Showing results by narrator "Charlie Thurston" in All Categories

Life for indentured servants in pioneer Virginia is hard. It is doubly hard for Richard Ayre, a London orphan who had been scooped off the streets as a child and sent to the Jamestown Colony. But a chance encounter with an Indian boy his own age gives him a friend, the first real friend he has had in years - until his master’s plan to raid an Indian village for corn turns Richard’s world upside down.

Dills and his mom have returned to Hamilton, her hometown, hoping to leave the horrors of Windsor behind. But it's impossible to escape the echoes of tragedy, and trouble always follows trouble. When Dills hurts a new classmate, it comes out in court that he was in the Windsor High library when the shooter came in. But he won't talk about what he saw, what he still sees whenever he closes his eyes.

Five years into fatherhood, Calvin Hennick is plagued by self-doubt and full of questions. How can he teach his son to be a man when his own father figures abandoned him? As a white man, what can he possibly teach his biracial son about how to live as a black man in America? And what does it even mean to be a man today, when society's expectations of men seem to change from moment to moment?

A moose walks into a rural Maine town called Oslo. Pierre Roy, a brilliant 12-year-old, loses his memory in an accident. Three families are changed for worse and better as they grapple with trauma, marriage, ambition, and their fraught relationship with the natural world. Oslo, Maine inspects the strengths and limitations of seven average yet extraordinary people as they reckon with their considerable collective failure around Pierre's accident.

Writing in the grand American tradition of Annie Dillard and Barry Lopez, Donovan Hohn is an "adventurous, inquisitive, and brightly illuminating writer" (New York Times). Since the publication of Moby-Duck a decade ago, Hohn has been widely hailed for his prize-winning essays on the borderlands between the natural and the human. The Inner Coast collects 10 of his best, many of them originally published in such magazines as the New York Times Magazine and Harper's.

Bloomland opens during finals week at a fictional southern university, when a student walks into the library with his roommate's semi-automatic rifle and opens fire. When he stops shooting, 12 people are dead. In this richly textured debut, John Englehardt explores how the origin and aftermath of the shooting impacts the lives of three characters: a disillusioned student, a grieving professor, and a young man whose valuation of fear and disconnection funnels him into the role of the aggressor.

An honest story about recovery and coping with both past and present, framed by the meteoric rise and fall of the band Nirvana and the wide-reaching scope of the #metoo movement, Nirvana is Here explores issues of identity, race, sex, and family with both poignancy and unexpected humor. Deftly told intertwining stories with rich, real characters are reminiscent of the sensuality and haunting nostalgia of Andre Aciman's Call Me By Your Name blended with the raw emotion of Kurt Cobain's lyrics.

As the tulips bloom and the Nazis tighten their grip across the city, the last signs of Dutch resistance are being swept away. Marijke de Graaf and her husband are arrested and deported to different concentration camps in Germany. Marijke is given a terrible choice: to suffer a slow death in the labor camp or join the camp brothel. On the other side of the barbed wire, SS officer Karl Müller arrives at the camp hoping to live up to his father’s expectations of wartime glory. When he encounters the newly arrived Marijke, this meeting changes their lives forever.

Joe Berkowitz loves cheese. Or at least he thought he did. After stumbling upon an artisanal tasting at an upscale cheese shop one Valentine’s Day, he realized he’d hardly even scratched the surface. These cheeses were like nothing he had ever tasted - a visceral drug-punch that reverberated deliciousness - and they were from America. He felt like he was being let in a great cosmic secret, and instantly he was in love.

It’s been almost two years since investigative reporter Jack Logan and television producer Taylor Parks brought down the Institute. But soon, a series of bizarre, seemingly random murder/suicides captures Jack’s attention as a disturbing pattern emerges. Could someone be intentionally causing people to become homicidal? At the same time, Taylor is producing a story about a class action suit against a national insurance company that has reached the Supreme Court.

Lackey Ferguson met Marissa Hardin once, the morning he signed on to build a bathhouse at the Hardins' fancy Fort Worth home. But when Marissa is found brutally murdered, Lackey becomes the number-one suspect in a trumped-up case, while a sexual psychopath runs loose. Desperate to find the real killer, Lackey must evade arrest while keeping an eye on his fiancée - who may just be the killer's next target....

Memory is Copeland-Stark’s business. Yet after months of reconsolidation treatments at their sleek new flagship facility, Hope Nakano still has no idea what happened to her lost year, or the life she was just beginning to build with her one great love. Each procedure surfaces fragmented clues which erode Hope’s trust in her own memories, especially the ones of Luke. As inconsistencies mount, her search for answers reveals a much larger secret Copeland-Stark is determined to protect. But everyone has secrets, including Hope.

Today, Vincent Van Gogh is one of the most famous artists of all time. During his lifetime, he sold just one painting. This misunderstood painter was passionate about his craft and created over 2,100 pieces of art in just over a decade before he passed away at the age of thirty-seven. Bold shades of blue and yellow, dramatically thick paint application, and heavy brush strokes define Vincent's pieces that are now adored by millions of people all over the world.

Hallie Bancroft's forty-two-year-old life is in shambles. The universe has been dishing out lemons to her at Mach speed: laid off from her job as a theater-set designer, abandoned by her boyfriend, and saddled with an apartment she can no longer afford. When her best friend intervenes, Hallie finds herself with five others in a Cape Cod mansion so gigantic it could have its own ZIP code. There, she meets Quinn O'Neill, a dashing widowed professor in his early fifties who, much to Hallie's surprise, loves wordplay and literature as passionately as she does.

On a surprisingly snowy day in Texas, a young student finds himself braving recess alone…that is, until he spots a new face sitting on the school's Buddy Bench. After a quick introduction, the two spend their recess discovering fun ways to enjoy the snow. By the end of recess, both kids leave the playground with a brand new friend. This sweet story of friendship brings the Buddy Bench's purpose to life.

A thoughtful interpretation of the loss of a father from a child's perspective. Jar Of Love encourages your little one to let positive feelings and memories guide their way through their grief after losing their daddy.

Steven, a freshly minted Army Ranger with big ambitions, is eager to take down bad guys—and maybe charm a few bad girls along the way. His first mission: locate a Soviet master scientist hiding in the rugged French Pyrenees before a sadistic terrorist beats him to it. On his journey, Steven encounters a traitor in a field of red poppies, a stunning Mossad black-ops agent, mouthwatering cassoulet, and Cindy, a telepathic, eyeless doll. As Steven races to prevent catastrophe, he discovers that nothing is as it seems—least of all, himself.

This is a story of the rich and the very poor. This is a story of an illegal auction with dire consequences. This is a story of murders past and present. This is a story of intertwined relationships and the silent ripples they leave behind, where love becomes a guiding force, revealing the lengths one will go to protect those they cherish.