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

England, 1936. A beloved king is dead, and by year’s end, the charismatic new monarch will give up his throne for love. The world is on the brink of war. And in the tumultuous intervening months, three outsiders will find themselves embroiled in the hidden truths, undeclared loves, unspoken sympathies, and covert complicities of a glittering high society in the throes of upheaval.

Ghost stories date back centuries, but those written in the Victorian era have a unique atmosphere and dark beauty. Michael Sims, whose previous Victorian collections Dracula’s Guest (vampires) and The Dead Witness (detectives) have been widely praised, has gathered twelve of the best stories about humanity’s oldest supernatural obsession. The Phantom Coach includes tales by a surprising and often legendary cast, including Charles Dickens, Margaret Oliphant, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, and Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as lost gems by forgotten masters such as Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and W. F. Harvey. Amelia B. Edwards’s chilling story gives the collection its title, while Ambrose Bierce ("The Moonlit Road"), Elizabeth Gaskell ("The Old Nurse’s Story"), and W. W. Jacobs ("The Monkey’s Paw") will turn you white as a sheet. With a skillful introduction to the genre and notes on each story by Sims, The Phantom Coach is a spectacular collection of ghostly Victorian thrills.

Kirpal Singh is riding the slow train to Kashmir. With India passing by his window, he reflects on his destination, which is also his past: a military camp to which he has not returned for 14 years. Kirpal, called Kip, is shy and not yet 20 when he arrives for the first time at General Kumar’s camp, nestled in the shadow of the Siachen Glacier. At 20,000 feet, the glacier makes a forbidding battlefield; its crevasses claimed the body of Kip’s father. Kip becomes an apprentice under the camp’s chef, Kishen, a fiery mentor....

In Horace and Me: Life Lessons from an Ancient Poet, Eyres reexamines Horace’s life, legacy, and verse. With a light, lyrical touch (deployed in new, fresh versions of some of Horace’s most famous odes)and a keen critical eye, Eyres reveals a lively, relevant Horace, whose society—Rome at the dawn of the empire—is much more similar to our own than we might want to believe.

Eyres’s study is not only intriguing—he retranslates Horace’s most famous phrase as “taste the day”—but enlivening.

Kennedy steered the nation away from the brink of nuclear war, initiated the first nuclear test ban treaty, created the Peace Corps, and launched American on its mission to the moon and beyond. JFK inspired a nation, particularly the massive generation of baby boomers, injecting hope and revitalizing faith in the American project. 2013 will mark the fiftieth anniversary of Kennedy's untimely death, a milestone to be marked by an avalanche of new books on his life and importance.

Ralph Boyd’s first glimpse of Daphne will be etched on his mind forever. Dark, teasing, slippery as mercury, she seems neither boy nor girl but sprite - something elemental. An up-and-coming composer, Ralph is visiting the writer Edmund Greenslay at his riverside home in Putney to discuss a collaboration. In its colourful rooms and unruly garden, Ralph finds an intoxicating world of sensuous ease and bohemian abandon that captures the mood of the moment. Entranced, he knows he will return.

On a dim winter afternoon, a young Irish immigrant opens the gas taps in his Brooklyn tenement. He is determined to prove - to the subway bosses who have recently fired him, to his badgering, pregnant wife - 'that the hours of his life belong to himself alone'. In the aftermath of the fire that follows, Sister St. Savior, an aging nun, a Little Sister of the Sick Poor, appears, unbidden, to direct the way forward for his widow and his unborn child.

London, 1905: The city is alight with change, and the Stephen siblings are at the forefront. Vanessa, Virginia, Thoby, and Adrian are leaving behind their childhood home and taking a house in the leafy heart of avant-garde Bloomsbury. There they bring together a glittering circle of bright, outrageous artistic friends who will grow into legend and come to be known as the Bloomsbury Group. And at the center of this charmed circle are the devoted, gifted sisters: Vanessa, the painter, and Virginia, the writer.

Before Twilight and True Blood, even before Buffy and Anne Rice and Bela Lugosi, vampires haunted the 19th century, when brilliant writers everywhere indulged their bloodthirsty imaginations, culminating in Bram Stoker's legendary 1897 novel, Dracula. Michael Sims brings together the very best vampire stories of the Victorian era - from England, America, France, Germany, Transylvania, and even Japan - into a unique collection that highlights their cultural variety.

