Showing results by publisher "Hachette Audio" in Literary Fiction

It's 1988 at the University of Sussex, where kids sport Mohawks and light up to the otherworldly sounds of the Cocteau Twins, as conversation drifts from structuralism to Thatcher to the bloody Labour students. Hailing from Atlanta, Georgia, David Heller has taken a job as a live-in aide to current quadriplegic and former playboy Hans Bromwell - in part to extend his stay studying abroad, but, in truth, he's looking to escape his own family, still paralyzed by the death of his younger sister 10 years on.

Highly awkward teenager Stanley Owens meets his match in beautiful, brainy Vera Baxter when they tie for first place in the annual national spelling bee - and the two form a bond that will change both of their lives. Though their mothers have big plans for them - Stanley will become a senator, Vera a mathematics professor - neither wants to follow these predetermined paths. So Stanley hatches a scheme to marry Vera in a sham wedding for the cash gifts, hoping they will enable him to pursue his one true love: crossword puzzle construction.

Examining the borders between one nation and another, between one person and another, Urrea reveals his mastery of the short form. This collection includes the Edgar-award winning "Amapola" and his now-classic "Bid Farewell to Her Many Horses," which had the honor of being chosen for NPR's "Selected Shorts" not once but twice.

Welcome to Christmas, Colorado, a charming small town where the beloved sheriff will need a Christmas miracle to convince a hotshot city girl to believe in the magic of the holidays. Resort developer Madison Lane is about to lose the one thing she loves most in the world - her job. Dubbed "The Grinch Who Killed Christmas", Madison spoiled a deal that would turn quaint Christmas, Colorado, into a tourist's winter wonderland. Now the citizens want her fired but the company gives her one last chance, sending Madison to the small town to restore the holiday cheer.

After Henry's girlfriend, Val, leaves him and transfers to another school, his grief begins to manifest itself in bizarre and horrifying ways. Cause and effect, once so reliable, no longer appear to be related in any recognizable manner. Either he's hallucinating, or the strength of his heartbreak over Val has unhinged reality itself.

When Irina - Romanian by birth but brought up by American parents who have never understood her - arrives at college she quickly abandons ordinary student life for an affair with an older, mysterious Romanian man named Andrei. Andrei awakens a powerful sensuality in Irina. And he has money - lots of it. For the first time, Irina feels free.

When Quaker Pastor Sam Gardner is asked by the ill Unitarian minister to oversee a wedding in his place, Sam naturally agrees. It's not until the couple stands before him that he realizes they're two women.

It's been two years since Jessy Lawrence lost her husband in Afghanistan, and she's never fully recovered. Drowning her sorrows didn't help, and neither did the job she'd hoped would give her a sense of purpose. Now trying to rebuild her life, she finds solace in her best friends, fellow military wives who understand what it's like to love - and lose - a man in uniform...and the memory of one stolen night that makes her dream of a second chance at love.

These stories introduce us not only to ordinary people seeking to live extraordinary lives, but also to the skunk ape (a southern variant of Bigfoot), the ghost of Jesse James, and a bone-tired Jack the Giant Killer. Whether it's Appalachia, Nashville, the Carolina Coast, or a make-believe land of talking dogs, each world Earley creates is indelible.

It's 1973, and David Leveraux has landed his dream job as a Flavorist-in-Training, working in the secretive industry where chemists create the flavors for everything from the cherry in your can of soda to the butter on your popcorn. While testing a new artificial sweetener - Sweetness #9 - he notices unusual side-effects in the laboratory rats and monkeys: anxiety, obesity, mutism, and a generalized dissatisfaction with life. David tries to blow the whistle, but he swallows it instead.

Olivia Marsten never imagined she'd be a war bride. But when her childhood best friend surprises her with a marriage proposal, she reluctantly accepts. She can't bear to send him off to serve in the Navy with a broken heart...even though her heart belongs to someone else. Sparks fly the moment mysterious stranger Peter Becker lays eyes on Olivia. He never hesitated to pull her out of harm's way-risking his own life to save hers. Yet as kind as he is handsome, Peter harbors a dark secret.

The nightmares have returned. Something, or someone, wants to drag Julia Davidson back into a dreadful conflict she assumed was a distant memory. Was this, like before, the echo of another person's dream? Is she responsible to rescue faces she doesn't recognize but can't forget? Do the murky images suggest she has a part to play in whatever ominous events lie ahead?

Peter Herring was the center of Anne's universe in college, and now, a few years later, he's become the center of Anna's, and merely a minor player in his ex-girlfriend's world. That is, until Peter and Anna are invited into Anne's parents' home to visit with her dying mother, and he finds himself drawn back into her orbit. Years later, when her own mother is dying, Anna will find herself yearning to reach out to Anne, with whom she had shared such a brief but intimate bond, and find solace in that moment from long ago.

When John Blessing dies and leaves behind two small children, the loss reverberates across his extended family for years to come. His young widow, Lauren, finds solace in her large clan of in-laws, while his brother's wife Kate pursues motherhood even at the expense of her marriage. John's teenage nephew Stephen finds himself involved in an act of petty theft that takes a surprising turn, and nephew Alex, a gifted student, travels to Spain and considers the world beyond his family's Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood.

Jenny Carpenter is the unrivaled pie-baking champion of Last Chance, South Carolina's annual Watermelon Festival and the town's unofficial spinster. With her dream of marriage and children on hold, she focuses on another dream, turning the local haunted house into a charming bed-and-breakfast. But her plans go off course when the home's former owner shows up on her doorstep on a dark and stormy night...

A tragic bus accident sets two families on a course toward destruction, irrevocably altering the lives of everyone in their wake. June McAllister is the wife of the local mill owner and undisputed first lady in town. But the Snow family, a group of itinerant ne'er-do-wells who live on a decrepit and cursed property, have brought her - and the town - nothing but grief. June will do anything to cover up a dark secret she discovers after the crash, one that threatens to upend her picture-perfect life, even if it means driving the Snow family out of town.

Devoted fans of Leila Meacham will devour this long, juicy audiobook. Tumbleweeds is the story of three young friends - the saint, the sinner, and the angel - growing up together in the sort of small Texas Panhandle town that lives and dies by its Friday night football games. A fateful event casts a long shadow over these three intertwined lives and leaves the listener desperate to see how it all plays out.

Howard Kapostash has not spoken in 30 years. Ever since a severe blow to the head during his days in the Army, words unravel in his mouth and letters on the page make no sense at all. Because of his extremely limited communication abilities, a small repertory of gestures and simple sounds, most people think he is disturbed. No one understands that Howard is still the same man he was before enlisting, still awed by the beauty of a landscape, still pining for his high school sweetheart, Sylvia.

When young Armstrong Todd's mother sends him to spend the summer in her native rural Mississippi, the Chicago-bred 15-year-old is unused to the segregated ways of the Deep South. So when the black youth utters a few innocuous words in French to a white woman, he has no idea of the impending firestorm he has ignited. Armstrong ends up paying the ultimate price when the offended woman's husband and his friends decide to teach the youth a lesson.

Ever since shape-shifter Elin escaped to Whidbey Island, danger has stalked her every move. Her human traits, combined with her unique supernatural gifts, make her a prized being to be possessed... or destroyed. It is only the passionate attraction she shares with were-hound Sean Black that gives her hope for her future - if she can elude the lethal predators who are hot on her scent. But Sean carries a secret that binds him to an enemy from the past and to a darker, deadlier force - a malignant evil that is hunting the women of Whidbey Island....