This is a story about a young man's journey into manhood and the discovery of his true calling in life. The story asserts the essential human right of each person to determine the course his or her life should take. But sometimes civilization gets in the way and lives don't unfold naturally.

As a boy, Dick Falkner ran away from abject poverty and an abusive alcoholic father. Sixteen years later, he finds himself hungry of body and empty of spirit in a Midwestern town. Although he finds no help in this so-called Christian town, he is eventually taken in by George Udell, a local publisher and kindhearted man. Through hard work and Christian morals, this man, who becomes known as "that printer of Udell’s", rises above his past to a new, inspiring life with God.

This classic Western story takes place on a cattle ranch. When a mysterious stranger comes walking into town seeking employment at the Cross-Triangle Ranch, life changes for these simple country folk.

Patrick McManus, author of How I Got This Way and one of America's favorite humorists, is an impish commentator on the obvious and not so obvious absurdities of modern life. His national best seller, The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw, is a collection of hilarious short pieces about fishing, its exotic equipment, and activities like "gunkholing". You will learn, for example, that the best way to learn to fish is to build an addition to your house first.

No growing pains have ever been more hilarious than those suffered loudly by the riotous Gilbreth clan. First, there are a dozen red-haired, freckle-faced kids to contend with. Then there's Dad, a famous efficiency expert who believes a family can be run just like a factory.

Can natural enemies make peace? Actually…can they fall in love? In his classic storytelling style, New York Times bestselling author Andy Andrews delivers an adventure set sharply against the warm waters and white sands of the Gulf of Mexico in WWII America.

When MacThomas Pockets finished his last tour as part of the Scottish Special Forces, he was hired to consult for a film director to finesse some scenes that weren't working. In a twist he never saw coming, he ended up moving to L.A. to work as the bodyguard for movie star Maybe Joe Sue.

In the year 1912, 19-year-old Christy Huddleston leaves home to teach school in the Smoky Mountains – and comes to know and love the resilient people of the region, with their fierce pride, their dark superstitions, their terrible poverty, and their yearning for beauty and truth. But her faith will be severely challenged by trial and tragedy, by the needs and unique strengths of two remarkable young men, and by a heart torn between true love and unwavering devotion.

This is the sequel to Freckles - the moving story of a young girl whose kindness and wholesome philosophy brightens the lives of everyone she meets.

Freckles, a plucky young man, lands a job as a watchman for a lumber company that logs timber in a mysterious forest swamp called the Limberlost.

This sprawling and often brutal novel, set in the rich farmlands of California's Salinas Valley, follows the intertwined destinies of two families - the Trasks and the Hamiltons - whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.

Rachel Rainsford should be excited. She was on a train traveling across the US to a well-paid position as an old lady's companion. But after several hours spent with the man who hired her and is accompanying her on her journey, she's having doubts. His manner seems strange, and she may have acted too hastily in accepting a job so far from home. Meanwhile, in the parlor car, Chan Prescott overhears two men concocting a plan to abduct a young woman. When her name is mentioned, Chan recognizes it as the daughter of a former beloved teacher.

The Moody family moves from New Hampshire to a Colorado ranch. Experience the pleasures and perils of ranching in 20th Century America, through the eyes of a youngster.

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

Why we think it’s a great listen: Never before has an author’s narration of his fiction been so important to fully grasping the book’s impact and global implications. Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of its monarchy to the present, The Kite Runner is the unforgettable story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them.