Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Psychological

In the setting of what is present-day Kazakhstan, Tolstoy examines two psychological problems. The first dilemma is that of a young man who desires both fulfilling love and a place as a respected member of society. The other is the difficulty of a primitive society to accept domination by a higher culture that has no understanding of the traditions it asks its colonists to cast aside.

Unable to approach her own long-buried history of loss and displacement, Historian Joan Severance takes refuge in the cool library rooms and the crumbling probate lists from Renaissance times. As Joan's disturbed, hyperintuitive mind falls increasingly under the spell of Valparuta and the charismatic resident archivist, Chiesa, a beautifully dressed heroin addict, she is forced to confront her long-submerged past.

Hayley Jo Zimmerman is gone. Taken. And the people of the small town of Twisted Tree must come to terms with this terrible loss and their place in it. In this brilliantly written novel, one girl's story unfolds through the stories of those who knew her.

When we meet septuagenarian Margaret Hughes, she is living alone in a mansion in Seattle with only a massive collection of valuable antiques for company. Enter Wanda Schultz, a young woman with a broken heart who has come to Seattle to search for her wayward boyfriend. Both women are guarding dark secrets and have spent many years building up protective armor against the outside world.

The world has changed forever. Across America, technology has been eclipsed by magic, and people are changing into the embodiments of their darkest desires and deepest fears. In this new time, former lawyer Cal Griffin has united a small group of outcasts to battle the chaos.

Told simultaneously from the perspective of humans and chimpanzees, A Beautiful Truth - at times brutal, other times deeply moving - is about the simple truths that transcend species, the meaning of family, the lure of belonging, and the capacity for survival. Looee is forever set apart, a chimp raised by a well-meaning and compassionate human couple in Vermont who cannot conceive a baby of their own. He's not human, but with his peculiar upbringing he is no longer like other chimps. One tragic night Looee's two natures collide, and this unique family is forever changed.

When Joshua and Nathalie Sandler's only child, 14-year-old Daniel, disappears one day in a town in western Massachusetts, their world changes in an instant. Over the next year, Joshua neglects everything else to search ceaselessly for their son, while Nathalie, a gifted cellist, withdraws into herself, unable to play a note of music.

Pablo Medina has written a new novel, a radiant journey through the mind of Amadeo Terra, a Cuban cigar factory worker confined in a Florida hospital after a stoke has left him paralyzed. His body no longer works, but his mind is very much alive, as is his ruthless and audacious wit. His only human contact is with the callous nurse who constantly scolds him, the orderly who barely acknowledges him, and the nun who prays for Amadeo's salvation while he fantasizes about what's under her habit.

Rooted in an actual case of wife-selling in early nineteenth-century England, the story builds into an awesome Sophoclean drama of guilt and revenge, in which the strong, willful Henchard rises to a position of wealth and power, only to achieve a most bitter downfall. Proud, obsessed, ultimately committed to his own destruction, Henchard is, as Albert Guerard has said, "Hardy's Lord Jim...his only tragic hero and one of the greatest tragic heroes in all fiction."

It is a moment in the near future when the threat of terror has cultivated rage, apathy, and panic across the country. For Phil, a dermatologist at the UCLA hospital, it is a time of unease, in contrast to the days when he coasted through life on his good looks and middling charm. In addition to having to deal with his mother, Edith, who's emerging after years of grieving over her late husband, Phil has been recruited for a secret terror-response team. The assignment just may provide an ordinary man a chance at heroism.

"You're in a slump." Nick Lasseter's boss is talking about his job performance as a reporter for the Waterloo Weekly, but he might as well be talking about Nick's whole life. His current assignment, a profile of a legendary liberal ex-congressman, is in trouble even before the subject abruptly dies.

The Professor, the first novel that Charlotte Brontë completed, is based on her experiences as a language student in Brussels in 1842. Told from the point of view of William Crimsworth, the only male narrator she created, the work questions many of the presuppositions of Victorian society.

When Jake Conason goes to a party at his Jefferson University fraternity house, he's sitting on top of the world. He's got great grades, a gorgeous girlfriend named Jordan, and an almost certain acceptance to his dream law school. He's golden, set to ride a wave of opportunity and advantage far into his adulthood. Little does he know that the moment he walks into the party his life will change forever.

Until he was nine years old, when he was adopted into a loving family, Jody was a little boy whose only experience of love was a painful, twisted hell. Now, two decades later, he moves from one woman to another, pointedly avoiding love - the thing he wants most but has never known how to give or take. Jody trusts only his wise and faithful dog Einstein to truly understand him and the darkness that haunts his life even in the bright light of a summer’s day. A chance meeting with Tess, an elderly woman still mourning her long-dead son, sends Jody on a journey back to the tortured memories buried deep below his scars.

Back to Wando Passo is a passionate and elegantly written story of two related love triangles: one marriage unraveling in the present day, and another one shattered by the Civil War. The interweaving stories build to a simultaneous crescendo of betrayal, revenge, and redemption.

After Richard Zale receives news of the death of a childhood friend, he returns to their hometown to pay his respects. It isn’t long, however, before old frictions and a new puzzle emerge, drawing him deeper into the mystery of his friend’s demise.

This dark yet funny story is told by a man who for two months has been a patient at a New York City mental ward. Having suffered a breakdown, he now finds himself caught between two worlds: the world of the ward, where abnormality and an odd sort of freedom reign, and the outside world, where convention and restrictive behavior rule. Finally on his way to becoming reasonably "normal" again, he is granted a “solo pass”, which allows him to leave the ward for several hours and visit the city.

Martin Harris returns home after a short absence to find that his wife doesn’t know him, another man is living in his house under his name, and the neighbors think he’s a raving lunatic. Worse, not a single person - family, colleague, or doctor - can vouch for him. Worse still, the impostor shares all of Martin’s memories, experiences, and knowledge, down to the last detail. He is, in fact, a more convincing Martin than Martin himself.

Gerard sits, fully clothed, in his empty bathtub and pines for Benna. Neighbors in the same apartment building, they share a wall, and Gerard listens for the sound of her toilet flushing. Gerard loves Benna. And then Benna loves Gerard. She listens to him play piano, she teaches poetry, and sings at nightclubs. As their relationship ebbs and flows, through reality and imagination, Lorrie Moore paints a captivating, innovative portrait of men and women in love and not in love.

Harms' Way takes us into the chilling world of a supermax detention facility where America's most psychotic killers are kept in solitary confinement. Yet as we get to know Ethan and explore this world through his wry humor and tragic sense of destiny, we find ourselves uncomfortably at home.