Johnnie Wise was just fifteen years old when her mother sold her virginity to an unscrupulous white insurance man named Earl Shamus. Stunningly beautiful, with long naturally wavy black hair, she possessed the voluptuous body of a thirty-year-old woman. Her skin was the color of brown sugar. Johnnie had heard about Earl Shamus and his escapades among the poor black women in New Orleans. But what she didn’t know was that Shamus had quietly made several of the girls in their neighborhood his...

After his blockbuster success of Little Black Girl Lost, and Little Black Girl Lost II Keith Lee Johnson takes us back to 1950's New Orleans, into the world of betrayal, envy, lust, and murder, where everyone has ulterior motives. The past resurfaces in this third installment of the life and times of seventeen year old Johnnie Wise. Truth has its consequences and Johnnie has a lot to answer for. The innocent girl we met in the first installment of this compelling series is gone; all that r...

Along the Elizabeth River in Norfolk stands an unassuming diner where love and misery are on the menu. The Brass Bough Cafe is a popular place full of regulars but something is very wrong. It's Tuesday, or so it says on the paper every day.When weary traveler, Ginette, arrives from France with a blank notebook meant to capture the world around her, she finds more than meets the eye. The unwitting diner patrons and a tenacious cat pull her out of despair, forcing her to see the real...

Author Lee Johnson describes Mixing Memory and Desire: How History Shaped the Foods of the Caribbean as ‘a food book with a large side dish of history.’It is not a cookbook – there are no recipes – or a forbidding history text filled with events and dates, but a primer for all readers of how the Caribbean’s turbulent history led to its distinctive cuisine. It is told in an entertaining and readable style, infused with appropriate poetic and song lyric extracts, and garnish...

Race complicates our relationships, even when we reject racism and seek to walk a better path together. How can we get our thinking—and our conversations—unstuck from entrenched patterns? In this book, four experts in psychology and social work present a model for how to build and deepen the cross-race relationships we want.The starting place, they testify, must be a biblical understanding of the problem of racial disunity, grounded in the grand narrative of Script...

Excerpts from the many unofficial "manuals" avidly bought by members of the British Home Guard desperate to prepare for invasion during World War II.How would you clear a stoppage on a Bren Gun while in action? What is the most effective way to clear a wood of enemy forces? How best could you counter a landing by enemy airborne forces in your area? What measure can you take to help ensure accurate rifle fire at night? What qualities should you look for when selecti...

A young social worker with a lonely past… A small Minnesota town's favorite son…An allegation...Unprotected is the story of Amanda Danscher, a young child protection social worker with a past she is trying to forget. She quickly becomes embroiled in a case against former state champion hockey player and favorite son, Chuck Thomas, who will do anything to buck the system rather than work with it—including whatever it takes to get Amanda out of his way. Luckily Amanda reconnects with Jacob, ...

Keeping children safe isn't just a job for Terrance County Social Worker Leah Danco. After she's taken care of the children of the county, she heads home to help keep her drug-dealing brother out of jail, her paranoid mother out of the psychiatric ward, and herself away from the constant draw of the whiskey bottle. There is simply no energy left to think about letting a man in her life. Leah's resistance doesn't stop Detective Pete Kemper from trying. The life of every party, Kemp has char...

The contribution of Black men and women throughout the history of California is often overlooked because it doesn't easily fit into the established narrative. In Los Angeles, over half of the original settlers were of African descent. These settlers left New Spain for the northern frontier to escape the oppression of the Spanish caste system, just as the racially oppressive Jim Crow laws propelled a similar migration from the American South 150 years later. Pioneers and politicians, as wel...

Revealing the roots of Johnnie Wise's family tree, the author takes readers to Nigeria where a beautiful sixteen-year-old girl, preparing to marry a much older man, escapes with her young lover on the night before the arranged marriage is to take place on a Dutch slave ship bound for America where she becomes Josephine Baptiste.

In this book from the critically acclaimed Little People, BIG DREAMS series, discover the life of Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-reigning monarch of modern times.Little Elizabeth loved dogs and horses and dreamed of living on a farm. But, one day, she heard chants on the streets. Her uncle Edward had renounced the Crown, which meant her father would be the next king, and she heiress to the throne. From that day on, she had to learn how to ...

We STILL be lovin’ Black children.Not sometimes.Not conditionally.Not when it is convenient.We loved them in the past.We love them now.We will love them in the future.In this expanded second edition, We Still Be Lovin’ Black Children: African Diaspora Literacy, A Divine Ancestral Charge, leading scholars, educators, and community leaders deepen the call to center African Diaspora Literacy as a foundation for healing, identity, and ...