Showing results by publisher "Tantor Audio" in Family Life

To Carley Wells, words are the enemy. When her English teacher reports to her parents that she has answered "What is your favorite book?" with "Never met one I liked," they decide to fix what he calls her "intellectual impoverishment." They will commission a book to be written just for her---one she'll have to love---that will impress her teacher and the whole town of Fox Glen with their family's devotion to the arts. They will buy their daughter The Love of Reading

Rachel See thinks she has it all figured out, until her boyfriend breaks things off and she's left with a job she dreads. Taking a leap, she decides to move abroad to Ireland, where she takes a position at a company without really knowing what the business does or what the job entails. While there, with the help of a new crew of international friends and her old buddy in New York, Magda, she finally learns to let go of stability and ambition to experience life with all its ups and downs. It's My Big Fat Greek Wedding meets Eat Pray Love—with a side of kimchi that accompanies each adventure.

It's November 1, 1961, in a small town in South Carolina, and nuclear war is coming. Ten-year-old Wilson Porter believes this with every fiber of his being. He prowls his neighborhood for Communists and studies fallout pamphlets and the habits of his father, a scientist at the nuclear plant in town. Meanwhile, his mother Nellie covertly joins an anti-nuclear movement led by angry housewives-and his father, Dean, must decide what to do with the damning secrets he's uncovered at the nuclear plant. When tragedy strikes, the Porter family must learn to confront their fears.

When her estranged father leaves a will naming her and her sisters the sole heirs of the inn and restaurant in Oak Harbor, Jo finds herself putting her pride aside and heading back to the one place she'd vowed never to return. Josephine is finally finding her way after being lost for so long, but when secrets that should have been buried start resurfacing, she runs the risk of losing the most important person in her life. She now realizes the life she's hanging onto is about to become shattered into pieces.

Manuel Lindo came from nothing, but stubbornly worked his way up at the Dredging and Construction Company. Obliged to move from city to city for his job, the family couldn't put down roots, and Elvira and her siblings' childhood was marked by unpredictability. As they pass through temporary homes, they're caught between Manuel's outsized temper and their young mother's worsening illness, which would tragically take her life. Beginning with nine-year-old Manuel's experience in Madrid in 1939, Open Heart takes us on a journey through Spain full of insights about love in its many forms.

More than a year has passed since Marjan, Bahar, and Layla, the beautiful Iranian Aminpour sisters, sought refuge in the quaint Irish town of Ballinacroagh. Opening the beguiling Babylon Cafe, they charmed the locals with their warm hearts and delectable Persian cuisine, bringing a saffron-scented spice to the once-sleepy village. But when a young woman with a dark secret literally washes up on Clew Bay Beach, the sisters' world is once again turned upside down.

Christina Phillips, grieving after a personal tragedy, leaves California for Istanbul, hoping the exotic sights and sounds and smells of the ancient city will help her heal. But when she finds herself being stalked by a young Kurdish woman and threatened by a driver who seems to know all about her family and her life, she must correct old injustices by unraveling family secrets before tragedy strikes once again.

Mona is married to Jack, younger brother to Denny Springer, lead singer for the greatest rock-and-roll band in the world. Jack happens to sing, too, of course, not that anyone in the world notices very much. After Denny attends the family Easter dinner in London for the first time in decades, Mona invites Denny to join her and her family for the summer at a rental house in coastal Connecticut. She tells Denny it'll be a chance for him to finally bond with Jack, from whom Denny has been estranged for 20 years. Denny initially laughs at the idea...but then shows up on their doorstep.

Priced out of their Manhattan neighborhood, Jessica and Aaron move with their young daughters to the one place Jessica swore she'd never go: the suburbs. But to Jessica's surprise, life in the commuter belt makes a great first impression. She quickly falls in with a clique of helpful mom friends, and she's thrilled when she's invited to a moms-only weekend at the beach. The trip turns into a series of eye-opening lessons, and Jessica must decide if she's strong enough to be honest with herself about the sort of life she really wants.

