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

Stoned out of his skull - this is how we find washed-up New York magazine writer Digby Maxwell when he is offered a last chance to redeem himself by becoming editor of a small philosophy magazine headquartered in a rural Vermont college town. Digby’s assignment is to make the magazine relevant to contemporary culture. For starters, that requires several more tokes, very deep tokes.

The New York Times best-selling author of Ordinary People crafts a gripping, character-driven novel of suspense that explores the fragile dynamics of family in the aftermath of tragedy.

After 22 years with the same company, George Breal is out of work for the first time in his life. He must confront the unpleasant task of reinventing his career at an age when many are winding down their ambitions and looking forward to retirement. A skilled manager, he finally finds work at the slowly failing Electronic Technologies (ETI), which has come face-to-face with a modern German competitor. ETI is owned by the cantankerous, obsessive, and dictatorial entrepreneur John Lowell, who is starting to realize, as he closes out his 70s, that his shortcomings are a direct result of his misguided actions from the past.

Kate Croy is secretly engaged to Merton Denscher, a journalist who lacks money. By chance, Kate befriends Milly, an American heiress, and learns she is suffering from a fatal illness. Kate devises a scheme to maximize their combined assets: she encourages Merton to take an interest in Milly and marry her. Kate intends to make him a rich widower whom she herself can marry. But such well-laid plans are not enough for the subtlety of the heart.

Written as a series of letters, Poor People tells the tragic tale of a petty clerk and his impossible love for a young girl. Longing to help her and her family, he sells everything he can, but his kindness leads him only into more desperate poverty, and ultimately into debauchery. As a typical "man of the underground", he serves as the embodiment of the belief that happiness can only be achieved with riches.

Set in London's backstreet slums, Oliver Twist is the story of a workhouse orphan captured and thrust into a den of thieves, where some of Dickens' most depraved villains preside: the incorrigible Artful Dodger; the barbarous bully Bill Sikes; and the terrible Fagin, whose knavery threatens to send them all to the gallows. This was the first of Dickens' works to depict realistically London's impoverished underworld, and to illustrate his belief that poverty leads to crime.

From the day Cobb and Mary meet kayaking on Maine’s Allagash River and fall deeply in love, the two approach life with the same sense of adventure they use to conquer the river’s treacherous rapids. But rivers do not let go so easily - and neither does their love. When Mary’s life takes a cruel turn, she vows to face those rough waters on her own terms and asks Cobb to promise, when the time comes, to help her return to their beloved river for one final journey. This beautiful tale is set against the rugged wilderness of Maine, the exotic islands of Indonesia, the sweeping panoramas of Yellowstone National Park, and the tranquil villages of rural New England.

First published in 1816 and generally considered Jane Austen's finest work, Emma is a humorous portrayal of a heroine whose injudicious interferences in the life of a young parlour-boarder in a neighboring village often lead to substantial mortification. Austen brings to life a myriad of engaging characters as she presents a mixture of social classes as she did in Pride and Prejudice.

It is New York, 1904, and Dulcy Remfrey, despite an idiosyncratic, traveling childhood, faces the predictable life of a woman of the time. But all that changes when her eccentric father returns from his expedition to Africa without any of the proceeds from the sale of a gold mine. It seems he's lost his mind along with the money, and Dulcy's obsessive ex-fiancé (and her father's business partner) insists she come to Seattle to decipher her father's cryptic notebooks, which may hold clues to the missing funds.

Harry Camden came out of the wilderness unwillingly. It was a girl who attracted him. But Sparrow Roberts, a fight manager, used this romantic lure only to attract Harry into his own sphere, because he knew that Camden had a truly devastating punch.

Fantasy icon Jane Yolen is adored by generations of readers and listeners of all ages. Now she triumphantly returns with this inspired gathering of fractured fairy tales and legends. Yolen breaks open the classics to reveal their crystalline secrets: a philosophical bridge that misses its troll, a spinner of straw as a falsely accused moneylender, the villainous wolf adjusting poorly to retirement. Each of these offerings features a new author note and original poem, illuminating tales that are old, new, and brilliantly refined.

Driftless is an unforgettable story of contemporary life in rural America. Words, Wisconsin, home to a few hundred people yet absent from state maps, comes richly to life by way of an extraordinary cast of characters.

The Crusaders, led by Richard I of England, are encamped in the Holy Land, and torn by the dissensions and jealousies of the leaders, including, besides Coeur de Lion himself, Philip of France, the duke of Austria, the Marquis of Montferrat, and the Grand Master of the Templars. The army's impotence is accentuated by the illness of Richard.

Jane Austen's first major novel, a parody of the popular literature of the time, is an ironic tale of the romantic folly of men and women in pursuit of love, marriage, and money. The humorous adventures of young Catherine as she encounters "the difficulties and dangers of a six weeks' residence in Bath" lead to some of Austen's most brilliant social satire.

Illumination Night follows the lives of a young blond giant who is as beautiful as he is frightening; an old woman at the end of her life whose last mission is to save her granddaughter's soul; a family torn apart by a wife's fears and a husband's unrealized desires; and the high school girl who comes to Martha's Vineyard against her will, who steals husbands and cars, and who will bring everyone together in a web of yearning, sin, and ultimate redemption.

This is A Madman's Diary, and Other Stories by Lu Xun, a renowned writer of modern Chinese literature. Lu Xun was a novelist, editor, translator, literary critic, essayist, and poet who wrote both in Vernacular Chinese and Classical Chinese. He became the titular head of the League of Left-Wing Writers in Shanghai in the 1930s.

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.

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.

Anders is an angry, cynical man. A book critic known for his scathing reviews, he finds any excuse to dismiss, belittle, or insult. This afternoon is no more agitating than the next. Angers finds himself in a long line at the bank, waiting to reach a teller. Even after two men - wearing masks and carrying guns - take control of the building, Anders is unfazed. It's this behavior that lands him with a pistol against his stomach and a man screamingin his face. And when the bank robber, indignant over Anders' behavior, shoots the book critic in the head, his mind floats through the memories of his life, settling on one particular event....

The second book by prize-winning Japanese novelist Fuminori Nakamura to be available in English translation, a follow-up to 2012’s critically acclaimed The Thief—another fantastically creepy, electric literary thriller that explores the limits of human depravity—and the powerful human instinct to resist evil.

When Fuminiro Kuki is eleven years old, his elderly, enigmatic father calls him into his study for a meeting. “I created you to be a cancer on the world,” his father tells him.