Showing results by narrator "Kate Reading" in All Categories

The country is America; the woman is Alexandra Bergson, a fiercely independent young Swedish immigrant girl who inherits her father's farm in Nebraska. A model of emotional strength, courage, and resolve, Alexandra fights long and hard to transform her father's patch of raw, wind-blasted prairie into a highly profitable business. A gripping saga of love, murder, greed, failure, and triumph, O Pioneers! vividly portrays the hardships of prairie life.

Evangeline Canterbury has always seemed perfectly composed and perfectly content. No one knows the fear and turmoil she holds inside, and she is happy to hide behind her façade. That is, until she meets Bennett Somerset on a night when her façade has fallen by the wayside, her misery visible for miles.

Lauren Willig continues the exciting series with her fourth novel, The Seduction of the Crimson Rose, featuring Lord Vaughn, the delightfully devilish spy from The Masque of the Black Tulip, and Mary Alsworthy, the raven-haired beauty whose sister accidentally stole her suitor in The Deception of the Emerald Ring.

In the near future, the collision of two nuclear superpowers – in two different timelines – is imminent. One America is experiencing its first technological revolution, whilst a parallel United States is a hi-tech police state. But both are poised to wreak destruction.

In Stornas, Reinar is feeling strong, working and training with vigor, imposing his authority on those around him, though internally, he is beset by fears. The threat of Alari grows each day, and though he carries himself with confidence, wanting to assure his people of their safety, Reinar knows it is only a matter of time before the goddess makes an appearance. Far away from Reinar, Alys is trying to turn her life around, though a terrible secret preys on her mind.

Here, collected in one volume and chosen by the author himself, are favorites such as "What Kind of Day Did You Have?", "Leaving the Yellow House", and a previously uncollected piece, "By the St. Lawrence". With his larger-than-life characters, irony, wisdom, and unique humor, Bellow presents a sharp, rich, and funny world that is infinitely surprising. With a preface by Janice Bellow and an introduction by James Wood, this is a collection to treasure for longtime Saul Bellow fans and an excellent introduction for new listeners.

In the sleepy Bavarian town of Gesternstadt, gossip was viewed by many as a local sport, a popular hobby, a harmless pastime that showed only the depth and enduring nature of the interest of one neighbour for another. In Gretel’s opinion, however, tittle-tattle sowed the seeds of malice among the fertile soil of jealousy, often watered by the tears of its victims. So it was that upon hearing from brother Hans of the whispers concerning a young woman, a married man and a thwarted lover, Gretel is compelled to rise from her beloved day bed to set things to rights.

San Francisco. Two trailblazing women—separated by a century—fighting for their futures. The Covert Buccaneer is a sweeping, dual-timeline historical fiction, women’s fiction, legal drama, and love story..

The Pink Carnation, history's most elusive spy and England's only hope for preventing a Napoleonic invasion, returns in Lauren Willig's dazzling, imaginative new historical romance. The Masque of the Black Tulip opens with the murder of a courier from the London War Office, his confidential dispatch for the Pink Carnation stolen.

It's the dawn of the twentieth century, post-Reconstruction, in the Commonwealth of Virginia. From the ancestral blood and sweat of its settlers - the immigrants, the slaves, the Cherokee - a new generation strives for prosperity in the united township of Grafton. Across the unfolding decades, childhood friends, mothers and daughters, wives and lovers will have their bonds tested. New hopes and dreams lie beyond the river, and as allegiances are challenged, a harmonious community finds itself grappling with inevitable cultural change.

In her debut novel, Rajaa Alsanea reveals the social, romantic, and sexual tribulations of four young women from the elite classes of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Originally released in Arabic in 2005, it was immediately banned in Saudi Arabia because of the controversial and inflammatory content, though black-market copies circulated widely.

Chapman unknowingly brought the Seventh Precinct to their demise. Now Officer Holden Sanders, known throughout the capital city as the survivor, seeks the truth of how so many he held dear were slaughtered. But, when it comes to light his former mentor might still draw breath, the officer of God is forced to wage war against the Almighty itself.

In a fascinating tour of creativity and the brain, Nancy Andreasen, professor of psychiatry at the University of Iowa and the winner of the National Medal of Science, explores how the human brain achieves creative breakthroughs--in art, literature, music, and science--the role of genes and environment, extraordinary creativity vs. ordinary creativity, and the question of genius and insanity.

Toni loses his father at a young age, and his mother, Elsbeth, is tasked with trying to provide for her son in the country all by herself. Toni discovers a passion for wood-carving, but circumstances do not allow him to pursue this line of work, and he instead finds himself as a herdsman up in the mountains. This life doesn't agree well with little Toni, and he falls ill and winds up in a sanitarium. He does not get better until he is reunited with his mother and all at once life for Toni and Elsbeth takes a positive turn thanks to the help of another patient in the sanitarium.

Gretel has never had any time for sorcerers, considering them nothing more than show-offs with questionable fashion sense. It is with some reluctance and a deal of grumpiness, then, that she agrees to look into the matter of a murdered magician. All that is left of him is a grisly remnant, which the police quack confirms is the murdered man’s appendix. What has become of the rest of him is baffling the local constabulary, the Sorcerers’ Society, and, not least, the hapless trickster’s widow.

Gretel, yes, that Gretel, is now all grown up and working as a private investigator in 18th century Bavaria. Her professional interest is piqued when she begins to hear whispers of mysterious goings-on off the coast of Schleswig-Holstein: sailors are disappearing, and there are rumours of mermaids and sea creatures and all manner of slippery, sea-based happenings.

The reign of the Sharakhani kings has been broken. Queen Meryam now rules the city. Çeda, meanwhile, has succeeded in lifting the asirim's curse, though it came at a terrible cost. Nalamae was slain in battle against her sister goddess. All is not lost, however. Çeda knows Nalamae will be reborn and so begins a quest to find her. The scheming King Ihsan has been busy as well, mining the legendary Blue Journals for a way to save the city and the desert beyond from certain destruction.

American Leonora Garrison has come to England in desperate search of investors to keep her family business afloat but instead finds surprising pleasure when she visits an exclusive ladies’ club and dares to kiss a stranger, who leaves her yearning for more. With a libertine for a father, Viscount Wyeth, more commonly known as Rook, vowed to live his life above reproach, with nary a hint of disgrace. Until one night, he takes a mysterious beauty into his arms, a lady who tempts him to cast his sterling reputation aside in favor of more wicked pursuits.

Abandoned by the sun, shunned by the Father of the Gods himself, the North is a wild place; a brutally cold land, where ambitious lords keep their followers warm with tales of how they will be the one to claim the prized crown of Alekka. Stories woven on stormy nights, sung around blazing fires over cups of ale, tell of the one who will unite the two halves of the broken land. They whisper of the Bear Stone, where the prophecy of that man’s coming was etched two thousand years ago.

This renowned journalist's classic Pulitzer Prize winning investigation of schizophrenia - now reissued with a new postscript - follows a flamboyant and fiercely intelligent young woman as she struggles in the throes of mental illness. "Sylvia Frumkin" was born in 1948 and began showing signs of schizophrenia in her teens. She spent the next seventeen years in and out of mental institutions. In 1978, reporter Susan Sheehan took an interest in her and, for more than two years, became immersed in her life.