Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in United States

One month short of her wedding day—and her thirtieth birthday—Nadia Palacio finds herself standing up to her infuriating, cheating fiancé for the first time in, well, ever. But that same courage doesn’t translate to breaking the news to her Argentinian family. She’s hyperventilating before facing them when she glimpses a magazine piece about a woman celebrating herself—with a second quinceañera! And that gives Nadia an idea. With a wedding venue already paid for, and family from all over the world with plane tickets, Nadia is determined to create her own happily-ever-after.

Ranging from the shattered gentility of Edith Wharton's heroines to racial confrontation in the songs of Nina Simone, American Rhapsody presents a kaleidoscopic story of the creation of a culture. Here is a series of deeply involving portraits of American artists and innovators who have helped to shape the country in the modern age. Claudia Roth Pierpont expertly mixes biography and criticism, history and reportage, to bring these portraits to life and to link them in surprising ways.

As Sarah Booth sees it, Easter weekend is a time to celebrate life in all its many forms. So when the newly-pregnant Tinkie invites her and Cece on a girls’ trip to Lucedale, Missisippi to celebrate that spring has official sprung, Sarah Booth can’t resist. Plans include facials, food, and a trip to the incredible Garden of Bones - a miniature Holy Land with recreations of all parts of the Middle East - for their Sunrise Easter Services led by biblical scholar, gardener, and creator of the Gardens Daniel Reynolds.

Sarah Booth has traded in hosting this Christmas season for a road trip with her besties. Each little Delta town has a special Christmas activity, and Sarah Booth’s BFF and detective partner, Tinkie, has arranged to rent a limo for the gang and drive to Columbus, MS, to stay in a B&B. Visions of Christmas shopping, parade floats, and romantic rendezvous are already dancing in their heads. But Christmas cheer soon turns to Christmas fear when, at one event after another, people keep getting hurt. Christmas karaoke gets ugly when one singer’s microphone gives her an electric shock.

When Dr. Alala Diakos, a visiting professor of Greek literature, comes to teach at Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi, it doesn't take long for controversy to follow. With her fervent feminist ideals and revolutionary leanings, she quickly earns the admiration of many - and the ire of others. During a speech in the park, in which Alala tries to organize the women of Zinnia to demand equal pay, the crowd gets unruly, with men heckling the professor. And then PI Sarah Booth Delaney finds a sniper rifle and scope in the bushes....

In The Kingdom of Surfaces, award-winning poet Sally Wen Mao examines art and history—especially the provenance of objects such as porcelain, silk, and pearls—to frame an important conversation on beauty, empire, commodification, and violence. In lyric poems and wide-ranging sequences, Mao interrogates gendered expressions such as the contemporary “leftover women,” which denotes unmarried women, and the historical “castle-toppler,” a term used to describe a concubine whose beauty ruins an emperor and his empire

When Minerva Jane Jenkins was just 14 years old, she married a man who moved her to the mountains. He carried with him a small box, which he told her was filled with gold. And when he died 50 years later, he made her promise to keep his secret. She is to tell no one about the box or the treasure it contains. Now 94, Minerva is nearing the end of what has sometimes been a lonely life. But she's kept that secret. Even so, rumors of hidden gold have a way of spreading, and Minerva is visited by a reporter, Del Rankin, who wants to know more of her story.

Three American GIs have gone missing in different South Korean cities. Sergeants George Sueno and Ernie Bascom, agents for the Army CID, link the disappearances to a woman locally rumored to be a gumiho, a legendary 9000-tailed fox disguised as a woman. George suspects that the woman is no mythical creature, but a wealthy kidnapper who's good at covering her tracks. Scrambling to stay one step ahead of a psychotic mastermind, George realizes he will have to risk his life to discover the whereabouts of his fellow countrymen.

