Showing results by publisher "Random House Audio" in Short Stories

A cynical Hollywood moviemaker confronts his dead wife’s lover and abruptly realizes the depth of his own passion. As his parents’ marriage disintegrates, a precocious fifth-grader distracts himself with meditations on baseball, spaghetti, and his place in the universe. And in the title story, an elderly nun enters a college creative writing class and plays havoc with its tidy notions of fact and fiction. The Whore’s Child is further proof that Russo is one of the finest writers we have.

From the coasts of Brazil to the borders of Tibet to the very heartland of America, May There Be a Road gathers 10 previously uncollected stories that capture the magnificent scope and sense of epic adventure that epitomize Louis L'Amour classic fiction. In these vivid settings L’Amour takes us into the pivotal moments when lives are altered forever, when men and women face a deadly enemy, find a kindred spirit, or confront their own mortality.

This new Mars adventure is a gripping story of danger and exploration that is as timely as tomorrow's headlines and as scientifically accurate and up-to-date as anyone can make it. "Mount Olympus" is a part of Ben Bova's most recent novel, Return to Mars.

From the New York Times best-selling author of Circle of Friends and The Glass Lake comes This Year It Will Be Different, a stunning work that brings us the magic and spirit of Christmas in 15 stories filled with Maeve Binchy's trademark wit, charm, and sheer storytelling genius. Instead of nostalgia, Binchy evokes contemporary life; instead of Christmas homilies, she offers truth; and instead of sugarplums, she brings us the nourishment of holidays that precipitate change, growth, and new beginnings.

Ruth Gurney arrived home to find her late father's cattle ranch in debt, and their trail-boss, Lonigan, missing. As luck would have it, there is a conveniently available replacement - Hoey Ives. The ranch hands are uneasy with Ives's place on the drive, but the money is desperately needed, and there's no time to wait for Lonigan. After days on the trail with no sign of water, weak cattle, and restless men, Ruth can't help but have second thoughts about the seemingly trustworthy Ives. When he suddenly proposes and asks for more than her hand in marriage, Ruth knows she has to find out what he's really up to - and fast.

One day during happy hour at the local bar, a former co-worker whispers the words, "postage stamps," in Ernie Klemper's ear. Ernie, a frustrated illustrator with no creative freedom, hopes that a job creating postage stamps will improve his situation with women and inspire him to create timeless and memorable art.

Ein glückloser italienischer Polizist reist von Neapel in ein kleines Bergdorf, um den Mörder des dortigen Bürgermeisters zu überführen. Ein selbstgefälliger Schüler lüftet das Geheimnis um den Reichtum seiner Familie und ändert daraufhin sein Leben für immer. Eine Dozentin bietet in den Dreißigerjahren ihren männlichen Kollegen an einer Ivy League Universität die Stirn und eine junge Anhalterin erlebt die Überraschung ihres Lebens.

Clarice Lispector gilt neben Virginia Woolf als bedeutendste Schriftstellerin der Moderne. Zu ihrem 100. Geburtstag erscheint der zweite und letzte Band ihrer gesammelten Erzählungen in der gefeierten Neuübersetzung von Luis Ruby. Hannelore Hoger, eine große Kennerin und Verehrerin Lispectors, liest ihre persönlichen Lieblingserzählungen aus beiden Bänden. Mit ihrer markanten Stimme und einem tiefen Verständnis für die komplexen Gefühle, die hinter Lispectors nur scheinbar einfacher Sprache aufscheinen, verleiht sie dieser Prosa einen kongenialen Ausdruck.

From one of China’s most famous contemporary writers, here is a stunning collection of stories, selected from the best of Yu Hua’s early work, that shows his far-reaching influence on a pivotal period in Chinese literature. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Yu Hua and other young Chinese writers began to reimagine their national literature. Departing from conventional realism in favor of a more surreal and subjective approach inspired by Kafka, Faulkner, and Borges, the boundary-pushing fiction of this period reflected the cultural changes sweeping the world’s most populous nation.

In this powerful and virtuosic collection of interlocking stories, Peter Orner, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, takes the short story to new heights. Through 44 compressed gems, Peter Orner chronicles people whose lives are at inflection points, gripping us with a series of defining moments.

Before being torn down in 2007, the Stateway Gardens public housing projects on Chicago’s South Side were ridden with deprivation and crime. But for some, like Tracy, the shy, intelligent young boy at the center of this enthralling collection of linked stories, they are simply home. Set in the mid-1980s and taking listeners up to the point of the destruction of the infamous Cabrini-Green housing projects, this collection gives an intimate look at the hopes, dreams, failures, and fortunes of a group of people growing up with the deck always stacked against them.

Cheaters tells nine short stories, each discussing a different shade of infidelity in today's times when societal norms are still the same - archaic. However, the urge to explore and experiment among the youth is at an all-time high. This friction, if not handled well, could lead to unexpected roads. Each story, though high on emotions, unfolds in a thrilling narrative.

This volume brings together the best of Ruskin Bond’s prose and poetry. For over four decades, by way of innumerable novels, essays, short stories, and poems, the author has mapped out and peopled a unique literary landscape. This anthology has selections from all of his major books and includes the classic novella Delhi Is Not Far.

Encounters with Unexpected Animals takes readers deep into the heart of bestselling author Bret Anthony Johnston’s home state of Texas, where teenagers search for love, parents grasp at connections with their children, and animals—real or imagined, familiar or unexpected—are reminders of the mystery, danger, and beauty of being alive.

The characters in Dominic Hoffman's tales of Late Rehearsals are familiar. Their choices are recognizable, and the people are far from perfect. Humor is a constant. However, their most significant commonality is the sense that every day is a rehearsal for the next. In this compilation of narratives, contemporary fables and intimate accounts, we travel cultures and cities, contemplate life and death to discover that our lives can be justified, vilified or distanced by the simple act of viewing the lives of others.

Chickpeas to Cook is the story of the woman of the tribe, women from some of the smallest of communities, often no more than a few hundred families in Singapore. How do these women live, think, breathe? What does the Dawoodi Bohra woman answer, for instance, when she’s asked if her daughter will don the ridah after marriage? When does the Sikh woman decide it’s time to come out of her brother’s shadow and live for herself? What does the Eurasian woman do when her DNA report arrives and it doesn’t quite tally with what her parents told her?

Deeply humane, in turn wry and humorous, the stories in this collection haunt listeners with their searing honesty.

In these twelve new stories, Richard Bausch explores the passions of men and women facing unex­pected circumstances and the complications of modern life and love. In the novella “Donnaiolo,” for instance, the parents of a young divorcée who has returned from Italy and a failed marriage must deal with the completely different, and unappealing, person she has become. In “Isolation,” a happily married woman who has con­ceived an unexpected passion for another man learns, in lockdown during the pandemic, that this man—into whose life Bausch also gives us a window—has become ill with Covid.