Showing results by publisher "Brilliance Audio" in World Literature

For a good part of Daphne Witt’s life, she was a supportive wife and dutiful mother. Now that she’s divorced and her daughter, Ellery, is all grown up, Daphne’s celebrating the best part of her life, a successful career, and a flirtation with an attentive hunk fifteen years her junior...who happens to be her daughter’s ex-boyfriend. Ellery is starting over, too. She’s fresh out of college. Her job prospects are dim. And to support her fiancé in med school, she’s returned home as her mother’s new assistant.

Fifteen years ago in the colourful bustle of Vietnam, Celine and Patrick met and shared four blissful days together. It felt like true love, but soon reality tore them apart and Celine moved on. But now, when she sees him unexpectedly on a busy London street, suddenly nothing else matters. As she deals with the mixed emotions of an amicable divorce, Celine becomes preoccupied with her daughter and the dating agency she founded - not least when her ex-husband, Mike, asks her to find him someone new.

Ukraine, 1923. On a small farm, two boys are born within days of each other, both Ukrainian, one Jewish. Mykhail and Asher grow up inseparable, together finding friendship, adventure and escape from the harshness of Russian rule. But after Asher’s family flees to Warsaw, their worlds are torn to shreds by the Second World War. The war brings cruelty to both boys. Although Asher finds love in Warsaw, the city is far from the haven his family sought; meanwhile Mykhail becomes a victim of the bitter struggle for Ukraine. But worse follows, in the shape of the Treblinka death camp.

1943: Europe is at war - but neutral Ireland is isolated from the storm. In a sleepy coastal village south of Dublin, eighteen-year-old Aileen Sweeney meets soldier Niall O’Rourke at a dance, and the spark between them soon ignites a powerful love. But when Niall makes a life-changing and contentious decision, Aileen’s hopes and dreams fall apart. In an instant Niall is transformed from dashing suitor to social outcast, and the fallout leaves each of them navigating the consequences alone. Putting her innocence behind her, Aileen must make her own tough choices.

After her beloved grandmother Rozenn’s death, Morane is heartbroken to learn that her sister is the sole inheritor of the family home in Cornwall - while she herself has been written out of the will. With both her business and her relationship with her sister on the rocks, Morane becomes consumed by one question: what made Rozenn turn her back on her? When she finds an old letter linking her grandmother to Brittany under German occupation, Morane escapes on the trail of her family’s past. In the coastal village where Rozenn lived in 1941, she uncovers a web of shameful secrets.

Lisa’s dated a series of disastrous men; Simon’s loved and lost the girl of his dreams. She’s hoping fate might intervene in her love life; he’d prefer that it stopped meddling with his. Today, they’re meeting, courtesy of the local paper’s ‘Blind Date’ feature - but while Lisa’s looking for that elusive ‘spark’, Simon’s sure lightning doesn’t strike twice. Will theirs be a love that’s written in the stars, or merely another mismatch written up in the Gazette?

Eleanor Merritt, a do-gooding American family-planning worker, was drawn to Kenya to improve the lot of the poor. Unnervingly, she finds herself falling in love with the beguiling Calvin Piper despite, or perhaps because of, his misanthropic theories about population control and the future of the human race. Surely, Calvin whispers seductively in Eleanor's ear, if the poor are a responsibility they are also an imposition.

E.F. Bloodworth has returned to his home - a forgotten corner of Tennessee - after 20 years of roaming. The wife he walked out on has withered and faded, his three sons are grown and angry. Warren is a womanizing alcoholic, Boyd is driven by jealousy to hunt down his wife's lover, and Brady puts hexes on his enemies from his mamma's porch. Only Fleming, the old man's grandson, treats him with the respect his age commands, and sees past all the hatred to realize the way it can posion a man's soul.

In an astounding debut poetry collection, Cave Canem, Callaloo, and Lambda Literary fellow Ife-Chudeni A. Oputa presents a relentless but refined portrait of one young woman's journey toward self-discovery. Her poems explore the eternal themes of the human condition - nature, origin, shame, identity, desire, mortality - with sensitivity and specificity. They illuminate and interrogate the ways that her characters inflict and experience pain, ultimately revealing how we must all face our shame in order to grow. No voice is blameless; no person is exempt.

