Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in World Literature

Sicily, 1980s: When she was just eight years old, Tina watched as her father, a member of Cosa Nostra, was murdered in cold blood. Now a teenager, she terrorizes her hometown of Gela, having made it her mission in life to join the mafia, an organization traditionally forbidden to women as made members. Nicknamed ’a masculidda', or “the tomboy,” Tina has taken charge of her own clan, and is notorious for her cruelty and reckless disregard for societal expectations.

Jess Kirkman’s mother is dying of congestive heart failure, and he has come home to be at her bedside. Charged with getting family affairs in order, he faces the daunting task of sorting out the secret workshop that his father left behind when he died 10 years ago. As he investigates his findings—a map littered with the names of strange women and a strange invention of stovepipe and ceramic—Jess discovers an intriguing side of his father.

An elderly woman in early 22nd-century Lagos is called in to help test the artificial intelligence built from her genius mother’s mind, but all is not as it seems. Exiled from Earth for a crime of passion, a young man must learn to survive a barely habitable prison planet. From the bustling streets of Lagos to the icy moons of Jupiter, this debut collection of twenty stories from the vivid imagination of the award-winning Wole Talabi explores what it means to be human in a world of accelerating technology, diverse beliefs, and unlimited potential from a uniquely Nigerian perspective.

Tomás Cruz swore he would never be like his father, an abusive cocaine junkie whose gangland exploits are notorious throughout the underbelly of northern Argentina. When Samuel Cruz is sentenced to thirteen years in prison, he leaves a laundry list of unfinished cartel business. Seba, Tomás’s revered older brother, has no choice but to abandon his straight life and take over his father’s underworld debt. Now fifteen years has passed, Seba has been arrested, and the ruthless cartel boss is holding his wife and daughter as collateral—just in time for the holidays.

In Customs, Solmaz Sharif examines what it means to exist in the nowhere of the arrivals terminal, a continual series of checkpoints, officers, searches, and questionings that become a relentless experience of America. With resignation and austerity, these poems trace a pointed indoctrination to the customs of the nation-state and the English language, and the realities they impose upon the imagination, the paces they put us through.

Lila Bonnard has left her island home in the Caribbean to join the faculty as a visiting professor at Mayfield College in a small Vermont town. On her way from the airport to Mayfield, Lila witnesses the fatal shooting of a Black man by the police. It turns out that the victim was a professor at Mayfield, and was giving CPR to a white woman who was on the verge of an opioid overdose. The two Black faculty and a Black administrator in the otherwise all-white college expect Lila to be a witness in the case against the police.

In a dry Kansas riverbed, a troop of young girls finds a human hand. This discovery leads Billy Spire, the tough and broken sheriff of Ewing County, to investigate and confront the depths of his community and of himself: the racism, the dying economy, the lies and truths of friendship, grievances of the past and present, and even his own injured marriage. To flyover folks, Ewing County appears nothing more than a handful of empty streets amid crop circles and the meandering, depleted Arkansas River. The truth of this place—the interwoven lives and stories—is anything but simple.

Twenty-year-old Deza was supposed to be just another hot girl emcee, but when a bonus track strikes a surprising social chord, it rockets her album to the top of the charts - and her record label promotes her to headline their first-ever all-female national tour. As Deza attempts to live up to her new reputation, her inexperience generates tour drama. And when her female DJ quits, the label replaces her with the last thing Deza needs: the sexy guy DJ she flirted with at a club.

It's 1932, and Sullivan Harris is on the run. He promised the people of Kline, West Virginia, that he would find them water, but now he's failed and disappeared with their cash. Although he's determined to stay a step ahead of pursuers - like Jeremiah Weber - his resources are running low. Gainey Floyd is suspicious of Sulley's claim to be a dowser when he appears in town but reconsiders after he finds water. Rather, it's Sulley who grows uneasy when his success makes folks wonder if he can find more than water - like forgotten items or missing people.

In the seedy ABC boxing club in Nairobi, four musicians — The Diva, The Corporal, The Taliban Man, and Miriam — gather for a competition to see who can perform the best Tizita. Listening from the audience is Kenyan tabloid journalist John Thando Manfredi, whose own life makes him vulnerable to the Tizita.

