Jessica Lennox's life is a shambles. Her comfortable marriage is over; her children are estranged; and her partnership in her CPA firm is hanging by a thread. Although she's only forty-six, she looks and feels old-old and finished. Jessie, a prominent accountant in a small Maryland town, needs to find a way to make lemonade from the lemon trees she seems to have grown in her life's orchard. Someone has financially gutted the CPA firm and framed Jessie for the crime. Worse, her home has been robbed and vandalized, and now one of her ex-partners is dead. In the midst of her troubles, Jessie reconnects with an old friend named Elise Bentley, a riding instructor and artist in northern Virginia. They enlist a handsome trust lawyer, Alden Marshall, to help track down the embezzled funds, trying to clear her name. Then, someone tries to kill her. Jessie retreats to Montana to assist an elegant heiress, Josie Hitchcock, who owns a ranch there; but she is still pursued by a possible killer. Now, only time will tell whether Jessie can make it safe for her children to come home.

Ever since Bessie Smith's powerful voice conspired with the ""race records" industry to make her a star in the 1920s, African American writers have memorialized the sounds and theorized the politics of black women's singing. In Black Resonance, Emily J. Lordi analyzes writings by Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Gayl Jones, and Nikki Giovanni that engage such iconic singers as Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson, and Aretha Franklin. Focusing on two generations of artists from the 1920s to the 1970s, Black Resonance reveals a musical-literary tradition in which singers and writers, faced with similar challenges and harboring similar aims, developed comparable expressive techniques. Drawing together such seemingly disparate works as Bessie Smith's blues and Richard Wright's neglected film of Native Son, Mahalia Jackson's gospel music and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, each chapter pairs one writer with one singer to crystallize the artistic practice they share: lyricism, sincerity, understatement, haunting, and the creation of a signature voice. In the process, Lordi demonstrates that popular female singers are not passive muses with raw, natural, or ineffable talent. Rather, they are experimental artists who innovate black expressive possibilities right alongside their literary peers. The first study of black music and literature to centralize the music of black women, Black Resonance offers new ways of reading and hearing some of the twentieth century's most beloved and challenging voices.

In January of 1979, the great soul artist Donny Hathaway fell fifteen stories from a window of Manhattan's Essex House Hotel in an alleged suicide. He was 33 years old and everyone he worked with called him a genius. Best known for "A Song for You," "This Christmas," and classic duets with Roberta Flack, Hathaway was a composer, pianist, and singer committed to exploring "music in its totality." His velvet melisma and vibrant sincerity set him apart from other soul men of his era while influencing generations of singers and fans whose love affair with him continues to this day. The first nonfiction book about Hathaway, Donny Hathaway Live uses original interviews, archival material, musical analysis, cultural history, and poetry to tell the story of Hathaway's life, from his beginnings as a gospel wonder child to his final years. But its focus is the brutally honest, daringly gorgeous music he created as he raced the clock of mental illness-especially in the performances captured on his 1972 album Donny Hathaway Live. That album testifies to Hathaway's uncanny ability to amplify the power and beauty of his songs in the moment of live performance. By exploring that album, we see how he generated a spiritual experience for those present at his shows, and for those with the privilege to listen in now.

In The Meaning of Soul, Emily J. Lordi proposes a new understanding of this famously elusive concept. In the 1960s, Lordi argues, soul came to signify a cultural belief in black resilience, which was enacted through musical practices-inventive cover versions, falsetto vocals, ad-libs, and false endings. Through these soul techniques, artists such as Aretha Franklin, Donny Hathaway, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes, and Minnie Riperton performed virtuosic survivorship and thus helped to galvanize black communities in an era of peril and promise. Their soul legacies were later reanimated by such stars as Prince, Solange Knowles, and Flying Lotus. Breaking with prior understandings of soul as a vague masculinist political formation tethered to the Black Power movement, Lordi offers a vision of soul that foregrounds the intricacies of musical craft, the complex personal and social meanings of the music, the dynamic movement of soul across time, and the leading role played by black women in this musical-intellectual tradition.

