Plant Fiction

Recent retiree Ruth Singer is reflecting on her life and wondering what direction it might have taken if she'd made different choices. What if she'd had her tubes tied before her difficult youngest child was born? What if she'd run off with Danny Fortuna when she'd had the chance? Not only does Ruth ponder these questions, she lives those what-if lives in her imagination. As the chaos of her real life swirls around her, she contemplates the roads she never took, the choices she never made, and comes to understand how she became the woman she is - and why.

Throughout their married lives, baseball star Gaspar Bethlen's wife gave him a lovingly crafted mystery every year for Christmas. Solving the clues led him to his present, but the mysteries themselves were the true gift. Now, Beth has died, leaving Gasper a wreck of a man. But Beth left behind a clue, the beginning of one final Christmas mystery, and it's much more than either of them expected.

Jesse Sienna doesn't believe that love can last. His parents' marriage was caring but passionless, and his own romantic history tells him that love can burn bright, but that it cannot burn for long. So when his elderly father, Mickey, moves in with him and seems unable to understand Jesse's no-strings-attached relationship with Marina, his current girlfriend, Jesse barely pays attention. It's just another example of how different they are - and more evidence that he and his father will never connect on any meaningful level.

Imagine the mid-1980s, last day of school, summer break. A teen rushes to meet his mother, who is being released from the hospital after cancer surgery. When the teen arrives, he finds out his mother is dead, but his ex-gangbanging dad, who's been in jail the last eight years, is at the hospital, ready to take the teen home. Mendel is a coming-of-age story about a high school senior who must learn how to forgive as he navigates life without his mother. To honor his mother, he joins Mendel's track team, but his father's thuggish past catches up with them.

In the 1990s American workplace, survival of the fittest is sometimes less about clawing your way to the top than developing good camouflage. And Audrey Rohmer is doing her very best to blend in as an undistinguished middle manager. Uninspired by her job and uneasy about her father's new marriage, Audrey coasts through the work week leaning on her “partner in apathy”–an admin assistant named Pooter–to keep her relationship with the married head of her department from becoming water cooler gossip.

Jimmy Kozlowski has a regular gig playing Paul McCartney in the Beatles tribute band Help!. The band is part of a cottage industry built around mimicry, where each group strives to be the ultimate Fake Fab Four. And none strives harder than Help!, thanks to Gene Klein, its John Lennon and leader. Gene's just gotten his Medicare card and spends much of his time caring for his ailing mother. But he hasn't lost a step on guitar or vocals and is determined to take Help! to the top, his goal being to perform in Liverpool one day.

Ben Seidel wasn't sure how serious they were when he and his wife, Shira, discussed having an open marriage. But when Shira announces that she is going on a date with Liz, any ambiguity evaporates. Suddenly, every day is new terrain for Ben, navigating between keeping things together with Shira and exploring new partners. And when one of those new partners begins to matter to him more than he ever anticipated, he discovers that the complexities of this new life are only just beginning.

The arrival of Julian Mack, an openly gay new student quickly gaining the attention of bullies, draws Nate into a friendship that tests the limits of what he can endure. Absorbed by the need to please Julian, Nate is quickly at odds with his best friend Michelle and her efforts to protect him. As Nate struggles to find what meaning music has in his life, rumors about him swirl around school, leaving him to decide between defending Julian and his reputation or the safety and comfort of his haven of music and color.

According to a 2021 study from the IPCC, conditions of extreme drought are 1.7x more likely than they were 100 years ago. That is, at any given time we are nearly twice as likely to be experiencing an extreme drought than our desert-dwelling ancestors had a century ago. And this problem is not trending in the right direction. Though drought conditions can impact so many areas of our lives, the beauty and diversity of our lawns does not have to be one of them.

Rick and Abby grew up together, became best friends, and ultimately fell in love. Circumstance tore them apart in their early teens, though, and they went on to lives less idyllic than they dreamed about in those early days. Rick has had a very successful career, but his marriage flat-lined. Abby has a magical daughter, Paige, but Paige's father nearly destroyed Abby's spirit.

Nature is beautiful...until it tries to eat you. Jaxon is just your average janitor, but when he's caught in the crossfire between advanced science and terrorism, he ends up running for his life and watching the world around him get swallowed whole. Mother Nature takes revenge, and Jaxon has nowhere to go!

Holding onto tin helmets, obscured vision through suffocating gas masks, tumultuous clouds of debris tumbling through a convoluted, mid-night sky from above, the girls scampered from installation to installation, from shelter to shelter in an attempt to, time the speed and distance of descending shells with a futile delusion of child like imagination.

Wangari lives in a magical place in rural Kenya where the soil is rich for planting, the trees abundant, and the nearby pond full of mysterious creatures. She drinks from cool, clean streams and plays beneath her favorite fig tree under her mother's watchful gaze. Then Wangari grows up and goes away to school, and things start changing at home. Farmers chop down the trees.

In this installment, Leah the biology expert and Gustavo the history buff are whisked away on a mission to a forest in North Carolina, USA. There, they meet a botanist working to protect the amazing Venus flytrap - an endangered species of plant - from being stolen by poachers and sold for money. It'll take every bit of brainpower, bravery, and expertise that Leah and Gustavo have to stop the poachers and rescue the plants.

In "Professor Jonkin's Cannibal Plant," listeners are taken on a thrilling journey into the world of botany and mutation. Follow Professor Jonkin as he turns a carnivorous plant that feeds on insects into a pet plant, like a large dog, that consumes three Porterhouse steaks per day. Is Jonkin's plant a pet or a monster?

After spending a life wandering around, confused, anxious, and alone, Terra, a florist, acquires a series of six esoteric self-help discs that are designed to help those struggling to ascend to their higher selves from her sister’s yard sale.

When Christmas comes for the four March girls, there is no money for expensive presents and they give away their Christmas breakfast to a poor family. But there are no happier girls in America than Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. They miss their father, of course, who is away at the Civil War, but they try hard to be good so that he will be proud of his ’little women’ when he comes home.

"Hochu Vse Znat'" - jeto celaja serija detskih razvivajushhih audioknig, glavnaja zadacha kotoryh - uspeshnaja podgotovka rebenka k shkole! Vmeste s Domevenok Bu i ego druz'jami vash Malysh popadet v udivitel'nye prikljuchenija. Vmeste oni uznajut: kakie byvajut rastenija, kak oni ustroeny vnutri i chem pitajutsja, dlja chego ih primenjajut, kak razmnozhajutsja rastenija i mnogoe-mnogoe drugoe.

Professor Jonkin is a scientist who has successfully cultivated a tree that produces many fruits. He doesn’t stop there though and starts experimenting on a pitcher plant with disastrous results....

Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to Fast-growing Plant and experience the compelling world of adventure fiction!