Audiobooks narrated by Karen Chilton

Thomas Jefferson Survives: American Independence in His Time and Ours

"“Does Thomas Jefferson still matter?” ask two leading historians on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson has been reinvented more than perhaps any American president in history. In the nineteenth century, slavery’s defenders invoked Jefferson’s defense of states’ rights while abolitionists drew on his antislavery writings in support of their cause. After the Civil War, Jefferson’s reputation declined because of his association with secession and disunion, but in the twentieth century, his image soared as he came to embody the democratic values America fought for during World War II. Unsurprisingly, Jefferson’s legacy has shifted yet again in the twenty-first century, effectively becoming a partisan talisman—jettisoned by the left as a plantation patriarch and repurposed by the right as an avatar of white nationalism. Dissatisfied with these political caricatures and manic swings, leading Jefferson scholars Peter S. Onuf and Francis D. Cogliano instead situate the founding father in his complicated historical context and reveal how his wisdom can be applied today. In a series of three interrelated essays, the authors paint a nuanced portrait. “Generations” elucidates how Jefferson’s understanding of history shaped his responses to the major problems of his time. “My Country” delves into how he conceived of the American homeland, and “The People” unravels how Jefferson articulated a new national identity in the Declaration of Independence. Taken together, Thomas Jefferson Survives demonstrates how even amid crisis, Jefferson managed to articulate a capacious and optimistic vision for the future of the American people. As Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed writes in her foreword, “As much as Jefferson reflected the often-benighted times in which he lived, he rose above them in ways that have a great deal to tell us about the political straits in which we find ourselves.” After all, Jefferson knew better than anyone that 1776 was an important moment, but not the only moment, for Americans to write a better future. “A powerful argument for the continuing importance of Thomas Jefferson in our troubled and turbulent times. These two great scholars of Jeffersonian America, using Jefferson’s belief in generational sovereignty and his utter faith in us, that is, the future generations of American people, have brilliantly described for us the various ways Jefferson still matters.”—Gordon Wood, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and author of Friends Divided"

Francis D. Cogliano, Peter S. Onuf (Author), Graham Winton, Karen Chilton (Narrator)

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Weathering the Storm: Navigating the Anti-Social Justice Wave

"Transformative change is often met with intense opposition, but we will not back down from the fight for social justice. In a nation caught in the crosscurrents of progress and backlash, Weathering the Storm offers both a wake-up call and a balm for the weary. Psychologist and educator Dr. Tiffany G. Townsend draws from her decades of leadership in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), blending personal stories, historical analysis, and psychological expertise to equip us with tools for resistance and resilience. With compassion, Dr. Townsend unpacks the tactics used to stifle equity including microaggressions, tokenism, gaslighting, and the systemic dismantling of DEI efforts with a concept she calls the 'redemptionist playbook.' This is not a book about despair. It's a call to radical hope. Grounded in psychological research and cultural history, Weathering the Storm offers a blueprint for navigating personal and professional spaces. Through strategies like self-care as resistance, spiritual grounding, collective action, and effective allyship, Dr. Townsend reminds us that well-being and activism are not mutually exclusive; they are intimately intertwined. This guide is for anyone who has ever felt worn down by injustice, disillusioned by regression, or isolated in their advocacy. It offers validation, empowerment, and above all, the reminder that the fight for justice is a long arc that we will ultimately bend together."

Tiffany G. Townsend PhD (Author), Karen Chilton (Narrator)

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Savvy Summers and the Po'boy Perils: A Mystery

"The next delectable mystery featuring quick-witted, unforgettable Savvy Summers, owner of a soul food café in Chicago. 'Listeners will be entertained by narrator Karen Chilton's performance of this deliciously devious novel set at Essie's Soul Food Cafe on the South Side of Chicago.” —Kirkus on Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes Savvy has her work cut out when an old friend hires her to cater a company luncheon at a nearby office building on Chicago's South Side. Stepping out of her traditional soul food comfort zone, Savvy whips together a menu of Creole classics, with her own spin, of course—mini po’boys with assorted fillings, sunburst salad, and bread pudding using Great Aunt Essie’s famous buttermilk biscuits. But when someone is found dead in the company’s conference room, Savvy’s culinary creations are suddenly in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. While the focus should be on their delicious flavors and inventive techniques, Savvy’s beloved café instead becomes the center of a murder investigation once again. Caught within a messy web of gossip, miscommunication, and fraught coworker relationships, Savvy will have to settle the confusion to clear her name. Somebody’s hiding something, and with the help of her trusty assistant manager, Penny Lopés, Savvy sets out uncover exactly who is to blame. With familiar faces turning up the heat on her investigation and her café still in hot water, will Savvy be able to save her reputation before it’s too late? A Macmillan Audio production from Minotaur Books"

