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

Stuck spending the summer with his screwed-up family, Gabriel Walker is bored out of his mind and looking for an adventure. And he seems to find it with the hot girl who lives next door. The attraction between them is instant and electric. Soon they're spending every stolen minute together. Talk about the perfect summer fling.

In 1951, the second year of the Korean War, a studious, law-abiding, and intense youngster from Newark, New Jersey, Marcus Messner, begins his sophomore year on the pastoral, conservative campus of Ohio's Winesburg College. And why is he there and not at a local college in Newark where he originally enrolled? Because his father, the sturdy, hardworking neighborhood butcher, seems to have gone mad - mad with fear and apprehension of the dangers of adult life, the dangers of the world, the dangers he sees on every corner for his beloved boy.

Twenty-four-year-old Eric Marshall arrives on Prince Edward Island to become a substitute schoolmaster, even though he has a bright future in his wealthy family's business. Eric has taken the two-month teaching post only as a favor to a friend - but fate throws in his path a beautiful, mysterious girl named Kilmeny Gordon. With jet black hair and sea blue eyes, Kilmeny immediately captures Eric's heart. But Kilmeny cannot speak, and Eric is concerned for and bewitched by this shy, sensitive mute girl.

The open range men are free-grazing cattlemen, those who don't own land but drive their stock through the country to graze. Boss Spearman knows that times are changing. Local ranchers are staking claims to grazing areas and building up extensive cattle empires. Boss has no quarrel with that, but he won't be intimidated or scared off. So when Denton Baxter makes it clear, by killing one man and seriously wounding another, that he intends to drive Boss and his crew out, Boss must make a stand.

A collection of timeless Westerns from some of the most well-known authors of the genre, including Zane Grey and Max Brand: "The Little Gold Miners" by Joaquin Miller, "Bulger's Reputation" by Bret Harte, "The Leaf of Red Rose" by W.H.H. Murray, "The Secret of Macarger's Gulch" by Ambrose Bierce, "The Californian's Tale" by Mark Twain, "Twelve O'Clock" by Stephen Crane, "The Vengeance of Padre Arroyo" by Gerturde Atherton, "A Deal in Wheat" by Frank Norris, "The Caballero's Way" by O. Henry, and more.

This novel centers on the figure of Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, a member of the dying class of the landed gentry, who spends most of his time lying in bed gazing at life in an apathetic daze, encouraged by his equally lazy servant Zakhar and routinely swindled by his acquaintances. But this torpid existence comes to an end when, spurred on by his crumbling finances, the love of a woman, and the reproaches of his friend, the hardworking Schtoltz, Oblomov finds that he must engage with the real world and face up to his commitments.

Lamb traces the self-discovery of David Lamb, a narcissistic middle-aged man with a tendency toward dishonesty, in the weeks following the disintegration of his marriage and the death of his father. Hoping to regain some faith in his own goodness, he turns his attention to Tommie, an awkward and unpopular 11-year-old girl. Lamb is convinced that he can help her avoid a destiny of apathy and emptiness and even comes to believe that his devotion to Tommie is in her best interest.

Set in the dangerous West Virginia frontier, this story tells of the bravery and heroism of Betty, the beautiful young sister of old Colonel Isaac Zane, one of the most courageous pioneers. Balanced against the grim incidents of the Indian War is the love story of Betty and Alfred Clarke, a handsome young soldier. Their romance, however, is plagued by troubles and endless interruptions before it reaches its stirring climax.

Set in 1950s Jerusalem, My Michael is the story of a remote and intense woman named Hannah Gonen and her marriage to a decent but unremarkable man named Michael. As the years pass and Hannah's tempestuous fantasy life encroaches on reality, she feels increasingly estranged from him, and the marriage gradually disintegrates. Gorgeously written and profoundly moving, this extraordinary novel is at once a haunting love story and a rich, reflective portrait of a place.

