Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Family Life

In late 2003, in his column in Entertainment Weekly, Stephen King called The Memory of Running "the best novel you won't read this year." This glowing endorsement of the audiobook resulted in Ron McLarty receiving a $2 million two-book deal from Viking Penguin. Also, Warner Brothers has shelled out big bucks for the movie rights to The Memory of Running, for which McLarty will write the script.

Crystal Malloy owns the beauty salon in Mystic Creek, Oregon. It took years of work to stand on her own after a difficult upbringing and to turn her fledgling enterprise into a successful business. There's never been much time for romance, but when a handsome, friendly man stops in to her salon - he's traveling through town on business - she's immediately taken with him.

Wyatt Fitzgerald doesn't consider his deafness a disability, and he doesn't want special consideration from anyone - least of all a spoiled city girl like Erin. He prides himself on his ability to read lips, and when she confronts him, Wyatt sees no reason to volunteer to her that he's deaf. But there's no escaping each other in the small Oregon town, especially once Erin seeks him out to make amends. Wyatt gave up on dating long ago, but the written correspondence he and Erin begin to share speak to him like nothing else ever has.

Edward Bloom, an aging salesman, is dying. As his grown son, William, cares for him, the young man tries to focus on what he knows about his father’s life. Story after story surfaces in William’s memory, and he shares mythic visions of a fantastic father who was loved by all - a man who was the best runner, fisherman, businessman, and adventurer in the world. Big Fish tells these tall tales of Edward Bloom’s life. Punctuated with his vast repertory of jokes, they set the stage for Edward’s final, wonderful transformation.

Isla Larsen Sanchez's life begins to unravel when her father passes away. Instead of being comforted at home in New Jersey, her mother starts leaving her in Puerto Rico with her great-aunt each summer, like a piece of forgotten luggage. It is only when Isla turns eighteen, and her grandmother, a great storyteller, dies, that Isla discovers she has a gift. The tales of dead family storytellers are brought back to life, replaying themselves over and over in front of her.

After years of living in fear of her husband, Amanda Banning has left him and moved to Mystic Creek, Oregon, for a fresh start. But she's having a tough time providing for herself and her six-year-old daughter. Writing her secret yearnings on slips of paper and sending them into the wind helps her cling to the hope that things will get better - and that she can find happiness again.

Justine and Seth Gunderson are trying to make plans and sort out their future after losing their business—the Lighthouse restaurant—to arson. The investigation is ongoing, but the prime suspect disappeared right after the fire. And this kind of crisis can be hard on a marriage. In the meantime, the drama of everyday life goes on for everyone in town: Maryellen’s difficult pregnancy means she needs to ask for help from an unlikely source, Lynette might have to figure out how to handle a broken heart, and someone gets involved with a celebrity!

Chin up, Emily Thorn faces the pain and heartache of love lost and years wasted. At 40, all she has to show for 20 years of marriage is a Federal Express letter from her husband that begins "Dear Emily" - and ends their life together. She had put her own life on hold to pay Ian's way through medical school. She believed him when he told her that one day she'd have everything she ever wanted - children, an education, a career of her own. What she got was overweight, out of shape - and dumped.

Peter Ducksworth, a Trinidadian widower of English ancestry, retires to Barbados, believing he will find an earthly paradise there. He decides to divide his land among his three daughters while he is alive, his intention not unlike that of King Lear, who hoped "That future strife/May be prevented now". But Lear made the fatal mistake of confusing flattery with love, and so does Ducksworth. Feeling snubbed by his youngest daughter, Ducksworth decides that only after he dies will she receive her portion of the land.

In a North Carolina mountain town filled with moonshine and rotten husbands, Sadie Blue is only the latest girl to face a dead-end future at the mercy of a dangerous drunk. She's been married to Roy Tupkin for 15 days, and she knows now that she should have listened to the folks who said he was trouble. But when a stranger sweeps in and knocks the world off-kilter for everyone in town, Sadie begins to think there might be more to life than being Roy's wife.

Raising four very different daughters on her own in rural Arkansas wasn't easy for Miss Pearly Bell. And she's always regretted that the sisters went their separate ways for good - and never wanted to see each other again. But when Pearly is stricken with a terminal illness, she summons them all home - determined to somehow help them get right with each other and forgive.... But that means dealing with past secrets and lies first.

