Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio" in Literature & Fiction

Benjamin arrives with his parents for a tour of Roaring Orchards, a therapeutic boarding school tucked away in upstate New York. Suddenly, his parents are gone and Benjamin learns that he is there to stay. Sixteen-years-old, a two-time failed suicide, Benjamin must navigate his way through a new world of “popped privileges”, “candor meetings”, “morning meds”, and “cartoon brunches” - all run by adults who themselves have yet to really come of age.

With this satirical novella, English schoolmaster Edwin A. Abbott provides both a mathematical fantasy and pointed observations on the social hierarchy of Victorian culture. The narrator, “a Square,” resides in the fictional two-dimensional world of Flatland. When he is visited by a sphere, he is suddenly faced with proof of the existence of three dimensions and is forced to see the limitations of his world.

David Wilson is called "Pudd'nhead" by the townspeople, who fail to understand his combination of wisdom and eccentricity. He redeems himself by simultaneously solving a murder mystery and a case of transposed identities.

Topper is a hilarious, ribald comedy about a mild-mannered bank manager and two capricious ghosts, George and Marion Kerby, who make it their mission to rescue Topper from the drab "summer of suburban Sundays" that is his life.

Two American travelers have been killed—one with poison, the other with a knife through the heart—and the only clues at the scene are a woman’s wedding ring and the German word for “vengeance” written in blood. The military surgeon Dr. John Watson is brought in to investigate, along with his clever, arrogant new roommate, Sherlock Holmes.

In his first published work in prose, James Joyce paints vivid portraits of the people of Dublin, his city of birth, in a collection of stories whose larger purpose, he said, was to depict a "moral history of Ireland". From the first story, in which a young boy encounters death, to the haunting final story involving the middle-aged Gabriel, the book gives an unflinching and realistic portrayal of "dear, dirty Dublin" in the early 20th-century.

Youth in Revolt brings us the journals of Nick Twisp, California's most precocious diarist, whose ongoing struggles to make sense out of high school, deal with his divorced parents, and lose his virginity result in his transformation from an unassuming 14-year-old to a modern youth in open revolt. As his family splinters, worlds collide, and the police block all routes out of town, Nick must cope with economic deprivation, homelessness, and the gulag of the public schools.

As his family splinters, worlds collide, and the police block all routes out of town, Nick Twisp must cope with economic deprivation, homelessness, the gulag of the public schools, a competitive Type-A father, murderous canines (in triplicate), and an inconvenient hair trigger on his erectile response, all while vying ardently for the affections of the beauteous Sheeni Saunders, teenage goddess and ultimate intellectual goad. He's smart, he's horny, he's resourceful, and he's on the loose.

In Youth in Bondage, the second volume of Nick's journals, we find him stuck in Sheeni's hometown of Ukiah, living like an indentured servant with his penny-pinching father while his paramour and her boyfriend are away at school in Santa Cruz. But trouble finds Nick again when the F.B.I. picks up his trail and he must rely on the cahones of his tough alter ego, Francois Dillinger.

He didn't intend to burn half of Berkeley to the ground or create a media frenzy by faking his best friend's suicide or enroll in high school dressed as an elderly Italian woman. However, he did. Nick Twisp started out an honor student and ended up a fugitive. His ongoing struggles to make sense out of high school, deal with his divorced parents, and lose his virginity have resulted in his transformation from an unassuming, precocious 14-year-old to a modern youth in open revolt.

In Banshee, Samantha Baxter - wife, mother, poetry professor - learns she has breast cancer and then ruins her own life. Tumbling through a catastrophic midlife crisis, she gives herself permission to partake in behaviors she's observed in her male colleagues, including having an affair with a student her daughter's age, ranting at board meetings, and telling her poetry students what she really thinks of their work. Underneath biting, witty narration lurks a childish, confused, and unrealized adult woman hell-bent on destroying her relationships and professional life.

Amid the political turmoil of the French Revolution, another revolution is taking place, an ambitious project to remeasure the Paris meridian, thus determining the precise distance from the North Pole to the equator in order to calculate a new base unit of length - the meter - establishing a rational system of measurement based on nature that will unite all people of all nations for all time.

The night world of Old Town, Portland, Oregon, has gone mad in the grip of gentrification, and at the center of it all is Lucky Supreme, a seedy tattoo parlor, whose proprietor is a street-bred artist with a unique approach to problem solving. Darby Holland has enough on his radar, but when some flash (tattoo artwork) stolen from him resurfaces in California, he can't help himself. His efforts to reclaim it set him on a dangerous path, dragging along his delightfully eccentric colleagues.

Eugenia, a baroness divorced from a German prince, and her bohemian brother, Felix, are coming back to America. Raised and cultured in Europe, they are returning destitute to New England to seek out their rich and innocent cousins. In a bungle of culture clash and love triangles, the Europeans hang their fortunes upon their ability to adapt. Where their scheming leads them is the last place they expect.

Penguin Island is Anatole France’s most searching and satirical novel. A humorous critique of customs and laws, rituals and rites, its subject is human nature, but its characters are penguins in the mythical land of Penguinia. The story of the strutting penguins and their virtues and vices is not merely a burlesque allegory of French history, but a satire of the history of mankind.

A young bride shuts herself up in a bedroom on her wedding day, refusing to get married. In this moving and humorous look at contemporary Israel and the chaotic ups and downs of love everywhere, her family gathers outside the locked door, not knowing what to do. The harder they try to reach the defiant woman, the more the despairing groom is convinced her refusal should be respected. But what, exactly, ought to be respected? Is this merely a case of cold feet? A feminist statement? A mourning ritual for a lost sister?