Showing results by publisher "Phoenix Books" in Literary Fiction

A 19th century novel that defied the repressive moral conventions of Victorian England. Young Tess Durbeyfield comes from an impoverished home. Her father, desperate to alleviate the family's financial plight, presses his daughter into work for the wealthy D'Urbervilles. But in doing so, Tess meets the manipulative Alec, who forces himself upon her. And though Tess later meets a kinder man who proposes marriage, her salvation is jeopardized when she reveals to him her troubled past.

In vignettes both comic and sexy, the owner of a coffee shop recalls the day his first wife seemed to achieve a moment of simple perfection, while she remembers the women's softball game during which she was stricken by the beauty of the shortstop. A young couple spends hours at the coffee shop fueling the idea of their fierce love. A professor of philosophy, stopping by for a cup of coffee, makes a valiant attempt to explain what he knows to be the inexplicable workings of the human heart.

Many kids write stories, but only a few of them grow up to be successful authors. Before there was Carrie, there was "Johnathan and the Witchs." And before there was Rabbit Angstrom, Toyota dealer, there was Manuel Cirarro, famous detective. Could we have seen the seeds of success in Stephen King's and John Updike's juvenilia? These young writers are the same people who dominated the best seller lists and occupy the most celebrated spots on bookshelves in our stores, libraries, and homes.

This swashbuckling epic of intrigue, romance, and swordplay has earned a reputation as one of the most thrilling adventure novels ever written. A young Gascon nobleman, D'Artagnan, makes his way to Paris, hoping to join the Musketeers, a legion of heroes held in high esteem by the king. D'Artagnan quickly proves he has the heart of a Musketeer and earns himself a place beside Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. Relying on their wits and skills with the sword, the Musketeers set out to preserve the honor of the king and foil the nefarious schemes of the wicked Cardinal Richelieu.

Heart of Darkness tells of the conflicting drives of two men—Charles Marlow, the captain of a steamboat, and Mr. Kurtz, a mysterious figure who oversees a trading post in Africa. After an arduous journey, Marlow finally encounters Kurtz, and the men come to grips with their differences—and their similarities.

Living in an abandoned apartment building in South-Central L.A., Socrates is one step away from the streets. He bags groceries at the supermarket, collects bottles and cans to recycle for pennies, and feels himself slipping toward invisibility - that is, until he meets 11-year-old Darryl, whose already committed murder and is perilously close to slipping into a life filled with only violence and bloodshed. Socrates' determination to fight for and save Darryl lights his own pathway to self-forgiveness.

In 1930's China, the all-male Peking opera was luxurious entertainment for the privileged class—but only children from the poorest families were sent to opera schools to train as actors. Abandoned by his mother—a prostitute who can no longer care for him—Xiao Douzi is brought to an opera school. With seeds of bitterness in his soul, the nine-year-old boy endures hardships and misery to learn and perfect his craft.

When one of Dr. Rafael Neruda's patients commits a vicious murder and then kills himself, the psychiatrist is compelled to discover the root causes of the crime. Delving into his own painful childhood, he embarks on a desperate personal mission to confront the nature of evil itself. Endangering both his personal and professional future, Neruda devises the ultimate test for his cure for evil— a cure that becomes a shocking journey of eroticism, manipulation, and danger.

This is the classic story of the young Theseus - Prince of Troizen, King of Eleusis and Athens, slayer of the Minotaur. Mary Renault's powerful novel captures the modern imagination by weaving myth, legend, history, and fiction into the story of a young hero's search for his destiny, or moira. If you like The King Must Die, try The Bull from the Sea.

After the violent death of his oldest daughter during a terrorist bombing, small town college professor Alan "Woody" Woodhall finds himself standing in the cemetery where she was buried. Woody is convinced that life has taught him all the lessons he has to learn: His wife has left him, and his two remaining daughters have grown up and moved away. Yet a new life, which Woody both longs for and resists, begins with his decision to attend the trial of the terrorists responsible for his daughter's death.

Life has always been a banquet for Sappho, one to be savored to the fullest. Following a magnificent destiny, her strange and sensual odyssey has carried her to the far corners of the ancient world, from Delphi to Egypt, to the Land of the Amazons, and the realm of Hades. For Sappho, it was always about love—love that seduced her into a plot to depose a dictator, and love that made her trade an unwanted marriage bed of a despised and drunken husband for a seemingly endless series of lovers, both male and female.

