Showing results by narrator "Charlie Thurston" in All Categories

In this epic, mythical debut novel, a newly-wed couple escapes the busy confusion of their homeland for a distant and almost-uninhabited lakeshore. They plan to live there simply, to fish the lake, to trap the nearby woods, and build a house upon the dirt between where they can raise a family. But as their every pregnancy fails, the child-obsessed husband begins to rage at this new world: the song-spun objects somehow created by his wife’s beautiful singing voice, the giant and sentient bear that rules the beasts of the woods, the second moon weighing down the fabric of their starless sky, and the labyrinth of memory dug into the earth beneath their house.

Fifteen-year-old Ben Buck and his family spent four years clearing the wilderness to build a new home in Pennsylvania. They fought the Indians and the British, and made sacrifices most people wouldn't have been strong enough to make. All so they could be independent and free. Now someone's trying to take everything away from them...their land, their home, even Ben's best friend, Joe. But the Bucks won't give up without a fight, and Ben knows his family will have to win a war to stay free. But what he doesn't know is that wars sometimes last a very long time. And even if you win in the end, you can lose almost everything along the way.

Germany, 1945. Ever since Anton Kohler first heard the vibrant sound of the violin, he's dreamed of mastering the instrument. But when his father dies, the 15-year-old must give up his passion to support his seven younger siblings. As the Russian army marches closer to his hometown, Anton and his best friend Gerhard are pulled from their families and forced to help defend their home in a last desperate stand. When Anton witnesses the slaughter of concentration camp prisoners, he vows to escape the war and find a way home....

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?

Cybil is a war child who at a young age is transplanted to Tucson, Arizona, and raised by an American officer and his rigid wife. Chloe, Cybil’s daughter, is adrift in an empty house in the hills of Virginia. Her marriage has fallen apart, and her estranged husband is dying of cancer. Beau, Chloe’s closest friend, is in love with a man he’s only met on the internet, who lives across the country. Through each of these characters, Matalone weaves a moving, beautiful narrative of home, identity, and belonging.

Justin Conkey was too young to fight in the Revolution of 1776, but now it is 1787 and he is 14. Justin is ready to fight, even if he has only his father’s old sword to protect him. But once on the battlefield, war is not what he expected. It is dangerous and frightening and nothing makes sense. Throughout a particularly bitter winter the young man is desperate to prove that he too can be a hero - not realizing that many times heroes turn out to be just ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events, who do what comes naturally to save others regardless of risk to themselves.

Nicky Flynn is coming of age in 1970s Brooklyn, riding into his sophomore year at St. Michaels. Nicky is at once sensitive, resilient, exasperated, and keenly observant - especially when it comes to his father, Patrick. Undeniably enigmatic, and coasting on vanity, charm, and desperation, “Himself”, as Nicky calls his father, is given to picking up old car junkers for cheap at NYPD auctions. But as Patrick’s compulsions slide into alcoholism and abuse, Nicky, his mother, and his sisters brace themselves for an inevitable sharp turn in their addled lives.

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.

Lily Bennett is less than thrilled to be the new kid as she starts her junior year in high school. But soon after classes begin, she meets a classmate, Cole Drepeau, with whom she forms an immediate and intimate bond. As Cole and Lily grow closer, Lily learns about the murder that divided the town more than 30 years before. In 1985, graduating senior Amber Greeley snapped, killing her boyfriend, Ben - Cole's uncle - and taking her own life.

Did you know that it’s believed Galileo was scolded by the Roman Inquisition for sassing his mom? That Isaac Newton loved to examine soap bubbles? That Albert Einstein loved to collect joke books, and that geneticist Barbara McClintock wore a Groucho Marx disguise in public? With juicy tidbits about everything from favorite foods to first loves, the subjects of Kathleen Krull and Kathryn Hewitt’s Lives of the Scientists: Experiments, Explosions (and What the Neighbors Thought) are revealed as creative, bold, sometimes eccentric - and anything but dull.

James and Kate are golden children of the late 20th century, flush with opportunity. But an economic downturn and an unexpected pregnancy send them searching for a way to survive. A friend in California's Siskiyou County grows prime-grade marijuana; if James transports just one load from Cali to Florida, he'll pull down enough cash to survive for months. And so begins the life of a mule.

In an airport restaurant on Thanksgiving morning, Adam and Marissa meet. Over the course of this day fraught with emotion and expectation, these two strangers will form an unlikely bond as they reckon with their family ties, their pasts, and the choices that will determine their way forward. Joshua Max Feldman focuses his knowing eye on one of the last bastions of classical American idealism, the Thanksgiving family gathering, as he explores our struggles to know - and to be - our best selves.

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.

It is December 1681, and the words of Mr. Baggot, the tithingman, terrify young William. William is living a strange double life. By day he is a printer’s apprentice living in a white man’s house. By night, he is Weetasket of the Narraganset tribe who must risk Baggot’s wrath to search for his lost brother. Then comes the winter celebration of the Saturnalia - the ancient Roman holiday on which masters and slaves trade roles. Will William’s secrets be revealed? And what dark deeds of others will be brought to light on this fateful night?

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.

The perfect addition to the number one New York Times best-selling Red Queen series, Broken Throne features three brand-new novellas, alongside two previously published novellas, Steel Scars and Queen Song. Fans will be delighted to catch up with beloved characters after the drama of War Storm and be excited to hear from brand-new voices as well. This stunning collection is not to be missed.

A young man whose childhood hobby of collecting sea shells and birds’ nests takes a sinister turn when he becomes obsessed with acquiring his brother’s girlfriend, in “The Hoarder”. An archeologist summoned to attend his beloved sister’s funeral is astonished to discover it is not she who has died, but someone much closer to him, in “Gardener of Heart.”

In the spring of 1942, young Elzbieta Rabinek is aware of the swiftly growing discord just beyond the courtyard of her comfortable Warsaw home. But she has no idea what goes on behind the walls of the Jewish Ghetto nearby until she makes a discovery that propels her into a dangerous world of deception and heroism. Elzbieta comes face to face with the plight of the Gorka family who must give up their newborn daughter - or watch her starve. For Roman Gorka, this final injustice stirs in him a rebellion not even his newfound love for Elzbieta can suppress.

Set in Queens and Manhattan in the aughts, the book is narrated by Ty, a half-Jewish, half-Catholic 20-something who works for a business consulting firm on Wall Street. He’s in love with Jenny, a fledgling writer from his Queens neighborhood, but she finds ways to keep her distance. He’s also smitten with his co-worker, Krista Kaplan, but she’s his supervisor and skeptical of Ty because of his relationship with Jenny. His mother has recently died, and his father spends most of his time watching movies from the Rocky and Superman franchises....

Jayne Marks is questioning the choices she has made in the years since college and is struggling to pay her bills in Manhattan when she is given the opportunity to move to Paris with her wealthy lover and benefactor, Laurent Moller, who owns and operates two art galleries, one in New York, the other in Paris. He offers her the time and financial support she needs to begin her career as a painter and challenges her to see who and what she will become if she meets her artistic potential.