Showing results by publisher "Brilliance Audio" in Literature & Fiction

1923 in Midland, Texas, and Miss Dara falls in love with her best friend - who also happens to be a girl. Terrified, Miss Dara takes a job at Sugar Land Prison for men, hoping to keep her secret attractions under lock and key. Once there, she befriends inmate and soon-to-be legendary blues singer Leadbelly, who sings his way out (true story) - but only after he makes her promise to free herself from her own prison. Sugar Land is a triumphant, beautiful debut novel about the heart’s refusal to be denied what the heart wants.

Vagablonde is a darkly humorous, rollercoaster ride through the Los Angeles music scene about a woman who wants two things, the first is to live without psychotropic medication, and the second is to experience success as an artist. A cautionary tale about viral fame, Vagablonde speaks directly to our time in biting detail.

New to a small town, Jackie and Paula envision a quiet life for their kids: a young adopted son and two teenage foster children, including the troubled Star. However, they quickly butt heads with their neighbor, Clementine, who disapproves of their lifestyle and is incensed when Star befriends her spirited horse, Comet. Haunted by past tragedy and unable to properly care for Comet, Clem nevertheless resents the bond Star soon shares with the horse.

In an astounding debut poetry collection, Cave Canem, Callaloo, and Lambda Literary fellow Ife-Chudeni A. Oputa presents a relentless but refined portrait of one young woman's journey toward self-discovery. Her poems explore the eternal themes of the human condition - nature, origin, shame, identity, desire, mortality - with sensitivity and specificity. They illuminate and interrogate the ways that her characters inflict and experience pain, ultimately revealing how we must all face our shame in order to grow. No voice is blameless; no person is exempt.

1855, New Hampshire. Lucy Blunt is set to hang for a double murder. Murderess or victim? Only Lucy knows the truth. In the shadow of the gallows, Lucy reflects on the events that led to her bitter downfall - from the moment she arrived at the rambling Burton mansion looking for work and a better life to the grisly murders themselves.

This novel is indeed a morality tale about the hazards of egotistical self-indulgence. Dorian Grey's pact with evil allows his portrait to take on his many sins and degradations while his physical appearance remains youthful. Over the years as he becomes cruel and vicious, even murderous, Dorian's young and perfect body is no longer enough to salvage his deteriorating mind and morality. Will justice and good prevail?

When celebrated singer Calista plunges to her death during a concert in Rio, her former girlfriend Stevie is watching, along with the rest of the world. But while millions of fans mourn, Stevie can’t shake the feeling that something isn’t right. Then Calista returns—alive, a little changed, but wanting Stevie back in her life for the first time in years. At first, seeing her again feels like a miracle.

A heartbroken and humiliated Ricky Graves took the life of a classmate and himself. Five months later, the sleepy community is still in shock and mourning. Ricky's sister, Alyssa, returns to confront her shattered, withdrawn mother and her guilt over the brother she left adrift. Mark McVitry, the lone survivor of the deadly outburst sparked by his own cruelty, is tormented by visions of Ricky's vengeful spirit. Ricky's surrogate older brother, Corky Meeks, grapples with doubts about the fragile boy he tried to protect but may have doomed instead.

James Patterson is a gay accountant living in Keyes, Oklahoma - deep in the Bible Belt - the religious heartland of America. He's also the first person to make contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence seeking to understand our world, and that makes him the most important person on the planet.

Jane Zander has moved with her husband, Matt, back to his hometown of Atwood, Wisconsin, where he is the new headmaster of the prestigious Atwood Prep School. Jane hopes it will be a good fit for herself, her husband, and their children. Especially Charles, their six-year-old son, who aspires to be the next Julia Child, rejects the norms of boyhood, and insists he is a girl.

It’s the final years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and Bríd and her sister, Ina, try to maintain a stable life in a divided country. Pushed by her mother’s fanaticism and a family tragedy, Bríd joins the IRA and makes a devastating choice. Frightened and guilt ridden, she flees, leaving behind Ireland and her family for America. Years later, her guilt and tragic history still buried, Bríd is an overprotective mother raising her sensitive daughter, Bernie, in Southern California.

