Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Literature & Fiction

The summer of 1553 is a time of danger and deceit. Brendan Prescott, an orphan, has been reared in the household of the powerful Dudley family. Brought to court, Prescott finds himself sent on an illicit mission to the king’s brilliant but enigmatic sister, Princess Elizabeth. But Brendan is soon compelled to work as a double agent by Elizabeth’s protector, William Cecil, who promises in exchange to help him unravel the secret of his own mysterious past.

The year 2010 marks the 100th anniversary of Twain’s death. In celebration of this important milestone, here, for the first time, is Mark Twain’s uncensored autobiography, in its entirety, exactly as he left it. This major literary event offers the first of three volumes and presents Mark Twain’s authentic and unsuppressed voice, brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions, and speaking clearly from the grave, as he intended.

Buried deep within the consciousness of Sergeant Raymond Shaw is the mechanism of an assassin, a time bomb ticking toward explosion, controlled by the delicate skill of its Communist masters. Shaw returns from the Korean War to an idolizing and unsuspecting country. What follows is at once a spy story, a love story, and a sobering, yet outrageously funny satire on demagoguery in American politics.

For Ellery Queen, there is no puzzle that reason cannot solve. In his time, he has faced down killers, thugs, and thieves, protected only by the might of his brain - and the odd bit of timely intervention by his father, a burly New York police inspector. But when a university professor asks Queen to teach a class, the detective finds there are people whom reason cannot touch: college students. Queen's adventure on campus is only the first of this incomparable collection of short mysteries.

When attractive, impulsive English widow Lilia takes a holiday in Italy, she causes a scandal by marrying Gino, a dashing and highly unsuitable Italian 12 years her junior. Her prim, snobbish in-laws make no attempt to hide their disapproval, and when Lilia's decision eventually brings disaster, her English relatives embark on an expedition to face the uncouth foreigner.

This historical romance, perhaps the greatest cloak-and-sword story ever, relates the adventures of four fictional swashbuckling heroes who served the French kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV. When the dashing young D'Artagnon arrives in Paris from Gascony, he becomes embroiled in three duels with the Three Musketeers: Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. But when he proves himself by fighting not against, but with, the Three Musketeers, they form a quick and lasting friendship.

Future imperfect: Three years after her famous husband's death, Cordelia Vorkosigan, widowed vicereine of Sergyar, stands ready to spin her life in a new direction. Oliver Jole, admiral, Sergyar Fleet, finds himself caught up in her web of plans in ways he'd never imagined, bringing him to an unexpected crossroads in his life. Meanwhile, Miles Vorkosigan, one of Emperor Gregor's key investigators, this time dispatches himself on a mission of inquiry into a mystery he never anticipated - his own mother.

Dark of Night is a story of worlds in collision. Three heroes who have survived the apocalypse are in a deadly race to save a busload of children from ravenous zombies and ruthless human scavengers.

Fanny and her groom had been tricked! Parents on both sides, all impoverished, had decided to recoup their families' losses by marrying their children to the progeny of a wealthier neighbor. The joke was on them, however, when it was outed that neither family had a penny to its name. Charles was not the dark rogue of Fanny's girlish fantasies, but he was chivalrously determined that she should meet someone more appropriate for her than he.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters follows the heroic efforts of the cryptozoological agency Monarch as its members face off against a battery of god-sized monsters, including the mighty Godzilla, who collides with Mothra, Rodan, and his ultimate nemesis, the three-headed King Ghidorah. When these ancient super species, thought to be mere myths, rise again, they all vie for supremacy, leaving humanity’s very existence hanging in the balance.

At 15, Chance Fortunato has seen more evil than most people ever will. Indentured by his father to the demon count Dulka, he's been taught dark magic and forced to do his infernal master's dirty work for eight years. But now Chance has figured out a way to defeat his master and free himself. His new life with his mother and sister is far from easy, and freedom has its own perils. Normal life is hard enough, but even in a mundane-looking high school, there are paranormal threats from both sides of the mystical fence.

This riveting story takes place during the Battle of the Hundred in the Hand, otherwise known as the Fetterman Massacre of 1866. The story is told alternately through the eyes of Cloud, a dedicated Lakota warrior who fights alongside a young Crazy Horse, and Max Hornsby, a white pioneer who mistakes Cloud's redheaded wife for a captive.

This is the story of an artist who was willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of art. In much of its general outline, this famous novel follows the life of Paul Gauguin, famous French post-impressionist painter, but it is not a novelized biography of Gauguin. Rather it is a sharply-delineated, carefully wrought "private life", written by one of the most vivid and penetrating contemporary literary masters.

Utopia is the name given by Sir Thomas More to an imaginary island in this political work written in 1516. Book I of Utopia, a dialogue, presents a perceptive analysis of contemporary social, economic, and moral ills in England. Book II is a narrative describing a country run according to the ideals of the English humanists, where poverty, crime, injustice, and other ills do not exist.

In the aftermath of the mysterious death of their lead singer, the young members of a now-legendary British acid folk band hole up at Wylding Hall, an ancient English country house with its own dark secrets. There they record Wylding Hall, the album that makes their reputation but at a terrifying cost when Julian Blake, their new lead singer, disappears within the mansion and is never seen again.

London, 1558. Queen Mary is dead, and twenty-five-year-old Elizabeth ascends the throne. Summoned to court from exile abroad, Elizabeth's intimate spy, Brendan Prescott, is reunited with the young queen, as well as his beloved Kate, scheming William Cecil, and archrival Robert Dudley.

The world of the Runelords has been combined by magic with another one parallel it, the beginning of a process that may unify all worlds into the one true world. This story picks up after the events of The Wyrmling Horde and follows two of Farland’s well-known heroes, Borenson and Myrrima, on a quest to save their devastated land and the people of the new world from certain destruction. But the land is not the only thing that has been altered forever: In the change, Borenson has merged with a mighty and monstrous creature from the other world, Aaath Ulber.

In the days of the frontier West, it was not unusual for desperadoes and fugitives from justice to seemingly disappear from the face of the earth. Shadow on the Trail by Zane Grey, one of the best-selling authors of all time, is the story of one such man who returned to reestablish himself in a law-abiding society. In Texas, young bank robber Wade Holden, once the toughest, fastest trigger man in the notorious Simm Bell gang, makes a promise to his dying mentor that he will go straight. But with the Rangers on his tail, he struggles to find sanctuary.

In the early spring of 1845, Henry David Thoreau built and lived in a cabin near the shore of Walden Pond in rural Massachusetts. For the next two years, he enacted his own Transcendentalist experiment, living a simple life based on self-reliance, individualism, and harmony with nature. The journal he kept at that time evolved into his masterwork, Walden, an eloquent expression of a uniquely American philosophy.

On the eve of a popular rebellion, the Chinese government starts to crack down in cities across the country. Fleeing the turmoil, Wang Yuan, the son of a famous general and grandson of the patriarch of The Good Earth, leaves for America to study agriculture. When he returns to China six years later, he encounters a nation still in the grip of violent uprisings. Unprepared for the social upheaval, Wang is torn by the tensions between old traditions and new ways and by his formidable family, whose struggles he hopes to solve.