Modern Fiction

As an agent of the Society for Magickal Heritage, I, Cordelia Vesper, have an important job: rescue endangered creatures, artefacts, books and spells wherever they are to be found. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to keep British magick alive. So we rescued a valuable book from a long-lost library, only it proved to be unusually... chatty. And it's got a foul mouth, too. What manner of weird magick is this? Somebody else thinks it's pretty interesting, too. Ancestria Magicka, they call themselves. Brand new. Big trouble.

Things have been quiet at the Society lately. Too quiet. It couldn’t possibly last. When a griffin appeared in the Yorkshire skies, it could only mean bad news. There’s only one place in Britain it could have come from and that’s the lost kingdom of Farringale. It’s a dire warning, and there’s worse to come. Turns out we aren’t the only people with an interest in the age-old city of the trolls. Farringale lies under attack—and these people will stop at nothing to take control of its treasures. It’s time for a showdown—the deathly serious kind.

An exploited child worker in the silver mines of Bolivia finds an ally – but at what cost? A young woman's affair has terrifying repercussions when her lover's wife dies. A sailor's wife takes her communion with Nature a little too far…From a hungry young woman who is not what she seems, to a boy who has taken his mother's advice a little too seriously; from disfigured girls willing to pay any price to fit in, to an immigrant who cannot escape his tormentor; from a new home with a sinister secret, this collection plumbs the depths of the psyche and dredges up some very modern horrors.

Life is never peaceful in Chris Erskine's house, what with the four kids, 300-pound beagle, chronically leaky roof, and long-suffering wife, Posh. And that's exactly the way he likes it, except when he doesn't. Every week in the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune (and now and then in many other papers), Erskine distills, mocks, and makes us laugh at the absurdities of suburban fatherhood. And now, he's gathered the very best of these witty and wise essays - and invited his kids (and maybe even Posh) to annotate them with updated commentary.

We live within the ruins of an ancient civilization whose size has rendered it invisible. Remembered in myth as Atlantis, Lemuria, or other lost world archetypes, the remains of this advanced civilization have lain buried for millennia beneath the deserts and oceans of the world. Investigating the perennial myth of a forgotten fountainhead of civilization, J. Douglas Kenyon presents extensive physical and spiritual evidence of a lost great culture, the collective amnesia that wiped it from planetary memory, and the countless ways ancient catastrophes still haunt modern civilization.

Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, a collection of narratives written between 1387 and 1400, tells of a group of 30 people from all layers of society who pass the time along their pilgrimage to Canterbury by telling stories to one another, their interaction mediated (at times) by the affable host - Chaucer himself. Naxos AudioBooks’ third volume presents the tales of six people, here in an unabridged modern verse translation (by Frank Ernest Hill, 1935).

When Harrison orders a bride, he’s hoping Hannah can accept him - scars and all. But when a storm forces them to his cabin before exchanging vows, there are no guarantees that she’ll stay put once she discovers who he really is. Hannah didn’t come to Alaska on a whim - she’s resilient, strong, and willing to fight for her happily ever after. But when the storm grows more fierce, Harrison’s past is brought to light. Is Hannah the cure this wounded warrior needs? Or will she leave before they get a chance to find out if love heals all wounds?

When Alaskan native Sullivan orders a bride, he’s not planning on falling in love. A recent transplant to his childhood home in the middle of nowhere, he wants company. More than company - he wants a woman in his bed every damn day. Sully’s financially independent because of his own hard work and determination. His mail-order bride has other ideas.

Catherine Cohen, the one-woman stand-up chanteuse who has electrified the downtown NYC comedy scene in her white go-go boots, has been posting poignant, unfiltered poems on social media since before Instagram was a thing. A self-proclaimed self-obsessed millennial on the prowl with her beaded bag, she ponders guys who call you "dude" after sex, English-major dreams, true love during the pandemic, and other weighty matters in these captivating short lyrics.

Nicole Palmieri is married to her job. As a user experience designer at Virtuality, an artificial intelligence company in Los Angeles, Nicole is at her desk from sunrise to sunset. She doesn’t have time for a social life (or a love life), but that’s perfectly fine with her. Until her best friend, Parisa Shahin, announces her engagement and asks Nicole to be her maid of honor. That’s when Nicole decides to meticulously schedule out the next six months of her life....

Huit contes de la rue Broca : "Le géant aux chaussettes rouges", "Roman d'amour d'une patate", "La maison de l'oncle Pierre", "Le prince Blub et la sirène", "Je-ne-sais-qui, je-ne-sais-quoi", "Scoubidou", "La poupée qui sait tout", "Histoire de Lustucru". Portés par la malice de Pierre Gripari, ces contes modernes, irréverencieux et insolites révèlent les princes et les sorcières sous un nouveau jour.

This is a story from the Canterbury Tales III: Modern Verse Translation collection.

Natalie and Neil everything they could want: a stylish London house, two high-flying careers, a close-knit group of friends and family. And best of all: an ideal marriage. Having children, they’ve agreed, would only disrupt their carefree lives. But then Neil turns thirty-five, and suddenly he’s longing for a baby. However, Nat has not had a similar change of heart. As they no longer agree on this fundamental issue, their once perfect relationship starts to crumble. Nat starts to think about her exes and wonders if one of the men she has loved in the past can offer her a future.

I.L. Peretz, the acknowledged "Father of Yiddish Literature", captured the essence of Eastern European Jewish life. He wrote of the magical quality of kindness, and the bitter fruits of blind faith.

When Agent Tony Mendoza is tasked with apprehending a deadly supernatural entity, he’ll do whatever it takes to close the case—even risking his humanity in the process.

Gripping and compassionate, Land of Big Numbers traces the journeys of the diverse and legion Chinese people, their history, their government, and how all of that has tumbled—messily, violently, but still beautifully—into the present. Cutting between clear-eyed realism and tongue-in-cheek magical realism, Chen’s stories coalesce into a portrait of a people striving for openings where mobility is limited.

If you’ve ever been a room parent or school volunteer, Jen Dixon is your hero. She says what every class mom is really thinking, whether in her notoriously frank emails or standup-worthy interactions with the micromanaging PTA President and the gamut of difficult parents. Luckily, she has the charm and wit to get away with it - most of the time. Jen is sassier than ever but dealing with a whole new set of challenges in the world of parental politics and at home.

This was the book that launched a genre. Modern fantasy collections trace their lineage back to Lord Dunsany, and this was his first work that today's listeners would recognise in tone and settings.

How do you get people to appreciate what is right in front of them? In The Tale of the Mandarin Duck, it takes a mysterious, beautiful duck and a clear-eyed kid to point out the obvious! This audiobook will have listeners of all ages coming back to visit the fantastical interpretation of New York City and its odd ducks - both feathered and human.

After her troublemaker mother’s mysterious death, Kira fled her wealthy Texas town and never looked back. Now, decades later, Kira is invited to an old frenemy’s vow renewal celebration Though she is reluctant to go, there are things pulling her home. . . like chilled wine and days spent by the pool . . . like sexy Jack, her childhood crush. But more important are the urgent texts from her grandmother, who says she has something for Kira. Something related to her mother’s death, something that makes it look an awful lot like murder.