Literary Life

Shanghai, 1912. Violet Minturn is the privileged daughter of the American madam of the city's most exclusive courtesan house. But when the Ching dynasty is overturned, Violet is separated from her mother in a cruel act of chicanery and forced to become a "virgin courtesan." Half-Chinese and half-American, Violet grapples with her place in the worlds of East and West - until she is able to merge her two halves, empowering her to become a shrewd courtesan who excels in the business of seduction and illusion, though she still struggles to understand who she is.

Thirty-four-year-old Harry Crane works as an analyst for the US Forest Service. When his wife dies suddenly, Harry, despairing, retreats north to lose himself in the remote woods of the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania. But fate intervenes in the form of a fiercely determined young girl named Oriana. She and her mother, Amanda, are struggling to pick up the pieces from their own tragic loss of Oriana’s father. Discovering Harry while roaming the forest, Oriana believes that he holds the key to righting her world.

The first thing every listener will want to know is whether Anne Shirley appears in these stories of Avonlea and Spencervale. She certainly does. As a matter of fact, page one starts off in this manner: "Anne Shirley was curled up on the window seat of Theodora Dix's sitting room one Saturday evening, looking dreamily afar at some fair starland beyond the hills of sunset. Anne was visiting for a fortnight of her vacation."

In a suburb outside Cleveland, a community of Indian Americans has settled into lives that straddle the divide between Eastern and Western cultures. For some, America is a bewildering and alienating place where coworkers can't pronounce your name but will eagerly repeat the Sanskrit phrases from their yoga class. Harit, a lonely Indian immigrant in his mid-40s, lives with his mother, who can no longer function after the death of Harit's sister, Swati.

Chin up, Emily Thorn faces the pain and heartache of love lost and years wasted. At 40, all she has to show for 20 years of marriage is a Federal Express letter from her husband that begins "Dear Emily" - and ends their life together. She had put her own life on hold to pay Ian's way through medical school. She believed him when he told her that one day she'd have everything she ever wanted - children, an education, a career of her own. What she got was overweight, out of shape - and dumped.

Wall Street traverse l'une des pires crises de son histoire. Nous sommes dans les années 1930, la Grande Dépression frappe l'Amérique de plein fouet. Un homme, néanmoins, a su faire fortune là où tous se sont effondrés. Héritier d'une famille d'industriels devenu magnat de la finance, il est l'époux aimant d'une fille d'aristocrates. Ils forment un couple que la haute société new-yorkaise rêve de côtoyer, mais préfèrent vivre à l'écart et se consacrer, lui à ses affaires, elle à sa maison et à ses oeuvres de bienfaisance.

East Sussex, 1914. It is the end of England's brief Edwardian summer, and everyone agrees that the weather has never been so beautiful. Hugh Grange, down from his medical studies, is visiting his aunt Agatha, who lives with her husband in the small, idyllic coastal town of Rye. Agatha's husband works in the Foreign Office, and she is certain he will ensure that the recent saber rattling over the Balkans won't come to anything.

Set in Saskatchewan and the Ottawa Valley, this finely honed tale begins in 1929 with a small-town schoolteacher helping an underprivileged child learn to read - all under the watchful eye of the school's domineering, enigmatic principal. From there the story takes listeners on a mesmerizing journey probing the roots of obsession and revealing how the pains and passions of childhood follow us into adulthood and beyond.

One night in New York City’s Chinatown, a woman is at a work reunion dinner with former colleagues when she excuses herself to buy a pack of cigarettes. On her way back, she runs into a former boyfriend. And then another. And...another. Nothing is quite what it seems as the city becomes awash with ghosts of heartbreaks past. What would normally pass for coincidence becomes something far stranger.

Until now, Kathryn Lyons's life has been peaceful if unextraordinary: a satisfying job teaching high school in the New England mill town of her childhood; a picture-perfect home by the ocean; a precocious, independent-minded fifteen-year-old daughter; and a happy marriage whose occasional dull passages she attributes to the unavoidable deadening of time.

It all began with a simple seaside vacation, a brother and sister recapturing their childhood. Antoine Rey thought he had the perfect surprise for his sister Mélanie's birthday: a weekend by the sea at Noirmoutier Island, where the pair spent many happy childhood summers playing on the beach. It had been too long, Antoine thought, since they'd returned to the island—over thirty years, since their mother died and the family holidays ceased. But the island's haunting beauty triggers more than happy memories.

Heartbroken and hoping for a new start, Abi Howes takes a summer job in rural France at the Château Bellevue. The old château echoes with voices from the past, and soon Abi finds herself drawn to one remarkable woman’s story, a story that could change the course of her summer - and her life. In 1938, Eliane Martin tends beehives in the garden of the beautiful Château Bellevue. In its shadow she meets Mathieu Dubosq and falls in love for the first time, daring to hope that a happy future awaits.

Yoshie's much-loved musician father died in a suicide pact with an unknown woman. It is only when Yoshie and her mother move to Shimokitazawa, a traditional Tokyo neighborhood of narrow streets, quirky shops, and friendly residents, that they can finally start to put their painful past behind them. However, despite their attempts to move forward, Yoshie is haunted by nightmares in which her father is looking for the phone he left behind on the day he died, or on which she is trying—unsuccessfully—to call him. Is her dead father trying to communicate a message through these dreams?

The fullest, most textural, most accurate - most human - account of Oscar Wilde's unique and dazzling life - based on extensive new research and newly discovered materials, from Wilde's personal letters and transcripts of his first trial to newly uncovered papers of his early romantic (and dangerous) escapades and the two-year prison term that shattered his soul and his life.

Noah wants to go home. A seemingly easy request from most four-year-olds. But as Noah's single mother, Janie, knows, nothing with Noah is ever easy. One day the preschool office calls and says Janie needs to come in to talk about Noah, and no, not later, now - and life as she knows it stops. For Jerome Anderson, life as he knows it has stopped. A deadly diagnosis has made him realize he is approaching the end of his life.

Six Californians join to discuss Jane Austen's novels. Over the six months they meet, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens. With her finely sighted eye for the frailties of human behavior and her finely tuned ear for the absurdities of social intercourse, Fowler has never been wittier nor her characters more appealing. The result is a delicious dissection of modern relationships.

From naughty children to rebellious teenagers, Rosie and Alex have stuck by each other through thick and thin. But just as they're discovering the joys of teenage nights on the town and dating disasters, they're separated. Alex's family moves from Dublin to America, and Alex goes with them. For good. Rosie's lost without him. But on the eve of her departure to join Alex in Boston, Rosie gets news that will change her life forever and keep her at home in Ireland.

The classic love story takes place on the De la Garza ranch, as the tyrannical owner, Mama Elena, chops onions at the kitchen table in her final days of pregnancy. While still in her mother's womb, her daughter to be weeps so violently she causes an early labor, and little Tita slips out amid the spices and fixings for noodle soup. This early encounter with food soon becomes a way of life, and Tita grows up to be a master chef. She shares special points of her favorite preparations with listeners throughout the story.

In December 1930, just before Christmas, the Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, social circuit is electrified with parties and dances. At the center of the social elite stand Julian and Caroline English. But in one rash moment born inside a highball glass, Julian breaks with polite society and begins a rapid descent toward self-destruction.

Some friends are more like family...and that's exactly how Cara Martin feels about Ryan Langston. He stood by her side through the most difficult time of her life, and there's nothing she won't do for him even now, after his death. But inheriting Ryan's share of his family's ranch in West Texas and living there for a year? Cara doesn't understand what he was thinking. Still, she cannot, will not deny Ryan's last request...even if it means sharing a roof with his brooding, arrogant older brother.