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Blues Along the River (Heartsong Presents--Historical Ser. #959)
by Sandra RobbinsBack Cover: "THEIR MARRIAGE IS NOT WHAT THEY DREAMED. "When Victoria Turner and Marcus Raines marry, they're both surprised to quickly discover they're not living happily ever after. Marcus continues to remember his late father's warnings about women betraying men, and he wonders if that is exactly what Victoria is doing when she refuses to abide by his wishes. Victoria is appalled that Marcus doesn't recognize how the South is changing after the war and that he can no longer treat his tenant farmers the way his father treated their slaves. Instead of being full of joy, their lives in their beautiful plantation home along the Alabama River reflect the blues sung by their workers. "Will Victoria and Marcus find the answers they need by turning to the Author of their love? Or will the pain of their pasts and their unwillingness to forgive leave their hearts empty and their home filled with bitterness?" The author wrote this novel within a Christian context. Both Victoria's and Marcus' faith develop and expand when they experience conflicts. Even if you are not a Christian believer, you might enjoy reading this novel and learn some important ideas and practical ways to carry them out by reading this story.
Blues And Trouble: Twelve Stories
by Tom PiazzaIn these stories, we see contemporary Americans looking for meaning in their troubled lives. The stories share travel as a common motif with each character searching outside her- or himself for happiness. We are taken into the abject life of an entertainer named Billy Sundown and witness his unusual effect on the life of a former classmate; a Gulf Coast fisherman having an affair with a college instructor safeguards his home and family against a threatening hurricane; a businessman unknowingly carries a loaded gun into his girlfriend's home for Thanksgiving; and a pair of Jewish tourists in Memphis stumble into a shop with Nazi memorabilia. The author's terse style paints a revealing picture of our perplexed culture. It is Tom Piazza's first book of fiction. Some of the stories were first published in magazines.
Blues Dancing
by Diane Mckinney-WhetstoneMy aunt says if you smell butter on a foggy night you're getting ready to fall in love.For the last twenty years, the beautiful Verdi Mae has led a comfortable life with Rowe, the conservative professor who rescued her from addiction when she was an undergrad. But her world is about to shift when the smell of butter lingers in the air and Johnson -- the boy from the back streets of Philadelphia who pulled her into the fire of passion and all the shadows cast from it -- returns to town.In "this story of self-discovery that moves seamlessly between the early 1970s and early 1990s" (Publishers Weekly starred review), acclaimed writer Diane McKinney-Whetstone takes readers into a world of erotic love, drugs, and political activism, and beautifully illustrates the struggle to reconcile passion with accountability and the redemptive powers of love's rediscovery. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
Blues Journey
by Walter Dean MyersThe African experience in America is celebrated with a soulful, affecting blues poem that details the long journey from the Middle Passage to life today.
Blues Lessons
by Robert HellengaGrowing up on his family's orchards in Appleton, Michigan, in the 1950s, Martin Dijksterhuis finds everything he needs in his extended family and in the land itself -- in the reassuring routines of growing and harvesting, spraying and pruning. Although his mother wants him to get out of Appleton, which she finds impossibly provincial, and attend a great university -- the University of Chicago, her alma mater -- he has no desire to leave. In the autumn of his junior year of high school, however, in the camp of the migrant workers who come north every year to pick the Dijksterhuis peaches and apples, Martin discovers his vocation, the country blues -- unsettling melodies that cry out from a place in the soul he never knew existed. He also falls in love with Corinna Williams, the strong-willed daughter of the black foreman who runs the Dijksterhuis orchards. His blues vocation and his love for Corinna are the two stories of his life. His struggle to combine them into a single story takes him a long way from home and from the life he had always envisioned for himself, and then it brings him back again in a way he could never have imagined. In this beautifully rendered novel, Robert Hellenga, author of The Sixteen Pleasures and The Fall of a Sparrow, explores the fragility of happiness, the difficulties of following one's calling in life, and the sorrows and satisfactions of being a parent.
