Showing results by publisher "Audible Studios" in Literature & Fiction

Of all of John Irving's books, this is the one that lends itself best to audio. In print, Owen Meany's dialogue is set in capital letters; for this production, Irving himself selected Joe Barrett to deliver Meany's difficult voice as intended. In the summer of 1953, two 11-year-old boys – best friends – are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy's mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn't believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul ball is extraordinary and terrifying.

Having enjoyed robust health throughout her career, Miss Read, the village schoolmistress at Fairacre, is looking forward to an energetic retirement in a few years' time. But, to her dismay, she is suddenly taken ill. She has no wish to give up her post yet, but memories of her former colleague collapsing in front of the schoolchildren haunt her. Is it time to say farewell to Fairacre?

Published in 1904, The Golden Bowl is the last completed novel of Henry James. In it, the widowed American Adam Verver is in Europe with his daughter Maggie. They are rich, finely appreciative of European art and culture, and deeply attached to each other. Maggie has all the innocent charm of so many of Jamess young American heroines. She is engaged to Amerigo, an impoverished Italian prince; he must marry money, and as his name suggests, an American heiress is the perfect solution.

Few people know the name Vesper Quill. To most folks, I’m just a lowly lab rat who designs brewmakers and other household appliances in the research-and-development lab at the powerful Kent Corp. But when I point out a design flaw and a safety hazard in the new line of Kent Corp spaceships, everyone knows who I am—and wants to eliminate me. I might be a seer with a photographic memory, but I don’t see the trouble headed my way until it’s too late. Suddenly, I’m surrounded by enemies and fighting for my life.

A Princess of Mars was the first book by Edgar Rice Burroughs to feature the character John Carter. It led to an 11-book series featuring his adventures and became the basis for the 2012 movie. Carter is a war-weary former military captain during the Civil War who is inexplicably transported to Mars. He quickly (and reluctantly) becomes embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions among the inhabitants of the planet.

In a cramped synagogue in north-west London, the eminent elderly rabbi passes away. On the other side of the Atlantic, his estranged daughter, Ronit, hears of her father's death and returns to London for the funeral. She has not returned home in 15 years. Ronit looks forward to a week or two of revisiting old friends, perhaps settling old scores. But she finds the community she grew up in a more confusing place than she'd anticipated.

The long-awaited new novel by the award-winning, best-selling author of Startide Rising and The Uplift War- an epic novel set 50 years from tomorrow, a carefully-reasoned, scientifically faithful tale of the fate of our world.

Earth is dying, and humanity is scrambling to set up colonies in other star systems. But the search process for habitable planets is not perfect, as the crew of the Ouroboros discover on arrival at their new home.

Set in modern day Moscow, Night Watch is a world as elaborate and imaginative as Tolkien or the best Asimov. Living among us are the "Others," an ancient race of humans with supernatural powers who swear allegiance to either the Dark or the Light. A thousand-year treaty has maintained the balance of power, and the two sides coexist in an uneasy truce. But an ancient prophecy decrees that one supreme "Other" will rise up and tip the balance, plunging the world into a catastrophic war between the Dark and the Light.

A woman and her husband rent a summer house, but what should be a restful getaway turns into a suffocating psychological battle. This chilling account of postpartum depression and a husband's controlling behaviour in the guise of treatment will leave you breathless.

I should’ve known she would ruin me the moment I saw her. Women like her are made to destroy men like me. I couldn’t resist her though. Given to me to start a war; I was too eager to accept. But I didn’t know what she’d do to me. That she would change everything.

When DI Rowan Jackman and DS Evans are told that the IT boss has disappeared, they soon suspect foul play. Orla Cracken, known as Orac, is no ordinary techie; she was once a field agent traveling abroad undercover, working for the government. Meanwhile DC Robbie Melton discovers that two people, both urban explorers, have mysteriously disappeared whilst out exploring abandoned buildings. One went missing at a disused airfield, but was it a military base, or was it civilian?

The passionate and tragic story of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff is one of the high points of 19th-century Romantic literature. In the relationship of Cathy and Heathcliff, and in the wild, bleak Yorkshire Moors of its setting, Wuthering Heights creates a world of its own, conceived with a disregard for convention and an instinct for poetry and the darkest depths of the human soul in torment.

When a blood-thirsty banc of orcs, led by an as-yet-unseen enemy, comes rampaging out of the Spine of the World, it lays waste to everything in its path. Dark elf ranger Drizzt Do'Urden and his most trusted friends find themselves in the path of destruction. As blades slash and feet trample, even the heroes may not survive a desperate stand.

The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction - but assassins are getting closer to her door. Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.

In a prosperous yet gruesomely violent near future, superhero vigilantes battle thugs whose heads are full of supervillain fantasies. The peace is kept by a team of smooth, well-dressed negotiators called The Men in Fancy Suits. Meanwhile a young girl is caught in the middle and thinks the whole thing is ridiculous. Zoey, a recent college graduate with a worthless degree, makes a reluctant trip into the city after hearing that her estranged con artist father died in a mysterious yet spectacular way.

Verity Michaels is new to New York City, but even she knows riding in a stolen cab is not a normal way to meet someone. Damn it if that tattoo-covered would-be felon isn't everywhere now, and lighting everything on fire under her skirt. His name is Hudson Fenn, and he's frustratingly impossible to pin down. He works as a bike messenger, but has the manners of a prince - along with a strange tendency toward breaking and entering.

Hailed by The New York Times as "a marvel of storytelling", The Things They Carried’s portrayal of the boots-on-the-ground experience of soldiers in the Vietnam War is a landmark in war writing. Now, three-time Emmy Award winner-Bryan Cranston, star of the hit TV series Breaking Bad, delivers an electrifying performance that walks the book’s hallucinatory line between reality and fiction and highlights the emotional power of the spoken word.

Stephanie Harrington didn’t discover treecats—they were indigenous to the planet Sphinx, a colony of the tiny Star Kingdom of Manticore. But at age ten she was the first human to bond with one. Now, almost 17, she is the species greatest champion. To the rest of the human galaxy, if they are known at all, they are recognized as tool using, socially organized, fuzzy little creatures, with no known method of communication—who also happen to be fierce hunters. But are they sapient?

“Blind eyes closed, but all-seeing. What was broken, mend and shatter. Orphan child, man of letters, tower keeper, castle feller. Body render, never feeling. What was severed, consume. Left hand hunger. Right devour. Starbreaker, death’s victor. Starbreaker, world eater. Starbreaker, awake.” —Prophecy of Aion Origin, date unknown