Showing results by narrator "Lisa Renee-Pitts" in All Categories

As America's number-one crisis-management expert, Judy Smith has been asked to help overcome the obstacles faced by some of the most well-known companies, celebrities, and politicians of our time. In the process she has discovered that, whether or not one is a household name, there are universal character flaws, trouble spots, and weaknesses that exist in everyone. Over the years, Smith has been able to identify these high-risk traits that often lead to marital, financial, professional, or personal imprudence.

Mystery sensation Pelecanos pens the lead story and edits this groundbreaking collection of stories detailing the seedy underside of the nation's capital. This is not an anthology of ill-conceived and inauthentic political thrillers. Instead, in D.C. Noir, pimps, whores, gangsters, and con-men run rampant in zones of this city that most never hear about.

Toni Morrison's Spiritual Vision unpacks this oft-ignored, but essential, element of Toni Morrison's work - her religion - and in so doing, gives listeners a deeper, richer understanding of her life and her writing.

In The Hannah Anointing, Michelle McClain-Walters reveals a special kind of spiritual power that stands unwaveringly in the face of recurring disappointment and the enemy's taunts. With her unique and empowering prophetic, McClain-Walters tackles issues women face on the road to their destiny and purpose, including how to: release the cry of the barren, pray in faith, and get God's attention.

In this groundbreaking book that places Rootwork in its rightful spot among other magickal traditions, Tayannah Lee McQuillar offers a fun and practical guide to improving your life with the help of African American folk magick. Rootwork begins with the basics, from explanations about the magickal powers of the four elements (air, earth, fire, and water) to instructions on creating talismans, charms, and mojo bags.

In the late 1630s, lured by the promise of the New World, Andrea Stuart's earliest known maternal ancestor, George Ashby, set sail from England to settle in Barbados. He fell into the life of a sugar plantation owner by mere chance, but by the time he harvested his first crop, a revolution was fully under way, binding together ambitious White entrepreneurs and enslaved Black workers in a strangling embrace....

Growing up in a rapidly changing Harlem, eight-year-old Malaya hates when her mother drags her to Weight Watchers meetings. The pressures of her predominantly white Upper East Side prep school are relentless, as are the expectations passed down from her painfully proper mother and sharp-tongued grandmother. As she comes of age in the 1990s, she finds solace in the music of Biggie Smalls and Aaliyah, but her weight continues to climb—until a family tragedy forces her to face the source of her hunger, ultimately shattering her inherited stigmas and embracing her own desire.

The first patient-to-patient guide for people living with Long COVID—with expert advice and an afterword by the leading research scientist

"Now, with God's help, I shall become myself." These words from Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard resonate deeply with Marlena Graves, a Puerto Rican writer, pastor, and activist. In this book, she describes the process of emptying herself that allows her to move upward toward God and become the true self that God calls her to.

Can’t Nothing Bring Me Down is the memoir of 104-year-old world-record-holding runner Ida Keeling. Miss Ida, as she’s known throughout her Bronx community, isn’t your typical runner. Her fierce independence helped her through the Depression and the civil rights movement. But her greatest trials were yet to come.

What do you do when that voice in your head tells you you're not enough? Not smart enough, not pretty enough, not capable enough, not present enough. Where do you turn when the world's promise that you can have it all becomes a crushing expectation that you must do it all, at all times, and keep a smile fixed on your face while you wither inside? Unpacking the biblical story of Mary and Martha as she shares her own story of recognizing her unique giftedness, Denisse Copeland shares the liberating truth that you have a right to be you. Just you, at the feet of Jesus.

Building on feminist standpoint theory, and in conversation with the works of Sojourner Truth, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and others, Ribeiro invites all of us to recognize where we stand, to imagine geographies different from those we've inherited, and to speak a more humane world into being.

Sylvia is shocked and confused when she is asked to be one of the first Black students to attend Central High School, which is scheduled to be integrated in the fall of 1957, whether people like it or not. Before Sylvia makes her final decision, smoldering racial tension in the town ignites into flame. When the smoke clears, she sees clearly that nothing is going to stop the change from coming. It is up to her generation to make it happen, in as many different ways as there are colors in the world.

In the ruins of a future America, 15-year-old Ice Cream Star and her nomadic tribe live off the detritus of a crumbled civilization. Theirs is a world of children; before reaching the age of 20, they all die of a strange disease they call Posies - a plague that has killed for generations. There is no medicine, no treatment; only the mysterious rumor of a cure.

Carrie has been a kitchen slave in Sam Fraunces’ tavern in New York City for as long as she can remember. But after she narrowly escapes a kidnapper, Carrie becomes more curious about her mysterious past. After all, she doesn’t even know her own last name. When her friend Dan Arabus comes to town, he talks about his dream of buying his mother’s freedom with the Continental notes his father left him. Deciding to help Dan discover how much the notes are worth, Carrie finds herself eavesdropping on Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and President Washington himself.

The New York Times best-selling author of Wench returns to the Civil War era to explore the next chapter of history - the trauma of the war and the end of slavery - in this powerful story of love and healing about three people who struggle to overcome the pain of the past and define their own future.

Published in 1861, Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is an autobiographical account of the author's experiences as a slave in 19th-century North Carolina, from her relatively happy childhood to the brutality she experienced as a teenager and young woman to her eventual escape to the North.

What is it like to be an Enneagram Nine? Writer and speaker Marlena Graves reflects on this question in a spirit of honest self-assessment and with a desire for personal and spiritual growth. She draws wisdom from the deep wells of both counseling and spirituality using illustrations from both Scripture and life. Each reading concludes with an opportunity for further engagement such as a journaling prompt, a prayer, or a spiritual practice.

Wise Black women have known for centuries that the blues have been a platform for truth-telling, an underground musical railroad to survival, and an essential form of resistance, healing, and learning. In her highly anticipated follow-up to the widely acclaimed Pushout, now a core text for teachers and principals on the criminalization of Black girls in schools, leading advocate Monique W. Morris invokes the spirit of the blues to articulate a radically healing and empowering pedagogy for Black and Brown girls.

In this world of frantic activity and constant entertainment, it can be hard to identify and embrace the rhythms that lead to true flourishing. Your spirit longs for a stronger connection to the divine, a clearer sense of personal spiritual growth, a closer relationship with your creator and redeemer. But how do you integrate this kind of inner growth into the realities of your outer life? If you long for a deeper experience of God as you journey through this life, Spiritual Practices for Soul Care offers forty ways to help you put the spiritual disciplines into action each day.