Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Literary Fiction

Ron Hansen has won an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters for his rich writing and poetic style. Atticus begins in the vein of a contemporary western. As it unfolds, it includes an intriguing murder mystery and a dramatic parable of the prodigal son. For years, prosperous Colorado rancher Atticus Cody has tried to understand his rootless son, Scott, who is now living a marginal life in Mexico.

Clay’s Quilt was a Book Sense '76 Pick and was nominated for the Southeastern Booksellers Book of the Year and the Appalachian Writers Association Book Award. Clay Sizemore loves his home in Free Creek, but he longs for more. Since the death of his mother when he was four, he has felt the absence of family. His father left, and he has no siblings. But finally, through the love of others, he is able to create a place of his own.

Ethiopian émigré Dinaw Mengestu is a skilled observer of people who offers a colorful debut work of fiction. Insightful and swiftly paced, this novel evokes past and present in the course of its compelling narrative. It's the `70s, and one D.C. neighborhood is undergoing big changes. In the mix is Ethiopian grocery owner Sepha Stephanos - a man with a complex past who fled his homeland after seeing his father brutalized by themilitary. He hopes for new prospects in D.C.'s gentrification process.

Eva Jean Roberts, E.J., has come home to Cullen's Corner. Everyone, especially Gram, is wondering why. People born in Cullen's Corner tend, like Newton's First Law of Motion, to remain inert - to live, work, breathe, marry, and die right here in the Corner. Those who do leave tend to keep going, with no inclination to look back. E.J. belonged to the latter. And now she is back? After 18 years?

Jane Smiley brings her extraordinary gifts, comic timing, empathy, emotional wisdom, an ability to deliver slyly on big themes and capture the American spirit, to the seductive, wishful, wistful world of real estate, in which the sport of choice is the mind game. Her funny and moving new novel is about what happens when the American Dream morphs into a seven-figure American Fantasy.

Southland brings us a fascinating story of race, love, murder, and history, against the backdrop of an ever-changing Los Angeles. A young Japanese-American woman, Jackie Ishida, is in her last semester of law school when her grandfather, Frank Sakai, dies unexpectedly. While trying to fulfill a request from his will, Jackie discovers that four African-American boys were killed in the store Frank owned during the Watts Riots of 1965. Along with James Lanier, a cousin of one of the victims, Jackie tries to piece together the story of the boys' deaths.

Two auditors for the US egg industry go rogue and conceive a plot to steal a million chickens in the middle of the night - an entire egg farm's worth of animals. Janey and Cleveland - a spirited former runaway and the officious head of audits - assemble a precarious, quarrelsome team and descend on the farm on a dark spring evening. A series of catastrophes ensues.

What I wanted more than anything was to be standing beside Schmidt, in concert with Schmidt, at the foot of Saint Sebastian’s Abyss along with Schmidt, hands cupped to the sides of our faces, debating art, transcendence, and the glory of the apocalypse.” Former best friends who built their careers writing about a single work of art meet after a decades-long falling-out. One of them, called to the other’s deathbed for unknown reasons by a “relatively short” nine-page email, spends his flight to Berlin reflecting on Dutch Renaissance painter Count Hugo Beckenbauer.

An authentic, gothic reimagining of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, told from the villain' s perspective, that takes listeners deep into the seedy side of Victorian London and explores the nature of personality and of the subconscious. Mr. Hyde is trapped in Dr. Jekyll' s surgical cabinet, counting the days until he will face capture and be forced to make the ultimate choice about survival. Over the course of four days, he thinks back on what brought him to this moment, and he finally has the chance to tell the story of his brief but marvelous life.

After marrying against her father's wishes, Maggie Duncan plans to flee to America with her husband, Ian. But Ian is accused of murder, and honor requires him to stay in Scotland to face the charges. Alone, Maggie sets up a life for them in the New World, while Ian faces the horrors of prison. Thousands of miles apart, the two must learn to trust in God's greater will to reunite them.

Marlena de Blasi, best-selling memoirist of A Thousand Days in Venice, makes her remarkable fiction debut with this poignant tale. Deemed an illegitimate child by her royal Polish family, Amandine is abandoned as a baby at a French convent. As she grows, Amandine struggles to accept her orphaned state. She longs to put together the missing pieces of her identity, but as World War II engulfs Europe, her time to find answers may be running short.

Richly complex, darkly comical, and irresistibly charming. Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist is one of the greatest novels of the 19th century, from one of literature's most esteemed craftsmen. Published serially between 1837 and 1839, it secured Dickens' reputation as a writer of exceptional skill and talent.

Well known for his short stories, critically acclaimed author Ron Carlson has been featured in the New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Esquire, and Best American Short Stories. Carlson has also won a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, a National Society of Arts and Letters Literature Award, and the 1993 Ploughshares Cohen Prize. Here he captivates audiences with a compelling novel no listener will soon forget.

Something is wrong with Eddie Hobson Sr., father of four, sometime history teacher, quiz master, black humorist, and virtuoso invalid. His recurring fainting spells have worsened, and with his ingrained aversion to doctors, his worried family tries to discover the nature of his sickness. Meanwhile, in private, Eddie puts the finishing touches on a secret project he calls Hobbstown, a place that he promises will save him, the world, and everything that's in it. A dazzling novel of compassion and imagination, Prisoner's Dilemma is a story of the power of invalid experience.

As a child growing up in 1920s Paris, Ida Chagall copes with her father Marc Chagall's brilliant artistic mind and overbearing ego and the tight leash he keeps on her. But as Ida blossoms into a young woman, she begins to glimpse freedom and opportunities for herself.

A small section of vine with bloodstained thorns has been encased in candle wax for centuries - and some believe the blood came from Christ. Convicted killer and death-row inmate Michael Coleman agrees to have the genes from the mysterious blood planted into his body. The results are so astonishing that the research must continue outside prison walls. But nobody can predict what will happen when Coleman assumes a new identity and reenters society. Blood of Heaven delves deep into the human heart and examines the very nature of good versus evil.

Diane seems to have the perfect life. She is a wife, a mother, and the owner of Happy People Read and Drink Coffee, a cozy literary café in Paris. But when she suddenly loses her beloved husband and daughter in a tragic car accident, the world as she knows it instantly vanishes. Trapped and haunted by her memories, Diane retreats from friends and family, unable and unwilling to move forward.

In his first novel, Dave Eggers has written a moving and hilarious tale of two friends who fly around the world trying to give away a lot of money and free themselves from a profound loss. It reminds us once again what an important, necessary talent Dave Eggers is.

Daniel Ahearn lives a quiet, solitary existence in a seaside New England town. Forty years ago, following a shocking act of impulsive violence on his part, his daughter, Susan, was ripped from his arms by police. Now in her 40s, Susan still suffers from the trauma of a night she doesn’t remember, as she struggles to feel settled, to love a man, and create something that lasts. Lois, her maternal grandmother who raised her, tries to find peace in her antique shop in a quaint Florida town but cannot escape her own anger, bitterness, and fear.

Architect Douglas Layton has lost everything. The balcony of one of his beautiful music halls collapsed during a packed performance, killing dozens. Layton knows the flaw was not in his design; someone else must have caused the dreadful catastrophe. But with no proof, Layton finds himself facing a five-year prison sentence. When he is finally freed, Layton starts over with a new name and identity, taking a job as a set painter. But as Layton begins to discover dead bodies hidden within theater halls across London, it soon becomes clear something darker is chasing him.