Showing titles in World Literature

Thomas Mann's last great novel, first published in 1947 and now newly rendered into English by acclaimed translator John E. Woods, is a modern reworking of the Faust legend, in which Germany sells its soul to the Devil. Mann's protagonist, the composer Adrian Leverkühn, is the flower of German culture, a brilliant, isolated, overreaching figure, his radical new music a breakneck game played by art at the very edge of impossibility. In return for twenty-four years of unparalleled musical accomplishment, he bargains away his soul—and the ability to love his fellow man.

In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce. A story-telling competition between a group of pilgrims from all walks of life is the occasion for a series of tales that range from the Knight's account of courtly love and the ebullient Wife of Bath's Arthurian legend, to the ribald anecdotes of the Miller and the Cook.

Bones—Murphy Shepherd's teacher, mentor, priest, and friend—is gone. Devastated by the loss and unsure how to continue the rescue work they started, Murph has no choice but to jump back in when the worst happens. His longtime friend and current United States vice president, Aaron Ashley, has been a silent partner in the fight against trafficking. But in spite of having the best security available, his three daughters have been taken bound and blindfolded from their home by an extraction team that left no clues and no trace.

DECEMBER 1944 In New Guinea, a young Australian nurse, Lotte Wyld, chances upon her first love, Virgil Nicholson, a soldier in the Allies' hard-fought jungle campaign. At Los Alamos in the United States, idealistic physicists Miriam Carver and Fred Johnson join Robert Oppenheimer and a team of brilliant scientists in a collective dream to build a weapon that will stop all war, while Kitty Oppenheimer wrestles with restrictions on her freedom. And on the sacred island of Miyajima in Japan, Hiroko Narushima is doing her best to protect her family.

Internationally best-selling novelist Irvin D. Yalom explores the mindsets of two men separated by 300 years. Using his skills as a psychiatrist, he explores the inner lives of Baruch Spinoza, the Jewish 17th-century secular philosopher, and of Alfred Rosenberg, outspoken Nazi ideologue, faithful servant of Hitler, the main author of racial policy for the Third Reich, and a godless mass murderer....

Sentaro has failed. He has a criminal record, drinks too much, and his dream of becoming a writer is just a distant memory. With only the blossoming of the cherry trees to mark the passing of time, he spends his days in a tiny confectionery shop selling dorayaki, a type of pancake filled with sweet bean paste. Into his life comes Tokue, an elderly woman with disfigured hands and a troubled past. Tokue makes the best sweet bean paste Sentaro has ever tasted. She begins to teach him her craft, but as their friendship flourishes, social pressures become impossible to escape.

The Glory plunges immediately into the violence and upheaval of the Six-Day War of 1967 - and continues the dramatic story of Israel’s struggle for survival. A sprawling, action-packed novel, Wouk takes listeners through the terrors of the Yom Kippur War, the famous Entebbe rescue, and the airstrikes on Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor - ending with the final hope for peace.

In words remarkable for their richness of rhythm and imagery, Milton tells the story of man's creation, fall, and redemption, "to justify the ways of God to men". Here, unabridged, and told with exceptional sensitivity and power by Anton Lesser, is the plight of Adam and Eve, the ambition and vengefulness of Satan and his cohorts.

Ten years ago, six teenagers hiked into the Blue Mountains wilderness - and only five came out alive. The survivors have barely seen each other since the tragic bushwalk. Yet when an invitation arrives to attend a 10-year memorial of their friend's death, Hugh, Charlotte, Alex, Laura and Jack find themselves travelling back into the rugged landscape where it all began. The weekend at an isolated homestead in the bush - no phone signal, no distractions - should be a chance to reflect and reconnect.

When nineteen-year-old farmgirl Adelaide Hoffman applies for a cadetship at the Gunnawah Gazette, she sees it as her ticket out of a life too small for her. The paper's owner, Valdene Bullark, seeing something of the girl she once was in young Adelaide, puts her straight to work.

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.

Berlin. 11 July 1986. They meet by chance on a bus. She is a young student, he is older and married. Theirs is an intense and sudden attraction, fueled by a shared passion for music and art, and heightened by the secrecy they must maintain. But when she strays for a single night he cannot forgive her and a dangerous crack forms between them, opening up a space for cruelty, punishment and the exertion of power. And the world around them is changing too.

At the end of World War II, American army officer Captain Sean O’Sullivan is commissioned with rebuilding Berlin. Reeling from the death of his brothers at German hands and faced with the direct horrors of the Holocaust, O’Sullivan struggles against his animosity towards the nation he is helping restore. Meanwhile, Soviet forces blockade Germany in a bid for power, and the Western Allies must unite to prevent a communist takeover. When the airlift begins, the Allies find their deepest convictions tested as they fight against a threat even more dangerous than Hitler.

Rabbi Sholem Shachne Katzenellenbogen’s world, the world of his forefathers, is crumbling before his eyes. And in his own home! His eldest, Bentzion, is off in Bialystok, studying to be a businessman; his daughter Bluma Rivtcha is in Vilna, at nursing school. For her older sister, Tilza, he at least managed to find a suitable young rabbi, but he can tell things are off between them. Naftali Hertz? Forget it; he’s been lost to a philosophy degree in Switzerland (and maybe even a goyish wife?). And now the rabbi’s youngest, Refael’ke, wants to run off to the Holy Land with the Zionists.

A deeply personal novel of identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of belonging and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part satire, part picaresque, at its heart it is the story of a father and son and the country they call home. Ranging from the heartland towns of America to palatial suites in Davos to guerrilla lookouts in the mountains of Afghanistan, Akhtar forges a narrative voice that is original as it is exuberantly entertaining.

JARED - If I had a dollar for every time Banner Morales made my heart skip a beat...The heart everyone assumes is frozen over. Her anger is...arousing. Every glare from those fire-spitting eyes, every time she grits her teeth, gets me...well, you know. If I had a dollar for every time she's put me in my place, I'd be an even richer man. I'm a successful sports agent because I assume "no" means you'll think about it. I'm sure what you meant to say is, "Coming right up." They say even rich men don't always get what they want, but those men don't know how to play the game.

During a vicious persecution of the clergy in Mexico, a worldly priest, the 'whisky priest', is on the run. With the police closing in, his routes of escape are being shut off, his chances getting fewer. But compassion and humanity force him along the road to his destiny, reluctant to abandon those who need him, and those he cares for.

Polly Perks had to become a boy in a hurry. Cutting off her hair and wearing trousers was easy. Learning to fart and belch in public and walk like an ape took more time. And now she's enlisted in the army, and searching for her lost brother. But there's a war on. There's always a war on. And Polly and her fellow recruits are suddenly in the thick of it, without any training, and the enemy is hunting them.

Alma Katsu calls My Heart Is a Chainsaw “a homage to slasher films that also manages to defy and transcend genre.” On the surface is a story of murder in small-town America. But beneath is its beating heart: a biting critique of American colonialism, Indigenous displacement, and gentrification, and a heartbreaking portrait of a broken young girl who uses horror movies to cope with the horror of her own life.

It is 1958. Newly promoted Chief Superintendent Frederick Troy of Scotland Yard is on a Continental trip with his older brother, Rod, who is taking the entire family on 'the Grand Tour' for his 51st birthday. After a concert in Vienna, Frederick Troy is approached by an old friend - Soviet spy Guy Burgess, who says something extraordinary: 'I want to come home.' MI5 send an agent to debrief Burgess - but the man is gunned down yards from the embassy, and Troy finds himself a suspect. As he fights to prove his innocence, Troy finds that Burgess is not the only ghost who returns to haunt him.