Sandra Jackson-Opoku (Author), Karen Chilton (Narrator)

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Blacks

"Here is a necessary collection of poetry for admirers of words and treasurers of literary beauty. Spanning more than 30 years, this collection of literary masterpieces by the venerable Ms. Gwendolyn Brooks, arguably Illinois' most beloved Poet Laureate and Chicago's elder black literary stateswoman, Blacks includes all of Ms. Brooks' critically acclaimed writings. Within its covers is the groundbreaking Annie Allen, which earned her the Pulitzer Prize in 1950. There is also the sweepingly beautiful and finely crafted A Street in Bronzeville, a highly anticipated and lauded poetic treasure that spoke volumes for this great poet's love of black people, Chicago's Black community, and even the community of the world. Blacks includes a special treat, Maud Martha, Brooks' only novel."

Gwendolyn Brooks (Author), Karen Chilton (Narrator)

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A Second Sight: How the Wonder and Vision of Black Mediamakers Push America Toward Freedom

""I have been waiting for a book like this, and I'm so glad it's here." - Clint Smith, author of How the Word is Passed Since the nation's founding, Black Americans have had a unique perspective on the U.S. experience-a "second sight"-that reveals the truth about the nation to itself. As renowned media scholar Sarah J. Jackson charts in this bold and daring masterwork, at the center of this effort has been an extraordinary cast of Black journalists, photographers, filmmakers, radio hosts, podcasters and other mediamakers who have drawn on the visionary tradition of second sight to advance democracy and broaden our most fundamental American values. When Black mediamakers raise their voices and speak uncomfortable truths about America, they shape memories of the nation and push us toward a future more closely aligned with our espoused values. For two centuries, this "second sight" has been an overlooked engine of American democracy. Drawing from W.E.B. Du Bois's philosophical work, along with deep historical analysis and dozens of interviews with today's most active Black mediamakers, A Second Sight shows these visionaries positioned at the margins of their industries and navigating fraught relationships to power. They've warned of the greatest dangers to democracy-from slavery to Nazism, and mass incarceration to misinformation. Their work is central to our culture and politics. Yet it is devalued, met with violent censure, or achieved only via ingenious work-arounds. This tension has sharpened their commitments to truth. Now one of our nation's foremost scholars of American media, Sarah J. Jackson, presents an appraisal that situates Black mediamakers at the vanguard of telling the American story. Brilliant, urgent and illuminating, A Second Sight is an authentic and candid grappling with a discordant thread in the American fabric and, in tracing a bolder vision for the nation, presents a way forward. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook."

Sarah J. Jackson (Author), Karen Chilton (Narrator)

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A Harlem Wedding: A Novel

"From The Unexpected Diva author Tiffany Warren—a dishy and dramatic novel of the Harlem Renaissance and its most famous Black debutante, Yolande Du Bois, daughter of W.E.B. Du Bois, whose spectacular wedding to poet Countee Cullen was the society event of the year...even though the bride and groom were not-so-secretly in love with other people. A century ago, Harlem’s glittering social scene had a single princess: Yolande Du Bois, the only child of N.A.A.C.P. icon W.E.B. Du Bois. Yolande was bold, vivacious, and beloved of every gossip columnist. A true daddy’s girl, Yolande followed her father’s advice on everything: from where she went to college (Fisk—Papa’s alma mater) to which sorority she joined (Delta Sigma Theta). But in matters of the heart, Yolande and her father did not agree. Dr. Du Bois himself curated a string of handsome suitors from the “Talented Tenth” for her, but Yolande’s true love was jazz musician Jimmie Lunceford, son of a working-class family from far-off Denver, Colorado. Their romance was an open secret, and more than a little scandalous. Despite it all, Yolande wound up marrying her father’s choice: famed poet Countee Cullen. Their lavish uptown wedding was the hottest social ticket of 1928. With three thousand attendees, sixteen bridesmaids, and Langston Hughes as a groomsman, it was truly a sight to behold. But, immediately after the wedding, Yolande’s carefully constructed fairy tale begins to crumble. Torn between the expectations of her father and society and her heart’s true desire, Yolande is forced to decide whether she must leave Harlem to create a more authentic life on her own terms. A Harlem Wedding is a heady read about love, notoriety, Black excellence, deception, and the très chic lifestyles of the Black elite, from speakeasies of Harlem and the green fields of Fisk University, all the way to Le Grand Duc in Paris."

