Showing results by narrator "Gabra Zackman" in All Categories

This masterwork of American immigrant literature is set in the 1920s on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and tells the story of Sara Smolinsky, the youngest daughter of an Orthodox rabbi, who rebels against her father's rigid conception of Jewish womanhood. Sarah's struggle toward independence and self-fulfillment resonates with a passion all can share. Compelling and beautifully written, Bread Givers is an essential historical work with enduring relevance.

Modern stories for modern times, Crash Diet is at once brilliant and bitter, happy and heartbreaking. In 11 stories, acclaimed novelist Jill McCorkle tells the varied tales of today's southern women, the lives they end up leading, and the loves that distract them. Sandra knows that the best revenge is her ex-husband's credit card; Ruthie is stuck owning a motel that the highway has bypassed; Anna is a widow who goes to airports and looks in on other people's lives; Bunny waits eagerly for her absent sister's postcards for advice on how to live.

Phantom Lady chronicles the untold story of Hollywood’s most powerful female writer-producer of the 1940s. In 1933 Joan Harrison was a 26-year-old former salesgirl with a dream of escaping her stodgy London suburb and the dreadful prospect of settling down with one of the local boys. A few short years later, she was Alfred Hitchcock’s confidante and the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of his first American film, Rebecca. Harrison had quickly grown from being the worst secretary Hitchcock ever had to one of his closest collaborators.

Medium Harlow Thane has given up her life as a celebrity paranormal investigator. After her life was turned upside down by a devious and illusive ghost, all she wants is to settle down in Keating Hollow, running the new pub in town. Unfortunately for her, no matter how much she wants to give up ghost hunting, the ghosts won’t quit her. Neither will her ex Cash Moses. With a ghost she just can’t seem to banish and her ex hell-bent on righting the past, it looks like Harlow’s plan for a quiet life isn’t in the cards.

Alice Feiring is a special sort of wine writer—the kind who dares to disagree with wine “experts”, and who believes wholeheartedly that the best wine writing is about life. To Fall in Love, Drink This is both her love letter to wine and a lifelong coming-of-age story. In a series of candid, wise, and humorous personal essays, Feiring tells the story of her parents’ divorce, her first big wine assignment, the end of an eleven-year relationship, the death of her father, a near-fatal brush with a serial killer, pandemic lockdown, and more—and suffuses each with love, romance, pain, joy, and wine.

In Victorian-era Louisville, the Home for Friendless Women is run by benevolent benefactors with one mission: to reform the fallen women who live there into pious mothers and wives through religious lessons and hard work. For Ruth, a college student who’s expelled after a campus sexual assault, the Home is a purgatory to endure before she can get her life back. For Belle, a queer sex worker who exchanged her bed at a brothel for one in the Home, it’s a safe place to rest her feet until she can track down her missing lover.

Clay Garrison is having a bad week. The newest batches of beer at the Townsend Brewery have been corrupted. Luckily, his earth witch wife, Abby, has been testing her own brews. Now it’s up to her batches to save the summer season’s profits. The problem? Everything is going wrong, and when a dire warning comes from the ghost of an old friend, Abby is starting to believe someone, or something, is out to get them. She’ll need her witchy powers to save the day and, in the end, reveal the gift of the witch.

Pears is a divorced 40-something living with her mother in Queens when the unsexiest pandemic ever hits the country and smatters her potential love life. If her mother wasn’t enough to cock block her, this virus does a double cock block of trapping her in masks while dosing her in hand sanitizer.

From the creator of Baby Sideburns and I Heart My Little A-Holes (and the creator of two kids who once were little a-holes but are slowly turning into awesome human beings), Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be A-Holes is a hilariously honest parenting guide written by a regular mom who doesn’t always know WTF she’s doing. Just like you.

The knights of the round table are alive in Vancouver, but when one winds up dead, it’s clear the familiar stories have taken a left turn. Hildie, a Valkyrie and the investigator assigned to the case, wants to find the killer―and maybe figure her life out while she’s at it. On her short list of suspects is Wayne, an autistic college student and the reincarnation of Sir Gawain, who these days is just trying to survive in a world that wasn’t made for him.

A former prodigy who refuses to believe her best years are behind her and a young virtuoso searching for his passion both get an unlikely shot at their dreams in this sparkling debut about second chances, unexpected joys, and the miraculous power of music.

In America, lipstick is the foundation of empires; it’s a signature of identity; it’s propaganda, self-expression, oppression, freedom, and rebellion. It’s a multibillion-dollar industry and one of our most iconic accessories of gender. This engaging and entertaining history of lipstick from the colonies to the present day will give listeners a new view of the little tube’s big place in modern America, from defining the middle class to building Fortune 500 businesses to being present at Stonewall and being engineered for space travel.

The 10th Winner of the 2019 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, Awarded by Barbara Kingsolver “What a read this is, right from its startling opening scene. But even more than plot, it’s the richly layered details that drive home a lightning bolt of empathy. To read At the Edge...

Lily Paddington has a gift, but to her, it’s more of a curse. Three years ago, she walked into her husband’s dream and found out he’d been lying to her for months. Now she’s divorced and doing whatever she can to make ends meet while raising her son on her own. After being unlucky in love, she has a hard time trusting anyone. But when she finds herself stranded in a small town overnight with Chase Garland, her walls start to crumble.

Ana will never forget her mother’s face when she and her baby brother, Oskar, were sent out of their Polish ghetto and into the arms of a Christian friend. For Oskar, though, their new family is the only one he remembers. When a woman from a Jewish reclamation organization seizes them, believing she has their best interest at heart, Ana sees an opportunity to reconnect with her roots, while Oskar sees only the loss of the home he loves.

In these wonderfully funny and poignant stories, Willett’s eccentric, complex characters think and do the unconventional. Soft, euphonic women gradually grow old; weak, unhappy men confront love and their own mortality; and abominable children desperately try to grow up with grace. With a unique voice and dry humor, Willett gives us a new insight into human existence, showing us those specific moments in relationships when life suddenly becomes visible. Critically acclaimed when it was first published, Jenny and the Jaws of Life is being brought back due to popular demand.

Paris. Tokyo. Shanghai. Seoul. Em’s Awful Good Fortune is part global romp, part dysfunctional marriage. Em is not simply married - it’s more like she’s handcuffed to her husband’s international career. Sure, they might be velvet cuffs, but still...cuffed. What else can she do but stomp her way through global capitals in search of her own identity? Part dysfunctional marriage, part global romp, this is not your typical expat story.

Several years in the future, an all-female astronaut team circumnavigates the globe once every 90 minutes aboard the International Space Station, prepared to be a powerful presence in space. When a surprise set of "everyday citizens" tags along for the ride, all protocol flies right out the proverbial...airlock.

Ruth Klein’s story is about merchants and landowners: aristocratic Polish Jews. It’s about their lives in refugee and concentration camps. About parents who survived the Holocaust but could not overcome the tragedy they had experienced, and about their children, who became indirect victims of the atrocities endured by Holocaust victims. After their liberation, Ruth’s parents were brought to the Displaced Person Camps in Germany, where they awaited departure to the United States. They were traumatized, starving, and impoverished, but they were among the survivors.

An abandoned calico cat, about to have kittens, hears the achingly lonely howl of a chained up, abused hound dog deep in the bayou. She dares to find him in the forest and the hound dares to befriend this cat, this feline, this creature he is supposed to hate. They are an unlikely pair, about to become an unlikely family.