The British win the American Revolutionary War, and a desperate Washington and the American founders must make a last stand in an enclave called Liberty. In 1781, George Washington's attempt to trap the British under Cornwallis at Yorktown ends catastrophically when the French fleet is destroyed in the Battle of the Capes. The revolution collapses, and the British begin a bloody reign of terror. A group of rebels flees westward and sets up a colony near what is now Chicago. They call it Liberty.

In The Ticket That Exploded, William S. Burroughs' grand "cut-up" trilogy, which starts with The Soft Machine and continues through Nova Express, reaches its climax as inspector Lee and the Nova Police engage the Nova Mob in a decisive battle for the planet. Only Burroughs could make such a nightmare vision of scientists and combat troops, of ad men and con men, whose deceitful language has spread like an incurable disease, be at once so frightening and so enthralling.

Ever since the Bommarito sisters were little girls, their mother, River, has written them a letter on pink paper when she has something especially important to impart. And this time, the message is urgent and impossible to ignore - River requires open-heart surgery, and Isabelle and her sisters are needed at home to run the family bakery and take care of their brother and ailing grandmother.

Barely into his 20s and already a highly decorated military hero, Army Special Forces veteran Blake Kershaw is now going to college, studying while recuperating from wounds received in Afghanistan, and planning to reenter the army as an officer after graduation. But life tosses Blake a curve when his country approaches him about using his special skills to avert a terrorist plot to detonate a nuclear device in a major eastern US city.

On the same August day in 1969 that a crazed hippie "family" led by Charles Manson commits five savage murders in the canyons above Los Angeles, a young ex-communicated seminarian arrives with images of Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift - "the two most beautiful people in the history of the movies" - tattooed on his head. At once childlike and violent, Vikar is not a cineaste but "cineautistic," sleeping at night in the Roosevelt Hotel where he's haunted by the ghost of D. W. Griffith.

Up the Down Staircase is the funny and touching story of a committed, idealistic teacher whose clash with school bureaucracy is a timeless lesson for students, teachers, parents – anyone concerned about public education. Bel Kaufman lets her characters speak for themselves through memos, letters, directives from the principal, comments by students, notes between teachers, and papers from desk drawers and wastebaskets, evoking a vivid picture of teachers fighting the good fight against all that stands in the way of good teaching.

Meticulous, funny, eccentric - Mary has always been mindful of the complex role she plays as a professor of history. Her lectures are carefully written out beforehand; her departmental loyalties ambiguous. She is so careful, in fact, that she began to see herself as flat, dull, and lifeless. The closing of Brandon College, the institution she'd spent more than fifteen years at, changes everything. Forced to find another position, Mary finds herself at an experimental college in rainy Oregon.

Desperate to quell her addiction to drugs, disastrous romance, and '90s San Francisco, Michelle heads south for LA. But soon it's officially announced that the world will end in one year, and life in the sprawling metropolis becomes increasingly weird. While living in an abandoned bookstore, dating Matt Dillon, and keeping an eye on the encroaching apocalypse, Michelle begins a new novel, a sprawling and metatextual exploration to complement her promises of maturity and responsibility.

Set in Malaya, Almayer's Folly is Joseph Conrad's first novel. In it, he charts the decline of a Dutch merchant after a 25 year struggle against overwhelming odds. Though married to a bitter and hateful Malayan wife, Almayer refuses to accept the financial ruin which he has precipitated. Instead, he dreams of fantastic wealth and a return to the civilization of his youth, accompanied by his loving daughter, Nina.

Tom Kedrick is hired by a financial syndicate to run off a gang of vagrants and outlaws who are occupying a sizable strip of land that the syndicate has filed, claiming it is unusable swamp. To Kedrick's dismay, these "vagrants and outlaws" turn out to be hard working ranchers and farmers who have improved the lands they have claimed and are determined to resist any effort to disenfranchise them.

With Saint Joan, George Bernard Shaw reached the height of his fame as a dramatist. Fascinated by the story of Joan of Arc but unhappy with "the whitewash which disfigures her beyond recognition," he presents a realistic Joan at war not just with British invaders but with realpolitik. This is a masterpiece of the theater of ideas, presented in the most eloquent, vital, human, and moving terms.