Blues Poems
by Kevin YoungBorn in African American work songs, field hollers, and the powerful legacy of the spirituals, the blues traveled the country from the Mississippi delta to “Sweet Home Chicago,” forming the backbone of American music. In this anthology–the first devoted exclusively to blues poems–a wide array of poets pay tribute to the form and offer testimony to its lasting power. <p><p> The blues have left an indelible mark on the work of a diverse range of poets: from “The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes and “Funeral Blues” by W. H. Auden, to “Blues on Yellow” by Marilyn Chin and “Reservation Blues” by Sherman Alexie. Here are blues-influenced and blues-inflected poems from, among others, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, June Jordan, Richard Wright, Nikki Giovanni, Charles Wright, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Cornelius Eady. And here, too, are classic song lyrics–poems in their own right–from Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson, Ma Rainey, and Muddy Waters. <p> The rich emotional palette of the blues is fully represented here in verse that pays tribute to the heart and humor of the music, and in poems that swing with its history and hard-bitten hope.
Blues and Trouble: Twelve Stories (Banner Books)
by Tom PiazzaExploring the diverse landscape of American life, the stories in Blues and Trouble: Twelve Stories capture the lives of people caught between circumstance and their own natures or on the run from fate, from a Jewish couple encountering a dealer in Nazi memorabilia to the troubled family of a Gulf Coast fisherman awaiting a hurricane. Tom Piazza’s debut short story collection, originally published in 1996, heralded the arrival of a startlingly original and vital presence in American fiction and letters. Set in Memphis, New Orleans, Florida, Texas, New York City, and elsewhere, the stories echo voices from Ernest Hemingway to Robert Johnson in their sharp eye for detail and their emotional impact. New to this volume is an introduction written by the author. Drawing themes, forms, and stylistic approaches from blues and country music, these stories present a tough, haunting vision of a landscape where the social and spiritual ground shifts constantly underfoot.
Blues for Cannibals: The Notes from Underground
by Charles BowdenCultivated from the fierce ideas seeded in Blood Orchid, Blues for Cannibals is an elegiac reflection on death, pain, and a wavering confidence in humanity’s own abilities for self-preservation. After years of reporting on border violence, sex crimes, and the devastation of the land, Bowden struggles to make sense of the many ways in which we destroy ourselves and whether there is any way to survive. Here he confronts a murderer facing execution, sex offenders of the most heinous crimes, a suicidal artist, a prisoner obsessed with painting portraits of presidents, and other people and places that constitute our worst impulses and our worst truths. Painful, heartbreaking, and forewarning, Bowden at once tears us apart and yearns for us to find ourselves back together again.
Blues for Mister Charlie: A Play (Vintage International)
by James BaldwinAn award-winning play from one of America&’s most brilliant writers about a murder in a small Southern town, loosely based on the 1955 killing of Emmett Till. • "A play with fires of fury in its belly, tears of anguish in its eyes, a roar of protest in its throat." —The New York TimesJames Baldwin turns a murder and its aftermath into an inquest in which even the most well-intentioned whites are implicated—and in which even a killer receives his share of compassion. In a small Southern town, a white man murders a black man, then throws his body in the weeds. With this act of violence, James Baldwin launches an unsparing and at times agonizing probe of the wounds of race.For where once a white storekeeper could have shot a "boy" like Richard Henry with impunity, times have changed. And centuries of brutality and fear, patronage and contempt, are about to erupt in a moment of truth as devastating as a shotgun blast.
