Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Psychological

Andrew Thale is not exactly thrilled when his overbearing father sends him on an errand to assess the property inherited from an eccentric aunt. Andrew is intrigued though, when he finds the house fully occupied. Its odd and interesting residents have a calming effect on him, especially the beautiful young woman named Tarragon. But his arrival seems to have set a series of mysterious events into motion. Narrator John McDonough’s engaging performance lets you share in the excitement and camaraderie.

For Nikki and Sadie, life at Loch Raven College was supposed to be filled with poetry and days spent trying on thrifted clothes. But there's a dark story that plagues the school halls—that of the Sylvia Club, a campus legend surrounding the death of multiple Sylvia Plath-adoring girls, all written off as suicides. Aspiring writer Nikki finds herself drawn to the stories, so much so that dead girls begin to haunt her dark imagination. To satiate her obsession, Nikki begins to dig into the deaths, and she soon suspects there's more to the story than just a tragic group of sad girls.

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, The Devil's Dream is an animated, lyrical novel that is meant to be savored as spoken word. Consummate storyteller Lee Smith's creation will delight anyone who enjoys the sound of language and a good story.

At sixty-six years old, Winston Kemper has always been a nonentity. No one notices him. His simple existence barely registers for those who come into contact with him. Some call him feeble-minded. He is a janitor at the local church, a groundskeeper by default, and that’s it. No friends, no family. When he’s done with work, he returns home—a remote, single room apartment located above a garage—and that is where his true work begins.

This fictionalized memoir of the award-winning author, Gloria Naylor, tells a story of a massive covert surveillance operation perpetrated against her by an official of the U.S. government. This domestic spying both destroys the peace and...

With My Annihilation, Fuminori Nakamura, master of literary noir, has constructed a puzzle box of a narrative in the form of a confessional diary that implicates its reader in a heinous crime. Delving relentlessly into the darkest corners of human consciousness, My Annihilation interrogates the unspeakable thoughts all humans share that can be monstrous when brought to life, revealing with disturbing honesty the psychological motives of a killer.

A consummate storyteller in the Southern tradition, Lee Smith tugs at her listeners' heartstrings with this haunting narrative that reads like a country ballad. Touching, funny, and sad, its down-to-earth characters are somehow familiar and endearing as they do their best to meet the demands of daily life.

With this fifth pulse-pounding entry in his Christy Award-winning series, best-selling author Steven James explores the rippling effects of life’s everyday choices. While investigating a double homicide in an isolated Wisconsin town, Special Agent Patrick Bowers uncovers a high-tech conspiracy that twists through long-buried Cold War secrets and targets present-day tensions in the Middle East.

Philip Roth, one of the best-known and award winning literary masters of our time, engages his readership with insightful and challenging novels of the human condition. With The Dying Animal, he revisits the character David Kepesh. At age 60, Kapesh is drawn out of his carefully ordered existence and into an obsessive affair with one of his students.

As a 14-year-old girl in London, Alice survived a horrific stabbing attack by two classmates obsessed with Mister Tender, a graphic novel character created by Alice's own father. Now, a decade later and an ocean away, Alice is trying to focus on the present - but the past won't leave her alone. Someone knows far more than they should - not just about the night she's tried so hard to forget, but also deeply private details about Alice's life.

Fuminori Nakamura's Akutagawa Prize-winner plunges us into the depths of a young man's winding, troubled psyche. An unnamed taxi driver in Tokyo has experienced a rupture in his everyday life. He cannot stop daydreaming of suicide, envisioning himself returning to the earth in what soon become terrifying blackout episodes. His live-in girlfriend, Sayuko, is in a similarly bad phase, surrendering to alcoholism to escape the memory of her miscarriage.

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.

Raised in a magnificent Charleston house, Jessie Roland wants for nothing. But as she grows into young adulthood, all she feels is loss and a desperate need to break free from the stifling possessiveness of her parents. Somewhere, in the deepest part of herself, Jessie believes that the world she has always lived in is not the one she came from...or belongs in. Now, at 19, she has escaped to Washington, DC, where no one knows her, and where she is swept into a whirlwind marriage to a Texas senator's son.

Jake knows the woman sitting next to him on his business flight to Denver - he just can't figure out how he knows her. Clara Stowe isn't in Jake's line of work. They have nearly nothing in common apart from a deep and shared certainty that they've met before. As their airplane conversation deepens, both struggle to figure out what circumstances could have possibly brought them together. Then, in a revelation that sends Jake reeling, Clara admits she's traveling to the Colorado mountains to kill herself, and she disappears into the crowded airport immediately after landing.

Her only daughter has just gone away to college, and Maggie O'Farrell knows she's turning into one of those helicopter parents she used to mock. But Maggie can't shake the feeling that something terrible is about to happen to Emma. And then, just as Maggie starts to relax, her daughter disappears. The clues are disturbing. An empty dorm room where Emma was supposedly living. A mysterious boy described as Future Husband in her phone. Dormmates who seem more sinister than friendly.

When Natalie Shelton thinks back to how things were before the car accident, she remembers a great marriage. She and her husband, Zack, seem as strong and dependable together as the houses he builds. They live in Portland, Oregon, and Natalie is co-owner of a successful accounting firm. They're happy, she's almost sure of it. Yet as Natalie lies trapped in a coma, unable to communicate though aware of everything around her, she realizes that her husband is hiding something.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The last thing Maura Thomas remembers before her car careened over a steep embankment is having dinner with her college roommate - over 20 years ago. Everything in between is a blank. Maura has no recollection of her husband, her daughter, or her busy, glamorous existence as owner of a Beverly Hills boutique. Maura can't even be sure that everyone around her is who they claim to be. Is it paranoia or self-preservation that makes her uneasy?

Jacob, a middle-aged architect living in Copenhagen, is in the alcohol-soaked throes of a bitter divorce when he receives an unexpected call from his great-uncle Anton, who is in his 90s and still lives with his brother, Anders, on their rural Jutland farm - a place Jacob hasn't visited since the summer of 1978. Anton asks Jacob to answer the question that has haunted them both for decades: What happened to Ellen? To find out, Jacob must revisit the farm and confront what took place that summer - one defined by his teenage obsession with Ellen.

It came out of the blue. A half-million dollars on graduation day. For Annie Daisy Clark, it was the capital she needed to start a business. Vowing to pay back every penny of it one day, she kept the bag of cash she’d found, and never looked back. Ten years later, Annie’s investment has paid off. The owner of a successful chain of elegant coffee bars, she is blissfully engaged and about to return to Boston for her ten-year college reunion. She also begins making good on her promise. But just as Annie’s life seems complete, the dark history of the money returns to haunt her.

Meet Libby Weeks, author of the mega-bestselling fantasy series the Falling Children—written as “F. T. Goldhero” to maintain her privacy. With the final manuscript months overdue to her publisher and rabid fans around the world growing impatient, Libby is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Already suffering from crippling anxiety, Libby’s symptoms quickly accelerate. After she forgets her dog at the park one day—then almost discloses her identity to the journalist who finds him—Libby has to admit it: she needs help finishing the last book.