Many believe that those who are destined to be together are connected by an invisible red thread. If that is so, the fates of Chai and Josi are weaved together and tied with a knot that cannot be broken. Chai has been the self-appointed protector of her best friend, Josi, since their toddler days. Their lives are as far from extravagant as can be imagined - but they don’t need material things to be content.

At the age of thirty-nine, Alice Chang suddenly finds herself living in the last place she expected: her mother’s house. But in the face of divorce, eviction, and the recent death of her father, she doesn’t have a choice. Watching as her mother thrives in a new job and meets younger men at the local gym, Alice struggles, reflecting on her parents’ marriage, her relationship with each of them, as she adjusts to being single again for the first time in twenty years. Then she finds her father’s old journal...and uncovers a shocking family secret.

In 1962, opportunities are typically few for nice Jewish girls clacking away at ninety words per minute in a newspaper typing pool. Except Judy Greenberg isn’t typical. An aspiring reporter in DC, she’s aiming for journalistic greatness—not finding a husband. Just don’t tell her mother. Then one day she answers her boss’s private line. The message is curiously cryptic. It’s also delivered in a Russian accent. Judy is certain she has stumbled upon a scoop.

What's worse than Paige Grant getting stuck in a window while breaking into her late grandmother's Lavender Island ranch? Being discovered - and saved - by next-door neighbor Adam Mason. The Grants and Masons haven't exactly been friendly in recent decades, despite Paige's teenage crush on handsome, standoffish Adam. But the down-on-her-luck actress now needs more than saving.

Noora Nieminen was destined to become a world champion. But when the sixteen-year-old skating sensation is found slain with her own skates, her promising career is unexpectedly cut short. Detective Maria Kallio is seven months pregnant, but that isn't going to stop her from putting everything she has into solving the murder. With a promotion on the line and her arrogant adversary, Pertti Ström, vying for the new job, Maria is determined to make an arrest.

Caitlin Marshall's trying to go home to Minnesota for Christmas, but at the last minute she gives her airline ticket to a stranded soldier. So Cait spends the holidays with Joe Rockwell, who was a childhood friend - and is still a terrible tease, claiming that Cait's his wife. Oh, sure, they were "married" in a pretend ceremony when she was eight, but now Joe wants to make their "marriage" real!

Susan has everything she ever wanted. A loving husband, an angelic daughter and the cottage of her dreams in County Cork. Her picture-perfect life seems too good to be true. And it is. At a housewarming party with their new neighbours, her daughter Amelia goes missing. As friends become suspects, Susan’s life spirals out of control. And when Amelia’s yellow cardigan is dredged from the lake, every parent’s worst nightmare suddenly seems horribly real. In the aftermath of Amelia’s disappearance Susan and her husband Paul are not themselves. Someone is hiding something.

Sara and Mia are more than just mother and daughter—they’re best friends, confidantes and partners in adventure. Mia’s dad’s identity may still be a mystery, but Mia’s independent, adventurous mum has more than made up for it over the years. So when Sara suggests a sun-soaked escape to Kos, the stunning Greek island shaped by volcanic forces, Mia jumps at the chance for their perfect summer getaway.

Italy, 1943. The seeds of terror planted by Hitler have brought Allied forces to Italian soil. Young lovers separated by war—one near a Tuscan hill town, the other a soldier on the Sicilian front—will meet any challenge to reunite.

Growing up on a farm in early twentieth-century rural Iceland, Karitas Ólafsdóttir, one of six siblings, yearns for a new life. An artist, Karitas has a powerful calling and is determined to never let go of her true being, one unsuited for the conventional. But she is powerless against the fateful turns of real life and all its expectations of women. Pulled back time and again by design and by chance to the Icelandic countryside - as dutiful daughter, loving mother, and fisherman’s wife - she struggles to thrive, to be what she was meant to be.

Lena Sharma is a successful San Francisco restaurateur. An immigrant, she’s cultivated an image of conservatism and tradition in her close-knit Indian community. But when Lena’s carefully constructed world begins to crumble, her ties to her daughter, Maya, and son, Sameer - both raised in thoroughly modern California - slip further away.