Showing results by publisher "Audible Studios" in World Literature

While the Battle of Berlin in 1945 is widely known, the horrific story of the Halbe Kessel remains largely untold. In April 1945, victorious Soviet forces encircled 80,000 men of the German 9th Army in the Halbe area, South of Berlin, together with many thousands of German women and children. The German troops, desperate to avoid Soviet capture, battled furiously to break out toward the West, where they could surrender to the comparative safety of the Americans.

The Old Wives' Tale is broken up into four parts, and the lives of two sisters are laid bare: one timid and unassuming, the other romantic and adventurous. From working as children in their family's drapery shop to their later years, Constance and Sophia's journey through life could not be more different. While one travels the world and defies male expectations, the other becomes a dutiful wife and mother.

The Ramayana, one of the world's greatest epics, is also a tragic love story. In this brilliant retelling, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni places Sita at the centre of the novel: this is Sita's version. The Forest of Enchantments is also a very human story of some of the other women in the epic, often misunderstood and relegated to the margins: Kaikeyi, Surpanakha, Mandodari. A powerful comment on duty, betrayal, infidelity and honour, it is also about women's struggle to retain autonomy in a world that privileges men.

When Mulanyin meets the beautiful Nita in Edenglassie, their saltwater people still outnumber the British. As colonial unrest peaks, Mulanyin dreams of taking his bride home to Yugambeh Country, but his plans for independence collide with white justice. Two centuries later, fiery activist Winona meets Dr Johnny. Together they care for obstinate centenarian Grannie Eddie, and sparks fly, but not always in the right direction. What nobody knows is how far the legacies of the past will reach into their modern lives.

From the author of The Christmas Hirelings comes this Audible Exclusive production of Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s classic sensation novel Lady Audley’s Secret. English actress Olivia Poulet gives an assured and captivating narration; a cornerstone of the genre and a scandal at the time of its publication, Lady Audley’s Secret is an entertaining and shocking tale of high drama and shifting perceptions.

In the dawn of history, a valiant people forged a pathway from an old world into a new one. Led by a dreamer who followed the spirit of the wolf, a handful of courageous men and women dared to cross the frozen wastes to find an untouched, unspoiled continent.

Written before all of Antarctica was fully mapped and explored, At the Mountains of Madness tells of a terrifying journey into the unknown. Epic in scope, cinematic in its sweep, and breathtaking in its revelations about humanity, this—described by some as the first true science-fiction novel—may be Lovecraft’s greatest literary achievement!

This is the story of Kitty Fane, the adulterous wife of a bacteriologist stationed in Hong Kong. When her husband discovers her deception, he exacts a terrible vengeance: Kitty must accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic in China.

In a cramped synagogue in north-west London, the eminent elderly rabbi passes away. On the other side of the Atlantic, his estranged daughter, Ronit, hears of her father's death and returns to London for the funeral. She has not returned home in 15 years. Ronit looks forward to a week or two of revisiting old friends, perhaps settling old scores. But she finds the community she grew up in a more confusing place than she'd anticipated.

So long as we are alive, so long as we feel, so long as we love, everything in us is an energy we can use. He is born into a world of poverty, ignorance and injustice, but Azaro awakens with a smile on his face. Despite belonging to a spirit world made of enchantment, where there is no suffering, Azaro chooses to stay in the land of the Living: to feel it, endure it, know it and love it. This is his story.

This collection of Buk's grimmest diaries gives an insight into the noir and brutal Los Angeles that Bukowski observed and lived so well. He was a legend in his time: a madman, a recluse, a lover...tender, vicious...never the same. These are exceptional stories that came pounding out of his violent and depraved life - horrible and holy. You cannot listen to them and come away the same again.

In this novel, set in the 15th century during the Hundred Years' War between France and England, Hella Haasse brilliantly captures all the drama of one of the great ages of history.

After a childhood filled with heartbreak, Irene, a talented artist, finds herself in a small Central American village where she checks into a beautiful but decaying lakefront hotel called La Llorona at the base of a volcano.

He was the brother of "the Arab" killed by the infamous Meursault, the antihero of Camus' classic novel. Seventy years after that event, Harun, who has lived since childhood in the shadow of his sibling's memory, refuses to let him remain anonymous: He gives his brother a story and a name - Musa - and describes the events that led to Musa's casual murder on a dazzlingly sunny beach.

Nola Leary would have been content to stay in Kilcairy, Ireland, healing villagers at her family’s clinic with a mix of magic and modern medicine. But a series of ill-timed omens and a deathbed promise to her grandmother have sent her on a quest to Half-Moon Hollow, Kentucky, to secure her family’s magical potency for the next generation. Her supernatural task? To unearth four artifacts hidden by her grandfather before a rival magical family beats her to it. Complication One: The artifacts are lost somewhere in vampire Jane Jameson’s occult bookshop. Complication Two: Her new neighbor, Jed Trudeau, keeps turning up half-naked at the strangest times....

Meet the Law family - eccentric, endearing and hard to resist. Your guide: Benjamin, the third of five children and a born humorist. Join him as he tries to answer some puzzling questions: Why won't his Chinese dad wear made-in-China underpants? Why was most of his extended family deported in the 1980s? Will his childhood dreams of Home and Away stardom come to nothing? What are his chances of finding love? Hilarious and moving, The Family Law is a linked series of tales from a wonderful Australian talent.

Pau, criado en las calles, se convierte en uno de los discípulos predilectos del genial arquitecto, con quien comparte los secretos del templo y de su arte. Allí conocerá a Rosetta, la sobrina de Gaudí, una enigmática joven, y sus vidas se entrelazan en una ciudad azotada por la desigualdad, los conflictos sociales y la crisis de una España encaminada a un incierto cambio de siglo. Jesús Bastante firma una fascinante novela de amor prohibido, poder, belleza y locura a los pies de la torre de San Bernabé, la única que el arquitecto logró concluir antes de su muerte.

Shiva, 'the destroyer' among the Hindu trinity (of gods), is depicted in many contradictory manners. The author, Devdutt Pattanaik, introduces listeners to these varied aspects and representations, and then sets about interpreting them. He explains the different anomalies and conflicts in beliefs, as well as the symbolism, rituals and reasons behind Hindu worship.

1939: Nerys Watkins leaves rural Wales to accompany her husband on a missionary posting to India. Travelling from lonely Ladakh, high in the Himalayas, Nerys discovers a new world in the city of Srinagar. Here, in the exquisite heart of Kashmir, the British live on carved wooden houseboats and dance, flirt and gossip as if there is no war. But the battles draw ever closer.

Simone Harlowe is a young Indigenous lawyer, straddling two lives and two cultures while studying for her Masters at Harvard. Her family life in Sydney is defined by the complex relationship she has with her father Tony, a prominent and respected figure in the Aboriginal community. As Simone juggles the challenges of a modern woman’s life—career, family, friends and relationships—her father is confronting his own uncomfortable truths as his secret double life implodes. Can Simone accept him for the man he is and forgive him for the man he’s not?