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

Bess has long been sure of two things - that her group of college friends would stay close, and that love is worth the wait. At 42, she's found the right man, and she's celebrating her upcoming wedding by inviting her best friends to beautiful Kennebunkport. Bess has always been at the helm of these reunions, herding everyone together. As usual, Marta and Mike journey from their home near New York City, while Chuck and his husband, Dean, travel from Los Angeles. But Allison, half of a devoted couple since college, is making the trip from Chicago without her husband, Chris.

Irreverently juggling magical realism, film noir, hip hop, and chicanismo, Tropic of Orange takes place in a Los Angeles where the homeless, gangsters, infant organ entrepreneurs, and Hollywood collide on a stretch of the Harbor Freeway. Hemmed in by wildfires, it's a symphony conducted from an overpass, grandiose, comic, and as diverse as the city itself - from an author who has received the California Book Award and the Association for Asian American Studies Book Award, among other literary honors.

In the second volume of her Northern Trilogy, Sarah Stonich reassembles characters that endeared Vacationland to so many fans: Retired union miner and widower Alpo Lahti is about to wed his charming and lively bride, Sissy Pavola, but, with Rauri unaccounted for, celebration seems premature. Alpo's son Pete struggles to find his straight and narrow, then struggles to stay on it, and even Sissy might be having second thoughts.

When Ferron Morgan's father dies in suspicious circumstances, his trauma is exacerbated by the conflict within his family and among his father's friends over whether the death was the result of medical negligence or if it was a political assassination. Ferron grew up in awe of his father's radical political endeavors, but in later years he watched as the resurgence of the political right in the Caribbean in the 1980s robbed the man of his faith.

London, 1942: The threat of German invasion has abated, and the war has entered a new chapter, famously summed up by Winston Churchill as "the end of the beginning." While Churchill faces mounting pressure and calls for his resignation, a dark new horror is unfolding across the channel, as the Nazis move forward with their plan to murder Europe's Jews.

Now president of her father's company, Bishop Aeronautics, Evelyn is presiding over a groundbreaking ceremony for the expansion of her factory when she is approached by Billy Takemura, a Japanese American soldier who announces that she's building on stolen land. Like Evelyn and Nick, Billy is a...

When an old enemy kidnaps Egan Cassidy's kid, the one-time mercenary must find a way to rescue the boy and then build a relationship with the son he never knew he had. And what about the woman he thought he had no right to love?

In the fall of 1939, while Europe grapples with the outbreak of war, Mimi Lukas wages a private battle in her Chicago neighborhood. Her husband, Stan, once a promising White Sox player, has been sidelined by a broken leg. His hopes of returning to baseball are dwindling along with their savings. As Stan sinks into inertia, Mimi resolves to go back to nursing.

Billie Enholm has never known quite how to define what makes her different from her schoolmates and her cousins, but there's no denying that she is. Bright but awkward, gifted with numbers and words yet baffled by the ease with which others interact, Billie lives with a constant, nagging voice that insists she's doing everything wrong. Even Billie's mother, Dixie, describes her as an "odd-wad."

In a tall and narrow house, on a stained and busy street, live twelve-year-old Oliver and his father, a story-loving writer. Haunted by the ghost of his alcoholic mother, Oliver finds comfort in his father's impromptu tales: the Black Dove, an elusive flower that gives strength; the girl who consumes it as she battles attackers and yearns for happier realms. Stories where lonely souls keep searching despite their losses and grief. Running from a bully one night, Oliver hides in a junk shop owned by an enigmatic man.

Writing in cascading vignettes, Selby Wynn Schwartz spins an invigorating tale of women whose narratives converge and splinter as they forge queer identities and claim the right to their own lives. A luminous meditation on creativity, education, and identity, After Sappho announces a writer as ingenious as the trailblazers of our past.

Dramatizing explosive events in London and Palestine in the years directly following World War II, The List follows the lives of Edith and Georg, Austrian refugees who are expecting their first baby in a world unfriendly to Jews. Anti-Semitism sweeps across the streets of London even as the world learns of the atrocities of the Holocaust. As Edith and Georg desperately search for surviving family members, they struggle to stay afloat in a world riddled with terrorism, assassination attempts, and fear.

Early in life, Ruth survived a series of devastating events: Her little brother died from a childhood illness, her mother died of grief, and then her father was shot by the police right in front of their home. In the years following her father's murder, Ruth pushes her past underground. She changes her name and moves to Kentucky, marries a man named Myron, and together they raise a kid. It's been two decades, and she is, by outside measures, living a good life―but why doesn't it feel good?

Miami, 1951. With a flurry of UN engagements bringing Mrs. Roosevelt to vibrant South Beach, Kay Thompson is thrilled to escape the post-Christmas blues in Washington DC—and distance herself from the sting of her recent breakup with private investigator Tim O’Malley. The dizzying sights and sounds of Miami reach their peak at the Copa City Club, where a late-night meeting with singer Josephine Baker reveals a troubling truth: Baker's bold stand against segregation has made her a target.

An utterly unique, Victorian-era mystery with a clever play on the famous Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde tale, where the monster becomes the hero, and lines are crossed along the way. Unbeknownst even to himself, the kind, gentle, quietly brilliant Dr. Jekyll has created an alter ego—his polar...

In 1961 Charlotte, North Carolina, the predominantly black neighborhood of Brooklyn is a bustling city within a city. Self-contained and vibrant, it has its own restaurants, schools, theaters, churches, and night clubs. There are shotgun shacks and poverty, along with well-maintained houses like the one Loraylee Hawkins shares with her young son, Hawk, her Uncle Ray, and her grandmother, Bibi. Loraylee's love for Archibald Griffin, Hawk's white father and manager of the cafeteria where she works, must be kept secret in the segregated South.

Jens Baggesen's The Labyrinth (1792–93) is a genre-bending and highly personal travel book that follows the young Danish author's journey, made in 1789, from Copenhagen through Germany to the Swiss border at Basel. In its outer form, it follows the conventions of travel writing: describing the cities, landscapes, and notable people encountered on the route, while also offering critical commentary on art, architecture, theater, and literature, mixed with reactions to the unfolding French Revolution.

In this book of essays, over forty successful writers in varied fields―poetry, science, the performing and visual arts, psychoanalysis, journalism, literature, and more―explore what drives them to write, and to work at their craft. In contributions arranged under three headings―"Models and Mentors," "Urges and Traumas," and "Evidence and Experiences"―each writer explores their personal understanding of writing as a psychological necessity. In varying ways, these candid, often emotional essays reveal a range of intimate, mysterious, and unpredictable purposes and motivations.

Drawing on examples ranging from Chaucer to children's rhymes, Cole Porter to Dylan Thomas, and from around the English-speaking world, it shows how any reader can understand and gain pleasure from poetry. This comprehensive guide explores poetry's relationship to everyday language and introduces major genres and technical aspects. Each chapter proceeds through chronological examples from a wide range of English language poems.

As John Freeman writes in California Rewritten, "Literature of so many kinds and so many genres from so many different types of people—at the highest level—has been coming out of California and from Californians for decades now." Freeman, one of the sharpest editors working today, has followed the evolution of California's literary life since his teenage years in Sacramento. In over fifty essays inspired by his hosting of Alta Journal's popular California Book Club, he offers an essential road map to California literature now.