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

Melanie Henderson's life is a lie. The scandal of her birth and the identity of her true parents is kept from her family's small, conservative Colorado town. Not even she knows the truth: that her birth mother was just 14 and unmarried to her father, a local boy who drowned when he tried to take a shortcut across an icy river. Thirty-five years later, in Denver, Melanie dabbles in affairs with married men while clinging to a corporate job that gives her life order even as her tenuous relationships fall apart. She still hasn't learned that the woman who raised her is actually her aunt.

No one thought that MacTrump - Lord of MacTrump Towers, Son of New York - would ascend to the highest position in the kingdom. Yet with the help of his unhappy but dutiful wife Lady MacTrump, his clever daughter Dame Desdivanka, and his coterie of advisers, MacTrump is comfortably ensconced in the White Hold as President of the United Fiefdoms, free to make proclamations to his subjects through his favorite messenger, McTweet. The Democrati, mourning the loss of their cherished leader O'Bama, won't give up without a fight.

The first collection of short fiction from Lambda Award-winning novelist Dale Peck spans 25 years of writing, including two O. Henry Award winners and the recipient of a Pushcart Prize. The stories in What Burns examine the extremes of desire against a backdrop of family, class, and mortality.

Ted Sweeney. Affable everyman in small-town Montana. Tailgate hung on with baling wire, owner of his own business. Ten minutes ago, his biggest worry had been how to pay for the engagement ring rattling around in his pocket. But that was before he came home to find a corpse tidily arranged in his favorite recliner, his "old pal of a piece of furniture". Is it a warning or a setup or what? Sweeney can't help but admire the efficiency of the work, the slice deep across the guy's throat. Somebody knew what they were doing.

Sasha "Pink" Jansen has heard the voice of God. He spoke loud and clear at her purity ceremony, when she was just 16 years old and Pastor Malik Stroman placed that ring on her finger. And He was just as clear when He told her that purity ring would someday be replaced with a wedding ring from the same man...all Pink had to do was save herself. Dreams of a life with Pastor Malik were enough to keep the privileged princess committed to her vow, keeping her eyes on the prize - the day she would become first lady. There's just one problem - Pastor Malik already has a wife.

Lachelle Jackson appears to have it all: a husband who adores her, a job that fulfills her, and friends that love her unconditionally. When Lachelle learns that she is pregnant, what should be the best experience of her life becomes one of the darkest times she ever endured. Facing a life-threatening pregnancy, in the midst of insurmountable grief, can Lachelle find the strength to fight for her life and that of her unborn baby? Can she overcome depression and move beyond memories of her past to accept God's greatest gift . . . love?

On the outside, clinical psychologist Dr. Olivia C. Maxwell appears to live a life others only dream about. She has a sexy husband, a big house, luxury cars, and two gorgeous children, and she attends all the see-and-be-seen events. To add to the mix, she is beautiful, tall, fit, and intelligent. But what people can't see is that inside, Olivia is living a nightmare. As the only dark-skinned member of her family, Olivia grew up hating the skin she's in and is desperately searching for acceptance. It's not long before those deep insecurities sabotage everything she loves.

"Momma set me on the jukebox." So begins the personal story of Denise (Sweetie) Wooten, set between a post-civil rights era New York City and a growing but stale rural Alabama. We are thrust in the midst of a family longing for normalcy, but instead struggling with illness and all that comes with it - denial, anger, misunderstanding, and love. As cultures clash, we see the family through a child's eyes and walk with her as she makes sense of war fought far away, but with effects close to home, and a tragedy that changes her life forever.

Meet the Days, Howards, Madisons, and Lees. Four wealthy couples obsessed with keeping up appearances. Pearson, Vonita, Nadalia, and Ryan want the world to believe that they live flawlessly prosperous lives, but behind the custom-made doors of their elaborate mansions lie salacious secrets that are becoming harder to hide. Saving face may be a priority for these wives, but scandal, addiction, financial ruin, and infidelity threaten to reveal their truths to the world - and worst of all, each other.

The sudden death of an alcoholic, lying, and manipulative mother sets off a chain of events that forces two worlds to eventually collide, releasing secrets and pain that could change the lives of everyone involved. Janice Williams is finally living the life that she's always dreamed. A respected dean of a university, with an adoring husband, she is finally happy - except for the hole in her heart that remains from a long-ago tragedy. Nicole Henry is enjoying the carefree life of a college student, until her adoptive parents announce they're divorcing and tapped out financially.

