around, why all her dreams seem suddenly, hopelessly out of reach. And why, ever since that day, she's been seeing zombies everywhere.

When a series of military-style attacks erupt across the United States, Detective John Sampson is called in to investigate. The attacks are untraceable, with patterns too random to decipher, leaving Sampson struggling to find a link amongst the carnage. As Sampson discovers a lead through an ex-military contact, his partner Alex Cross is brutally side-lined, leaving him certain about one thing: he can trust no one. With soldiers called on secret assignments and others mysteriously disappearing, Sampson must revisit his military past if he's to save his country's future.

In this glittering triptych novel, Suzette, Maple and Agnes, three Black women with albinism, call Shreveport, Louisiana home. At the bustling crossroads of the American South and Southwest, these three women find themselves at the crossroads of their own lives. A searing meditation on grief, female strength, and self‑discovery, Nobody's Magic is a testament to the power of family—the ones you're born into and the ones you choose. And in these three narratives, among the yearning and loss, each of these women may find a seed of hope for the future.

Attorney Rhonda Bird returns home to LA to bury her estranged father and discovers that he left her two final surprises. The first is a private detective agency that he set up after leaving his job as an accountant; the second is a teenage half sister named Baby. When Rhonda goes into her father's old office to close down the business, she gets drawn into a case involving a young man who claims he was abducted. The investigation takes Rhonda and Baby to dark and dangerous places, and they become the target of a criminal cartel seeking revenge.

Who was at the forefront of women's right to vote? We know a few famous names, like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, but what about so many others from diverse backgrounds—Black, Asian, Latinx, Native American, and more—who helped lead the fight for suffrage? On the 100th anniversary of the historic win for women's rights, it's time to celebrate the names and stories of the women whose stories have yet to be told.

Mistletoe, Maine, is buzzing and not just because Christmas is around the corner! Dante West, local cutie-turned-Hollywood hunk, is returning home to make his next movie. Everyone in town is excited...except librarian Lucy Marshall. When Dante took off for LA without warning - or even a goodbye - he broke Lucy’s heart. She swore not to spend one more minute thinking about her ex, but Dante makes an offer Lucy’s struggling library can’t refuse: a major donation to film on-site.

Shania never thinks much about being White. But after her beloved grandmother passes, she moves to the gentrifying town of Blue Rock and is thrust into Bard, the city's wealthiest private school. At Bard, race is both invisible and hypervisible, and Shania's new friends are split on what they see. There's Catherine, the school's queen bee, who unexpectedly takes Shania under her wing. Then there's Prescott, the golden boy who seems perfect...except for the disturbing rumors about an altercation he had with a Black student who left the school.

In the 1970s, gay men and lesbians were openly despised and drag queens scared the public. Yet that was the era when Doris Fish (born Philip Mills in 1952) painted and padded his way to stardom. He was a leader of the generation that prepared the world not just for drag queens on TV but for a society that welcomes and even celebrates queer people. How did we get from there to here? In Who Does That Bitch Think She Is? Craig Seligman looks at Doris’s short but overstuffed life as a way to provide some answers.

Three Black women building new lives in Stockholm become linked in unexpected ways to the same influential white man. Told through the perspectives of each of the three women, In Every Mirror She's Black is a timely, richly nuanced novel that touches on important social issues of racism, classism, fetishization, and tokenism, and what it means to be a Black woman navigating a white-dominated society.

Teacher Stella Marshall’s summer break has just began, but the gossip is already sizzling: Luke Keegan’s back in town! Stella’s high school crush is all grown up and smolderingly sexy. She might even consider a fling with the former Navy SEAL, if she hadn’t already sworn off all romantic entanglements. But there isn’t a single thing she can do to stop the rumor mill whispering about her and Luke being together—unless . . . A showmance!

Maggie hasn't told this story in years. More than two decades ago, she fell in love. She was 16 and far from home, waiting to give her baby up for adoption. Bryce showed Maggie how to take photographs, and he didn't judge her for the way her belly swelled under her jumper. They had the perfect first kiss. Theirs was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of love. Now, as Maggie sits by the Christmas tree in her gallery telling her story, surrounded by the photographs that made her famous - the photographs Bryce never saw - her new gallery assistant asks her a question.

Hand in Hand presents the stories of 10 men from different eras in American history, organized chronologically to provide a scope from slavery to the modern day. The stories are accessible, fully drawn narratives offering the subjects' childhood influences, the time and place in which they lived, their accomplishments and motivations, and the legacies they left for future generations as links in the "freedom chain".

You should not have come to the island. You should not have been speeding. You should not have tried to hide the body. You should not have told your children that you could keep them safe. No one can run forever.

After moving from a small country town to Seattle, Heather Baxter marries Tom, a widowed doctor with a young son and teenage daughter. A working vacation overseas seems like the perfect way to bring the new family together, but once they're deep in the Australian outback, the jet-lagged and exhausted kids are so over their new mom. When they discover a remote Dutch Island, off-limits to outside visitors, the family talks their way onto the ferry, taking a chance on an adventure far from the reach of iPhones and Instagram.