Showing results by narrator "Allyson Johnson" in All Categories

From the pulpy pages of Black Mask Magazine in the 1920s and '30s, through the film noir era of the 1940s, to today, noir fiction has lured many a reader and movie-goer away from the light and into the dark underbelly of society. Names such as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and James M. Cain; titles like The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, The Postman Always Rings Twice...these have inhabited our collective consciousness for decades. Humanity, it seems, loves the dark. And within the dark, one figure stands out: that of the femme fatale.

The Land of Nod used to be just a name in a nursery rhyme to Wren. But when she discovered the secret magic of stardust, she learned that some of those rhymes had secrets of their own - and the Land of Nod is real. A few months ago, the evil Magician Boggen attempted to escape his exile on Nod and return to Earth. Wren stopped him, but Boggen is still out there. To save her world, Wren will travel farther than even she could have dreamed: to the heart of Nod itself, where she must defeat Boggen once and for all.

Wren Matthews thought she’d outgrown nursery rhymes a long time ago. But that was before she knew that songs of twinkling little stars and four-and-twenty blackbirds were the key to an ancient, hidden magic. Wren’s discovery catapults her into a world of buried secrets, strange dreams, and a mountain fortress under an aurora-filled sky. But just as she starts to master her unique abilities, her new world begins to crumble around her...and only she can save it.

Meet the fascinating women of American Folklore and Legend in this award-winning collection! 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?...

In their own words, immigrants recall their arrival in the United States. Includes brief biographies and facts about the Ellis Island Oral History Project...

Most Western democracies have few or no people serving life sentences, yet here in the United States more than 200,000 people are sentenced to such prison terms. Marc Mauer and Ashley Nellis of The Sentencing Project argue that there is no practical or moral justification for a sentence longer than 20 years. A thoughtful and stirring call to action, The Meaning of Life also features moving profiles of a half dozen people affected by life sentences, written by former “lifer” and award-winning writer Kerry Myers.

Ananke and the rest of the Excoms team thought they would get a little bonding time to kick back and relax. But the world has different ideas. After the organization that they work for discovers that over 100 prisoners from a now dismantled human trafficking operation are missing, the team is sent out to find them and bring them back. With few clues, they must follow a trail that leads from Washington State to Panama and beyond. And when they reach the end, what they find is far beyond anything they ever expected.

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.

Beneath the glitter of Mardi Gras lies the sleaze of Bourbon Street; under the celestial sounds of JazzFest, the nightmare screams of a city once at war within its neighborhoods, but after Hurricane Katrina, seemingly at war with nature and the rest of the country as well. New Orleans is a third world country in itself, a Latin, African, European (and often amoral) culture trapped in a Puritan nation.

Charlie Tristan Moore isn't a hero. She's a survivor. Already wrestling with the demons of her past, she is tested as never before when she arrives home one night to find herself under attack by three monstrous skinhounds straight out of a nightmare. Just as hope seems lost, she is saved by the sinister Man in Black, dressed in a long, dark coat that seems to possess a life of its own and wielding a black-bladed sword in his grisly red right hand.

Welcome to the childhood of Catherine McClure Gildiner. It is the middle of the 1950s in Lewiston, New York, a small and sleepy American town very near Niagara Falls. No one is divorced. Mothers wear high heels to the beauty salon and children pop Pez candy and swing from vines over a local gorge. But at the tender age of four, it becomes clear to her Cathy's parents that their rambunctious daughter is no ordinary child and they soon put her "to work" at her father's pharmacy.

Council on Interracial Books for Children award winner From the award-winning author of The Hundred Penny Box comes a sweet story about how one girl can make a difference. 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...

"The selections are uniformly uplifting, with affirming messages about the heritage, strength and dreams of African Americans."—Publishers Weekly In this compelling collection, thirteen major poets rise in response to the dazzling vistas and emotionally vivid portraits of award-winning artist...

They called her "Minty." When she grew up, she became Harriet Tubman, the courageous and heroic woman who helped hundreds of slaves escape to freedom through the Underground Railroad. But she was just a little girl for a while—and this is her story. Minty, short for Araminta, was a feisty and...

This short story is from the anthology Mitigated Futures. 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.

There is a tribe in Africa where, the first time a woman leaves home following the confinement period after giving birth, everyone she meets along the road greets her with a sacred song otherwise reserved for warriors returning from battle. She's honored as having lived through a rite of passage that will forever mark her womanhood as abundant and powerful and blessed. She's respected as a fully franchised member of the most ubiquitous and yet most extraordinary group of beings in our collective experience: Mothers.

"Stop the wedding!" No bride wants to hear those words, least of all Susannah "Legs" Carter, one of the Bod Squad's best agents. But when her colleague Jackson bursts in with news that her presumed-dead father may still be alive - and possibly a double agent - the vows are on hold, and the Bod Squad hits the road.

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.

Drawing on interviews with family members, managers, promoters, and the jazz musicians who worked with her, as well as contemporary newspaper articles and reviews, Late Life Jazz tells the unsung story of one of America's finest singers, Rosemary Clooney. Ken Crossland and Malcolm Macfarlane trace Rosemary's life from her hardscrabble beginnings in Maysville Kentucky, through her first performances singing with the Barney Rapp Band in Cincinnati, through her rise to pop stardom in the early 1950s.

The stage is set for a possibly cataclysmic confrontation in non-space-and the Speaker for the Clan Council and her human mate are about to find themselves in the heart of the conflict.