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

John Lincoln needs a hot best seller, and finds his salvation in Amy O’Malley, a recent University of Chicago grad who’s worked on the school’s famous sex survey. With Lincoln’s prodding, Amy writes an erotic thriller that draws on her research experience. Her book indeed opens doors for Lincoln — but not in the way he imagined. Meanwhile, Tony Buford, a “professor of happiness studies” at a local college, gently blackmails him into publishing his fantastically mundane poetry.

In his career, Dave Barry has done just about everything - written bestselling nonfiction, won a Pulitzer Prize, seen his life turned into a television series. And now, at last, he has joined the long list of literary figures from Jane Austen to Tolstoy who have made the transition from humor columnist to novelist - and done it with a style and inventiveness that establishes that, yes, he is very good at that, too.

The United States prides itself on being the world’s melting pot, but during a long, hot summer in coastal North Carolina, three young people will put that theory to the test. A German named Tillmann is vacationing in the States with his girlfriend and corresponding with an African American colleague about the evolution of blues music.

The Wahoo Rhapsody is just one of countless fishing charters plying the waters of the Pacific between Cabo San Lucas and San Diego. But chances are good the Rhapsody is the only boat with a fortune in marijuana hidden inside a fresh catch of yellowfin tuna. This special cargo is the handiwork of first mate Weevil Ott, who is smuggling the pot on behalf of a mysterious drug lord known only as “La Cucaracha.” Since Captain Winston Weber is blissfully unaware of the secret tucked inside his ship’s hull, the operation runs smoothly…

The puppy started it. The poor thing was cold and trembling, abandoned on their front doorstep. Dash, impulsive as always, decides on the spot that they should keep it. But her husband, Andrew, thinks it's the craziest thing he's ever heard. A fight over a scruffy little dog doesn't seem like much of a reason to walk out on your husband of 20 years - but the spat over the puppy is just the last of many straws.

Forty-six-year-old divorcée Christine is finally happy - or so she thinks. She has an amazing boyfriend but she also has a drama-filled family she fears might scare him off. And when Christine spies her dependable Aunt Inge in the company of a man who is most certainly not her husband, it sends the family drama into overdrive - and delivers an unexpected wake-up call to Christine. Because after witnessing the newfound passion with which 60-something Inge is tackling each day, Christine becomes aware of the mounting frustrations in her supposedly fabulous life. Sick and tired of playing it safe, Christine finally decides the time has come to make some big changes.

Created by Don Quinn, the co-creator of Fibber McGee & Molly, The Halls of Ivy was a situation comedy series that ran on NBC radio from 1950 through 1952. Originally slated to star Gale Gordan and Edna Best, the lead roles went to British husband-and-wife actors Ronald and Benita Colman. The Colman’s were well versed at comedy and already a hit with radio fans having played Jack Benny’s next-door-neighbor on The Jack Benny Program for years. Ronald Colman played William Todhunter Hall, the urbane president of small, rural Ivy College. 

After the performance of a lifetime at the sold-out Stade de France, comic Édouard Bresson decides to vanish. Très drôle. His estranged son Arthur isn’t laughing. Édouard has sent him a letter and instructions to a puzzle - a treasure hunt for the son he ignored and misses and loves. If Arthur is willing to find out everything there is to know about his father and to understand the choices he made, all he has to do is put the pieces together. As the trail of clues winds its way through the past, what unfolds is a surprising journey of forgiveness, family, and self-discovery.

Created by Irving Brecher, The Life of Riley starred William Bendix as Brooklyn-born Chester A. Riley, a family man who worked as an airplane riveter at the fictional Cunningham Aircraft plant in California. The stories were usually set at home, with Riley cheerfully disrupting life with his malapropisms and ill-timed intervention into minor problems. His stock answer to every turn of fate “what a revoltin' development this is!” became a popular catchphrase.

Charlie is already feeling adrift when she relocates to an exclusive town in coastal New England with her mysteriously distant husband, Dev, and their young twins in tow. She hopes the move will recharge her stalled marriage, and she wants her kids to feel like they belong, even if she’s clearly a fish out of water herself. In a strange new world where summer is a verb and both the harbor and the partygoers are awash in a dizzying constellation of pinks and pastels, she’s never felt so confounded or alone. She’ll need more than a preppy handbook to find her way.

Freshly graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, Veridian Sterling is ready to hang her work in any of the countless New York galleries that are sure to give her a show. The problem is only one will, and they’re not interested in her art so much as her personal assistant skills. No glitz, no glam, and definitely none of the money she needs to help her struggling mother finally realize her dream of starting her own business after having sacrificed everything for Veri to go to art school.

Will Easterly leads a great life in Chicago. The postcollege uncertainty of his twenties behind him, he’s married to Rachel Armas, love of his life, and in just a few months he’ll become a father too. But instead of feeling excited, he finds himself doubting his ability to be a good parent. Probably because his own dad walked out when Will was only a kid. So the day Rachel comes home in tears, he jumps at the chance to bury his own insecurities and focus on her. Turns out she was just offered her dream job…in Los Angeles.

Holly Banks could not have made a worse first impression on the seemingly perfect moms in her new affluent community, the Village of Primm. Turns out wearing pink piggy pajama bottoms while dropping off her kindergartener late to the first day of school wasn’t her best look.

Unwritten in the annals of the sporting world is the story of a man with unlimited potential who was denied his rightful place in the lore of golf...It is a story that might never have been told had Charley Hunter not accepted a summer internship at Butler & Yates, a prestigious Atlanta law firm. Bobby Jones, the legendary amateur golfer, had once been a partner at the firm and his old legal files had been severely neglected over the years.

Dark, lanky, and bald, New York-raised photographer Sabre Cumberbatch can’t tell if she’s highly talented or just highly Instagrammable. Up to here with art critics and their gaseous praise, Sabre returns to Barbados, her childhood island home, to water her roots. She needs to quell self-doubt by doing something—anything—profoundly important. Welcoming her with bejeweled open arms is her aunt Aggie, a fearsome high-society attorney eager to show off her famous American niece. When Sabre witnesses Aggie unleash her wrath on the household staff over a minor mistake, Sabre finds her cause.

Frances Mathews doesn’t get out much since her husband died, but that doesn’t stop her from jump-starting a campaign to create a hedgehog highway in Hilltop Place—feeding stations, holes at the bottoms of gates and fences, and wild garden areas for hibernation. To Frances’s delight, her neighbours are on board. Mostly.

A year after forest fires ravaged the town of Crow Valley and claimed the life of Dale Jepson―karaoke legend, local prison guard, and all-around good guy―the community hosts a high-stakes karaoke competition. But when a convicted murderer escapes from nearby Crow Valley Correctional, residents discover there’s more on the line than local, perhaps even national, karaoke fame.

Yang Wei wakes to find himself still a patient at the hospital. Somehow, he’s aged decades overnight and is confined to the geriatric ward on a massive Hospital ship as it floats along a bloodred sea full of unsightly things. But human remains and sea nymphs are perhaps nothing compared to the goings-on belowdecks.