Showing results for "The" in Literary Fiction

Emma can be enjoyed as a charming love story, a detective story, and a comic and lively picture of English life 200 years ago. Austen's beautiful, clever, wilful but fallible heroine Emma Woodhouse believes she knows best. Perfectly content with her life she sees no need for either love or marriage, yet nothing pleases her more than meddling in the romantic lives of others.

Leo Tolstoy's classic story of doomed love is one of the most admired novels in world literature. Generations of readers have been enthralled by his magnificent heroine, the unhappily married Anna Karenina, and her tragic affair with dashing Count Vronsky.

Countess Ellen Olenska, separated from her European husband, returns to old New York society. She bears with her an independence and an awareness of life which stirs the educated sensitivity of the charming Newland Archer, engaged to be married to her cousin, May Welland. Though he accepts the society's standards and rules he is acutely aware of their limitations. He knows May will assure him a conventional future but Ellen, scandalously separated from her husband, forces Archer to question his values and beliefs.

Exclusively from Audible. 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.' So begins Charles Dickens' most famous historical drama: a gripping tale of war, social injustice and the choice between darkness and light. After being unjustly imprisoned for 18 years, French doctor Manette is released from the Bastille jail in Paris and embarks upon a journey to London in the hope of finding the daughter he never met.

As the daughter of a drug dealer, Wavy knows not to trust people, not even her own parents. It's safer to keep her mouth shut and stay out of sight. Struggling to raise her little brother, Donal, eight-year-old Wavy is the only responsible adult around. Obsessed with the constellations, she finds peace in the starry night sky above the fields behind her house until one night her stargazing causes an accident. After witnessing his motorcycle wreck, she forms an unusual friendship with one of her father's thugs, Kellen, a tattooed ex-con with a heart of gold.

The Heathcliff we know is obsessive, possessive and cruel, bound and beholden to his childhood love and would-be soulmate Catherine, and their home at Wuthering Heights. But before his descent into monstrous revenge, there were three missing years. A time of possibility, freedom and a different kind of love… With Cathy’s rejection burning hot in his ears, Heathcliff flees the moors and arrives in London, seeking distraction and oblivion...

A workhouse orphan, Oliver experiences the terror and brutality of the criminal underworld. His companions, a thief, a whore, a pickpocket, and a fence, are destined for gruesome ends, but Oliver emerges unscathed from the darkness of the underworld.

When Ellie Chapman inherits a dilapidated farm, perched high up on the cliffs above the English Channel, it’s not long before she decides to launch a wedding business. After all, with a mum whose cake baking skills rival Mary Berry’s, and the perfect venue, it seems the natural choice.

She might be a total novice when it comes to the first wedding, but with a bride who leaves everything until the last minute, a vengeful ex-fiancé of her own, and the world’s naughtiest donkey...What could possibly go wrong?

Wolf tells the story of a man who - after too many nameless women and drunken nights - leaves Manhattan to roam the wilderness of northern Michigan, hoping to catch a glimpse of the rare wolves that prowl that territory. Returning Harrison fans will be ecstatic to re-discover this early novel once again, and for new listeners, this work serves as the perfect introduction to Harrison’s remarkable insight, storytelling skill, and evocation of the natural world.

Late one moonlit night, Walter Hartright encounters a solitary and terrified woman dressed all in white. He saves her from capture by her pursuers and determines to solve the mystery of her distress and terror. Inspired by an actual criminal case, this gripping tale of murder, intrigue, madness and mistaken identity has never been out of print since its publication and brought Collins great fame and success.

Anna Karenina seems to have everything - beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son. But she feels that her life is empty until the moment she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky.

When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, is brought to Europe by her wealthy aunt Touchett, it is expected that she will soon marry. But Isabel, resolved to enjoy the freedom that her fortune has opened up and to determine her own fate, does not hesitate to turn down two eligible suitors, declaring that she will never marry. It is only when she finds herself irresistibly drawn to the cultivated but worthless Gilbert Osmond that she discovers that wealth is a two-edged sword.

Written at the request of Charles Dickens, North and South is a book about rebellion that poses fundamental questions about the nature of social authority and obedience. Gaskell expertly blends individual feeling with social concern and her heroine, Margaret Hale, is one of the most original creations of Victorian literature. When Margaret Hale's father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience she is forced to leave her comfortable home in the tranquil countryside of Hampshire....

Despite the title, Dickens's portrayal of early industrial society is less relentlessly grim than that in novels by contemporaries such as Elizabeth Gaskell or Charles Kingsley. Hard Times weaves the tale of Thomas Gradgrind, a hard-headed politician who raises his children Louisa and Tom without love and to have no empathy, their lives completely devoid of beauty, culture, or imagination. Only after a series of crises does their father realise that the manner in which he raised his children has ruined their lives.

Violet Chase has always been off-limits. The girl I wanted... but could never have. In my teens, her father warned me to keep my hands to myself. Boys like me don't get girls like her. His family saved me, and I owed them. Her brothers, my best friends, made it clear where I stood: below them. We had one stolen moment of passion, then I ran. That was fourteen years ago, and I've regretted it ever since. Now, she's back in London, but life for both of us is very different. Her past decade has been filled with lies that she thought were true.

Light-skinned Black woman Irene Redfield encounters an old childhood friend - Clare - who is now "passing" as a White woman. Clare is married to a racist White man, who doesn't know she has African American blood. In spite of the danger of being found out by her husband and society at large, she finds herself helplessly drawn to Irene's world.

Never make a major life decision in the wake of emotional turmoil. Cassie Romano learned this the hard way, leaving sunny San Diego for a teaching position at a private school in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York after a painful break-up left her heart-broken and in need of a change. It all seemed so perfect in June when she came to interview. But now it’s December, and she’s stranded on top of a mountain surrounded by snow, ice, and acres of wilderness, lonelier than ever and bored out of her mind.

Told through the experiences of the four women who loved him, this imaginative account of Frank Lloyd Wright's raucous life blazes with Boyle's trademark wit and invention. Boyle's protean voice captures these very different women and, in doing so, creates a masterful ode to the creative life in all its complexity and grandeur.

One night. No names. No commitment. That was our agreement. But Spencer Lancaster was addictive. And I was high. High off his taste, starved for his kiss, and desperate for his touch. So when he asked me to stay, to enjoy his company for more nights than I knew I should, I wasn't in the right mind to say no. Everything was perfect. A dream come true. But half a world away, there were secrets. Lies. Insecurities. All of the truths that could tear us apart.

Arthur MacDonald, 85, is having an end-of-life crisis. His beloved, dying wife of over 60 years no longer knows who he is. His older brother still has all his hair and a wife almost half his age. The man his middle-aged daughter is dating has a ponytail. His teenaged grandson wants to cook desserts for a living. And his daughter wants him to move into Silvermine retirement home. Then Arthur meets the gorgeous, radical, 80-something-year-old Robbie and learns that nobody is ever too old to fall in love all over again.