Blues for Outlaw Hearts and Old Whores (The Alligator Mysteries #6)
by Massimo CarlottoThis Alligator mystery, “a simple gangster revenge tale . . . gets more and more emotionally intense . . . Crime writing this good just has to be read” (NB Magazine).International secret police operations, drug trafficking, prostitution, and identity theft set the stage for the eternal struggle between Good and Evil.Acclaimed as one of today’s best contemporary noir writers, Massimo Carlotto reaches new heights in the most complex “Alligator” novel to date. Rich with biting humor, humanity, and psychological insight, this is an exemplary noir novel from a crime writer at the top of his game.Marco Buratti, a.k.a. the Alligator, and his partners Max the Memory and Beniamino Rossini have fallen into a trap laid by their worst enemy, Giorgio Pellegrini, a wanted man who has no intention of living as a fugitive for the rest of his life and turns state evidence, but something goes wrong. Blackmailed by a high government official, the Alligator and his partners are forced to investigate. But they’ve been framed: even if they discover who’s behind the crime, they’ll rot in prison. To survive, some rules will have to be bent, and others broken.“Gripping . . . James Ellroy fans will be satisfied.” —Publishers Weekly“A masterpiece . . . Blues for Outlaw Hearts and Old Whores is Carlotto writing in top form.” —Mystery Tribune“Carlotto’s novels are perfectly balanced, everything moves in the right, often unexpected direction. Sudden turns of events are interspersed with dialogue that reminds of postwar American noir films . . . Somewhere up there Raymond Chandler is surely applauding.” —La Stampa“A fine read, with good writing and flashes of oblique humor.” —Booklist
Blues for Unicorn (Bright Owl Books)
by Molly CoxeUnicorn and Mule play the blues. But Unicorn has too many rules! This fun photographic easy-to-read story features the long "u" vowel sound. Kane Press's new series of super simple easy-to-reads, Bright Owl Books, adds Molly Coxe's five fun photographic long vowel stories, which are each only around 100–200 words. Molly Coxe's stories help kids learn to read by teaching the basic building blocks of reading—vowel sounds. With a note to parents and teachers at the beginning and story starters at the end, these books give kids the perfect start on educational success. Bright Owl Books make bright owl readers!
Blues for a Black Cat and Other Stories (French Modernist Library)
by Boris Vian"[Blues for a Black Cat] brings back the nimble Vian in a collection of his short fiction, initially published as Les Fourmis in 1949. The work has the unmistakable flavor of the time and place, Claude Abadie's jazz band, the coded and absurdist messages of rebellion, the wistful fables, verbal riffs and goofy anarchic encounters; the mise-en-scene includes an expiring jazzman who sells his sweat, a cat with a British accent and a piano that mixes a cocktail when "Mood Indigo" is played."—Boston Globe
Blues in Stereo: The Early Works of Langston Hughes
by Langston HughesPublishers Weekly&’s Top Ten Fall 2024 Poetry Books From Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, a stunning collection of early works—both polished poems andraw, unfinished, works-in-progress written from 1921-1927—curated by award winning poet and National Book Award finalist, Danez Smith. Before Langston Hughes and his literary prowess became synonymous with American poetry, he was an eighteen-year-old on a train to Mexico City, seeking funds to pursue his passion. His early poems see Hughes finding his voice and experimenting with style and form. Beloved verses like &“The Negro Speaks of Rivers,&” were written without formal training, often on the back of napkins and envelopes, and were inspired by the sights and sounds of Black working-class people he encountered in his early life. Blues in Stereo is a collection of select early works, all written before the age of twenty-five, in which we see Langston Hughes with fresh eyes. From the intimate pages of his handwritten journals, you will travel with Hughes outside of Harlem as he ventures to the American South and Mexico, sails through the Caribbean, and becomes the only Harlem renaissance poet to visit Africa. His poems and journal entries celebrate love as a tool of liberation. His songs showcase the musicality of verse poetry. And the collection even includes a play he cowrote with Duke Ellington with a full score that experiments with rhythm and structure.Blues in Stereo portrays a young man coming of age in a changing world. Page by page, a young, fresh-faced Hughes contends with matters beyond his years with raw talent. And by keeping his original, handwritten notations found in archival material, we get to witness a genius&’s earliest thought process in real time. National Book Award-nominated poet Danez Smith offers their insight and notes on themes, challenges, and obsessions that Hughes early work contains. Beautifully rendered and thoughtfully curated, Blues in Stereo foreshadows a master poet that will go on to define literature for centuries to come.
