Showing results by publisher "Audible Studios" in Contemporary Fiction

Captain Jack Aubrey sails away from the hated Australian prison colonies in his favourite vessel the Surprise, pondering on middle age and sexual frustration. He soon becomes aware that he is out of touch with the mood of his ship: to his astonishment he finds that in spite of a lifetime's experience he does not know what the foremost hands or even his own officers are thinking.

Lifelong friends, now in their sixties, James, a teacher, and Hugh, a TV personality, both live with attractive women 25 years their junior. But the age difference is a time bomb, ticking away at the heart of both relationships. Kate's hunger for a life more in keeping with her own age threatens to bring her eight years with James to an end. And how is Julia to cope when her own career begins to blossom while Hugh's is withering before their eyes? The arrival of Miss Beatrice Bachelor, a razor-sharp Oxford spinster, fuels the discontent in both girls.

Compelling, challenging and resilient, over 10 beautifully contained chapters Clade canvasses three generations, from the very near future to late this century. Central to the novel is the family of Adam, a scientist, and his wife, Ellie, an artist. Clade opens with them wanting a child and Adam in a quandary about the wisdom of this. Their daughter proves to be an elusive little girl and then a troubled teenager, and by now cracks have appeared in her parents' marriage. Their grandson is in turn a troubled boy.

Nestled in the heart of the Cotswolds, Thrush Green is normally a peaceful place. But as autumn turns to winter, feelings are running high in the village. Miss Fogerty, a respected teacher at the village school for over thirty years, is troubled by the methods of the new young teacher. Dotty Harmer takes up driving, much to the concern of others, and it isn’t long before she is involved in an accident and a threatening court case.

Essays in Love is a stunningly original love story. Taking in Aristotle, Wittgenstein, history, religion and Groucho Marx, Alain de Botton charts the progress of a love affair from the first kiss to argument and reconciliation, from intimacy and tenderness to the onset of anxiety and heartbreak.

世界35ヶ国で翻訳決定！柚木麻子の新境地にして集大成。男たちの財産を奪い、殺害した容疑で逮捕された梶井真奈子(カジマナ)。若くも美しくもない彼女がなぜ──。週刊誌記者の町田里佳は親友の伶子の助言をもとに梶井の面会を取り付ける。

When Lord Petrefact hires Walden Yapp, Professor of Demotic Historiography at Kloone University, to write a scurrilous family history Yapp finds plenty of material in Buscott village, where Frederick Petrefact is running the Mill and adding new vices to the family collection. If Yapp can lay his hands on the Petrefact Papers in the Buscott Museum he may be able to expose the multi-national capitalism of the Petrefacts to the whole world.

The end of the school year often brings unmitigated rapture for schoolteachers, and so it should for Miss Read, schoolmistress in the charming English village of Fairacre. But on the very first day of the long summer holiday, she falls and breaks her arm. Just when her summer seems ruined, her old friend Amy Garfield, comes to her aid with a diverting suggestion. They travel to Crete for two weeks, and the change of scene provides a welcome break for both of them.

鳴りやまぬ拍手と眩しいほどの光、人生の境地がここにある。

Goodwood is a small town where everyone knows everything about everyone. It's a place where it's impossible to keep a secret. In 1992, when Jean Brown is 17, a terrible thing happens. Two terrible things. Rosie White, the coolest girl in town, vanishes overnight. One week later, Goodwood's most popular resident, Bart McDonald, sets off on a fishing trip and never comes home. People die in Goodwood, of course, but never like this. They don't just disappear.

俺たちは踊れる。だからもっと美しい世界に立たせてくれ！

死刑か逆転無罪か。童話×リーガルミステリ　怪しい魔法使いにガラスの靴を渡され、言葉巧みに王城で開かれる舞踏会へと誘われたシンデレラ。お城に到着するやいなや、シンデレラはさっそく王子様の目にとまりダンスを踊る。しかしその後、王子様の死体が発見されたことで華やかな舞踏会の空気は一変。

Adapted For The Film Slumdog Millionaire. Eighteen-year-old Ram Mohammad Thomas has been arrested after answering twelve questions correctly on a TV quiz show to win one billion rupees. The producers have accused him of cheating his way to victory. Twelve extraordinary events in street-kid Ram's life - how he was adopted as a foundling orphan by a priest; came to have three names; fooled a professional hit man; even fell in love - give him the crucial answers.

Most of the big money belongs to Torquil Paterson Frisby, the dyspeptic American millionaire – but that doesn’t stop him wanting more out of it. His niece, the beautiful Ann Moon, is engaged to ‘Biscuit’, Lord Biskerton, who doesn’t have very much of the stuff and so he has to escape to Valley Fields to hide from his creditors. Meanwhile, his old schoolfriend Berry Conway, who is working for Frisby, himself falls for Ann – just as Biscuit falls for her friend Kitchie Valentine.

Gossip From Thrush Green returns readers to that delightful English village, neighbour to Fairacre, for a golden summer. But this sleepy, pristine setting conceals a flurry of activity among the villagers. Rumour has it that Mr. Venables is considering retirement just as the village’s teacher is about to make an important decision. Molly Curdle prepares for a new baby. The kindly vicar, Charles Henstock, works on his sermon - quite unaware of the disaster that will overtake him.

The mid-'70s: at an all-boys Catholic school in Melbourne, Timothy Conigrave falls wildly and sweetly in love with the captain of the football team. So begins a relationship that weathers disapproval, separation and ultimately death. With honesty and insight, Holding the Man explores the highs and lows of any partnership and the strength of heart both men have to find when they test positive for HIV. This is a book as refreshing and uplifting as it is moving - a funny and sad and celebratory account of growing up gay.

Just before dawn one late-summer morning, Captain Bruno Courrèges is roused from sleep by the wail of the town siren atop the Mairie, summoning the volunteer firemen of St Denis. Bruno, the only policeman in the small Périgord town, follows the fire engines towards the site of a large barn, now engulfed in flames, the surrounding fields ablaze. Everything points to arson. A Californian wine maker is planning to buy up half the valley to create a huge wine-producing operation.

As a boy, William Bellman commits one small cruel act that appears to have unforeseen and terrible consequences. The killing of a rook with his catapult is soon forgotten amidst the riot of boyhood games. And by the time he is grown, with a wife and children of his own, he seems indeed, to be a man blessed by fortune. Until tragedy strikes, and the stranger in black comes, and William Bellman starts to wonder if all his happiness is about to be eclipsed. Desperate to save the one precious thing he has left, he enters into a bargain.

The Group follows eight graduates from exclusive Vassar College as they find love and heartbreak, and choose careers and husbands against the backdrop of 1930s New York.

On a lake deep in the Minnesota woods, Kathy Wade comforts her husband John, a rising political star, after a devastating electoral defeat in which he's been pursued by rumors of the atrocities he committed in Vietnam. But it is clear that something is horribly wrong between them - too much has been hidden. Then Kathy vanishes, along with their boat.