Who runs the world? The Beyhive knows. From the Destiny's Child 2001 hit single "Survivor" to her 2019 jam "7/11," Beyoncé Knowles-Carter has confronted dominant issues around the world. Because her image is linked with debates on race, sexuality, and female empowerment, she has become a central figure in pop music and pop culture. Beyoncé: At Work, On Screen, and Online explores her work as a singer, activist, and artist by taking a deep dive into her songs, videos, and performances, as well as responses from her fans. Contributors look at Beyoncé's entire body of work to examine her status as a canonical figure in modern music and do not shy away from questioning scandals or weighing her social contributions against the evolution of feminism, critical race theory, authenticity, and more. Full of examples from throughout Beyoncé's career, this volume presents listening as a political undertaking that generates meaning and creates community. Beyoncé: At Work, On Screen, and Online contends that because of her willingness to address societal issues within her career, Beyoncé has become an important touchstone for an entire generation—all in a day's work for Queen Bey.

How can we accept sorrow and disappointments in our lives? What enables us to face another day when we face unexpected tragedy and loss? Where do we find meaning in those moments that leave us weak and wondering? In our darkest times, where do we find the light? Although Lorraine Lordi does not try to dictate answers to any of these questions, ("I'm no theologian, and I'm certainly not a saint "), through her recent experience with being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, she has slowly come to grasp some guiding beliefs that have sustained her during this unpredictable journey. She hopes that some of her discoveries may help others as they, too, face their own struggles no matter how tiny or how tragic. Getting up with a teething baby in the middle of the night or wrestling with demons through addiction, every chapter in our lives can take on a whole new meaning if we can find a deeper meaning to whatever is happening to us. Our circumstances may differ, but our journeys follow similar fluctuations between trials and tribulations. If we are not only going to survive but thrive on this journey, we must find an internal place of stillness where we can listen to a voice that will lead us along the right path. By trusting in this voice, we may see this journey as a mysterious process of accepting the roles we've been asked to play, acting out the plot before us, and ascending beyond ourselves to find a connection to a higher, loving force. We can call this force God or Allah or Yahweh or Everything or Nothing or Spirit or Power or Love. Or any other name that helps us better understand what a special role we play in the all of life. By trusting in this force, we can rise above our suffering and become compassionate sources of light that are connected to one great Source and to one another. In other words, we are not now or have ever been walking on this path alone. In this book, Lorraine details the live-saving truth that lifted her out of her most despairing moments -- physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Her story is still in the process of being written, and she has no clue where she is along the path right now. Is she at the beginning? The end? Will she feel better tomorrow? Will she take a turn for the worse? None of us knows what will happen tomorrow let alone in the next hour. But no matter what has happened, what will happen, or what is happening in our lives, Lorraine has come to embrace this one guiding truth: Someone or Something else is guiding us along this path whose end we cannot see. Not only that, but this Guide has created a special plan for each one of us out of unconditional love. Go ahead and call that idea wacky. Lorraine once thought so, too. We're not in control of our own lives? Who in this modern-day world wants to believe that? During a silent, unstructured retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Louisville, Kentucky, though, Lorraine heard five simple words a humble monk quietly spoke as she made plans to go home early. What were these five words that made her stay for the whole week? How did these words change her perspective about her own disease? What other gifts has she found along the way to bring her out of darkness and into the light? When she fell on the side of the road, what did she discover about choices she could make along the way to make her path smoother? And why did she spend nearly three years writing this book when her opening line states, "This is not a book I want to write"? You may discover the answer to that question as you read this book. More importantly, you may find the peace, faith, and compassion you need as you struggle to find meaning though your own story. That is the Real Author's greatest hope.

Amidst the sultry music and sensual movement of the Argentine Tango, a killer dances with his victims, waiting to take the breath of those he feels can bring him closer to perfection. When Alsedel Llewellyn finds two of his friends murdered, he follows a trail through the tango venues of New York City and Buenos Aires searching for answers. He soon has to make a choice--pursue the man he suspects is the murderer or hope the police find enough evidence before another falls and the killer escapes to the underground of his homeland. Travel with this unlikely hero uncovering the intriguing world and codes of the tango as he pursues the man known as, Maestro.