Blues in Stereo: The Early Works of Langston Hughes
by Langston HughesPublishers Weekly's Top Ten Fall 2024 Poetry BooksBefore Langston Hughes and his literary prowess became synonymous with American poetry, he was an eighteen-year-old on a train to Mexico City, seeking funds to pursue his passion. His early poems, beloved verses like "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," were written without formal training, often on the back of napkins and envelopes, and were inspired by the sights and sounds of Black working-class people he encountered in his early life.Blues in Stereo is a posthumous collection of these early works, in which we see Langston Hughes like we've never seen him before. In the intimate pages of his handwritten journals, you will travel with Hughes outside of Harlem as he ventures to the American South and Mexico, sails through the Caribbean, and becomes the only Harlem renaissance poet to visit Africa. He celebrates love as a tool of liberation in his poems and journal entries. His songs included showcase musicality of verse poetry. And the book even includes a play he co-wrote with Duke Ellington with a full score that experiments with rhythm and structure.Blues in Stereo portrays a young man coming of age in a changing world. Page by page, a young, fresh-faced Hughes contends with matters beyond his years with raw talent. National Book Award nominated poet Danez Smith offers their insight and notes on themes, challenges, and obsessions that Hughes early work contains. Blues in Stereo foreshadows a master poet that will go on to define literature for centuries to come.
Blues in the Dark: A Thriller
by Raymond BensonFrom the New York Times bestselling and internationally acclaimed author comes a Hollywood crime drama set in the 1940s and present day that tackles racism, sexism, and murder. Karissa Glover is a movie producer who moves into a decrepit but functional old mansion in the West Adams Heights area of Los Angeles, where black celebrities of yesteryear—Hattie McDaniel, Louise Beavers, and others—once resided. The former owner was a white actress, Blair Kendrick, who often starred as the "bad girl"—a femme fatale—in films noirof the 1940s. However, Blair’s career was cut short when she was tragically killed by the mob after allegedly witnessing the slaying of a corrupt studio head in 1949. As Karissa and her producing partner decide to develop a modern film noir about Blair Kendrick, malevolent forces from the past attempt to stop them—first with intimidation, and then with the thread of murder. Is this because Karissa has learned that Blair was involved in a then-taboo interracial relationship with jazz musician Hank Marley? What really happened on the night that death struck in a dimly lit studio mogul’s office? The consequences of Blair and Hank’s doomed love affair still resonate in the present day as Karissa attempts to unravel Blair’s secrets. Seeping with mystery, intrigue, Hollywood history, and forbidden romance, Blues in the Dark is Raymond Benson at his most insightful and page-turning best.
Blues in the Night
by Dick LochteEx-con Dave “Mace” Mason’s favor for an old friend could get him killedin this “fast-moving crime novel” from an award-winning author (Publishers Weekly). When ex-con Dave “Mace” Mason is hired by Paulie Lacotta, an old acquaintance and high-rolling crime boss, to watch his ex-girlfriend, Angela, he knows there's more to the job than he's being told. Angela has fallen in love with one of Paulie's competitors, Tiny, and Paulie wants to know if she's the reason a big deal recently went south. But Mace draws some unwelcome attention as he investigates, and when Tiny is found dead, Mace wonders if he will live long enough to uncover the truth. “Lochte is just as fast-paced and funny flying solo as when he’s wingman for Al Roker or Christopher Darden, both of whom he's collaborated with in the past.” —Kirkus Reviews “Lochte is a somewhat underappreciated writer. This solid, well-crafted thriller with a likable protagonist and an engaging cast of supporting players should remind readers that he is a dependable storyteller in his own right.” —Booklist “Tense, fast-moving crime novel from Nero Wolfe Award–winner Lochte.” —Publishers Weekly
Blues in the Night (Molly Blume #1)
by Rochelle KrichSunday, July 13. 1:46 A.M. Near Lookout Mountain and Laurel Canyon. An unidentified woman in her twenties, wearing a nightgown, was the victim of a hit-and-run accident that left her unconscious and seriously injured. There were no witnesses.So reads the report on the accident off Mulholland Drive in Molly Blume’s Crime Sheet column for a weekly Los Angeles tabloid. Just another small L.A. tragedy, soon forgotten.But the image of the young woman in her nightgown stumbling along a dark, winding road is one Molly, a freelance true-crime writer, cannot shake. In fact, it draws her to a bedside in intensive care, where the victim whispers to her three names: Robbie, Max, and Nina. It’s not a smoking gun, but is sufficient to reinforce Molly’s gut instinct that there are sinister circumstances behind the assault on Lenore Saunders.With fearless conviction, Molly asks questions that nobody—including Lenore’s mom, her ex-husband, her shrink, or even Molly’s L.A.P.D. buddy, Detective Connors—wants to answer. Nevertheless, the astute Molly discovers Lenore lived a fractured life, so different from Molly’s own secure and loving Orthodox Jewish background. And as a chilling picture of the unfortunate woman begins to take shape, the menace of murders past and present stirs and quickens.In her first Molly Blume novel, award-winning novelist Rochelle Krich tells a story in the tradition of the great L.A. mysteries of the past—and introduces an investigator who is pure gold. Twentysomething divorcee Molly Blume, with her deep faith, short skirts, and nose for the truth, is a heroine to cherish.
Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory
by Houston A. Baker Jr.Relating the blues to American social and literary history and to Afro-American expressive culture, Houston A. Baker, Jr. , offers the basis for a broader study of American culture at its "vernacular" level. He shows how the "blues voice" and its economic undertones are both central to the American narrative and characteristic of the Afro-American way of telling it.
Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory
by Houston A. Baker Jr.Relating the blues to American social and literary history and to Afro-American expressive culture, Houston A. Baker, Jr., offers the basis for a broader study of American culture at its "vernacular" level. He shows how the "blues voice" and its economic undertones are both central to the American narrative and characteristic of the Afro-American way of telling it.
Blues, Twos and Baby Shoes (The Constable Mavis Upton Series #3)
by Gina KirkhamMavis Upton returns from her adventures in Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, and this time she&’s taking no prisoners—which is never ideal for a police officer . . . Mavis is pregnant, as is her daughter Ella. Facing the prospect of motherhood and being a grandmother simultaneously, the last thing Mavis needs is problems at work. She must contend with a new sexist dinosaur of a Sergeant who is more bully than mentor, and a mysterious case involving a blackmailer sending poison pen letters is baffling the force and tearing the local community apart. Can Mavis juggle impending motherhood and her career, maintain a loving relationship with her other half Joe and deal with being a grandmother, all while solving the case? Well, this is Constable Mavis Upton . . . literally anything is possible . . . Series praise &“Laugh out loud brilliance, so witty and cleverly written.&” —Samantha Magson &“Hilarious! It&’s true, everyone needs Mavis in their life.&” —Sherrie Hewson &“Such a terrific read!&” —Lorraine Kelly
Blueschild Baby: A Novel
by George Cain“The most important work of fiction by an Afro-American since Native Son.” —Addison Gayle, Jr., The New York Times Book ReviewA searing chronicle of the life of a young ex-convict and heroin addict in 1960’s Harlem, an unsparing portrait of a man who couldn’t free himself from the horrors of addiction Blueschild Baby takes place during the summer of 1967—the summer of race riots all across the nation; the Summer of Love in the Haight Ashbury; the summer of Marines dying near Con Thien, across the world in Vietnam—but the novel illuminates the contours of a more private hell: the angry desperation of a heroin addict who returns to his home in Harlem after being in prison.First published in 1970, this frankly autobiographical novel was a revelation, a stunning depiction of a marginal figure, marked literally and figuratively by his drug addiction and navigating a predatory underground of junkies and hustlers—and named George Cain, like his author.Now with a new preface by acclaimed writer Leslie Jamison, this is an unvarnished conjuring of the tyranny of dependence: its desperation, its degradation, its rage and rebellion; the fragile, unsettled, occasional shards of hope it permits; the strange joys of being alive and young and lost and hooked and full of feverish determination anyway.“[A] powerful literary account of addiction.” —The New Yorker
Bluescreen
by Dan Wells"Bluescreen is a stunning deluge of imagination, filled with suspense and twists and unforgettable characters. This book is just plain awesome."--James Dashner, bestselling author of The Maze RunnerFrom Dan Wells, author of the New York Times bestselling Partials Sequence, comes the first book in a new sci-fi-noir series. Los Angeles in 2050 is a city of open doors, as long as you have the right connections. That connection is a djinni--a smart device implanted right in a person's head. In a world where virtually everyone is online twenty-four hours a day, this connection is like oxygen--and a world like that presents plenty of opportunities for someone who knows how to manipulate it.Marisa Carneseca is one of those people. She might spend her days in Mirador, but she lives on the net--going to school, playing games, hanging out, or doing things of more questionable legality with her friends Sahara and Anja. And it's Anja who first gets her hands on Bluescreen--a virtual drug that plugs right into a person's djinni and delivers a massive, nonchemical, completely safe high. But in this city, when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is, and Mari and her friends soon find themselves in the middle of a conspiracy that is much bigger than they ever suspected.
