Beyond the Black Diamond


Book Description

A lone scientist and a resourceful scavenger become unlikely allies in a thrilling time travel adventure! Anya Petrova, a brilliant but ostracized researcher, stumbles upon a hidden truth: the Astreans, an advanced alien race, weren't the aggressors history portrays them to be. But a powerful organization, the Harbingers, controls the narrative, manipulating events across time to rewrite history for their own gain. Armed with a malfunctioning time machine and a salvaged Astrean energy core, Anya finds herself thrust into a desolate wasteland. Here, she encounters Kairos, a gruff scavenger with a mysterious past. Together, they must navigate the treacherous ruins and evade the Harbingers' pursuit. Their journey leads them back to the present, where they uncover a hidden chamber brimming with Astrean technology. But the Harbingers are always one step ahead, and a desperate escape leaves them with a single clue: a fragmented map revealing locations where the Harbingers have tampered with history. Can Anya and Kairos decipher the map, expose the Harbingers' manipulations, and rewrite the narrative before it's too late? Join them on a heart-pounding quest through time, where the past holds the key to the future!




Black Diamond Queens


Book Description

African American women have played a pivotal part in rock and roll—from laying its foundations and singing chart-topping hits to influencing some of the genre's most iconic acts. Despite this, black women's importance to the music's history has been diminished by narratives of rock as a mostly white male enterprise. In Black Diamond Queens, Maureen Mahon draws on recordings, press coverage, archival materials, and interviews to document the history of African American women in rock and roll between the 1950s and the 1980s. Mahon details the musical contributions and cultural impact of Big Mama Thornton, LaVern Baker, Betty Davis, Tina Turner, Merry Clayton, Labelle, the Shirelles, and others, demonstrating how dominant views of gender, race, sexuality, and genre affected their careers. By uncovering this hidden history of black women in rock and roll, Mahon reveals a powerful sonic legacy that continues to reverberate into the twenty-first century.




Black Diamond


Book Description

Traces the history of baseball in the Negro Leagues and its great heroes, including Monte Irwin, Buck Leonard, and Cool Papa Bell.




The Proving


Book Description

By the mid twenty-first century civilization will be colonizing the near reaches of the solar system. Honor and honesty will be highly valued. People may choose to receive a brain implant, called a grain, which imparts great knowledge. It is customary to perform a proving-a feat of intellect that proves that the grain is working. In the year 2063, you will find the Zambino family residing at 125 Puffin Rock Road in Blue Hill, Maine. Even for these remarkable times the Zambinos are not your average family. Chookanoo Zambino and his genetically engineered, adopted brother Scoom can't wait to get their grains and then, build a spacecraft for their proving. They can count on help from family, friends and the household robot, Zimbit. But, ancient spirits from beyond have a different proving for the Zambino boys. What do they have in common with a Civil War solder, a Nez Pierce warrior, a Roman centurion and the crew of a schooner that disappeared in 1891? Discover the secret reason Scoom was genetically engineered by a renegade scientist. So, liquefy some electricity and fire up the hyperbaric engines-it's time to go for a ride with the Zambinos of Blue Hill.




The Black Diamond Detective Agency, Collector's Edition


Book Description

A graphic novel about a corn farmer named John Hardin who is suspected by the Black Diamond Detective Agency for blowing up a train and finds himself running from the law.




Beyond the Crossroads


Book Description

The devil is the most charismatic and important figure in the blues tradition. He's not just the music's namesake ("the devil's music"), but a shadowy presence who haunts an imagined Mississippi crossroads where, it is claimed, Delta bluesman Robert Johnson traded away his soul in exchange for extraordinary prowess on the guitar. Yet, as scholar and musician Adam Gussow argues, there is much more to the story of the devil and the blues than these cliched understandings. In this groundbreaking study, Gussow takes the full measure of the devil's presence. Working from original transcriptions of more than 125 recordings released during the past ninety years, Gussow explores the varied uses to which black southern blues people have put this trouble-sowing, love-wrecking, but also empowering figure. The book culminates with a bold reinterpretation of Johnson's music and a provocative investigation of the way in which the citizens of Clarksdale, Mississippi, managed to rebrand a commercial hub as "the crossroads" in 1999, claiming Johnson and the devil as their own.




The Black Diamond


Book Description




The Black Diamond


Book Description

The Black Diamond is the sixth book in the saga. This time Juan is born in Lesotho, South Africa. As his immortal spirit continues to live on, he is able to vividly recall his eternal past and cannot understand why whites despise men of his race. His father Moshoeshoei, king of the Basotho, instructs him in the art of government and in the subtleties of diplomacy. His mother, offspring of Chaka Zulu, wants to end her peoples suffering and wishes that his son will dedicate his life to save their bodies and spirits. The protagonists principle desire is the same as that of all his other lives - to find the woman that was created with him at the beginning of time. Maluti and Tineke sense each other's existence and recognize that they are a couple of kindred spirits who prowl about the world in search of love; but they never meet. The novel takes place during a difficult time in Africa. Gold and diamonds are discovered. The descendants of the Dutch struggled to rise from the tyranny of England as the blacks fight to preserve their homeland. The British Empire, which is under the auspices of a brotherhood, appears to be unbeatable as it is filled wealth of the seven continents, usurping the natural resources in the seas by attacking ships of Spain, Holland, China and India. After centuries of ideological conflicts and social, religious and political differences, the nations distance themselves. The weapons become more sophisticated and, although the science improves, diseases decimate men and animals. Gradually the planet is invaded by the human species that threatens to destroy everything in its path, including a variety of almost extinct birds, fish, reptiles and mammals.




The Mystery of the Black Diamond


Book Description

First century private detective Jake Jezreel is drawn into a mysterious case involving a rare black jewel. The case begins rather simply with a request by James, the head of the Jerusalem church, to locate a missing fellow minister in the church. This puzzling disappearance has the entire Christian church in Jerusalem concerned and praying for their missing pastor. Soon, the investigation for the missing person diverts Jake into a more elaborate course, that of trailing after a jewel known as The Black Diamond. Detective Jake Jezreel had never heard of The Black Diamond. And yet this mys-terious object will plunge him and his wife, Hannah, into an adventurous investigation like he had never experienced before. What kind of power did this lustrous, gorgeous diamond have over men? How could it make men hate and attack each other to own it? Will Jake be drawn into the powerful, magnetic influence this black beauty possesses? Only a nerve-racking climax at the Hip-podrome in Caesarea can bring the answers Jake is searching for.




The Black Diamond and the Witch’s Curse


Book Description

To most people, it appears as if Derek James is a typical college freshman. Yes, he is on a football scholarship at one of the most prestigious universities in the country, but other than that, he appears quite ordinary. But there is an extraordinary secret that Derek is harboring: he is a warlock! When he runs into fellow freshmen Matthias, Omar, and Tre’Vell, he is surprised to learn that they are also warlocks! Shortly after they all meet, however, the freshmen start getting attacked by terrifying monsters. Now, the four fast friends must overcome doubts and disagreements in order to discover the source of the attacks. But it may go deeper than any of them realize.