Showing results by publisher "Phoenix Books" in Literature & Fiction

Two retired Texas Rangers, Captains Woodrow Call and Augustus "Gus" McCrae, lead a cattle drive from the small town of Lonesome Dove to the unsettled Montana territories. On their grueling journey, they are joined by Joshua Deets, a Black scout and former Ranger, Jake Spoon, a fugitive, and Newt Dobbs, a 17-year-old boy who may have family ties to Call. Richly authentic, beautifully written, always dramatic, Lonesome Dove will make listeners laugh and weep, dream and remember.

This collection of recordings about Brother Cadfael—a Benedictine monk and amateur sleuth in the 12th century—are performed here by the ideal actor. Sir Derek Jacobi, who portrayed Cadfael in several television adaptations, captivates listeners with his renderings of Monk's Hood, Saint Peter's Fair, The Heretic's Apprentice, The Potter's Field, The Summer of the Danes, and Brother Cadfael's Penance.

For decades, a quartet of Chinese women who have emigrated to San Francisco gather to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk—they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Over the years, their stories have informed the lives of four daughters who feel the weight of family and world history on their shoulders. With wit and sensitivity, this novel explores the deep, complicated, and sometimes painful connections between mothers and daughters.

This adventure story has everything you could want: a handsome good guy, a pretty heroine, some bad guys, sword fighting, revenge, romance, and of course a happy ending, along with “rodents of unusual size.” Join Westley (the plucky farm boy), Buttercup (the beautiful young maiden), Inigo Montoya (the driven, embittered swordsman), Prince Humperdinck (the scheming villain), and many other strange and unusual characters in this swashbuckling tale of good-natured silliness.

The Company tells the thrilling story of agents imprisoned in double lives, fighting an enemy that is amoral, elusive, and formidable. It also lays bare a warfare within the company itself, adding another dimension to the spy vs. spy game. The Company tells the thrilling story of agents imprisoned in double lives, fighting an enemy that is amoral, elusive, and formidable. It also lays bare a warfare within the company itself, adding another dimension to the spy vs. spy game.

One day, 14-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find two notes in her mailbox, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up?

This story of Lord Rama — the 7th incarnation of Lord Vishnu— i s a wondrous tale of cosmic adventure that immerses the listener in a world of heroes, gods, and demons.

In Paris, in Washington, and in Greece in a fabulous villa, an innocent American becomes a bewildered, horror-stricken pawn in a game of vengeance and betrayal. She is Catherine Douglas, a woman caught in a web of four lives intertwined by passion as her handsome husband pursues an incredibly beautiful film star...and as Constantin Demeris, a legendary Greek tycoon, tightens the strands that control them all.

Christopher Hitchens continues to make the case for a splendidly godless universe in this first-ever gathering of the influential voices past and present that have shaped his side of the current (and raging) God/no-god debate. With Hitchens as your erudite and witty guide, you'll be led through a wealth of philosophy, literature, and scientific inquiry, including generous portions of the words of Lucretius, Benedict de Spinoza, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Mark Twain, and more.

The first entry in Leslie Stewart's diary read: "Dear Diary; This morning I met the man I am going to marry." It was simple, optimistic statement, without the slightest portent of the dramatic chain of events that was about to occur. The Best Laid Plans takes listeners inside two of America's most powerful and ruthless institutions: the world of politics with it's scandals, corruption, and cover-ups; and that of newspaper publishing, where it is not unusual to use the power of the press to destroy lives - or bring down heads of state - in pursuit of a story or to settle a score.

Kate Blackwell is the symbol of success—a beautiful woman who parlayed her inheritance into an international conglomerate. Winner of a unique position among the wealthy and world-renowned, she is also a survivor as indomitable as her father, who returned from the edge of death to wrench a fortune in diamonds from the hard South African soil. As she celebrates her ninetieth birthday, Kate surveys the family she has manipulated, dominated, and loved over the decades and asks herself: Is she the master of the game?

In the wake of a humbling incident aboard a canal boat in the Cotswolds, young Captain Horatio Hornblower arrives in London to take command of the Atropos, a 22-gun sloop barely large enough to require a captain. Her first assignment under Hornblower's command is as flagship for the funeral procession of Lord Nelson.

Sissy Hankshaw, an almost flawlessly beautiful small-town girl with big-time dreams, hitchhikes her way into your heart, your hopes, and your sleeping bag in Tom Robbins's magical, funny, and most famous novel. Follow Sissy's amazing odyssey from Virginia to chic Manhattan to the Dakota Badlands, where FBI agents, cowgirls, and ecstatic whooping cranes explode in a deliciously drawn-out climax.

The exhilarating adventures of Anne McCaffrey's bestselling Crystal Singer series continue with Killashandra, a story that mixes interplanetary political intrigue with passionate romance. In this installment, Killashandra Ree's crystal claim has been exhausted, forcing her to take a new assignment and leave her new lover back on their native Ballybran. She goes undercover on a distant, desolate planet, searching desperately for the crystal that will save her—and, quite possibly—determine the fate of the entire universe.

Killashandra Ree has spent ten grueling years in musical training, anticipating interstellar celebrity as a vocal soloist. She is young, beautiful—and still without prospects. After learning that a flaw in her voice will prevent her from singing lead, she hears of the mysterious Heptite Guild on the planet Ballybran, where the fabled Black Crystal is found. Mining this strange form of crystal is a dangerous occupation but to Killa, the risks are acceptable. Remarkably, her adaptation to crystal mining is unusually easy. The problem is—few people who land on Ballybran ever leave.

Killashandra, one of the most gifted singers on Ballybran, is drawn like a magnet to the song of crystal. In order to work with crystal, singers are infected with a symbiotic life form that heals them and gives them near eternal life—but slowly destroys their memories. Since crystal singing brings Killashandra ecstasy, she doesn't mind the initial small annoyances of memory loss. What she hadn't counted on was the loneliness she felt when her heart still remembered what her mind had forgotten—the names of her friends and lovers.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is the story of a man who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for eternal youth. As Basil Hallward, an aspiring artist, puts a few touches on a portrait of his handsome young friend Dorian Gray, Gray wishes that the portrait might grow old while he remains forever young. While Dorian Gray spends his life pursuing fresh experiences and new sensations, his looks do not change. However, the portrait, secretly hidden in the attic of his residence and with which he has grown increasingly obsessed, does.

When Rosie Trethewey, a disillusioned doctor turned market researcher, unexpectedly inherits a shack on the remote northern tip of Great Barrier Island, she decides it's time to begin a new life. Arriving at her new home, Rosie finds she has two neighbors sharing the wilderness: Red O'Hara, a refugee from horrific wartime experiences on the Burma Railway, and Angus McLeod, a retired policeman who's abandoned a society he sees as soft and contemptible. Rosie's appearance panics Red and Angus, both fearing she'll disrupt their ordered lives...and they're right.

Here are the excruciatingly funny adventures of Suzanne Vale — a young film star and drug addict — who survives a rehab clinic only to rejoin the equally harrowing world of Hollywood. Out there on the edge, despair flips into hilarity, and we're left laughing as Suzanne struggles to come to terms with her various fantasylands.

This rich and charming novel about a virtuous young woman's search for love amidst the fickle world of country gentry in Regency England is one of Jane Austen's most memorable works. Anne Elliot exists in a world where shallowness and hypocrisy present a challenge to her centered values and tender emotions. Anne vies for the affections of the man she loves while at the same time her willpower is threatened as she battles the conventions of a proper parochial society.