Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Literary Fiction

Carol Wiley Cassella burst onto the literary scene with her debut novel Oxygen, which became a national best-seller and won reams of critical praise. In this engaging follow-up, a Seattle physician has to reevaluate life and career when her husband’s business crashes. Through this tale of love and medical wonder, Cassella uses her 25 years of experience in the medical industry to inform a work of emotional distinction and penetrating insight.

Ben has just returned from a war waged against a nameless enemy. To avoid being nabbed by police and forced to work in a factory, he’ll need to find a wife. But to do that, he must wear a bachelor’s suit—and the tailor won’t make one for him.

Political activist and best-selling author Randall Robinson is a pillar of scholarship and insight within the African-American literary community. His acclaimed novel Makeda stars Gray March, a young man who, beginning in the 1950s, embarks on a journey of spiritual and historical enlightenment through stories he hears from his blind grandmother.

While her 77-year-old husband lies upstairs, dying, Anna Robison spends her depleting energy defending their home. Their three middle-aged daughters and 23-year-old granddaughter have invaded, radiating vigor and good intentions. But the younger women temper their help with squabbling, ill-considered advice, and an abundant supply of their own problems.

In the smoky darkness of the local watering hole, two preppy college boys come in for a drink and end up changing three old buddies forever. After being savagely beaten by his wife's lover, a husband crosses the border into Mexico for a night of wild action that soon escalates out of hand. The aged proprietor of the local furniture emporium doesn't have friends, doesn't watch TV, doesn't smoke, drink, or go out, and has never attended a parade, festival, concert, play, or any other public ceremony.

Doc Blaine must drive 3,000 head of cattle from Texas to Kansas, and needs his sons Jared and Miles to help. Unfortunately, his sons are in love with the same woman - and have vowed to kill each other on sight.

Often hailed as the heir apparent to Wallace Stegner, Ivan Doig is among the finest chroniclers of the contemporary American West. In Mountain Time, Lexa McCaskell and Mitch Rozier leave their Seattle home to visit Mitch’s dying father in Montana. There Mitch clashes with both Lexa and his father as events from the past are explored and difficult memories resurface.

It was a fire that could be seen for miles, a fire that split the community, a fire that turned families on each other, a fire that it's still hard to get a straight answer about. A quarter of a century ago, someone held a match to Greenwood, Texas's cotton. Stephen Graham Jones was 12 that year. What he remembers best, what's stuck with him all this time, is that nobody ever came forward to claim that destruction. And nobody was ever caught. Greenwood just leaned forward, pretending that the fire had never happened.

A legendary figure in Latin jazz and author of Mi Vida Saxual, Paquito D'Rivera pens the adventures of Pucho Escalante, an energetic Cuban trombone player. Such characters as Ernest Hemingway, Celia Cruz, Olga Guillot, and even Superman appear in this story, set in the city of Havana, Cuba.

One of Jane Austen's most complex and mature works, Mansfield Park shows the writer at the top of her form, tackling the manners and customs of early 19th-century society with wit and irony that still resonate with readers two centuries after the book's initial publication. Flo Gibson's compelling narration gives perfect voice to the trials and tribulations of Fanny Price, sent at a young age to live with her rich relations.

Part of Ivan Doig’s acclaimed Montana trilogy, English Creek revolves around Jick McCaskill, a 14-year-old growing up in 1930s Montana. This incandescent coming-of-age tale dramatizes the climatic events of one summer that inevitably mark Jick’s awakening from childhood to adulthood.

Best-selling author Elizabeth Berg has published fiction and nonfiction in The New York Times Magazine, Ladies’ Home Journal, and New Woman. She has been nominated for a National Magazine Award for her graceful, witty writing. In The Pull of the Moon, she alternates letters and journal entries to trace a middle-aged woman’s impulsive, and solitary, drive across country.

Karen Tei Yamashita has been honored with the American Book Award and Janet Heidinger Kafka Award. A stunning portrait of Asian Americans in 1960s and ’70s San Francisco, I Hotel is a remarkable collection of 10 related novellas. Touching on such topics as Japanese internment camps and the Marcos dictatorship, the book presents readers with characters of rich design.

In 1970s Boston, the glossy veneer of 16-year-old Sarah Kunitz’s wealthy family is starting to show cracks. Her parents’ constant fighting and her mother’s prescription pill abuse drive Sarah into two romantic relationships with unforeseen consequences. With grief fresh in her heart, Sarah wonders if she or her family will ever love again.

Meet Mattie Rigsby, 78, who keeps a clean house and bakes the best pound cake in Listre, North Carolina. Her children grown, she lives a comfortable and independent life. Her orderly days are about to be disrupted, however, by a stray. Unkempt and unloved, teenaged and delinquent, Wesley Benfield just might need a piece of her apple pie and a verse or two of "Walking Across Egypt", her favorite hymn.

Jackie is a poor boy from Harlem and the victim of abuse from his widowed, alcoholic father. But everything changes on the day he discovers the power of comedy. When his classmates make fun of his tattered clothes, Jackie turns everything around by freely poking fun at himself and soon has everyone on the floor with laughter. His amazing talent, and raging ambition, take him through the local club circuit to become the most sought after comedic entertainer in opulent, '50s Las Vegas and beyond.

It has been five years since famed artist Lowell Haven painted one of his gloriously narcissistic self portraits. The estrangement of his daughter, Merit, is the main reason why. Now Lowell's partner Fergus hopes to lure Merit home by throwing an extravagant gala at the family's 65-room estate in Ohio.

In The Bible Salesman, Preston Clearwater is scoring cash working a car-theft ring in post-World War II North Carolina. When he picks up 19-year-old Bible salesman Henry Dampier, Preston convinces the kid that he's an FBI spy. And before Henry knows what's up, he finds himself in way over his head with no apparent way out.

Mario Alfieri, the world's most famous tenor, is preparing to make his debut at the Met. As he rents a house facing Gramercy Park, he discovers a pale young woman hiding in its music room. Her love and secrets soon mesmerize the great man. Set in turn-of-the-century New York, this is a tale of passion, intrigue, and murder.

Best-selling author Joshua Mohr’s work has been chosen as a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. Here he takes listeners to 2003 San Francisco as the country divides into groups for and against the Iraq War. Damascus, a dive bar in the Mission District, becomes the unlikely setting for a showdown between the opposing sides. Tensions come to a boil when the bar’s proprietor agrees to host a show by an ambitious artist with a flair for the dramatic.