Tiffany L. Warren (Author), Karen Chilton (Narrator)

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Tell Her Story: Eleanor Bumpurs & the Police Killing That Galvanized New York City

"The life and 1984 murder of a beloved Black grandmother that changed community activism forever-and sparked the ongoing movement against racist policing and brutality #SayHerName: The story of Eleanor Bumpurs, told for the first time by decorated historian and Bumpurs's former neighbor LaShawn Harris On October 29, 1984, 66-year-old beloved Black disabled grandmother Eleanor Bumpurs was murdered in her own home. A public housing tenant 4 months behind on rent, Ms. Bumpurs was facing eviction when white NYPD officer Stephen Sullivan shot her twice with a 12-gauge shotgun. LaShawn Harris, 10 years old at the time, felt the aftershocks of the tragedy in her community well beyond the four walls of her home across the street. Now an award-winning historian, Harris uses eyewitness accounts, legal documents, civil rights pamphlets, and more to look through the lens of her childhood neighbor's life and death. She renders in a new light the history of anti-Black police violence and of the watershed anti-policing movement Eleanor Bumpurs's murder birthed. So many Black women's lives have been stolen since-Deborah Danner, Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, Sonya Massey-and still more are on the line. This deeply researched, intimate portrait of Eleanor Bumpurs's life and legacy highlights how one Black grandmother's brutal police murder galvanized an entire city. It also shows how possible and critical it is to stand together against racist policing now."

LaShawn Harris (Author), Karen Chilton (Narrator)

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And Then Came the Blues: My Story of Survival on Both Sides of the Badge / A Memoir

"After being shot ten times by her fiancé and left for dead, Katrina Brownlee miraculously survived and became a decorated NYPD detective, a mentor, and founder of a nonprofit support group for at-risk women. ACCORDING TO THE NATIONAL COALITION AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, in the United States, an average of twenty-four people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner, and one in three women have experienced some form of domestic violence. One of those women was Katrina Brownlee, who as a twenty-two-year-old mother of two experienced hell at the hands of her then-fiancé. He was a law enforcement officer—a group two to four times more likely than the general population to be abusive, and who are known for protecting their own. During his dangerous outbursts, Brownlee would call the police for help, only to see the cops turn their backs on her when her abuser flashed his badge. On a cold January morning in 1993, her fiancé shot her ten times and left her for dead. Brownlee could have been just one more of the eleven females killed per minute worldwide by a loved one. Instead, miraculously, she survived. Through hard work, faith, and perseverance, she recovered from her injuries and found a path through her trauma. She decided to become a police officer to help others in her situation, to be the “good cop” who had not been there for her when she had needed saving. In 2021, she retired from a highly decorated twenty-year career with the NYPD. As the founder of a support group for at-risk young women, Young Ladies of Our Future, Brownlee decided that the time had come to tell her story—the whole story—of self-empowerment, of healing generational trauma, and of turning pain into hope for herself and her community. “And Then Came the Blues is a gripping memoir of resilience, justice, and redemption. I was incredibly moved by Katrina Brownlee’s unflinching honesty and inspired by her tenacity. She has written a riveting tale that reminds us that triumph after trauma is possible.”—Bernice L. McFadden, author of Sugar"

Katrina Brownlee (Author), Karen Chilton (Narrator)

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Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes: A Mystery

"“Listeners will be entertained by narrator Karen Chilton's performance of this deliciously devious novel set at Essie's Soul Food Cafe on the South Side of Chicago.”—AudioFile A sparkling debut mystery set on the south side of Chicago, featuring the quick-witted, unforgettable Savvy Summers, proprietor of a soul food café. When Savvy Summers first opened Essie's soul food café, she never expected her customer-favorite sweet potato pie to become the center of a murder investigation. But when Grandy Jaspers, the 75-year-old neighborhood womanizer, drops dead at table two, she suddenly has more to worry about than just maintaining Essie's reputation for the finest soul food in the Chicagoland area. Even as the police deem Grandy’s death an accident, Savvy quickly finds herself—and her beloved café—in the middle of an entire city’s worth of bad press. Desperate to clear her name and keep her business afloat, Savvy and her snooping assistant manager, Penny Lopés, take it upon themselves to find who really killed Grandy. But with a slimy investor harassing her to sell her name and business, customers avoiding her sweet potato pie like the plague, and her police sergeant ex-husband suddenly back in the picture, will Savvy be able to clear the café’s name and solve Grandy’s murder before it all falls apart? After all, while Savvy always said her sweet potato pie was to die for, she never meant literally. A Macmillan Audio production from Minotaur Books."