Present day. After tragedy plunges her into grief and unresolved anger, Sarah Ashby returns to her childhood home determined to finally follow her long-denied dream of running Old Depot Grocery alongside her mother and grandmother. But when she arrives, her mother, Rosemary, announces to her that the store is closing. Sarah and her grandmother, Glory Ann, make a pact to save the store, but Rosemary has worked her entire life to make sure her daughter never follows in her footsteps. She has her reasons - but she'll certainly never reveal the real one.

Reclusive Clare Collins crafts her novels like she crafts her life: perfectly. So the world is stunned when the famous author is found dead on a beach from a self-inflicted gunshot - the morning after her latest book hits the shelves. Her sister, Eileen, is at a loss. Clare led a charmed life: success, mansions, money...why would she throw it all away? But while reading through her sister's latest - and greatest - novel, Eileen discovers a clue that unravels the fiction and reveals the painful truth. Suddenly, the life that Eileen had envied doesn't seem so sparkling....

Erin De Laney came to Mystic Creek hoping that the slower pace might rekindle her enthusiasm for law enforcement. Instead she feels as frustrated as she did in the city and when her disillusionment with the job increases, she takes a position on her uncle's ranch. Her life has enough complications without her attraction to handsome, deaf cowboy, Wyatt Fitzgerald, the foreman on the ranch. Wyatt has sworn off dating, and Erin fears that nothing she does will ever change his mind. Yet while working with an abused horse under Wyatt's guidance, Erin comes to better understand herself.

In the charming seaside town of Cedar Cove, life is full of drama, love and second chances … There’s drama at the beauty salon in Cedar Cove. Teri Miller has noticed that something seems to be worrying her international chess-champion husband, Bobby Polgar. He told her he’s “protecting his queen,” and she has the oddest feeling that he isn’t talking about chess but about her. Rachel Pendergast has two men seriously interested in her, and she’s going to have to make a choice. On the other hand, Linnette McAfee recently left town because her love life fell apart.

When confident and handsome Eric Larson is sent to a rural Montana town to work in the local branch of his uncle’s financial company, he’s determined to exceed everyone’s expectations, earn a promotion, and be back in Seattle by the end of summer. Yet nothing could prepare him for the lessons this small town has in store.

In the small town of Grady, Montana, twenty-four-year-old Tad Bungley has a reputation for trouble. When he lands a job at Come Around Ranch, however, his life seems to take a positive turn. As he develops a soft spot for Sam, the ranch owner's disabled son, and a special bond with TJ, a rescue horse with a poor reputation of his own, Tad becomes determined not to bungle up this time.

Freelance writer Jacqueline Tate arrives in Los Angeles and soon meets brilliant, award-winning scientist Randall Atwater, the man she's come to cover at a conference on trends and technology. He is everything she's read about - brainy, witty, handsome, and cool. And after a week spent with the most fascinating man she's ever known, there's no way she can give him up. There's just one problem: Randall's wife of 20 years. No matter - men like Randall are few and far between.

Increasingly wary of her father's genetic research, Rachel Kramer has determined that this trip with him to Germany - in the summer of 1939 - will be her last. But a cryptic letter from her estranged friend, begging Rachel for help, changes everything. Married to SS officer Gerhardt Schlick, Kristine sees the dark tides turning and fears her husband views their daughter, Amelie, deaf since birth, as a blight on his Aryan bloodline.

E.M. Forster's Howards End is a vivid portrait of London's golden age, before World War I forever changed its values and culture. Forster brings the great city's upper classes to life, detailing their grandiose spending habits, popular fads, Monet and Debussy, the rise of feminism, and the beginnings of urbanization. More than a mere idealization of pre-war London, Howards End provides insightful commentary on the rapid societal changes that occurred at the onset of the 20th century. Masterfully blending the stories of three vastly different groups of people - the independently wealthy, educated Schlegels; the nouveau riche Wilcoxes; and the ambitious but struggling Leonard Bast - Forster weaves a wonderfully rich, unforgettably poignant novel.