This book tells the story of a young man who struggles to find his way in a world that doesn’t seem to want him. He isn't smart enough or handsome enough. His skin is the wrong shade and his shaking nervousness is never understood. From his first steps as a child, he is exposed to life's harsh realities: poverty, violence, sexual abuse, neglect ... until finally, seeking to escape the cruelty and unfairness of the world by immersing himself in its questionable pleasures, he drifts further and further from a salvation he doesn't even know exists. In Mama Can You Hear Me, William Waters shares the story of his life with a candor and sincerity that is as touching as it is shocking at times. With his experiences and soul laid bare, he offers up his journey, from the depths of despair to the welcoming arms of God, who lifted him up, carried him through, and picked him up when he faltered. With faith, determination, and the grace of God, it is the story of a young man who survived.

Tess Jennings, now a member of the Memphis Police Department, is on her first cold case. The suspected suicide of Lizbeth Knapp ten years ago isn’t a theory her family accepts—they believe she was murdered. But the case is only one of Tess’s worries. Ghosts are talking, and word of her abilities rapidly spreads. A dark ghost is terrifying the spirits of Memphis, and she must force the entity to cross over. Tess doesn’t have to do this alone. Not only does she have her ghost-lover, Kipp McGowen, but the department has brought in a medium. Dane Wolfe might answer all her questions, but he also brings a world of trouble. Will Tess finally have all she’s ever wanted, or will everything she’s vowed to protect be ripped away?

Keena and Kim met in a group home and have been best friends ever since. They both have the mindset of money over men, and they don’t play where they lay. They set brothas up and rob them, disappearing without a trace. Keena, the brains of the two, sets up the biggest lick of their lives in Miami. If they can pull this one off, they can retire and live the good life. Peter, who everyone calls Black, is not an easy target. He is different from all the others that they have set up, and Keena is having second thoughts. Kim has a big secret that Keena knows nothing about. Will the secret cost them everything? Watch this riveting story unfold as these Queen City queens take you down a dark path of betrayal, lust, and turmoil on the hot streets of Miami. Will the girls be able to pull this off, or will they die trying?

Kassandra's early step off the porch only made her transition from inmate to full-time escort that much easier. Stuck between a cold-hearted pimp name Papa Bear and a beautiful, loving bottom bitch named Mama Bear, Kassandra is forced to choose between reaching the number-one spot in the game, pushing the other girls out of the way, and leaving everything that she loves behind, including her son, or running away with the clothes on her back and what's left of her dignity and heart to try to find happiness alone.

A collection of love poems and song lyrics. Some of the poems are dark, some are more light-hearted and romantic, all are written from a deep emotional place. I write about love - romantic love, love between friends, love between family.

Three strong-willed women--Reece, a lawyer; Maxie, a struggling journalist; and Charlotte, a real estate agent--encounter the ups and downs of life as they search for true love and fulfillment.

Mothers-Sisters/Daughters-Friends is a collection of short stories about eight women living in Hopeville, Georgia. They are ordinary women with an extraordinary love for each other. Although the ladies are confronted with many trials and tribulations in life, their love is constant.

The novellas and stories in American Originals convey the power of the West Texas desert to swallow people—literally, or through the rituals of labor, or through the raptures of ecstatic vision, induced by blessings or madness—and people’s ability to forge connections in spite of extreme conditions. Each piece in this thematically-linked collection assumes a unique shape, whether poetically compressed, echoing (only to break) the contours of mystery stories, or redolent of the forms of classical prayer. The Texas of AMERICAN ORIGINALS becomes the landscape of strife and hope, struggle and love, lost and found. The characters in the stories and novellas here learn, sometimes the hard way, the truth of T. S. Eliot's insight that the "end of all our exploring" in life is to "arrive where we started" and to know, for the first time, who we really are. Saints and sinners, and the blurred lines between them, drive these spare narratives set in the plains and deserts of Texas. [Daugherty's fiction] "leaves us dry-eyed and wiser in that place far beyond tears that we know from our own lives."--Shelby Hearon "Daugherty combines the serious and literary with the funny and offbeat, resulting in sparkle-plenty prose with an ear for dialogue that never fails."--Beverly Lowry