Showing results by publisher "Brilliance Audio" in Literary Fiction

Milla has always felt alone in the world. The only child of a distant mother, she has no other family, and even her forthcoming marriage to Paul feels more like settling than true romance. But then a letter arrives, announcing that a Spanish grandmother she knew nothing about has died and left her a small shop in Mallorca. Milla is determined to uncover the truth. She travels to Palma, where she is enchanted by the beauty of the old town in springtime. At the shop she now owns, she meets Leandro, a handsome local who helps her piece together the story of her grandmother.

Vagablonde is a darkly humorous, rollercoaster ride through the Los Angeles music scene about a woman who wants two things, the first is to live without psychotropic medication, and the second is to experience success as an artist. A cautionary tale about viral fame, Vagablonde speaks directly to our time in biting detail.

Born into slavery, Dahlia never knew her mother - or what happened to her. When Dahlia’s father, the owner of Vesterville plantation, takes her to work in his home as a servant, she’s desperately lonely. Forced to leave behind her best friend, Bo, she lives in a world between black and white, belonging to neither. Ten years later, Dahlia meets Timothy Ross, an Englishman in need of a wife. Reinventing herself as Lily Dove, Dahlia allows Timothy to believe she’s white, with no family to speak of, and agrees to marry him.

In rural Victorian England, the willful Bathsheba Everdene is courted by three men: her repressed neighbor, a devoted shepherd, and a thriftless soldier. They cross and clash again and again in tragedy, grief, betrayal, misguided affections, and the follies of romantic love. Though far from the fury of the city, the drama they engender is equal to the whole of the universe in madness and passion.

River steamboat captain Charles Marlow has set forth on the Congo in Africa to find the enigmatic European trader Mr. Kurtz. Preceded by his reputation as a brilliant emissary of progress, Kurtz has now established himself as a god among the natives in "one of the darkest places on earth." Marlow suspects something else of Kurtz: he has gone mad.

A scandalous revelation is about to devastate a picturesque town where the houses are immaculate and the neighborhoods are tightly knit. Devoted mother Cora O’Connell has found the journal of her friend Laurel’s daughter - a beautiful college student who lives next door - revealing an illicit encounter. Hours later, Laurel makes a shattering discovery of her own: her daughter has vanished without a trace. Over the course of one weekend, the crises of two close families are about to trigger a chain reaction that will expose a far more disturbing web of secrets.

Once, Hope Payne was a mermaid, performing at the local theme park and captivating audiences young and old. Today, she's married to a pragmatic marine biologist who has filled the pool in their backyard with flounder for a special study. Before he begins, the fish vanish - echoing a loss Hope alone can understand. She senses there's something underwater, something alive and hungry for more, but is she in too deep to ever resurface?

In the tradition of Colson Whitehead's Zone One, a visionary debut novel about shelter, escape, family, violence, and dumpster diving. It's the story of a restless group of young squatters. They've run away from their families and their pasts, questing after knowledge of their most wild selves, roaming the half-empty suburbs of America, occupying the homes of the foreclosed or vacationing, never staying in one place long enough to attract attention while shoplifting beer at the local Speedy Stop.

Refusing to be civilized by Southern society or cowed by his drunken father's lashings, young Huckleberry Finn decides he has only one option left: fake his own death and hop a raft down the Mississippi River. Instead of carrying him far from trouble, though, Huck's raft delivers him to a place of moral uncertainty. Mark Twain unwinds Huck's harrowing journey to manhood with satirical wit, revealing the troubled history of the American South, where slavery held sway long after the Civil War ended.

Faye Martin never expected her husband to abandon her and their three children...or that she'd have to struggle every day to make ends meet. So when her 4-year-old daughter is discovered through a YouTube video and offered a starring role on a television series, it seems like her prayers have been answered. But when the reality of their new life settles in, Faye realizes that fame and fortune don't come without a price.

In exploring everyday life and its intersections with death, this enduring collection of stories offers a naturalistic depiction of the working class in early twentieth-century Dublin. Joyce masterfully portrays frustrations and aborted desires to escape the mundane; transformative epiphanies both great and small; and the restraints, loneliness, violence, and contemplations of lives lived.

Rita-Mae has lived in fear for as long as she can remember. Fear of being alone, fear of her past and, above all, fear of her husband, Harry. Until she spots an advertisement for a vacant cottage in a small town in Northern Ireland. She makes her escape filled with hope, ready to start a new life in a new home, free from the pain of her past. But her place of refuge may not be as safe - or as anonymous - as she thought.

After the death of their father, sisters Elinor and Marianne Dashwood face financial ruin. At the mercy of their half brother, John, and his greedy wife, their only hope is to make a good match. But reduced circumstances make courtship difficult - especially after being turned out of their home. While responsible Elinor takes a practical approach to matters of the heart, Marianne throws herself in unreservedly. In Jane Austen’s first novel, two of literature’s most iconic characters discover that love demands a balance of passion and pragmatism.

Whether he's sneaking doughnuts, mooning over a pretty girl, or snookering the local boys to do his work for him, Tom Sawyer is the consummate schemer - but his charm and easygoing nature keep him from being in anyone's bad graces for long. However, when Tom teams up with his friend Huck Finn, their sleepy Missouri town had better watch out.

On the hot Texas army base she calls home, Katie spends the lazy days of her summer waiting: waiting to grow up; waiting for Dickie Mack to fall in love with her; waiting for her breasts to blossom; waiting for the beatings to stop. Since their mother died, Katie and her older sister, Diane, have struggled to understand their increasingly distant, often violent father. While Diane escapes into the arms of her boyfriend, Katie hides in her room or escapes to her best friend’s house - until Katie’s admiration for her strong-willed sister leads her on an adventure that transforms her life.

Charming, rich, and clever, heiress Emma Woodhouse has no need for an occupation - or a husband. Still, she considers herself quite skilled at matchmaking. Although her dear friend Mr. Knightley advises against it, there is nothing that she enjoys more than entangling herself in the romantic lives of others. But when one of her well-intentioned plans goes awry - as Mr. Knightley rightly predicted - Emma must face the consequences of her meddling.

Robert Holton has just returned from the torment and strife of war in Europe and settled in a solitary existence working for a New York stockbroking business. The haunting memories of nights of love spent in Florence are suppressed as he struggles to succeed in an arid city. And when Carla turns up unexpectedly from his more passionate past, Robert finds he must choose between the fixed path of money-making and dull conventionality, and the fraught, uncertain path of love and freedom.

Checker Secretti is the most gifted and original drummer that the club-goers of Astoria, Queens, have ever heard. When he plays, conundrums seem to solve themselves, brilliant thoughts spring to mind, and couples fall in love. The members of his band, The Derailleurs, are passionately devoted to their guiding spirit, as are all who fall under Checker's spell. But when another drummer, Eaton Striker, hears the prodigy play, he is pulled inexorably into Checker's orbit by a powerful combination of envy and admiration.

As intricate as a house of mirrors, Nabokov’s last novel is an ironic play on the Janus-like relationship between fiction and reality. It is the autobiography of the eminent Russian-American author Vadim Vadimovich N. (b. 1899), whose life bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, though the two are not to be confused (?).

"I am always with you. I will always be here." This was the promise Ella’s mother betrayed thirty years ago when she walked into the sea, leaving her five-year-old daughter alone in the world. Ella’s been angry ever since, building up a wall to protect herself. But that all changes the day she opens a newspaper and finds those ten little words printed in a classified ad. Ella refuses to believe her mother could still be alive - that would mean she did want to live, just not with her daughter. So she throws herself into finding out exactly what happened all those years ago.