For seventeen years, a serial murderer has used the Presley, Arkansas, Annual Hunt for the Golden Egg to find prey. Or at least that’s what some people believe. Others, like the town’s devoted “Eggheads,” relish the tradition and think the deaths are just unfortunate accidents. But for Nell Holcomb, the town’s annual Hunt dredges up a particularly painful memory: her brother’s death, long believed to be “the Hunter’s” first kill.

Sparkle McCavity, young drag queen and employee of Miss Merkin, is missing, presumed kidnapped or even worse. Naturally, Merkin turns to reluctant sleuth and friend to the community Fi for help, but clues and suspects are worryingly thin on the ground—and the drag king Stan the Man is proving somewhat distracting. When Merkin’s niece is then found murdered, spiked on a light pole in nightclub TRASH, it becomes clear that Fi’s friends are in danger. Again.

Mark Sternum, whom listeners first met in Perfect Agreement, is a veteran teacher. Twenty years older, separated for six months from his lover, and desperate to duck the overtures of double-dealing deans above him and disgruntled adjunct faculty below him, Mark has one ambition every day he is on campus - to close the classroom door and leave the world behind. His escape, however, is complicated by his contentious, complicated wrestling match of a relationship with the Professor, the tenured faculty member with whom Mark has co-taught this creative-writing workshop for ten years.

Every Kind of Wanting explores the complex intersection of three unique families. Miguel Guerra, who grew up in poverty in Venezuela before his family's relocation to Chicago, could not be more different from his partner Chad Merry, a happy-go-lucky real estate mogul from Chicago's wealthy North Shore. When Chad's sister, Gretchen - struggling with the deterioration of her marriage - offers the couple her eggs, they begin scrambling for a surrogate to carry the child, finally settling on Miguel's old friend Emily, happily married to an eccentric Irish playwright.

Beautifully and hauntingly written, After Disasters is told through the eyes of four people in the wake of a life-shattering earthquake in India. An intricate story of love and loss weaves together the emotional and intimate narratives of Ted, a pharmaceutical salesman turned member of the Disaster Assistance Response Team; his colleague Piotr, who still carries with him the scars of the Bosnia conflict.

Arthur Blauefee promised to stay away from Jeremy Tyler forever. But when he learns that his troubled, heartbroken ex-lover has been seduced and swindled out of his inheritance, Arthur is off to the rescue. After rekindling their passionate affair, the starry-eyed lovers learn that Jeremy’s plight has gone from terrible to worse. Not only has Jeremy been cheated out of his fortune, he’s been framed for murder.

The high-octane drama, romance, and sexuality of New York’s gay scene snap to life in this compelling collection of five intersecting stories from the author of Gulliver Takes Manhattan. Your guides are hotheaded Brayden, spurned by his ex-boyfriend and carving a path of explosive revenge across the city; Marty, an aspiring actor whose unexpected shot at a breakthrough role could propel him straight to Broadway; go-go boy Chase, finally facing some hard truths about his life....

Nick Nolan’s Double Bound reunites us with many of the characters introduced in his delightful Strings Attached: Jeremy, now in a committed relationship with fun-loving, hot-headed Carlo; Arthur, Jeremy’s protector, confidant, and mentor; and Katharine, Jeremy’s wealthy benefactress, still hiding a slew of secrets and hidden agendas. This sequel displays the same wit, verve, style, and sense of adventure that were so engaging and fresh in Strings Attached.

Nestled in the Pennsylvania countryside, Florence University frames an idyllic college world, complete with cute coeds and handsome jocks - not to mention plenty of booze and sex with virtually no responsibility. For three seniors, the vagaries of life have rarely been so terrifying. Drawn together by their struggles for identity, the three students form a fateful friendship that will change the courses of their lives forever. Sexy, fast paced, and layered with intimate insight about life’s most formative years, The Fall is a compelling coming-of-age story.