Chaim Klein - a fearless Israeli Special Forces officer - has his hands full. After Klein unexpectedly finds the long-lost Ark of the Covenant, he must then search the globe for the Ten Commandments tablets. Klein must also confront and stop a consortium of Islamic states and terrorist organizations who are planning a simultaneous attack that would obliterate dozens of Western cities and Israel. Along the way, he comes across the mystical and awe-inspiring Sword of David.

Cuban-born Mercedes Spivey and her American husband, Nolan, win a five-day cruise to Cuba. Although the circumstances surrounding the prize seem a little suspicious to Mercedes, Nolan’s current jobless status and their desperate need to revamp their marriage make the decision a no-brainer. Once aboard, Mercedes is surprised to see two people she met through her ex-boyfriend Lorenzo: former University of Havana professor Selfa Sagarra and down-on-his-luck Spanish writer Javier Jurado. Even stranger: They also received a free cruise.

South Korea, 1970s: Sergeant First Class Cecil B. Harvey, a senior NCO in charge of Eighth Army’s classified documents, has long been a friend (willing or unwilling) to Sergeants George Sueño and Ernie Bascom. So when he goes missing with a top-secret document that even a glance at could get an officer court-martialed, Sueño and Bascom take it upon themselves to find him. Meanwhile, Overseas Observer reporter Katie Byrd Worthington is back to make life difficult for top army brass. When she lands in a Korean jail cell, Sueño and Bascom are sent to get her out.

Rachel, the mother of the aging professor Thomas Vanderlinden, shared her life with two men. Both went by the name of Rowland Vanderlinden. The first husband went abroad and never returned. The second, whom Rachel also unquestioningly accepted as her husband, was a mystery. In an attempt to understand his mother's adventurous decisions regarding love and marriage, Thomas sets out on a journey to the far reaches of the Pacific to find the first Rowland, and his real father. As the mystery of the two Rowlands unfolds throughout the novel, so too does a fascinating portrait.

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.

Detective Jack Yu returns in a pulse-pounding fifth investigation in New York's Chinatown - can he save an old gangster friend from a ruthless killer? Chinatown gang leader "Lucky" Louie was shot outside of a Chinatown off track betting establishment on the 13th of January and lay in a coma for 88 days, waking on Easter Sunday. The number 88 is a double-helix double-lucky Chinese number; religion and superstition all lean Lucky's way. But Detective Jack Yu, Lucky's boyhood blood brother, fears his friend's luck is about to run out.

In Taiwan, the Mid-Autumn Festival is a time for prioritizing family. When 25-year-old Jing-nan's gangster uncle, Big Eye, asks a favor, Jing-nan can't exactly say no, especially because two goons are going to follow him around to make sure he gets it done right. The favor is this: Big Eye's 16-year-old daughter, Mei-ling, has a biker boyfriend from the wrong side of the tracks and Big Eye wants Jing-nan to bring her to Taipei, away from the bad influences, and straighten her out.

When beautiful young Lucy Graham accepts the hand of Sir Michael Audley, her fortune and her future look secure. But Lady Audley's past is shrouded in mystery, and Sir Michael's nephew, Robert, has vague forebodings. When Robert's good friend, George Talboys, suddenly disappears, he is determined to find him and to unearth the truth. His quest reveals a tangled story of lies and deception, crime and intrigue, whose sensational twists turn the conventional picture of Victorian womanhood on its head. Can Robert's darkest suspicions really be true?

American writers have long sought to compose "the great American novel", or "America's epic", Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby have been advanced as plausible contenders for the title, but no work can mount a more substantial claim than Herman Melville's Moby Dick, or The Whale.

Actor Matthew McConaughey descends into a surreal desert of the soul, an admirer of Miley Cyrus performs a 3,000-word sentence in defense of his passion, an aging porn star dons a dinosaur costume to film the sex scene of a lifetime, and Leonard Cohen shills for Subway: these mercurial and wildly varied stories explode the conventions of short fiction.