Ever since Bessie Smith’s powerful voice conspired with the “race records� industry to make her a star in the 1920s, African American writers have memorialized the sounds and theorized the politics of black women’s singing. In Black Resonance, Emily J. Lordi analyzes writings by Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Gayl Jones, and Nikki Giovanni that engage such iconic singers as Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson, and Aretha Franklin. Focusing on two generations of artists from the 1920s to the 1970s, Black Resonance reveals a musical-literary tradition in which singers and writers, faced with similar challenges and harboring similar aims, developed comparable expressive techniques. Drawing together such seemingly disparate works as Bessie Smith’s blues and Richard Wright’s neglected film of Native Son, Mahalia Jackson’s gospel music and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, each chapter pairs one writer with one singer to crystallize the artistic practice they share: lyricism, sincerity, understatement, haunting, and the creation of a signature voice. In the process, Lordi demonstrates that popular female singers are not passive muses with raw, natural, or ineffable talent. Rather, they are experimental artists who innovate black expressive possibilities right alongside their literary peers. The first study of black music and literature to centralize the music of black women, Black Resonance offers new ways of reading and hearing some of the twentieth century’s most beloved and challenging voices.

Jessica Lennox's life is a shambles. Her comfortable marriage is over; her children are estranged; and her partnership in her CPA firm is hanging by a thread. Although she's only forty-six, she looks and feels old-old and finished. Jessie, a prominent accountant in a small Maryland town, needs to find a way to make lemonade from the lemon trees she seems to have grown in her life's orchard. Someone has financially gutted the CPA firm and framed Jessie for the crime. Worse, her home has been robbed and vandalized, and now one of her ex-partners is dead. In the midst of her troubles, Jessie reconnects with an old friend named Elise Bentley, a riding instructor and artist in northern Virginia. They enlist a handsome trust lawyer, Alden Marshall, to help track down the embezzled funds, trying to clear her name. Then, someone tries to kill her. Jessie retreats to Montana to assist an elegant heiress, Josie Hitchcock, who owns a ranch there; but she is still pursued by a possible killer. Now, only time will tell whether Jessie can make it safe for her children to come home.

In The Meaning of Soul, Emily J. Lordi proposes a new understanding of this famously elusive concept. In the 1960s, Lordi argues, soul came to signify a cultural belief in black resilience, which was enacted through musical practices-inventive cover versions, falsetto vocals, ad-libs, and false endings. Through these soul techniques, artists such as Aretha Franklin, Donny Hathaway, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes, and Minnie Riperton performed virtuosic survivorship and thus helped to galvanize black communities in an era of peril and promise. Their soul legacies were later reanimated by such stars as Prince, Solange Knowles, and Flying Lotus. Breaking with prior understandings of soul as a vague masculinist political formation tethered to the Black Power movement, Lordi offers a vision of soul that foregrounds the intricacies of musical craft, the complex personal and social meanings of the music, the dynamic movement of soul across time, and the leading role played by black women in this musical-intellectual tradition.

Who runs the world? The Beyhive knows. From the Destiny's Child 2001 hit single "Survivor" to her 2019 jam "7/11," Beyoncé Knowles-Carter has confronted dominant issues around the world. Because her image is linked with debates on race, sexuality, and female empowerment, she has become a central figure in pop music and pop culture. Beyoncé: At Work, On Screen, and Online explores her work as a singer, activist, and artist by taking a deep dive into her songs, videos, and performances, as well as responses from her fans. Contributors look at Beyoncé's entire body of work to examine her status as a canonical figure in modern music and do not shy away from questioning scandals or weighing her social contributions against the evolution of feminism, critical race theory, authenticity, and more. Full of examples from throughout Beyoncé's career, this volume presents listening as a political undertaking that generates meaning and creates community. Beyoncé: At Work, On Screen, and Online contends that because of her willingness to address societal issues within her career, Beyoncé has become an important touchstone for an entire generation—all in a day's work for Queen Bey.