Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Literary Fiction

Mark's parents have never done a thing for him. When he got out of the army and married Krystal, they were against it, just as they are against his moving to Los Angeles. But Mark has a dream, a dream of being an entertainer, of having a show in Las Vegas. So he packs Krystal and their son, Hans, into their car and starts driving from Arizona to California, determined to show his parents how wrong they are to doubt him. But when the car breaks down at a small gas station in the desert, Mark and Krystal are forced to face realities about their future and their marriage.

April's father, a psychology professor, has had a breakdown and has landed in the Alta Vista State Hospital. Her stepmother, Claire, is just waiting for him to get out so she can leave on a trip to Italy - a trip April is worried Claire won't come back from. She needs Claire, at least until she finishes high school. She needs her not just as a companion but as a worldly woman who can tell April about men and their desires…men far different from her boyfriend, Stuart.

Hooper, a Vietnam veteran, finds himself at an army base in Washington State. His days are uneventful, filled with mundane duties, empty conversations, and the occasional jaunt with a married woman. A phone call in the middle of the night breaks Hooper's predictable routine. One of the guards at the communications center is threatening to kill himself - and says he'll shoot the other guard if he interferes. Hooper goes to talk to the distressed soldier, a cook nicknamed "Porkchop" who's disappointed by his life as an army man.

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in the New Yorker. Dámaso Funes is a medical miracle. He didn't make a sound when he was born, and as the years go by it's found that he doesn't feel pain. Not when he picks up hot coals with his bare hands or when he breaks his leg. To his father he is a sideshow freak, a spectacle from which he can make money, but to the village doctor who delivered him he is much more. He is a marvel, a wonder of genetics - the next step of human evolution.

Lonnie is tired. He's tired of his job, the monotony of it, and tired of the predictability ofhis home life now that he's a father. It's a day like every other day, and hecan't face the inevitability of it all. So he lies. It's a small lie, but heknows small lies become big ones. He knows it as soon as he says his daughteris in the hospital. But he can't stop himself, and he can't stop the lie fromtaking on a life of its own.

Kate Chopin is a widely considered a forerunner to the feminist authors of the twentieth century. Focusing on themes of race andgender, her short stories largely center on life in rural Louisiana. In "A Pair of Silk Stockings," a young woman unexpected finds herself with fifteen dollars.Inspired by her newfound wealth, she ignores her natural impulses and indulgesin a day of luxurious abandon. A wistful rumination on loss and the illusion ofcontrol, "A Pair of Silk Stockings" is Chopin at her absolute best.

Sherwood Anderson's most enduring work, Winesburg, Ohio, is considered one of earliest works of modernistliterature. The sequence of short stories centers on the life of George Willardand those who live in the rural, pre-industrial town. "Adventure," a shortstory within the novel, tells the tale of Alice Hindman, a twenty-somethinggirl, and her continued devotion to her former lover Ned Currie, who left her toseek his fortune in Chicago.

Foreign correspondent Lola Wicks is livid. She's been downsized from her Kabul posting. Her editor reassigns her to a stateside suburban beat formerly the province of interns. When she arrives in Montana for some R&R at a friend's cabin, her friend is nowhere in sight. Anger turns to terror when Lola discovers her friend shot dead. She can't get out of Montana fast enough, until she finds that she can't get out at all.

A young English teacher falls - glass first - into a love affair and the world of wine when he meets a famous and enchanting sommelier. Before Peter Hapworth meets Izzy, he knows the difference between pinot noir and peanut butter, but that's about it. Lonely and frustrated with his academic career - as well as with dating - his life takes a sudden turn one night when he turns on the television. He's transfixed by the woman staring back at him, a glass of wine swirling delicately in her hand - Isabelle Conway, one of the preeminent sommeliers in the world.

In a cave in the Shenandoah National Park, two bodies are discovered, wrapped in the tattered remains of a lover's knot quilt. In Washington, D.C., Isaac Taylor inherits a nearly identical quilt from a grandmother whose name he never even knew. After narrowly escaping death, newspaper journalist Kendra Taylor retreats to a cabin nestled in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley to heal and sort out her feelings about her troubled marriage.

