Showing results by narrator "Sara Morsey" in All Categories

Bernard Shaw based his "religious pantomime" Androcles and the Lion on the ancient fable of the runaway slave who pulls a painful thorn from a lion's paw, thereby making a lifelong friend. This tale of a puny Greek tailor triumphing over the Roman emperor is, as always with Shaw, a commentary on the politics of his time, with the emperor standing in for the British government and, indeed, all repressive regimes.

The more I learn about what I really I am, the less I understand who I’m meant to be. Hood? Werewolf? Something else altogether? Figuring that out will have to wait. The fate of the slayers has been forced into my hands, and for their sake and mine, I need to hand them off to someone else ASAP. Where else could I go but to the hoods?

At last a book about the so-called "Mad Monk" of Imperial Russia that lays to rest the myths and reveals the truth about one of the most controversial characters in human history while exploring the impact his murder had on a dynasty, a people, and a country.

Ex-CIA agent Barbara Gold witnesses a woman being struck down by a car in broad daylight. It was no hit-and-run but plain, cold-blooded murder. After some sleuthing, Barbara discovers the strangest fact yet about sleepy Cheerville, New England: There’s a nudist colony on the edge of town, and the victim was an active member. Barbara must go on the hardest mission of her career - bare her 70-year-old body for all to see - in order to solve another bizarre murder mystery.

Written in 1923 and originally published in France, The Great American Novel examines the impossibility of writing such work in America. Williams not only writes the novel with poetic satire and pathos but allows us into his writing process, as he strives to define a young America at the end of a World War and the beginning of the “Roaring ‘20s”.

The Faoii have protected Clearwall for generations. With militaristic order and stalwart discipline, these women have reigned in prosperity. But when her monastery is attacked and her sisters slaughtered, only young Kaiya-faoii is left alive. Forced to cope without the long-standing traditions of her Order, Kaiya travels the country on a mission to avenge her sisters and preserve what is left of her heritage. The search brings her not only to dark discoveries and ancient family secrets, but to something she never wanted or dreamed of: a brother she never knew she had.

After contracting polio as a child, Sandra Gail Lambert progressed from braces and crutches to a manual wheelchair to a power wheelchair - but loneliness has remained a constant, from the wild claustrophobia of a child in body casts to just yesterday, trapped at home, gasping from pain. A Certain Loneliness is a meditative and engaging memoir-in-essays that explores the intersection of disability, queerness, and female desire with frankness and humor.

Set in early 20th century New York, Edith Wharton's classic novel follows the changing fortunes of the beautiful Lily Bart, an impoverished socialite who relies on the kindness of rich friends to move in glamorous society. Lily and all her friends know that she must make a rich marriage to achieve financial security, but she is drawn to kindred spirit Lawrence Selden, a charming but decidedly middle-class lawyer. Will Lily survive in a world of predatory financiers and their ruthless wives?

Humorist Will Rogers, known as The Cowboy Philosopher, serves up political satire 1900s style in his notes on the Paris Peace Conference and the formation of the League of Nations following World War I. Rogers-isms is as pointed and dry as any contemporary political commentary. Referring to the Conference as "the Peace Feast" Rogers says "…I don't want to see the world grow up in ignorance on this historical subject."

Mary Carlson didn't plan to become a veterinarian, but her husband's work inspired her to leave teaching, become a vet herself, and open a feline-exclusive clinic. Along the way, there were grueling years of vet school, a shattered hip, an enduring love, illness, and death - and the rediscovery that life, especially one filled with delightful animals, is worth living.

Why They Stay explores the reasoning and motivation of wives who stay with their politician-husbands after they cheat. Hillary Clinton couldn't have known in 1998 how her husband's high-profile philandering would play out. Would he be rehabilitated in the public eye? She took the gamble. Had she left the marriage, today she might be the spurned wife of a retired politician instead of the first American woman to run for president on a major party ticket.

On a November day in 1951 Neeley McPherson turned five...and accidentally killed her parents. Thrown into the care of her alcoholic grandfather, she survives by her wit, and the watchful eye of a black man, Gideon. In 1959, as equal rights heats up the South, authorities accuse Gideon of stealing a watch and using a Whites Only restroom. Neeley, now 13, decides to break him out of jail. When the infamous Catfish Cole, Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon of the Carolinas, discovers their courageous escape, he pursues Neeley and Gideon into the frozen Blue Ridge Mountains to a wolf sanctuary.

The Darling by Anton Chekhov is a humorous and poignant character study of an endearing woman. Chekhov gives us a puzzling heroine who seems to subordinate herself to the male intellect yet emerges as a gentle woman blighted by disappointment, but still "soldiering on."

Daddy's Little Secret: A Daughter's Quest to Solve Her Father's Brutal Murder is a poignant true crime story about a daughter who, upon her father's murder, learns of his alternative lifestyle. She had looked the other way about other secrets of his as well - deadly secrets that could help his killer escape the death penalty, should she come forward. An inside look at the complex and fascinating psyche of a father who shared an uncommon bond with his daughter.

This collection was first published in 1916 and contains some of Frost’s most famous poems, including "The Road Not Taken", "Hyla Brook", and "Birches". Frost’s dedication reads: "To You - who least need reminding that before this interval of the South Branch under black mountains, there was another interval, the Upper at Plymouth, where we walked in spring beyond the covered bridge; but that the first interval of all was the old farm, our brook interval, so called by the man we had it from in sale."

Strikingly beautiful and exceptionally talented, Montgomery Clift was at the peak of his fame in 1956 when a devastating car crash nearly destroyed his face. While this traumatic event robbed him of his heartthrob status and turned him into a somewhat disturbing, socially alienated character, author Elisabetta Girelli argues that Clift had always combined on-screen erotic ambiguity with real-life sexual nonconformity.

In the mid 1800's, an abused mother and child leave a stranded wagon along the Oregon Trail to find safety for the child. Lost in a blizzard, the mother feels they will die. She awakens to a strange surrounding and finds they were saved by a Sioux chief. From that day forward their lives are changed forever.

High in the mountains of central Japan, there's a town that makes it official business to invite in a host of spirits every summer. Helen's twin sister has drowned. After 60 years of relying on each other, Helen must now learn to not only work through her grief, but to embrace a life without the only person who ever mattered.

When Ettie stumbled over a dead body, she was surprised to see it was an Amish woman, Deena Brown. Ettie soon learned Deena had not always been Amish. It was one reason the woman never fitted in - that and the fact that no one saw her for days when she was working on her jigsaw puzzles. Ettie knew if she recreated Deena's last days, the murderer would be revealed.

When Reg doesn't turn up for his tour group, Willow is frightened something terrible has happened to him. After an increasingly panicked hunt, she and Harmony find him hiding away from the extraterrestrial life-forms he usually seeks. After Sheriff Wender uncovers a body in the same pasture Reg insists he encountered an alien being, they must consider whether a universal incident has taken place.