Showing results by publisher "Phoenix Books" in World Literature

Mr. & Mrs. Bridge is the saga of a clean-cut, "upper-class" couple who increasingly find their post-WWII world and traditional belief systems challenged by a changing society. For Walter Bridge, an ambitious lawyer, and his wife, whose focus is her household, affluence and material comforts create a cocoon of community respectability that cloaks the void within.

For decades — in China and in San Francisco — Winnie Louie and Helen Kwong have kept each other's confidences, but those secrets are about to be revealed. Convinced that she is dying, Helen decides to celebrate the Chinese New Year by unburdening herself of hidden truths — not only hers, but those of Winnie and of Winnie's daughter, Pearl.

This rich and charming novel about a virtuous young woman's search for love amidst the fickle world of country gentry in Regency England is one of Jane Austen's most memorable works. Anne Elliot exists in a world where shallowness and hypocrisy present a challenge to her centered values and tender emotions. Anne vies for the affections of the man she loves while at the same time her willpower is threatened as she battles the conventions of a proper parochial society.

For decades, a quartet of Chinese women who have emigrated to San Francisco gather to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk—they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Over the years, their stories have informed the lives of four daughters who feel the weight of family and world history on their shoulders. With wit and sensitivity, this novel explores the deep, complicated, and sometimes painful connections between mothers and daughters.

One day, 14-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find two notes in her mailbox, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up?

For decades, a quartet of Chinese women who have emigrated to San Francisco gather to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk — they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Over the years, their stories have informed the lives of four daughters who feel the weight of family and world history on their shoulders.

This story of Lord Rama — the 7th incarnation of Lord Vishnu— i s a wondrous tale of cosmic adventure that immerses the listener in a world of heroes, gods, and demons.

A masterful portrait of desire and betrayal that takes place during the sumptuous Gilded Age, The Age of Innocence questions the morals and assumptions of elite 1870s New York society when "scandal was more dreaded than disease." Newland Archer, gentleman lawyer and heir to one of New York City's best families, is happily anticipating a highly desirable marriage to the beautiful but conventional May Welland—until May's exotic European cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska returns to New York society.

In this seventh installment of the Jeeves series, the unflappable butler once again must apply his cleverness to rescue Bertie Wooster—this time from being arrested, lynched, and engaged by mistake! Chaos ensues when Aunt Dahlia demands that Bertie help dupe an antique dealer into selling her an 18th-century cow creamer. Complications grow as Bertie's pal Gussie Fink-Nottle is more interested in studying the effects of a full moon on the love life of newts rather than marrying Madeline Bassett.

Years after her Chinese half-sister assails her with ghost stories set in the mysterious world of Yin, Olivia — a young woman from San Francisco — finds herself in China. Looking for a way to reconcile her past with dreams for her future, Olivia's American assumptions are shaken by Chinese ghosts, but she also finds reasons to hope.

Rainer Maria Rilke has been called the most significant and compelling poet of spiritual experience of the 20th century. His exploration of the struggle between life and art and the supremacy of divine love over personal love has touched the hearts of men and women everywhere. The poems in this reading are from the selected poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, edited and translated by Stephen Mitchell.

The period of English romantic poetry occurred roughly between 1800 and 1850 and was represented by poets such as William Blake, Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and William Wordsworth. All of these poets are featured in this collection of more than 50 poems read by award-winning actors that include Joan Allen, Julie Christie, Stephen Fry, Glenda Jackson, and Jude Law.

Drawing upon everyday incidents, common situations, and rural imagery, Robert Frost fashioned poetry of great lyrical beauty and potent symbolism. His language is simple, clear, and colloquial, yet dense with meaning and wider significance. This brilliant collection features some of Frost's greatest works, including "The Road Not Taken," "Asking for Roses," "The Death of the Hired Man," "In the Home Stretch," "Into My Own," "Meeting and Passing," "Mending Wall," and more.

This timeless saga traces the intertwined lives of a group of prosperous Jewish Holocaust survivors in New York City after World War II. A chain of events disrupts the close-knit community as each refugee struggles to reconcile the horrific past with the difficult present and explores both the nature of faith and the nature of love. Marriages and affairs fall apart; age and death take their toll; the wisdom of the scripture and kabbalah and the precepts of the great philosophers and avatars of modern science are passionately debated in extended conversations that seethe with drama.

The poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke addresses the issues of God, death, and "destructive time." Rilke tries to transform these problems into an inner world, what he calls "a whole inner world as if an angel, comprehending all space, were blind and looking into himself." Eminent author and translator Stephen Mitchell brings these ideas vividly to life in this new translation of Rilke's most transcendent works.

Middle-aged Lucas Corso is a tired and cynical book detective, a mercenary hired to hunt down rare editions for wealthy and unscrupulous clients. When a well-known bibliophile is found hanged, leaving behind part of the original manuscript of Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, Corso is brought in to authenticate the fragment. Soon the unsuspecting Corso is drawn into a swirling plot involving devil worship, occult practices, and swashbuckling derring-do among a cast of characters bearing a suspicious resemblance to those of Dumas' masterpiece.

Emma Bovary is the original desperate housewife. Beautiful but bored, Emma is not content to be the mere dutiful wife of a French country doctor. She believes she was meant for something more—a life of luxury, leisure, and, above all, true and passionate love. She spends lavishly on clothes and on her home and throws herself headlong into a reckless series of doomed affairs. Soon heartbroken and crippled by debts, she takes drastic action, with tragic consequences for her husband and daughter.

Originally meant to be heard rather than read, this great epic returns to the oral form for today's listeners.

When Abe Ringel takes the case of Joe Campbell, the "White Knight" of the New York Knicks who stands accused of rape, he thinks he's found the perfect easy victory to get his career on track. But when Ringel's investigations suggest that Campbell is guilty and dangerous, the defense attorney must confront the conflict between his courtroom responsibilities and his ethics as a human being.

Connor McKnight, former acolyte of film, Zen, and Japanese literature, is not unaware that these avocations are wildly different from his present occupation as a fledgling celebrity journalist. Meanwhile, his longtime girlfriend, the fashion model Philomena, seems curiously remote and soon decamps for the West Coast. Then there's the sister with whom he shared a flamboyantly addled childhood and his best friend, a monkishly neurotic and militantly vegetarian writer.