A heartfelt comedy of manners for fans of Seating Arrangements and Crazy Rich Asians, Diksha Basu's debut novel unfolds the story of a family discovering what it means to be nouveau riche in modern India. Hilarious and wise, The Windfall illuminates with warmth and charm the precariousness of social status, the fragility of pride and, above all, the human drive to build and share a home. Even the rich, it turns out, need to belong somewhere.

Frank has been in a serious car accident and he’s missing memories - of the people around him, of the history they share, and of how he came to be in the crash. All he remembers is that he is a lawyer who specializes in fine print, and as he narrates his story, he applies this expertise in the form of footnotes. Everyone keeps telling Frank that he was fine before the accident, "just a bit overwhelmed", but as he begins to reclaim his memories, they don’t quite jibe with what everyone is telling him.

Two men with a passion for vinyl create a society for the appreciation of records. Their aim is simple: to elevate the art of listening by doing so in forensic detail. The society enjoys moderate success in the back room of their local pub, The Half Moon, with other enthusiasts drawn to the initial promise of the weekly gathering. However, as the club gains popularity, its founder's uncompromising dogma results in a schism within the movement and soon a counter group forms.

Key West, 2016. Sea levels are rising, coral reefs are dying. In short, everything is going to hell. It's here that two young filmmakers find something to believe in: an old sailor who calls himself Daniel Defoe and claims to be 560 years old. In fact, old Dan is in the prime of his life - an incredible, perhaps eternal American life. The story unfolds over the course of a millennium, picking up in the 16th century in the Viceroyalty of New Granada and continuing into the 26th. Some things remain constant throughout the centuries, and being on the edge of ruin may be one.

All Asanka knows is poetry. From his humble village beginnings in the great island kingdom of Lanka, he has risen to the prestigious position of court poet and now delights in his life of ease: composing romantic verses for love-struck courtiers, enjoying the confidence of his king, and covertly teaching Sarasi, a beautiful and beguiling palace maid, the secrets of his art.

Joshua and Christophe are twins, raised by a blind grandmother and a large extended family in a rural town on Mississippi's Gulf Coast. They've just finished high school and need to find jobs, but in a failing post-Katrina economy, it's not easy. Joshua gets work on the docks, but Christophe's not so lucky. Desperate to alleviate the family's poverty, he starts to sell drugs. He can hide it from his grandmother but not his twin, and the two grow increasingly estranged

Joanna Smith Rakoff's richly drawn and immensely satisfying first novel details the lives of a group of Oberlin graduates whose ambitions and friendships threaten to unravel as they chase their dreams, shed their youth, and build their lives in Brooklyn during the late 1990s and the turn of the 21st century.

Kit has been projecting into other species for seven years. Longer than anyone else at ShenCorp. Longer than any of the scientists thought possible. But lately she has the feeling that when she jumps, she isn't alone.... Since she was 12, Kit has been a phenomenaut, her consciousness projected into the bodies of lab-grown animals for the purpose of research.

Jonathan Trefoil's boss is unhinged, his relationship baffling, and his apartment just the wrong side of legal. His girlfriend wants to marry someone just like him - only richer and with a different sense of humor. He doesn't remember life being this confusing back before everyone expected him to act like a grown-up. When his brother asks him to look after his dogs, Jonathan's worldview begins to shift. Could a border collie and a cocker spaniel hold the key to life, the universe, and everything?

A debut collection of stories that plunge listeners into the tender and chaotic hearts of adolescent girls growing up in New York City, from celebrated poet and National Magazine Award nominee Jenny Zhang.

Letters, postcards, notes and telegraphs from the great and the good, the notorious and the downright wicked, shine a spotlight on a range of historical events and movements providing an immediate link to the immediate and much more distant past. This audiobook includes letters from: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mikhail Gorbachev, Lucien Freud, Barbara Hepworth, Nelson Mandela, Caitlin Thomas, Mary Whitehouse, Gandhi, George Washington among many others.