Sandra Jackson-Opoku (Author), Karen Chilton (Narrator)

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Sing the Truth: The Kweli Journal Short Story Collection

"A powerful must-read collection of bold BIPOC voices. All proceeds support The Kweli Journal's mission to nurture emerging writers of color and foster a vibrant literary community. 'It gave me great pleasure to read this beautiful collection of important, diverse, sometimes heartbreaking, and always moving stories; it had the extra benefit of introducing me to several authors whom I'd never read before and whose work I've started to seek out. Highly recommended.' —Nancy Pearl, acclaimed librarian, bestselling author, and literary critic "With this new collection of short stories, we are once again the beneficiaries of brilliant prose that dances off the pages and into our hearts. I'm proud to be in the chorus praising SING THE TRUTH." —Monique Greenwood, co-founder of Go On Girl! Book Club and owner of Akwaaba Bed & Breakfast Inns "As the editor of the groundbreaking journal Kweli, Laura Pegram has introduced us to many of the finest writers of the contemporary literary landscape. In this new, monumental anthology, Pegram has gathered several of these writers, welcoming us to a luminous community in the word." —Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois Hailed as "The Paris Review of BIPOC literature," The Kweli Journal has been a launching pad for many of today's most celebrated writers. Kweli—"truth" in Swahili—marks its fifteenth anniversary with this luminous collection edited by founder Laura Pegram. These vivid narratives explore the devastation of leaving home and the struggle to adapt to reimagined lives, lost loves, distant families, and buried pasts, deepening our understanding of the human experience. Featuring works from acclaimed authors Naima Coster, Nicole Dennis-Benn, Daphne Palasi Andreades, Susan Muaddi Darraj, and others, this anthology stands as a testament to voices too often overlooked in contemporary literature. 'The stories in this collection serve as windows into diverse communities while inviting readers of all backgrounds to engage with and appreciate the richness of our cultures.' —Edwidge Danticat, from the foreword of Sing the Truth"

TBD (Author), Almarie Guerra, Angel Pean, Bahni Turpin, Chante McCormick, Charlie Wood, Frankie Corzo, Jennifer Aquino, Karen Chilton, Luzma Ortiz, Natalie Naudus, Neil Shah, Rasha Zamamiri, Shayna Small, Timothy Andrés Pabon (Narrator)

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Who Pays for Diversity?: Why Programs Fail at Racial Equity and What To Do About It

"How diversity initiatives harm employees of color by turning them into workplace commodities. Diversity programs are under attack. Should those interested in racial justice fight to keep them, or might there be another way forward? Who Pays for Diversity? reveals the costs that employees of color pay under current programs by having their racial identities commodified to benefit white people and institutions. Oneya Fennell Okuwobi proposes fresh and thoughtful ways to reorient these initiatives, move beyond tokenism, and authentically center marginalized employees. Drawing on accounts of employees from across the workplace spectrum, from corporations to churches to universities, Who Pays for Diversity? details how the optics of diversity programs undermine employees' competence while diminishing their well-being and workplace productivity. Okuwobi argues that diversity programs have been a costly detour on the path to racial justice, and getting back on track requires solutions that provide equity, dignity, and agency to all employees, instead of defending the status quo. 'Oneya Fennell Okuwobi brilliantly uncovers the hidden costs of diversity initiatives, challenging the superficiality of such programs and the burdens they place on people of color within so-called 'diverse' environments with a powerful, evidence-backed critique. This book is an essential read for anyone committed to creating genuine racial equity in workplaces and institutions.'—Mary Murphy, Herman B. Wells Endowed Professor, Indiana University"

Oneya Fennell Okuwobi (Author), Karen Chilton (Narrator)

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Psychosis Diagnosis

"Welcome to The Church of Salvation, where your soul checks in but never checks out. Raised by his drug-addicted mother in the small town of Coraki, Australia, Monroe Morgan is determined to escape a life steeped in misery. With dreams of a better future, he has secured a job at his brother-in-law’s pub in Coffs Harbour and is set to start as soon as he turns eighteen. However, a month before his departure, Monroe’s life takes a drastic turn when his neighbour, Indi, appears at his doorstep, battered and scared for her life. She reveals harrowing details about her upbringing in The Church of Salvation and declares that she is being forced to marry the church’s pastor against her will. Concerned for Indi’s safety, Monroe plans to take her with him when he leaves. But on the morning of their escape, he is jolted awake by blood-curdling screams coming from next door. A violent confrontation with Indi’s father ensues, resulting in Monroe’s arrest and a year-long stay in Rozelle Hospital for drug-induced psychosis. In a cruel twist of fate, Indi’s father denies her existence, and the doctors and authorities dismiss her as a figment of Monroe’s imagination. After a year of treatment and recovery, Monroe returns to Coraki determined to find Indi and prove she is real. However, the visit to his old neighbourhood soon unearths a web of dark secrets, and he finds himself at the centre of a decades-old cult conspiracy. He’ll have to summon all his strength to discover not only where Indi went, but who he truly is, before more young women mysteriously wind-up dead."

Nikki Minty (Author), Ari Maza Long, James Fouhey, Jodie Harris, Karen Chilton, Tamblyn Lord (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks Narrated by Karen Chilton

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