At the age of 48, film critic David Denby returned to his alma mater, Columbia University, to re-experience the core humanities courses he had taken as a freshman 30 years before. Facing the question of what he really knows, Denby re-examines the besieged Western classics, ranging from Homer, Sappho, and Sophocles to Dante, Nietzsche, and Woolf. What relevance do the writers and thinkers of the past have to our current life? The answer surprised Denby and will surprise and enlighten his listeners.

Beneath the twin shadows of Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl in Mexico, the Consul is drunk. He staggers from bar to bar hoping to find salvation staining the bottom of the next glass. His lonely existence is disrupted when his former wife, Yvonne, returns with, Hugh, the Consul's half-brother. But the reunion turns sour when a local peasant turns up dead, beginning a series of events that will decide the Consul's fate. In the course of one day an entire life is chronicled, set against the backdrop of Europe during the Spanish Civil War.

In short stories, poems, and monumental novels, James Joyce set out to discover the meaning of his nationality, simultaneously celebrating and ridiculing the history of Ireland in the brilliant style that has made him the most towering figure in the literary landscape of the early 20th century. In this audio, Dublin-born Gabriel Byrne brings to life Joyce's short stories from Dubliners, as well as selections from the brilliant A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and the dream-like Chamber Music.

During the course of a long summer, it becomes clear to two young, lost, and bored Korean War vets that their future lies outside Indianapolis—amid the gleaming towers of Manhattan, where they will find glory, fame, and lots of women. Set in the 1950s, this novel by acclaimed author Dan Wakefield seethes with pent-up frustration and confusion, and nearly every episode bubbles with hilarity.

A baffling series of incidents at the majestic Paris Opera sparks frightening rumors about a mysterious opera ghost. Performers are ill-at-ease when they sit alone in their dressing rooms, alleging to have seen the enigma in evening clothes moving about in the shadows. Then a young and beautiful prima donna is visited by a masked "Angel of Music" who teaches her to sing and jealously demands her devotion—but with a price. With an increasing pattern of fear and violence, the phantom of the opera begins to strike, but always with a beautiful young performer at the center of his deadly desires.

Ivanhoe, a trusted ally of Richard-the-Lionhearted, returns from the Crusades to reclaim the inheritance his father denied him. Ivanhoe defends Rebecca, a vibrant, beautiful Jewish woman, against a charge of witchcraft—but it is Lady Rowena who is Ivanhoe's true love. Richard's brother, the wicked Prince John, plots to usurp England's throne, but Richard and the well-loved famous outlaw, Robin Hood, team up to defeat the Normans and regain the castle. Blending historic reality, chivalric romance, and high adventure, Ivanhoe features action, high drama, adventure, and colorful characters.

A pauper's child reared in a workhouse, young Oliver Twist serves an apprenticeship in a loveless house. Despairing, he runs away and is befriended by a gang of young pickpockets who offer him the only welcome home he has ever known. Falling under the influence of villainous company, the young orphan struggles to escape from a life of poverty and crime, in search of the love he longs for. Oliver Twist is one of Dickens' greatest achievements, a vivid depiction of London's outlaw society with an array of memorable characters.

The welfare of children—a theme of many novels by Charles Dickens—is central to Nicholas Nickleby, the story of a fatherless young man, his mother, and his sister who find themselves at the mercy of a greedy and unscrupulous relative. Nicholas Nickleby is both a vivid indictment of the exploitive, brutal boarding schools of the late 19th century and a celebration of a little family's resilient generosity of spirit. Actor Paul Scofield's performance captures the warmth and charm of this story and its array of colorful characters.

Falsely accused of a crime and betrayed by his closest friend, the weaver Silas Marner has been hoarding his earnings for 15 years. Distanced from his religious community, he has devoted himself to his work and taken pleasure only in counting his coins. Then in a single day, his gold is stolen and a lovely child appears on his doorstep. As he changes his life to meet the irresistible needs of the child, Marner accepts that the loss of the gold was a necessary exchange for the child.