Showing results by narrator "Edoardo Ballerini" in All Categories

D. Nurkse’s immigrant parents met on a boat out of Europe in 1940; he was a child of the generation whose anxieties were forged in the shadow of Hiroshima and the aftermath of WWII. His poems extend that child’s dignified ignorance into an open encounter with the cataclysms of the latter twentieth century and with family structures.

In this urgent outpouring of American voices, our poets speak to us as they shelter in place, addressing our collective fear, grief, and hope from eloquent and diverse individual perspectives.

Originally published in 1860, Ivan Turgenev’s First Love follows a 16-year-old boy’s infatuation with an older princess, who has moved in next door.

A masterpiece of American individualism, Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience is considered by many to be one of the most important pieces of political and philosophical writings ever produced by an American. Thoreau wrote the essay because of his opposition to slavery and the Mexican-American War. When the government engages in actions that are unjust, he believed that citizens should completely withdraw their support of the government and stop paying taxes, even if it results in imprisonment or violence.

Already a major international best seller, now available in English for the first time: In An Appeal to the World, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet illuminates the way to peace in our time, arguing for a form of universal ethics that goes beyond religion - values we all share as humans that can help us create unity and peace to heal our world. "All people are united in the pursuit of happiness and the desire to avoid suffering," His Holiness reminds us. "This is the source of humanity's greatest achievements."

Viktor Orlov had a longstanding appointment with death. Once Russia's richest man, he now resides in exile in London, where he is waging a crusade against the kleptocrats who have seized control of the Kremlin. His mansion is protected by armed bodyguards. Yet somehow, on a rainy summer evening, in the midst of a global pandemic, Russia's vengeful president finally manages to cross Orlov's name off his kill list.

In 1897, Odd Einar Eide returns home from a near-death experience in the Arctic only to discover his own funeral underway. His wife, Inger, stunned to see him alive, is slow to warm back up to him, having spent many sleepless nights convinced she had lost both him and their daughter, Thea, who traveled to America two years earlier but has yet to send even a single letter back to them in Hammerfest, their small Norwegian town at the top of the earth.

Paolo the dachshund is trapped. Although he lives in Rome, a city filled with history and adventure, he is confined to a hair salon. Paolo dreams of the sweet life - la dolce vita - in the Eternal City. And then, one day, he escapes! Paolo throws himself into the city, finding adventure at every turn. Join our hero as he discovers the wonders of Rome: the ruins, the food, the art, the opera, and - of course - the cats. Everyone will cheer the daring of this bighearted dog, whose story shows that even the smallest among us can achieve great things.

These three stories, set during the summer of 1940, draw on Italo Calvino's memories of his own adolescence during the Second World War, too young to be forced to fight in Mussolini's army but old enough to be conscripted into the Italian youth brigades. The callow narrator of these tales observes the mounting unease of a city girding itself for war, the looting of an occupied French town, and nighttime revels during a blackout. Appearing here in its first English translation, Into the War is one of Calvino's only works of autobiographical fiction.

A renowned documentary filmmaker is found dead after a sex game goes horribly wrong. Across town, a homemade bomb explodes at a charity benefit. The only cops who can work both cases are Zach Jordan and Kylie MacDonald of NYPD Red - the elite, hard-charging investigative task force called in exclusively for New York City's most high-profile crimes. Racing against the clock to keep the city's most prominent citizens safe, Zach and Kylie uncover enough corruption, blackmail, drugs, sex, and vengeance to shock even the most jaded of New Yorkers.

Someone is murdering the retired ladies of the lunch club. Jack McCall, ably assisted by Nora Burke and Max Logan, is hired by the governor - the brother of one of the victims. At the start, it seems a cushy job: nice weather, good pay, and an attractive Florida State cop is assigned to assist Jack. But in typical Jack McCall fashion, this murder case quickly turns screwy.

Josh is by far the best zombie Torcher around - at least, he is in his virtual-reality zombie-hunting game. Josh has quickly risen through the player ranks, relying on the skill, cunning, and agility of a real Torcher. Charlie is the top-ranked player in the game. Since all the players are shrouded in anonymity, Josh never expects Charlie to be a girl - and he never expects the offer she makes him: to join the underground gaming league that takes the virtual-reality game off the screen and into the streets.

Joyce always had an uneasy feeling about her son, Michael. Serious baby, then a serious kid, then a serious grown-up. His large, dark eyes. He always kept everything inside. When he misses coming home for his birthday, Joyce believes the worst and takes a drive upstate, desperate to find him. What she finds will strain her sanity. Intimate and unsettling, The Wolfs Mother Speaks is perfect for fans of Jeff VanderMeer, Victor LaValle, and Drew Magary.

Would you risk your life for total strangers? When she is assaulted while on vacation in Key West, the unforgettable Kate Bowers marshals her skills as a former homicide detective and Army MP. As she hunts down her assailant, she discovers women enslaved in a high-end sex trafficking operation on a luxury super-yacht. That’s only the first complication. The president’s daughter is missing and in mortal danger.

After a harrowing tour in Afghanistan, intelligence officer Amy Cornwall is eager to return home to her husband and their young daughter. But as soon as she steps into the house, she knows that something is terribly wrong. Her family is missing. The kidnappers leave a message: if she wants to see her husband and daughter alive again, Amy must complete a near impossible task...and she has 48 hours to do it. She'll do whatever it takes to bring them home.

This is what we long for: the profound pleasure of being swept into vivid new worlds, worlds peopled by characters so intriguing and real that we can't shake them, even long after the story's told. In this extraordinary audiobook, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, Dominic Smith brilliantly bridges the historical and the contemporary, tracking a collision course between a rare landscape by a female Dutch painter of the Golden Age, an inheritor of the work in 1950s Manhattan, and a celebrated Australian art historian who painted a forgery of it in her youth.

NYPD Red – the task force attacking the most extreme crimes in America's most extreme city –hunts a killer who is on an impossible mission. A vigilante serial killer is on the loose in New York City, tracking down and murdering people whose crimes have not been punished. The number of victims grows, and many New Yorkers secretly applaud the idea of justice won at any price.

In the remote Aspromonte Mountains in southern Calabria, Italy, three best friends embark on a life of crime in order to raise themselves up out of the poverty of their childhoods and the suffering of their parents. Black Souls draws on centuries of brigand lore, peasant rebellion history, mountain mythology, and colonial suffering to offer a gripping morality tale about how violence begets violence.

Faldistoire’s grandfather thinks he’s a ghost. Sylvie’s mother reads Tarot and summons storm clouds to mete her witch’s justice. Behind his Dad-of-the-Year demeanor, Sébastien’s father hides dark designs. It’s Croustine’s grandfather who makes the boy a pair of slippers from the dead family dog, but it’s his dad, the uncannily named Kevin Lambert, who always seems to be nearby when tragedy strikes, and in the cemetery, under the expressionless gazes of toads, small graves are continuously being dug: Chicoutimi, Quebec, is a dangerous place for children.

Sage Singer has a past that makes her want to hide from the world. But when she strikes up an unlikely friendship with Josef Weber, a quiet old man and respected pillar of the community, she feels that finally, she may have found someone she can open up to. Until Josef tells her the evil secret he's kept for sixty years…