Bluesman: A Novel
by Andre Dubus III“A gentle and winning” historical novel from the author of House of Sand and Fog and a “sympathetic and compassionate chronicler of ordinary lives” (Publishers Weekly).It is the summer of 1967 and Leo Suther is about to turn eighteen. This is the summer that everyone has something to teach Leo. His father warns him that “life can turn on a dime.” Allie, his girlfriend, wants to teach him about love. Her father, the local communist and civil rights organizer, lectures him on politics and carpentry. And Ryder, a family friend, wants to show Leo the magic of the harmonica—harp of the blues.However, when Leo’s life threatens to come unglued, it is his mother’s wisdom he turns to. Though she died before Leo was five, her voice lives on in her diaries and poems, testifying to the strength of her love for her husband and son—a love that can still, years later, offer consolation.“Dubus captures well those small, mundane moments upon which lives really turn, and he captures too the enthusiasms and confusions of adolescence confronting adulthood.” —Library Journal
Bluest Nude: Poems
by Ama CodjoeAma Codjoe’s highly anticipated debut collection brings generous light to the inner dialogues of women as they bathe, create art, make and lose love. Each poem rises with the urgency of a fully awakened sensual life. Codjoe’s poems explore how the archetype of the artist complicates the typical expectations of women: be gazed upon, be silent, be selfless, reproduce. Dialoguing with and through art, Bluest Nude considers alternative ways of holding and constructing the self. From Lorna Simpson to Gwendolyn Brooks to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, contemporary and ancestral artists populate Bluest Nude in a choreography of Codjoe’s making. Precise and halting, this finely wrought, riveting collection is marked by an acute rendering of highly charged emotional spaces. Purposefully shifting between the role of artist and subject, seer and seen, Codjoe’s poems ask what the act of looking does to a person—public looking, private looking, and that most intimate, singular spectacle of looking at one’s self. What does it mean to see while being seen? In poems that illuminate the tension between the possibilities of openness and and its impediments, Bluest Nude offers vulnerability as a medium to be immersed in and, ultimately, shared as a kind of power: “There are as many walls inside me / as there are bones at the bottom of the sea,” Codjoe writes in the masterful titular poem. “I want to be seen clearly or not at all.” “The end of the world has ended,” Codjoe’s speaker announces, “and desire is still / all I crave.” Startling and seductive in equal measure, this formally ambitious collection represents a powerful, luminous beginning.
Bluestar's Prophecy (Warriors Super Edition #2)
by Erin Hunter Wayne McloughlinDestined for greatness . . .Four Clans of wild cats have shared the forest for generations, thriving in their territories. But tensions are running high, and ThunderClan must assert its strength or risk falling prey to its power-hungry neighbors. Into this time of uncertainty, a kit is born. A prophecy foretells that Bluekit will be as strong as fire, destined to blaze through the ranks of her Clan. But with this prophecy comes the foreshadowing of her destruction by the one enemy she cannot outrun.As Bluekit gains power and eventually earns her leader name, Bluestar, she fights to protect her Clan. But secrets from the past threaten to surface--secrets that may destroy ThunderClan . . . and Bluestar.