Brooke O'Connor - elegant, self-possessed, and kind - has a happy marriage and a deeply loved young daughter. So her adamant refusal to have a second child confounds her husband, Sean. When Brooke's high school boyfriend, Alex - now divorced and mourning the death of his young son - unexpectedly resurfaces, Sean begins to suspect an affair. For 15 years Brooke has kept a shameful secret from everyone she loves. Only Alex knows the truth that drove them apart. His reappearance now threatens the life she has so carefully constructed and fortified by denial

Ray Shepard is a wealthy architect who has mystified his friends by marrying Evelyn, a woman who works at a nail salon. Evelyn, in turn, hides a secret past about her former life in the circus, her ex-husband's mysterious death, and the colorful tattoos she carefully conceals under her clothes. When Evelyn starts to cave under the pressure of living in Ray's rarified world, she suggests they take in Ingrid, a 16-year-old girl with blue hair, a pet iguana, and no place to stay for the summer.

Frankie Byrne has returned from the war in Iraq to a war in her San Diego home. More than anything, Frankie wants to regain the closeness she once shared with her husband and daughter, but it feels like they've created a new life without her. She doesn't seem to belong anywhere anymore. Her father, Brigadier General Harlan Byrne, USMC retired, thinks that Frankie's problems are her own fault. A woman, especially a mother, should not go off to war.

The award-winning stories in Dima Alzayat's collection, Alligator and Other Stories, are luminous and tender, whether dealing with a woman preforming burial rites for her brother in "Ghusl", or the great-aunt struggling to explain cultural identity to her niece in "Once We Were Syrians". Alzayat's stories are rich and relatable, chronicling a sense of displacement through everyday scenarios. There is the intern in pre-#MeToo Hollywood of "Only Those Who Struggle Succeed", or the "dangerous" women of "The Daughters of Manāt" who struggle to assert their independence.

Nothing interests Sarah Purcell more than the volcanoes she studies until she meets Dr. Cullen Gray. Maybe that's why she marries him two days later. Illogical, yes, but nothing has ever felt so right. As the honeymoon period ends and real life sets in, everything falls apart. A year after their separation, when Sarah is injured, she's shocked when Cullen shows up to help.

They say you never forget your first love...Born under a sparkling crescent moon, Nelson is a bright-eyed, inquisitive half beagle, half poodle. He lives with Katey and Don, newlyweds whose marriage is straining under the pressures of domesticity, but Katey's devotion to Nelson buoys the pup even as he worries his home may be falling apart. But there are few things Nelson likes better than to follow a scent, and one day he follows his nose and gets lost... very lost. Though he searches frantically for Katey - and she for him - Nelson can't seem to find his way home....

Meet the hapless Jeremy: a man in his late 50s, he scrapes together a living in Paris by writing soft-core pornography under the saucy guise of "Nathalie Cray". When his all-but-estranged sister tells him their father is on his deathbed, Jeremy reluctantly travels back to his parental home in the depths of the English countryside. Confronted with a life that he had always been eager to escape, his return marks the start of an emotionally fraught journey into the family's checkered past.

Sarah has given up her career to raise her children in the countryside, while her husband works long hours in London. Alone, she explores the fields and the woods near her home and discovers an enchanting lake, a memorial bench for a boy who drowned in mysterious circumstances, and Finn, a beautiful troubled teenager who plays truant from school.

In 1953, on a remote island in South Korea, a young boy stows away on the ferry that is carrying his older brother and sister-in-law to the mainland. Fifty-two years later, Han Hyun-kyu is on a plane back to Korea, leaving behind his wife and grown children in America. It is his daughter, Jane---a war photographer recently injured in a bombing in Baghdad and forced to return to New York---who journeys to find him in the South Korean town where his brothers have settled.

In the village of al-Awafi in Oman, we encounter three sisters: Mayya, who marries Abdallah after a heartbreak; Asma, who marries from a sense of duty; and Khawla, who rejects all offers while waiting for her beloved, who has emigrated to Canada. These three women and their families witness Oman evolve from a traditional, slave-owning society slowly redefining itself after the colonial era to the crossroads of its complex present.

With wit and warmth, And Sometimes Why captures the fragile rhythm and unpredictable drama of family life. When Sophia and Darius say good-bye to their teenage daughters one unremarkable morning. they have no idea how permanently their family will be affected by a decision made around the breakfast table. One of the daughters will have a terrible accident; the other will meet a boy. Both events will change their lives forever.