The Wind That Lays Waste begins in the great pause before a storm. Reverend Pearson is evangelizing across the Argentinian countryside with Leni, his teenage daughter, when their car breaks down. This act of God or fate leads them to the workshop and home of an aging mechanic called Gringo Brauer and a young boy named Tapioca. As a long day passes, curiosity and intrigue transform into an unexpected intimacy between four people.

When Maecidion dies, the reading of the will is an outrage. Irion, the dead necromancer's kin, watches as coveted heirlooms are given to his enemies. Himself no stranger to black magic, Irion soon embarks on a bitter skirmish to retrieve what should rightfully be his. A composite novel: Tinged with traces of horror and humor, erotica and satire, the world of Mulgara plays host to an ensemble of dark characters.

Growing up in early 20th-century Illinois, Ruby Drake is a happy child. But one winter's night, her beloved parents perish in an accident - and suddenly Ruby finds herself penniless and nearly alone in the world. Her new path eventually takes her to Harvester, where she is lucky enough to find work on the welcoming Schoonover farm. Kind Emma, forward-thinking Henry, and their hired men - ambitious Dennis and reserved Jake - soon become a second family to the orphaned teenager.

Sheila's life is built of little thievings. Adrift in her mid-30s, she sleeps in fragments, ditches her temp jobs, eavesdrops on her neighbor's Skype calls, and keeps a stolen letter in her nightstand, penned by a UPS driver she barely knows. Her mother is stifling and her father is a bad memory. Her only friends are her mysterious, slovenly neighbor Vinnie and his daughter Torrey, a quirky 12-year-old coping with a recent tragedy. When her grandmother Rosamond dies, Sheila inherits a box of secret love letters from Harold C. Carr - a man who is not her grandfather.

Set in the hardscrabble landscape of early 1900s Oklahoma, but timeless in its sensibility, Prairie Fever traces the dynamic between two sisters: the pragmatic Lorena and the chimerical Elise. Their connection to each other supersedes all else, until the arrival of a schoolteacher sunders the sisters' relationship as they both begin to fall for him. Expansive and intimate, with poetic intensity and deadpan humor, Prairie Fever tells the story of characters tested as much by life on the prairie as they are by their own churning hearts.

Abbey Mei Otis's short stories are contemporary fiction at its strongest: taking apart the supposed equality that is clearly just not there, putting humans under an alien microscope, putting humans under government control, and more. Otis has long been fascinated in using strange situations to explore dynamics of power, oppression, and grief, and the 12 stories collected here are at once a striking indictment of the present and a powerful warning about the future.

Building on her critically acclaimed novel The Last Days of California and her biting collection Always Happy Hour, Miller slyly transports listeners to her unapologetic corner of the South - this time, Biloxi, Mississippi, home to 63-year-old Louis McDonald, Jr. His wife of 37 years left him, his father has passed - and he has impulsively retired from his job in anticipation of an inheritance check that may not come. One day, he stops at a house advertising free dogs and meets overweight mixed-breed Layla.

Thousands of years ago, the city of Athanor was set adrift in time and space by alchemists, called "the Curious Men". Ever since, it has accumulated cultures, citizens, and species into a vast, unmappable metropolis. Isten and her gang of half-starved political exiles live off petty crime and gangland warfare in Athanor's seediest alleys. Though they dream of returning home to lead a glorious revolution, Isten's downward spiral drags them into a mire of addiction and violence. Isten must find a way to save the exiles and herself.

In September 1769, 3,000 people descended on Stratford-upon-Avon to celebrate the artistic legacy of the town's most famous son, William Shakespeare. Attendees included the rich and powerful, the fashionable and the curious, eligible ladies and fortune hunters, and a horde of journalists and profiteers. For three days, they paraded through garlanded streets, listened to songs and oratorios, and enjoyed masked balls. It was a unique cultural moment - a coronation elevating Shakespeare to the throne of genius. Except it was a disaster....

A yacht races to outrun a tsunami. A young man jailed on a drug charge forms a relationship with his cellmate that is by turns tender and brutal. A family buys a rural slaughterhouse, and tensions quickly escalate between them and their religious neighbors. A teen raised by his eccentric gay father, a Turkish immigrant, finds his life fractured by violence. A fictionalized Coretta Scott King, surveilled and harassed by the FBI, considers the costs of her life with her husband. Here Is What You Do is a bravura, far-ranging collection, its stories linked by sorrow and latent hope.