Showing results by narrator "Jean Ann Douglass" in Literature & Fiction

Her husband's affair coming to light two weeks before his death should have been the worst thing to happen to Beth Cartwright that year. But being a widowed, single mom in a community of upper-class housewives is proving to be far more difficult. 

1962. In the middle of Brooklyn Heights sits the Starlite: boutique dress shop by day, underground women's club by night. Started by the shop's proprietor after her councilman ex-husband, Fred Abbott, ruined her reputation, Madeline's social club soon becomes a safe haven for women from all walks of life. These after-hour soirées soon bring two very different women into Madeline's life - Elaine, a British ex-pat struggling to save her marriage, and Lisa, a young stewardess whose plans for the future are suddenly upended.

A blue girl lives in the woods, eating secrets baked into moon pies and shaking up a small lakeside town. In this small lakeside town, mothers bake their secrets into moon pies they feed to a silent blue girl. Their daughters have secrets too - that they can’t sleep, that they might sleep with a neighbor boy, that they know more than they let on. But when the daughters find the blue girl, everyone’s carefully held silences shake loose. 

In nine stories that range from the real to the unreal, strange to familiar, funny to frightening, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum reminds us why her wildly original debut, Madeleine Is Sleeping, and her masterful Ms. Hempel Chronicles have become contemporary classics - celebrated and beloved.

Dragons, magic, princesses of mighty kingdoms: elements of fantasy that have carried on throughout the many ages and yet may one day be forgotten. Enter, and delve into the roots of fantasy, rediscovering the fantastic, and exploring lost worlds. This is storytelling at its best. This collection of original works will take listeners back to the moment when they first fell in love with the genre; featuring stories from writers across the spectrum such as Mark Lawrence, R.S. Belcher, Miles Cameron, and many more.

From the best-selling author of The Things We Cannot Say comes a poignant post-WWII novel that explores the expectations society places on women set within an engrossing family mystery that may unravel everything once believed to be true.

1959: Grace is a young mother with four children under four. All she ever wanted was to have a family of her own, but there are thoughts Grace cannot share with anyone in the months after childbirth. Instead she pours her deepest fears into the pages of a notebook, hiding them where she knows husband, Patrick, will never look. When Grace falls pregnant again, she turns to her sister, Maryanne, for help.

Far from the kingdom of Torvald, on the Western Isles near the coast, sea dragons rule the skies. Lila is the daughter of the Raider leader, destined to take his place one day aboard their plundering ships. Her people value only what trinkets they can get their hands on, but she aspires to much more than that: Lila wants the Raiders to become Dragon Mercenaries, dragon riders who help protect merchant fleets and navies from attack. Her father Kasian is skeptical, but a young monk named Danu comes bearing a prophecy claiming that Lila is the lost heir of Roskilde, a born Dragon Rider.

From A to Z, “Agitate” to “Zygote,” Freeman assembled the words that felt most essential, most potent, and began to build a case for their renewed power and authority, each word building on the last. The message that emerged was not to retreat behind books, but to emphatically engage in the public sphere, to redefine what it means to be a literary citizen. With an afterword by Valeria Luiselli, Dictionary of the Undoing is a necessary, resounding cri de coeur in defense of language, meaning, and our ability to imagine, describe, and build a better world.

Harper Cody used to worry about the SATs or a getting a new laptop for Christmas...but now, she only wants to keep her little sister alive. At 5:59 a.m. early in September, life as she knew it came to an end with a nuclear flash ninety miles away in Colorado Springs. For two months, her family sheltered in the basement of their home, surviving on whatever canned goods Dad could scavenge. Passing evacuees told of a safe haven in the mountains, but her father refused to leave. He thought their home was safe...until a gang of looters kicked in the door.

An epidemic hits the country, and Brooklyn Harper is stolen from the life she knew. Implanted in a rural camp, Brooklyn and her friends are severed from their families and the outside world. Each day is filled with combat training to assure their safety against a mysterious virus and the creatures it creates - violent humanoids with black blood. Two years later, Brooklyn’s cabin-mate, Dawson Winters, finds a letter that shatters the illusion they’ve been living in. There is a world outside Camp Eleven, and the virus that supposedly destroyed their country seems non-existent.

Keke is a biopunk journalist who won't stop till she exposes the truth. Will her reckless ambition help the surrogates, or harm them? Join Keke on her mission to uncover the biggest story she's ever encountered. You'll meet Jasmine and Marko and get pulled under with Kirsten, who's on the cusp of her own nail-biting story.