Maureen McDaniel

Secrets to Happiness

• UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 40 mins)
• By Sarah Dunn
• Narrated By Julie Dretzin

Deftly mixing humor and pathos, Sarah Dunn's Secrets to Happiness delivers an entertaining story of professional women living the city life. It has been likened to a hybrid of Candace Bushnell, Edith Wharton, and Jane Austen, and Kirkus Reviews calls it a "smart chick-lit tale with dark undertones." Recently divorced Holly is intelligent and spunky - and her priceless ruminations on love, life, and happiness are not to be missed.

Heft

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 44 mins)
• By Liz Moore
• Narrated By Kirby Heyborne, Keith Szarabajka

Forrmer academic Arthur Opp weighs 550 pounds and hasn’t left his rambling Brooklyn home in a decade. Twenty miles away in Yonkers, seventeen-year-old Kel Keller navigates life as the poor kid in a rich school and pins his hopes on what seems like a promising baseball career - if he can untangle himself from his family drama.

The Age of Miracles: A Novel

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 3 mins)
• By Karen Thompson Walker
• Narrated By Emily Janice Card
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

On a seemingly ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, Julia and her family awake to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth has suddenly begun to slow. The days and nights grow longer and longer, gravity is affected, the environment is thrown into disarray. Yet as she struggles to navigate an ever-shifting landscape, Julia is also coping with the normal disasters of everyday life.

The Wordy Shipmates

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 15 mins)
• By Sarah Vowell
• Narrated By Sarah Vowell, Eric Bogosian, T. Bone Burnett, Jill

Sarah Vowell's special brand of armchair history makes the bizarre and esoteric fascinatingly relevant and fun. She takes us from the modern-day reenactment of an Indian massacre to the Mohegan Sun casino, from old-timey Puritan poetry, where "righteousness" is rhymed with "wilderness," to a Mayflower-themed waterslide. Throughout, The Wordy Shipmates is rich in historical fact, humorous insight, and social commentary by one of America's most celebrated voices.

The Importance of Being Seven

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 33 mins)
• By Alexander McCall Smith
• Narrated By Robert Ian Mackenzie

Perhaps best known for his No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, #1 New York Times best-selling author Alexander McCall Smith delights fans around the world with his warmhearted 44 Scotland Street novels. In the series’ sixth entry, the residents of 44 Scotland Street grapple with problems both trivial and severe, but none so great as when six-year-old Bertie Pollock - who longs to be seven - mislays his mum and learns a valuable lesson about wish fulfillment.

Georgia Bottoms: A Novel

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 46 mins)
• By Mark Childress
• Narrated By Debra Monk
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

A best-selling author of books for adults and children, Mark Childress pens his most outrageous work yet with Georgia Bottoms. The titular heroine is the epitome of the church-going Southern belle, except for one teeny-tiny aspect of her life. Georgia’s family inheritance has long since evaporated, and to maintain her genteel lifestyle, Miss Bottoms has taken six affluent lovers—the fly in the ointment being that one is a married preacher who’s about to reveal their infidelity to the whole congregation.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette: A Novel

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 39 mins)
• By Maria Semple
• Narrated By Kathleen Wilhoite
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.

Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle - and people in general - has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands.

Model Behavior: A Novel

• UNABRIDGED (6 hrs and 14 mins)
• By Jay McInerney
• Narrated By Richard Cox
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Connor McKnight, former acolyte of film, Zen, and Japanese literature, is not unaware that these avocations are wildly different tfrom his present occupation (fledgling celebrity journalist). Meanwhile, his longtime girlfriend, the fashion model Philomena, seems curiously remote, and soon decamps for the West Coast.

Equal of the Sun: A Novel

• UNABRIDGED (13 hrs and 52 mins)
• By Anita Amirrezvani
• Narrated By Simon Vance

Iran in 1576 is a place of peace, wealth, and dazzling beauty. But when the Shah dies without having named an heir, the court is thrown into tumult. Princess Pari, the Shah's daughter and closest adviser, knows more about the inner workings of the state than almost anyone, but the princess's maneuvers to instill order after her father's sudden death incite resentment and dissent. Pari and her trusted servant, a eunuch able to navigate the harem as well as the world beyond the palace walls, are in possession of an incredible tapestry....

The Sense of an Ending

• UNABRIDGED (4 hrs and 40 mins)
• By Julian Barnes
• Narrated By Richard Morant

Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour, and wit. Maybe Adrian was more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life. Now Tony is retired. He’s had a career and a single marriage, a calm divorce. He’s certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer’s letter is about to prove.