Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Women's Fiction

Coming-of-age meets coming-of-middle-age in this tender exploration of what it means to reinvent yourself. A teenage girl runs away from a life of boredom and poverty, with dreams of becoming a smoke jumper. A middle-aged mother escapes to the mountains to explore her artistic side. Thanks to a snowstorm, Ivy and Mary Ellen find themselves trapped together in an isolated home in the Poconos. Now lying to each other, and themselves, they must confront what kind of people they want to be and - when a near-fatal accident forces them to face the truth - who they really are.

A solid marriage, a thriving business, and the esteem of their close-knit Alabama community - Joyce and Odell Watson have every reason to count their blessings. Their marriage has given well-off Joyce a chance at the family she's always wanted - and granted Odell a once-in-a-lifetime shot to escape grinding poverty. But all that respectability and status comes at a cost. Just once, Joyce and Odell want to break loose and taste life's wild side, without consequences.

Paris Metro is the gripping story of an American journalist compelled to reexamine her convictions as terrorism threatens to engulf her family. It's 2015, and Kit is living in Paris, estranged from her Iraqi diplomat husband and raising their teenage son, Ahmed. When Charlie Hebdo is attacked and a cartoonist friend of hers is killed, and then terrorists storm the Bataclan, Kit's Parisian world is shattered. As she is drawn back into reporting, she begins to suspect that Ahmed may be running with the terrorists.

Three friends. One slim chance to beat the streets. But even when you fight your way out by any means necessary, cold hard cash is still no guarantee you'll escape....

"Nine Lives" by Kiki Swinson: Wild-card Aiden. Dead-shot Ava. Killing nine targets in 10 days will be this brother-sister hit team's biggest score yet. But as Ava sets up their final target, she falls hard for him and a chance at a normal life. "The Crushed Ice Clique" by Noire: At first all ghetto princesses Honore and Cucci want is quick cash-flow. But after sexing jewelry distributor Slimy Sam and learning his illegal tricks of the trade, they assemble a crack team of thieves for one dazzling scam.

Rachel Fleischer has good reasons not to be at her father's deathbed. Foaling season is at hand, and her horses are becoming restless and difficult. Her critical mother and grasping sister could certainly handle Marty Fleisher's resistance better without her. But Malachi, her 80-something horse manager - more father to her than Marty has ever been - convinces Rachel she will regret it if she doesn't go. When a stranger at her father's funeral delivers an odd gift and an apology, Rachel finds herself drawn into the epic story of her father's World War II experience.

Spencer Murphy is a national treasure. A famous correspondent during the Vietnam War who escaped captivity in Southeast Asia, he made a fortune off of his books and television appearances. But Spence is growing forgetful with age; he's started to wander and even fails to come home one night. When a body is discovered at Step Above, the sprawling Murphy house near Steps Beach, Nantucket police detective Meredith Folger is called in to investigate.

Ten years ago, Julie Portland accidentally killed her best friend, Reba. What's worse is she got away with it. Consumed by guilt, she left the small town of Lawrence Mill, Mississippi, and swore nothing would ever drag her back. Now, raising her daughter and struggling to make ends meet in Manhattan, Julie still can't forget the ghost of a girl with golden hair and a dangerous secret.

She is on something of a vision quest, looking for family, for home, for understanding. She is also driven by the leftover teenaged desire to meet Pat Johns - Jesse from The Beachcombers - because he is, as she says, a working, healthy Indian man. Birdie heads for Molly's Reach to find answers, but they are not the ones she expected. With the arrival in Gibsons of her Auntie Val and her cousin Skinny Freda, Birdie begins to draw from her dreams the lessons she was never fully taught in life.

The citizens of Claxton, Texas, are justifiably possessed with a healthy thirst - on the dusty plains of West Texas, they're in the midst of a seven-year drought when the town finally votes to go wet. The opposition faction, and its leader, Miss Jessica Cater, manage to shut down the promotion beer-store owner Buck Turlock has cooked up just in time for the Fourth of July celebration. But will Buck's schemes lead Miss Jessie to rethink her position?

A nameless 15-year-old runs away to Los Angeles, seeking life beyond the harsh constraints of her evangelical upbringing. She is the narrative of her passage, from her escape on a bus through her quiet, determined progress across the city's unforgiving terrain. The journey takes her into and around the lives of Angelinos from all walks....

Scorned, pregnant, and facing a life without promise, Pippa Grayhawk is stunned when her father announces that they're leaving their home in Australia to take over his estranged father's sprawling Wyoming ranch. Drawn into bitter family rivalries and feeling like an interloper in her new home, Pippa rides out into the wilderness and meets an intriguing stranger and his pet wolf. The wolf doesn't scare her, but she's very much afraid to trust another man with her heart.

Ruth Galm's spare, poetic debut novel, set in the American West of early Joan Didion, traces the drifting path of a young woman as she skirts the law and her own oppressive anxiety. Into the Valley opens on the day in July 1967 when B. decides to pass her first counterfeit check and flees San Francisco for the Central Valley.

After a nightmarish two years, Nathan Carver thinks he can relax. His sister Sherri and her husband Randall are once again enjoying life and time with their family. Then they get bad news. Jacqueline Tate, the woman who's been a walking, talking tornado of trouble in all of their lives has been released from prison. They decide to take reasonable precautions and let God take care of the rest. But Jacqueline hasn't changed one bit, and she has plans of her own....

Vero and her husband, Shane, have moved out of the sweet suite above his parents' garage and found themselves smack in the middle of adulthood - two kids, two cars, two jobs. They are not coping well. In response to their looming domestic breakdown, Vero and Shane get live-in help with their sons - a woman from the Philippines named Ligaya (which means "happiness"); the children call her LiLi.

Rachel feels like she doesn't fit in - until she finds heavy metal and meets Fern, a kindred spirit. The two form their own band, but the metal scene turns out to be no different from the misogynist world they want to change. Violent encounters escalate, and the friends decide there's only one way forward....

Brought up in the savage captivity of her unstable grandmother's rural Pennsylvania home, Mari Calder once yearned for rescue. Now she struggles every day to function as an adult in the confines of normal society. Left with only a foggy recollection of her childhood, she's consumed with being a dutiful wife to her husband, Ryan, and mother to their two children. But an unexpected twist of events returns her to that long-forgotten house in the woods.

When Kristin Stevens loses her administrative job in California' s university system, she and her husband, Cal, relocate to Massachusetts. Kristin takes a position at a smaller, less prestigious college outside Boston and promptly becomes entangled in its delicate, overheated politics. Cal, whose musical talent is nothing more than a consuming avocation, spends his days alone, fixing up their new home. And as they settle into their early fifties, the two seem to exist in separate spheres entirely.

When 27-year-old image consultant Poppy Ross discovers that her handsome and seemingly devoted husband Parker is having an affair, she is dumbfounded. Before she has chance to confront him, however, he is struck by lightning. When he regains consciousness, he has lost his short-term memory - including that of the affair. Given a chance to erase history and possibly save her marriage, Poppy decides to remake herself in the mistress's image, so that Parker might never be tempted to stray again.

Mara Brennan is about to unravel. Three days after her twenty-eighth birthday, her boyfriend dumps her, leaving her with nothing but a basement apartment, a futon and a pile of unpaid bills. On top of that, her job, working as a receptionist at a cosmetic surgery clinic is a nightmare; her boss is a tyrant; and her friends have gotten ahead of her in the game of life. Mara realizes it's time for an identity makeover. She devises the OM List, a personal pathway to perfection inspired by her best friends, Olivia and Mitz, and her newfound love for yoga.