As the US and global economies in the 21st century head toward a major recession, and companies worldwide struggle to survive, one businessman is tempted to turn to crime. Two strong businessmen who run a colossal international management consulting and accounting firm find themselves battling one another to save it, each proposing a different way of preventing its collapse. One is the CEO and founder, an amoral, ruthless megalomaniac; the other is the senior-most executive who expects to succeed the CEO as head of the company and a principled but flawed idealist.

After sisters Laure and Marie learn of their parents’ plan to sell the family’s summer retreat, L’Agapanthe, they devise a scheme for attracting a wealthy suitor who can afford to purchase the estate. For the sisters, it has become a necessary part of their character, their lifestyle, and their past. L’Agapanthe is the perfect venue to exercise proper etiquette and intellect, though not all its visitors are socially savvy - especially when it’s a matter of understanding the relationship between old money and the nouveau riche.

The Trespasser, first published in 1912, was Lawrence's second novel and foreshadowed the passion of Lady Chatterley's Lover. Helena Verden, a young woman in her late 20s, and Siegmund MacNair, her violin teacher, are in love. But there is more than one obstacle to their happiness. Siegmund is a married man with children and Helena is full of inhibitions. They spend a week together on the Isle of Wight, their passion remaining unrequited. When they return to London, Siegmund faces a deadlock. Tormented by his family's bitter reproaches, he is nonetheless unable to desert them for Helena. His solution to his dilemma turns a woman's longing for love into tragedy. Lawrence based his novel on the true-life experiences of his friend Helen Corke, as revealed in her diaries.

Claire Boltwood and her father drive their Gomez-Dep roadster from Minnesota to Seattle, exposing themselves to all the perils of early motoring. They encounter the upper-crust Boltwoods who are at once more noble and more insignificant. Other class barriers exist between Claire and a mechanic named Milt, who, along with his cat, follows close behind.

Claude Wheeler resembles the youngest son of an American fairy tale. His fortune is ready-made for him, but he refuses to settle for it. Alienated from his crass father and pious mother, all but rejected by a wife who reserves her ardor for missionary work, and dissatisfied with farming, Claude is an idealist without an ideal to cling to. It is only when his country enters the First World War that Claude finds what he has been searching for all his life.

This short novel follows the fate of Sissy Jupe, a warm-hearted circus child, and the family that adopts her. Deserted by her ailing father, Sissy is taken into the cold household of the Gradgrind family, which operates a school. The "eminently practical" Thomas Gradgrind believes only in facts and figures and has raised his children accordingly, thoroughly suppressing the imaginative side of their nature, and the consequences are devastating.

Nineteen-year-old Kate Brady joined the army to bring honor to her family and democracy to the Middle East. Instead, she finds herself in a forgotten corner of the Iraq desert in 2003, guarding a makeshift American prison. There, Kate meets Naema Jassim, an Iraqi medical student whose father and little brother have been detained in the camp. Kate and Naema promise to help each other, but the war soon strains their intentions. Like any soldier, Kate must face the daily threats of combat duty, but as a woman, she is in equal danger from the predatory men in her unit.

The House of Mirth was Edith Wharton's first great novel. Set among the elegant brownstones of New York City and opulent country houses like gracious Bellomont on the Hudson, the novel creates a satiric portrayal of what Wharton herself called "a society of irresponsible pleasure-seekers" with a precision comparable to that of Proust.

What would you say to a young stranger who wishes to die? What arguments would you use to restore his will to live? What ideas and ideals would you invoke to save him? Faced with that dilemma, the principal character of Elie Wiesel's magnificent novel - an old wanderer named Azriel - decides to tell a story: his own. The very one he was not supposed to tell, the one he had pledged to keep to himself.

Topanga Canyon es el hogar de dos parejas cuyos destinos están a punto de chocar. El estilo liberal de vida de Delaney y Kyra Mossbacker les permite gozar de una existencia sencilla y placentera en una nueva comunidad privada. El es un escritor amante de la naturaleza, y ella una obsesiva agente de bienes y raices. Cándido y América Rincón son mexicanos ilegales que desesperadamente buscan alcazar el sueño americano mientras luchan por sobrevivir acampando a las orillas de un rio.