Showing results by narrator "Tavia" in All Categories

For half a century, the French writer Annie Ernaux has transgressed the boundaries of what stories are considered worth telling, what subjects worth exploring. In this probing meditation, Ernaux turns her attention to the phenomenon of the big-box superstore, a ubiquitous feature of modern life that has received scant attention in literature. Recording her visits to a store near Paris for over a year, she captures the world that exists within its massive walls.

It remains without question the most memorable and memorized speech in American history. On November 19, 1863, in 272 words delivered among the freshly dug graves of Union dead upon the country's bloodiest battlefield, Abraham Lincoln redefined American liberty and forever altered the course of...

Cécile, a stylish 47-year-old, has spent the weekend visiting her parents in a provincial town southeast of Paris. By early Monday morning, she's exhausted. These trips back home are always stressful, and she settles into a train compartment with an empty seat beside her. But it's soon occupied by a man she instantly recognizes: Philippe Leduc, with whom she had a passionate affair that ended in her brutal humiliation 30 years ago. In the fraught hour and a half that ensues, their express train hurtles toward the French capital.

“Stunning. . . Oliveira writes with feeling.” —The New York Times Book Review “[An] engrossing story. . . that feels utterly timely.” —People, “The Best New Books” New York, 1879: An epic blizzard descends on Albany, devastating the city. When the snow finally settles, two newly...

Styles of Radical Will, Susan Sontag's second collection of essays, extends the investigations she undertook in Against Interpretation with essays on film, literature, politics, and a groundbreaking study of pornography.

New York Times bestselling author Shelley Shepard Gray brings us another compelling suspense in her Amish of Hart County series, this time featuring an undercover English DEA agent who will do anything to protect the Amish girl he loves. Calvin Fisher left the Amish community at fourteen and...

Now streaming on Netflix and BBC iPlayer! The Breakfast Club meets Pretty Little Liars in Gretchen McNeil’s witty and suspenseful novel about four disparate girls who join forces to take revenge on high school bullies and create dangerous enemies for themselves in the process. Perfect for fans...

The 2015 winner of the Brown Democracy Medal, Joan C. Tronto, argues in Who Cares? that we need to rethink American democracy, as well as our own fundamental values and commitments, from a caring perspective. Asserting that Americans are facing a "caring deficit" - that there are simply too many demands on our time to care adequately for children, elderly people, and ourselves - she asks us to reconsider how we allocate care responsibilities.

Thirty-five years after her first collection, the classic Against Interpretation, America's most important essayist chose more than 40 longer and shorter pieces from the previous 20 years. "Reading", the first of three sections, includes ardent pieces on writers from Sontag's own private canon - Machado de Assis, Barthes, W. G. Sebald, Borges, Tsvetaeva, and Elizabeth Hardwick.

HE'S READY FOR LOVE AND EVERYTHING IT MEANS. IS SHE? Three years ago, Mary Jo Summerhill fell completely and utterly in love with Evan Dryden. But she was a kindergarten teacher, and he was a Boston blue blood with political ambitions. His family said she wasn't the "right kind of wife" for...

Elmira Bayrasli's colorful narrative brings listeners inside the world of high-growth entrepreneurs as they overcome vexing obstacles to build businesses that create jobs and economic growth and - perhaps most important - shift mindsets. Here are the people who personify the transformative force of entrepreneurship from parts of the world that will be the source of the overwhelming amount of economic growth over the next 25 years.

In the not-so-distant future, the forecasted 'death of print' has become a reality. Bookstores, libraries, newspapers, and magazines are a thing of the past, as we spend our time glued to handheld devices called Memes that not only keep us in constant communication but have become so intuitive as to hail us taxis before we leave our offices, order takeout at the first growl of a hungry stomach, and even create and sell language itself in a marketplace called the Word Exchange.

To Charles Fort, with Love is award-winning fantasist Caitlín R. Kiernan’s third collection of short fiction, a haunting parade of the terrible things which may lie beyond the boundaries of science, the minds which may exist beyond psychology, and the forbidden places which will never be located in any orthodox globe. A deceptively even dozen, this collection includes Kiernan’s celebrated stories “Onion” and “Andromeda Among the Stones”, as well as a number of more obscure pieces.

With his father’s mysterious disappearance and his brother Ronnie enlisting in the Vietnam War, 13-year-old TJ Crowley is left alone with his racist, unstable mother, Kate. The newly enforced Fair Housing Act results in the unthinkable for the Crowleys when a Black family, headed by the eminent Dr. Washington, crosses the racial red line and moves in next door. Kate is quick to warn TJ that their new neighbors are strictly off-limits and makes a panicked call to beg Ray, her old flame, to travel to their home in Wichita Kansas to help deal with “the problem next door.”

Choice. Power. Speed. Today's leaders continually face these forces. But with too many choices, too much power, and too much speed, leaders often make decisions in a heightened state of emotion (and drama). Hasty decisions are often poor ones, and in this climate there is no place to hide. Privacy is a thing of the past; the days of covering up or ignoring a problem are over. In today's transparent culture, the decision making of leaders is more vulnerable than ever - and it is more critical than ever to get it right.

A book that instantly captured the hearts of readers across the country, An American Childhood is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard’s poignant, vivid memoir of growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1950s.

The history of the Great Warming of a half millennium ago suggests that we may yet be underestimating the power of climate change to disrupt our lives todayand our vulnerability to drought, writes Fagan, is the silent elephant in the room.

Meredith Hunt is content with her solo life. She owns and runs a successful Pilates studio, volunteers at the high school every week, and recently bought a house. She can take care of herself, which is good because she has a hard time relying on other people. When she's mugged and a handsome man comes to her rescue, she doesn't know how to accept his help - or how to stop staring into his brown eyes. Ace Vance moved to Bridgeport to offer his 15-year-old son, Finn, a better life. Here, Finn has a chance to play football for a good team and maybe even earn a college scholarship.

Wave Woman is the untold story of an adventurer whose zest for life and learning kept her alive for 98 years. Betty Pembroke Heldreich Winstedt was the granddaughter of Mormon pioneers who, after spending an active and athletic childhood in Salt Lake City, moved to Santa Monica with her family and enrolled at USC to study dental hygiene. Betty went on to elope with a man she hardly knew, and to have two daughters.

When the aristocratic Vishov family is banished from their native Ustalav due to underhanded politics, they're faced with a choice: fade slowly into obscurity or strike out for the nearby River Kingdoms and establish a new holding on the untamed frontier. For Lady Tyressa Vishov, the decision is simple. Together with her children and loyal retainers, she'll forge a new life in the infamous Echo Wood, and neither bloodthirsty monsters nor local despots will stop her from reclaiming her family honor.