Showing results by narrator "Tavia Gilbert" in All Categories

Christina Crawford’s Mommie Dearest cast a spotlight on the unspoken horrors of family violence and exorcised the demons of her childhood. But in the years following the controversial best seller’s publication, the author’s resilience was tested in ways she never expected. Crawford was forced to brave a stunning backlash intended to shame her, a film adaptation that bastardized her story and compounded the trauma, a descent into alcoholism, a divorce, and a massive stroke that left her paralyzed. Staying true to her fighting spirit, she made a remarkable comeback.

It begins in Toronto, in the years after the smart drug revolution. Any high school student with a chemjet and internet connection can download recipes and print drugs, or invent them. A seventeen-year-old street girl finds God through a new brain-altering drug called Numinous, used as a sacrament by a new Church that preys on the underclass. But she is arrested and put into detention, and without the drug, commits suicide. Lyda Rose, another patient in that detention facility, has a dark secret: She was one of the original scientists who developed the drug.

This extraordinary evocation of a grown daughter’s attachment to her mother - and of both women’s strength and resiliency - recounts Annie’s attempt to first help her mother recover from Alzheimer’s disease and, then, when that proves futile, bear witness to the older woman’s gradual decline and her own experience as a daughter losing a beloved parent. I Remain in Darkness is a new high-water mark for Ernaux, surging with raw emotional power and her sublime ability to use language to apprehend her own life’s particular music.

Self-regard, in the works of Annie Ernaux, is always an excruciatingly painful and exact process. Here, she revisits the peculiar kind of self-fulfillment possible when we examine ourselves in the aftermath of a love affair, and sometimes, even, through the eyes of the lost beloved.

Welcome back to Hope River in New York Times bestselling author Patricia Harman’s newest novel as midwife Patience Hester, along with her family and friends, face the challenges of the home front during World War II. The women of Hope River trust midwife Patience Hester, whose skill in...

For Southern girl Verity Long, friendship means sitting down to stories and sweet tea on the front porch. For her gangster ghost housemate, it means dragging Verity out to a remote haunted asylum during a raging thunderstorm to do a favor for a long-dead mob boss. But Verity is always ready to help out a friend, even one as eternally eccentric as Frankie. And in the case of Mint Julep Manor, the stakes are too high to refuse.

Sometimes, Verity Long would like to forget she lives with the ghost of a 1920s gangster. But the reluctant housemates must once again work together when a dead detective blackmails Frankie into helping him solve a Great Gatsby-era cold case. Before she can say “bathtub gin”, Verity is dragged straight into a raging, otherworldly house party. Worse, every guest is hiding something. Meanwhile, Ellis Wydell, Verity’s living, breathing boyfriend needs Verity’s help with a police case of his own.

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer meets The Fifth Wave in this chilling and explosive new series from author Kimberly Derting. The last thing Kyra Agnew remembers is a flash of bright light. She awakes to discover that five whole years have passed. Everyone in her life has moved on—her parents are...

The world has been saved; life is beautiful and everyone loves and appreciates the hero, even though they have put him in some godforsaken place. To keep him safe, or so they say.... But it's too boring there! Only at first glance, however, because entertainment can be found anywhere and the street phase of the world tournament, Battle of the Champions, is just the right thing to pass the time, especially if some divine gifts are taken into consideration, which, regardless of his unique strategic and tactical talent, seriously complicate his life.

Dan’s first tournament may have ended, but life goes on. His luck is still with him in his regular life as well, and it seems to be endless. However, he is surrounded by very smart people, and surely one of them is going to start doubting his talents, at least a bit? Especially now, with a new game about to start. The latest foes are even more dangerous than the last and the rules are still unfamiliar to him. Dan wonders how reasonable the rules are in the first place. Is it really possible to take a competition that lasts a couple of hours at most seriously?

Eliya thinks that she’s finally found true love and passion with her charismatic and demanding husband, an aspiring novelist—until he ends their relationship in a Paris café, spurring her suicide attempt. Seeking to heal herself, Eliya is compelled to piece together the jagged shards of her life and history. Eliya’s heart-wrenching journey leads her to a profound and unexpected love, renewed family ties, and a reconciliation with her orphaned mother, Lily.

In Too Good to Be Altogether Lost, Wilder expert Pamela Smith Hill dives back into the Little House books, closely examining Wilder's text, her characters, and their stories. Hill reveals that these gritty, emotionally complex novels depict a realistic coming of age for a girl in the American West. This realism in Wilder's novels, once perceived as a fatal flaw, can lead to essential discussions not only about the past but about the present—and the underlying racism young people encounter when reading today.

Gone almost 30 years, Audrey Hepburn remains among the most beloved of movie stars, known for great beauty and for hits like Roman Holiday, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and Wait Until Dark. At the height of her fame at age 38, she walked away from Hollywood to raise her sons. Two decades later, seeking a new direction, she joined the organization that had saved her as a Dutch girl at the end of World War II: UNICEF. What happened next surpassed the plot twist of any movie.

When cats start getting sick, feline-loving freelance writer Theda Krakow suspects it’s accidental. But Violet, Theda’s shelter-owning rock-music buddy, claims the cats’ kibble was poisoned. When Theda starts looking at politics at the city shelter, she finds a number of people who could have happily committed the heinous crime.

In 1956, Kitty Cunningham disappeared on the way to the Starlite Drive-In. Now the first real evidence of foul play is coming to light in the ghostly realm—and it links directly to a modern crime. Only a sleuth with one foot in the past can solve the mystery and make things right.

Lewis Beckford's wife was murdered on a London subway car; now Lewis spends his night searching the underbelly of London looking for the man with the snake tattoo. A year after her death, he finds Richard Baxter, but his attempt to bring the man to summary justice for his crime goes horribly awry when the train finds its way to Mithras Court Station, a place not on any mortal map of London. The only key Lewis finds is a name - Sir Lucius Knight. But Knight seeks only his own empire to rule, and in Mithras Court, he has that. Lewis cannot buy his assistance easily, but Knight offers a deal....

Setting aside grief from the fallout of the second World War and putting her energy into curating an upcoming show critical to her career as the Keeper of the Metalworks at London’s renowned Victoria and Albert Museum, Jeannine Maycroft stumbles upon a unique collection of jewel-framed miniature eye portraits—a brilliant romantic device and clandestine love token of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Hannah Arendt was a polarizing cultural theorist—extolled by her peers as a visionary and berated by her critics as a poseur and a fraud. Born in Prussia to assimilated Jewish parents, she escaped from Hitler’s Germany in 1933. Arendt is now best remembered for the storm of controversy that surrounded her 1963 New Yorker series on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a kidnapped Nazi war criminal. In this comprehensive biography, Anne C. Heller tracks the source of Arendt’s contradictions and achievements to her sense of being a “conscious pariah”.

As Darrin and Amie Patrick reveal in this profoundly practical and transformational audiobook, God designed your wife with the need to be loved. And that design is an invitation for you to love her deeply, intentionally, and passionately. Practicing 10 powerful actions, including listening, pursuing, and serving, will transform you into your wife's lifelong champion and have her nominating you for the Husband Hall of Fame.

Part memoir, part popular science, and part social commentary, Bottled Up probes breastfeeding politics through the lens of Barston’s own experiences as well as those of the women she has met through her popular blog, The Fearless Formula Feeder. Incorporating expert opinions, medical literature, and popular media into a pithy, often wry narrative, Barston offers a corrective to our infatuation with the breast. Impassioned, well-reasoned, and thoroughly researched, Bottled Up asks us to think with more nuance and compassion about whether breastfeeding should remain the holy grail of good parenthood.