Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Literary Fiction

Alternating between a woman's childhood in a small town and as an adult in the city, this novel traces a Jehovah Witness family's splintering belief system, their isolation, and the erosion of their relationships. As Emily becomes closer to her closeted Uncle Tyler, she begins to challenge her upbringing. Her questions about the Jehovah's Witnesses' insular lifestyle, rigid codes of conduct, and tenets of their faith haunt her older sister Lenora too.

Like a series of Penthouse letters penned by Kathy Acker, Lie with Me recounts a woman's sexual escapades, picking up random men in bars for a series of increasingly extreme encounters, hoping to understand love from the far side of sluttiness. In The Way of the Whore, Mira, an introverted Jewish girl obsessed with Jean Genet, allows herself to be seduced by the sex industry, determined to find meaning in her tormented relationships with cruel men.

In a trance-like state, Albert walks - from Bordeaux to Poitiers, from Chaumont to Macon, and farther afield to Turkey, Austria, Russia - all over Europe. When he walks, he is called a vagrant, a mad man. He is chased out of towns and villages, ridiculed and imprisoned. When the reverie of his walking ends, he's left wondering where he is, with no memory of how he got there. His past exists only in fleeting images.

A body is found on the side of a highway. Naked, throat slashed, no identification. It disappears from the back of a police van and begins a strange odyssey, making its way, over the course of one early winter night, all around the northern town of Sudbury and through the lives and dreams of eleven very different people.

Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack is headed for Yuma, escorting Harvey "Cisco" Lang to prison and Adele Simpson to safety. He knows full well of their shared romantic history, and even though Adele swears she's done with Cisco, Burrack is keeping a hard eye on her as well as on the outlaw. But his companions are the least of his worries. A ruthless cattle baron has put a five-thousand-dollar price on Burrack's head - and every low-life bounty hunter and bandit across the Painted Desert is looking to claim it…

Mary Byrd Thornton could understand how a reporter couldn' t resist the story: a nine-year-old boy sexually molested and killed on Mother's Day, 1966. A suspect to whom nothing would stick. A neighborhood riddled with secrets. No one, especially the bungling or complicit authorities, had been able to solve the crime. Now, 30 years later, the reporter' s call will reel a reluctant Mary Byrd from Mississippi back to Virginia where she must confront her family - and, once again, the murder's irremovable stain of tragedy.

Josiah is a child preacher, called to speak to an amphitheater of thousands in 1980s New York. In a style reminiscent of DeLillo, Cheshire takes us inside their apocalypse-obsessed world, setting the tone for events to come. Fast forward several years, and Josiah (or Josie) has broken with the community that bound him, only to have the new life he built collapse. When his ex-wife Sarah calls to say his father sounds strange - even unhinged - Josie must return home. Back in Queens, the old sights and sounds of the neighborhood and the memories overcome him....

James McConnell’s one wish is that his nine-year-old son will finally be healthy enough to play a game of catch. Then he and his wife, Emily, receive news they’ve dreaded: Aaron’s cancer has relapsed. As the family steels themselves for a draining treatment regimen in yet another hospital, Aaron receives the gift of a lifetime - a personal visit from one of his favorite professional baseball players - and the chance to make a bold request, his wish: To see his dad play in one major league game.

Ellen Wingate thinks she's hit the jackpot when she learns the millions she's inherited comes with a super-exclusive condo in the mountains outside of Las Vegas. But leaving Minnesota for paradise turns out to be the ultimate nightmare. Trapped with her neighbors in a freakish winter avalanche, a chilling discovery at the bottom of an indoor pool signals a frightening turn of events.

When Kristin Stevens loses her administrative job in California' s university system, she and her husband, Cal, relocate to Massachusetts. Kristin takes a position at a smaller, less prestigious college outside Boston and promptly becomes entangled in its delicate, overheated politics. Cal, whose musical talent is nothing more than a consuming avocation, spends his days alone, fixing up their new home. And as they settle into their early fifties, the two seem to exist in separate spheres entirely.

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman has sold over a million copies nationwide since its publication in 1971, making the fictional character of Miss Jane so real many people don’t know she exists only in the imagination of Louisiana-born author Ernest J. Gaines. Miss Jane is 100 years old when she is interviewed by an area high school teacher looking to teach his students more about plantation society in the Deep South. Her story is not only a vivid picture of the South before the dawn of the civil rights era, but also a story of one woman’s survival against overwhelming odds.

Charlie Bellerose leads a seminomadic existence, traveling widely to manage the language academies he has established in different countries. After separating, somewhat amicably, from his wife, he moves from Madrid back to his native Canada to set up a new school, and for the first time he forges a meaningful relationship with his brother, who's going through a vicious divorce.

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.

On a mangy beach in Key West, 16-year-old Myra meets Elijah, a Tanzanian musician twice her age. Trapped on a Spring Break family vacation, Myra longs to lose her virginity to Elijah, and is shocked to learn he lives with Gayl, a secretive, violent woman with a strange power over him. When Myra and her splitting-up family return home, she falls in with a pot-smoking anarchist crowd. But when Gayl and Elijah follow her north, she walks willingly into their world, engaging in more and more abject sexual games. As Myra enters unfamiliar worlds of sex, porn, race, and class, she explores territories unknown in herself.

After suffering an unbearable loss, a man takes a road trip in an attempt to find solace and encounters beauty, brutality, and beguiling characters along the way in this darkly thrilling audiobook. Grieving the deaths of his wife and infant daughter, Nathan Soderquist decides to journey westward across the continent, documenting the ever-changing sky in brief entries of ravishing poetry. Desperately lonely and with nothing left to lose, he drives through vacant landscapes committing acts of violence, nobility, cowardice, and bravery, all the while trying to save the world from evil.

On a dark night in Lusaka, Zambia, an adolescent girl is brutally assaulted. In shock, she cannot speak. Her identity is a mystery. Where did she come from? Was the attack a random street crime or a premeditated act? The girl's case is taken up by Zoe Fleming, a human rights lawyer working in Africa. A betrayal in her own past gives the girl's plight a special resonance for Zoe, and she is determined to find the perpetrator and seek justice. Also investigating on behalf of the Zambian police is Joseph Kabuta. At first reluctant to work together, they team up.

Reporter Lester Booker joins legendary gunfighter Rance March on the trail of a dangerous outlaw to learn how the West was really won.

When the McCandles' Gang decides to shoot up Coalville, Idaho, it seems like a pretty easy hit. But among the survivors is a young man named Joseph Roper. Joey worked with Sheriff Hackett, and he was not about to let Ian McCandles get away with what he has done. This is the story of Joey's search for justice, and the paths that his search took him on!

Bass Reeves was a man of color and a deputy United States marshal. For thirteen years he was aided by Dave Adams, also a deputy marshal, and a white man. Bennie Reeves was Bass Reeves' son and a barber, a good one, before he shot down his unarmed wife who had been cheating on him and then disappeared. U.S. Marshal Leo E. Bennett, known as Doc, had reservations about handing the warrant to Bass Reeves to be served against Bennie. But for Bass there was no reservation...

In Summerlin, North Carolina, it is - quite literally - a race to the finish. Glenn and Laura Bales lie dying in the same house, and although Laura is more interested in her Whitman’s Sampler chocolates, and Glenn in whatever happened to his first wife, Evelyn, their children have their eyes unswervingly fixed on the inheritance. Who will get the money, and what it will mean for this unusual little Southern community is a richly comic novel about endings.