As a child in Spain, Puri always knew her passion for chocolate was inherited from her father. But it’s not until his death that she learns of something else she’s inherited - a cocoa estate in Vinces, Ecuador, a town nicknamed “París Chiquito”. Eager to claim her birthright and filled with hope for a new life after the devastation of World War I, she and her husband Cristóbal set out across the Atlantic Ocean. But it soon becomes clear someone is angered by Puri’s claim to the estate…

Teresa Sanchez has always known who she was: a professor, a wife, a mother, and a friend. But when her husband dies unexpectedly, she finds herself completely broken. Taking a leave from the university, Teresa hopes that she can mourn her husband and get back on her feet, but instead, she spends a year consumed by grief. Until the day she levitates.

Delaney Detective Agency gets a taste of the spotlight when they are called to a case on a movie set in Greenville, MS, right on the Mississippi River. Marlon Brandon, heir to a wealthy and influential political family, has brought a film crew to town to film a drama about the 1927 flood that submerged a great deal of Greenville. Marlon wants the world to know the story of the flood—and the heroic role the Brandon ancestors played in rescuing dozens of local residents from drowning. Or at least that was the plan until he disappeared.

Taipei is rocked by the back-to-back murders of a petty criminal and a police captain just as the city is preparing to host the big Austronesian Cultural Festival. The celebration is set to bring in indigenous performers from all around the Pacific Rim to the island nation of Taiwan. Jing-nan, the proprietor of Unknown Pleasures, a popular food stand at Taipei’s largest night market, is thrown into the intrigue. Is he being set up to take the rap, or will he be the next victim? T

It's Halloween season in Mississippi as Sarah Booth and the gang gather to decorate and gush over Tinkie's new baby, Maylin. Sarah Booth is just about to refresh the cocktails when she hears a knock on the door and opens it to find a woman named Frankie, distraught at the disappearance of her daughter, Christa, a young journalist. Christa had been investigating the disappearance of young women in New Orleans over a five-year period—one every year around Halloween. Now Christa herself is missing, and Frankie fears it may be connected to a cult based in the Garden District.

A wonderful collection of stories that captures the spirit of Mexican culture and its peoples.

This edition includes both poems and letters, as well as the only contemporary description of Emily Dickinson, and is designed for readers who want the best poems and most interesting letters in convenient form. An excellent introduction to the work of a poet whose originality of thought remains...

From a young age Kerouac was a spiritual thinker and questioner, and he always considered himself a spiritual writer. Buddhism gave more meaning to Jack’s work as a writer: he was working not for personal accomplishment and glory but for human betterment. And Buddhism justified his lifestyle: with its vision of the material world as empty and illusory, he was free to do what he wanted.

In a small town where gossip flows, bedridden Mary Ruth McCready reigns supreme, doling out wisdom and meddling in everyone's business with a fervor that would make a matchmaker blush. When her best friend has her world rocked by a scandalous revelation from her dying husband, Mary Ruth kicks into high gear, commandeering the help of her favorite granddaughter, Sarah Elizabeth, in tracking down the truth. Finding clues in funeral condolence cards and decades-old gossip dredged up at the Blue Moon Beauty Emporium, the two stir up trouble faster than you can say "pecan pie."

Gabriela Menchaca and Edwin Saucedo are hardworking, undocumented employees at the Detmer Foods chicken plant in Springdale, Arkansas, just a stone’s throw from the trailer park where they’ve lived together for seven years. While dealing with personal tragedies of their own, the young couple endures the brutal, dehumanizing conditions at the plant in exchange for barebones pay.

Private investigator Sarah Booth Delaney returns to her Mississippi Delta roots, hoping that long drives through cotton fields and the companionship of her dogs will ease her restless spirit. Instead, she's confronted by a ghostly vision of a woman in white on the Tallahatchie Bridge, who disappears before Sarah Booth can investigate further.

When their worlds are upended, two women brought together by their loss discover what truly matters most. Claire Roth sacrificed love for a life of comfort on Lake Toxaway—until the dam broke, and the lake washed down the side of the mountain. Fourteen years later, she longs to see the lake...