Showing results by narrator "Xe Sands" in All Categories

Gerard sits, fully clothed, in his empty bathtub and pines for Benna. Neighbors in the same apartment building, they share a wall, and Gerard listens for the sound of her toilet flushing. Gerard loves Benna. And then Benna loves Gerard. She listens to him play piano, she teaches poetry, and sings at nightclubs. As their relationship ebbs and flows, through reality and imagination, Lorrie Moore paints a captivating, innovative portrait of men and women in love and not in love.

Lil and Frank married young, launched into courtship when they bonded over how they both - suddenly, tragically - lost a parent when they were children. Over time, their marriage grew and strengthened, with each still wishing for so much more understanding of the parents they’d lost prematurely. Now, after many years in Boston, they have retired in North Carolina. There, Lil, determined to leave a history for their children, sifts through letters and notes and diary entries - perhaps revealing more secrets than Frank wants their children to know.

In this award-winning collection, listeners will find spellbinding stories of loss, absence, and the devastating effects of chance - of what happens when the unthinkable bad luck of other people, of other towns, becomes our bad luck, our town. Taut, lucid, and engrossing, provocative and dark - and often darkly funny - these stories have much to offer the lover of literary fiction as well as the listener who just loves a great story.

Claire McIntyre tried to ignore the murders - the headlines of women stabbed to death, the city’s mounting fear. She tried to forget, too, the painful past she’d left behind in Massachusetts...and concentrate on her entrancing new life with Marc Bonnard. He was a man of wealth and sophistication, who wrapped her in a spell of erotic desire. Claire could almost believe that she loved him. But as the brutal deaths continued, Claire discovered a terrifying secret, a nightmare that became her own, and fled into the proud, indifferent city, searching for help.

A perfect blend of provocative beauty and fighting skills kept her safe in the most dangerous situations. But Maggie Bennett had no protection against her feelings for the handsome, mysterious Randall Carter. Torn by memories of past hurts, hopes for new love tossed her back into his arms and onto the bloody trail of a notorious terrorist. Maggie and Randall are swept on a wild roller-coaster ride of violence and betrayal…targets for an assassin's bullet and a passion that will strike without warning from the dark depths of the heart.

Maggie Bennett’s irresistible beauty and deadly skills in the martial arts always got her out of the tight spots. But she couldn't escape a stab of pain and passion when her new partner turned out to be tall, sensual Randall Carter. Once before, his kisses had promised forever - until the morning he'd walked out of her life. Now a thrilling, high-voltage chase after a mysterious spy has led her back into his arms and behind Europe's Iron Curtain, where Maggie and Randall become desperate players in an electrifying game - ready to break every rule...in danger and desire.

Maggie Bennett possesses stunning beauty that acts as a disguise for the lethal skills that truly come together to make her tough, icy, and cool. She thought she was ready for anything until she was assigned to protect ex-rock star Mack Pulaski. He aimed his sensual appeal with deadly accuracy - right into Maggie’s heart. Love is full of traps, but it could be a fatal distraction on the sizzling journey that sweeps them from Central America to Zurich, where multi-million-dollar drug deals provide the kind of stakes men kill for.

When Mimi finds out her favorite words - simple words, like apricot, blackberry, buttercup - are disappearing from the English language, she elects her granddaughter Brook as their Keeper. And did you know? The only way to save words is to know them.

Consider this glowing debut from Paige Lewis a menagerie of near-extinction. Space Struck explores the wonders and cruelties occurring within the realms of nature, science, and religion, with the acuity of a sage, the deftness of a hunter, and a hilarious sensibility for the absurd. The universe is seen as an endless arrow “...and it asks only one question: How dare you?” The poems are physically and psychologically tied to the animal world.

Finding Mrs. Warnecke tells the inspiring story of Cindi Rigsbee, a three-time Teacher of the Year, and Barbara Warnecke, the first-grade teacher who had a profound and lasting impact on Cindi's life. Cindi, an insecure child who craved positive attention, started her first-grade year with a teacher who was emotionally abusive and played favorites in the classroom. Two months into the school year, her principal came into the classroom and announced that half the students were being moved to another classroom.

The Voucher Promise examines the Housing Choice Voucher Program, colloquially known as "Section 8", and how it shapes the lives of families living in a Baltimore neighborhood called Park Heights. Eva Rosen tells stories about the daily lives of homeowners, voucher holders, renters who receive no housing assistance, and the landlords who provide housing.

Joyce Carol Oates, a queenpin of the noir genre, has brought her keen and discerning eye to the curation of an outstanding anthology of brand-new top-shelf short stories (and poems by Margaret Atwood!). While bad men are not always the victims in these tales, they get their due often enough to satisfy listeners who are sick of the gendered status quo, or who just want to have a little bit of fun at the expense of a crumbling patriarchal society. This stylistically diverse collection will make you squirm in your seat, stay up at night, laugh out loud, and inevitably wish for more.

Magic is real, and hungry—trapped in ancient texts and artifacts. Only a few who discover it survive to fight back. In this third season, join Detective Sal Brooks, newest recruit to a black-ops magic hunting team backed by the Vatican, as she travels the world to keep the supernatural in check.

Jenn Berney was one of those people who knew she was destined for motherhood - it wasn't a question of if, but when. So when she and her wife, Kelly, decided to start building their family, they took the next logical step: They went to a fertility clinic. But they soon found themselves entrenched in a medical establishment that didn't know what to do with people like them. With no man factoring into their relationship, doctors were at best embarrassed and at worst disparaging of the couple. Soon Jenn found herself stepping outside of the system determined to disregard her.

Traveling with Sugar reframes the rising diabetes epidemic as part of a 500-year-old global history of sweetness and power. Amid eerie injuries, changing bodies, amputated limbs, and untimely deaths, many people across the Caribbean and Central America simply call the affliction "sugar" - or, as some say in Belize, "traveling with sugar". A decade in the making, this audiobook unfolds as a series of cronicas - a word meaning both slow-moving story and slow-moving disease.

Rabies enjoys a fearsome and lurid reputation. Throughout the decades of spiraling growth that defined New York City from the 1840s to the 1910s, the bone-chilling cry of "Mad dog!" possessed the power to upend the ordinary routines and rhythms of urban life. In Mad Dogs and Other New Yorkers, Jessica Wang examines the history of this rare but dreaded affliction during a time of rapid urbanization.

In today's fast-paced, competitive business environment, everyone needs to communicate clearly and use time productively. E-Mail: A Write It Well Guide is a user-friendly audiobook that is filled with guidelines, tips, and tools. Discover how to write professional email that gets results, makes better use of email time, and avoids problems that can be costly. The updated version includes a section on using instant messaging and handheld devices. Used by individuals, corporations, and trainers, this is a must-have for anyone who writes emails at work.

In The Dinosaur Tourist, Caitlín R. Kiernan’s 15th collection of short fiction, 19 tales of the unexpected and the uncanny explore that treacherous gulf between what we suppose the world to be and what might actually be waiting out beyond the edges of our day-to-day experience. A mirror may be a window into another time. A cat may be our salvation. Your lover may be a fabulous being. And a hitchhiker may turn out to be anyone at all.

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.

In Caitlín R. Kiernan’s The Ammonite Violin & Others, one of contemporary dark fantasy’s most bewitching and distinctive voices is back with another banquet of the weird and unexpected. Within this book, you’ll discover a dazzling suite of stories situated on the borderlands between the unspeakable and the erotic, the grotesque and the sublime.