Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Literary Fiction

Spanning six decades of the 1800s, this mesmerizing story is a fictional biography of Marie Laveau - one of the most haunting characters in New Orleans’ history. Part of a long line of voodoo priestesses and healers, Marie tells of the mystery, passion, and violence that pattern her life. Like her grandmother, Marie sees visions from an early age. She never knew her mother, who practiced a spiritualism so potent she was murdered by those who feared her.

Having justly earned her reputation as a master storyteller, Lee Smith's name evokes images of authentic country folk struggling through life's arduous tests. Saving Grace adds a stunning spiritual dimension. The daughter of a preacher who ignores his destitute family, Florida Grace doesn't think much of Jesus. He's the reason she's lived in squalor and He wasn't there for her through her failed marriage. But in one shining moment He calls out to her and she returns to her roots to heed His call.

Emma Woodhouse has it all: She's beautiful, rich and very clever - maybe too clever - but she also has too much time on her hands. So Emma decides to dabble in the lives of others, setting about making romantic matches - but why can't she find the right suitor for herself?

Learn about the bomb blast that rocked the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on Sunday morning, September 15, 1963, killing four young girls.

Critically acclaimed author Gish Jen is a National Book Critics Circle Award nominee and the person John Updike proclaimed as the young novelist most likely to become his successor. In The Love Wife, Jen poignantly explores the explosive dynamics of a mixed-race modern family.

After losing her grandmother, her home, and all her worldly possessions in the storm, Monique Deveraux has all but given up on life. Then at an evacuee shelter, a wealthy woman takes her in and introduces her to a billionaire businessman, starting Monique on a whirlwind of success. But something is lurking in the shadows that could take everything away again. In the chaos after the storm, a convict walked out of jail and blended in with the dishevelled evacuees - and she was looking for revenge when she met Monique.

As detective Xavier Kilgarvan sorts through clues and rumors, facts and fantasy, he is united with his beloved Perdita in a perilous challenge - the case of The Bloodstained Bridal Gown. Twelve years after solving the mystery of The Devil’s Half Acre, Xavier has received an urgent plea for help. A young minister and a woman from his parish have been murdered. Their torn bodies are found in an oddly suggestive position: leaning tenderly upon each other on a sofa in the rectory. Yet something even stranger is discovered upstairs....

La historia de Juana Villegas donde las circunstancias la han llevedo al borde de la desepreacion, su madre acaba de morir, esta embarazada, sin trabajo, sin dinero, no quiere tener a su hijo para que no repita la misma vida que a ella la ahoga. No encuentra apoyo en ni en su padre ni en su hermano, ella piensa que todo esta en su contra, la unica esperanza que ella encuentra para salvarse es que ese dia llueva, ese dia parece que va a llover pero no llueve solo se encuentra a un antiguo novio.

As a child of the esteemed writer John Cheever, Benjamin Cheever grew up in a household filled with books. For 11 years, Benjamin worked as an editor. When he started writing, however, he found his literary voice in satire. Famous After Death is a darkly comic look at some of America’s favorite obsessions.

Spur Award winner Robert Flynn captures the authentic texture of Texas in this compelling novel about family ties and life’s toughest lessons. Chance Carter doesn’t like his grandmother, so when he learns her health is failing, he thinks only of his status as the sole heir to her million dollar ranch. Yet when he pays her a visit, he learns surprising truths about his past that force him to reconsider everything he knows.

When Achilles Conroy and his brother Troy return from a tour of duty in Afghanistan, their white mother presents them with the key to their past: envelopes containing details about their respective birth parents. After Troy disappears, Achilles - always his brother’s keeper - embarks on a harrowing journey in search of Troy, an experience that will change him forever. Heartbreaking, intimate, and at times disturbing, Hold It ’Til It Hurts is a modern-day odyssey through war, adventure, disaster, and love, and explores how people who do not define themselves by race make sense of a world that does.

Lee Smith, author of the acclaimed The Last Girls, delights with a tale of dry wit. Smith has won many prizes, including the Southern Book Critics Circle Award and the Academy Award in Literature.

Edgar, Anthony, and Gumshoe finalist Craig McDonald takes listeners to 1924 Paris for this riveting tale. Someone is murdering literary magazine editors, so Gertrude Stein assigns Hector Lassiter, fellow mystery writer Brinke Devlin, and Hector’s dear friend Papa Hemingway to track down the killer. While the romance smolders between Hector and Brinke, their investigation takes them down a path that grows stranger by the minute.

Oral History, the lyrical saga of a Virginia mountain family, follows four generations of Cantrells over more than a century. Researching an assignment for an Oral History course, Jennifer drives to the town where her mother and father grew up. Raised by a stepmother, the young college student wonders why her father never talks of her real mother and is intrigued by the mystery of her heritage. One by one, the Cantrells tell of lives filled with vitality, colored by the land and family history.

When a dust storm engulfs her Colorado town and pink snow blankets the streets, a heartbreaking decision faces Ruby Cole, a girl who counts birds. She must either abandon her baby or give in to her father, whom she nicknames Lord God, and marry a man more than twice her age who already has two wives. She chooses to run, which sets in motion an interlocking series of actions and reactions, upending the lives of an equestrian police officer, pawnshop riffraff, a disabled war vet, Nuisance Animal destroyers, and a grieving ornithologist who is studying the decline of bird populations.

Percy York Goodnight, or Pyg as he prefers, and his mother Revelie travel back to the family ranch in Texas to be reunited with Loving, a man with whom Revelie once shared a passionate affair. He's been shot and is near death, but that is not the only tragedy playing out in the Lone Star State. It seems that the ax of family legend, that once rested in Pyg's father's tombstone, has been stolen. Now Pyg's leading a posse aiming to get it back.

Virginia Woolf once called Thomas Hardy "the greatest tragic writer among English novelists". His atmospheric novels were often considered shocking upon their publication. In this classic, Clym Yeobright returns to Egdon Heath from Paris, intending to settle down and improve the lives of his townspeople. But the alluring and mysterious Eustacia Vye has other plans. Like so many of Hardy’s masterpieces, The Return of the Native is both a rich character study and a critical examination of Victorian society.

Critically acclaimed author David Schickler made a splash with Kissing in Manhattan, a best-selling story collection that Booklist said is "magical" and "never ceases to amaze and impress". Now this gifted writer's extraordinary imagination produces a brazen novel that reads like Bonnie and Clyde meets Robin Hood.

Deeply affected by a teenaged affair with a man nearly three times her age, Marcy Bunkleman subtly shapes the lives of everyone she meets. As she and the people closest to her tell their stories, an incredible picture emerges of secrets and lies, of knowledge and ignorance, and gradually of people longing to recapture those moments of effortless goodness in their lives. As Huddle gently strips away the layers of stories we tell ourselves and others, we find the strengths and weaknesses of people like ourselves.

The Silver Fleece, cotton, could be the answer to Zora and Bles' prayers in overcoming poverty. While attending Miss Smith's School in rural Alabama, they lovingly nurture their crop. But, the white aristocracy is determined to control the price of cotton and monopolize the market. Can two young lovers prevail despite the daunting obstacles laid before them?