Showing results by narrator "Barbara Barnes" in All Categories

The world is never done catching up with Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), the author of Walden, “Civil Disobedience,” and other classics. A prophet of environmentalism and vegetarianism, an abolitionist, and a critic of materialism and technology, Thoreau even seems to have anticipated a world of social distancing in his famous experiment at Walden Pond. In Now Comes Good Sailing, 27 of today’s leading writers offer wide-ranging original pieces exploring how Thoreau has influenced and inspired them.

In Twice upon a Time, the third volume in The L.M. Montgomery Library, Benjamin Lefebvre collects and discusses over two dozen stories from across Montgomery’s career as a short fiction writer, many of them available in book form for the first time.

Award-winning novelist Vikram Seth is renowned worldwide for his magnum opus A Suitable Boy. But his dazzling debut, though less well-known, is equally innovative, masterly and ambitious. First published in 1986 and inspired by Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, it is written entirely in verse, comprising almost 600 stanzas of rhyming sonnets. This epic poem focusses on the interconnected stories of five young professionals, as they make their way in the 'unfettered city' of San Francisco in the '80s.

Before: Olivia knows she is lucky. She has a loving husband, Frank, an adorable son, Jake, and a beautiful new home. It couldn’t be more different from her childhood on the outskirts of Whitaker, dirt poor and dreaming of getting out. But at the end of long days with no one to talk to, always feeling like she’s not quite good enough, she starts to wonder if there’s a better life waiting.... After: Everyone in Whitaker knows who Olivia is. She’s the woman who left her family for no-good Dane Miller - and the one who most likely shot him.

The Dark Tower meets True Blood in this gritty and wildly entertaining tale of Gunnie Rose, a woman fighting unimaginable odds to keep her people alive after the disintegration of America. This is a surefire hit for fans of The Walking Dead or Westworld.

A spellbinding collection of 15 stories from multi-million copy internationally best-selling author Rosamunde Pilcher, published posthumously two years after her death. Each of the 15 stories is a perfect slice of romance written with warmth and passion, featuring some wonderfully memorable, smart and feisty female characters that will transport listeners to another time and place.

Picking up right where A Longer Fall left off, this thrilling third instalment follows Lizbeth Rose as she takes on one of her most dangerous missions yet: rescuing her estranged partner, Prince Eli, from the Holy Russian Empire. Once in San Diego, Lizbeth is going to have to rely upon her sister Felicia and her growing Grigori powers to navigate her way through this strange new world of royalty and deception in order to get Eli freed from jail where he's being held for murder.

Dr. Leah Wright returned to her childhood home in rural Pennsylvania with her husband to find peace and quiet, start afresh, and raise her six-year-old daughter Emily. But when she gets home one dark winter night, clutching roses in her hand, she finds her daughter huddled under her bed and her husband’s blood all over the floor.... When Detective Luka Jericho is called to investigate, he’s shocked to learn that the killer left a witness behind - the victim’s young daughter.

It’s been two years since Ellie and her family left their lives in America behind and moved to a small Welsh village to run her husband’s family inn. Having fought to save it from disrepair, Ellie is shocked when her sister-in-law, Sarah, breaks the news that the inn is facing financial trouble and might have to close after Christmas, a thought that breaks all their hearts.

In this second thrilling instalment of the Gunnie Rose series, Lizbeth Rose is hired onto a new crew for a seemingly easy protection job, transporting a crate into Dixie, just about the last part of the former United States of America she wants to visit. But what seemed like a straight-forward job turns into a massacre as the crate is stolen. Up against a wall in Dixie, where social norms have stepped back into the last century, Lizbeth has to go undercover with an old friend to retrieve the crate as what's inside can spark a rebellion, if she can get it back in time.

In the summer heat at the Craven County Fair in rural Pennsylvania, Dr. Leah Wright is shocked to find a pregnant woman hiding from view and in labor. Leah manages to deliver the baby safely, but the woman won’t reveal her name. She's terrified, running from someone, and days later both she and her newborn son go missing....

One month since she lost her husband, Dr Leah Wright knows it’s time to return to her family home. Though the crime scene tape and blood stains are gone, she will never feel safe with her daughter there again. Receiving a call from Detective Luka Jericho to assist with a police investigation is a welcome distraction, until she sees the scene: a wife dead, another family ripped apart. As Leah is the new head of the Crisis Intervention Center, Luka knows she can help him speak to the victim’s traumatized husband, who he suspects might have had something to do with his wife’s death.

Dakota Finch never really recovered from the day her best friend was murdered. Dakota and Flora were best friends – and Dakota has never confessed her own dark secret about what she did that day. Years later, Dakota has become a detective, hiding her broken heart behind a rock-hard shell. When her latest misdemeanour sees her re-assigned back to her small home town, she can’t help but think it could be her chance to finally catch Flora’s killer – a man who’s only ever be known as “the Sugar Man”.

Lizbeth Rose is awaiting the arrival of her sister Felicia and her husband's younger brother Eli in Texoma. Both needed to leave the seat of the Holy Russian Empire in San Diego after Felicia's burgeoning wizardly power in death magic became the reason for kidnapping and assassination attempts from her mother's family of high-powered wizards in Mexico. Yet bad news has travelled ahead of them, as Eli is called back to San Diego, taking Peter along with him, splitting them apart in more ways than one as their enemies' plans for revenge come to fruition.

Modern and diverse, these women of different classes and ages struggle with sexuality, fate, motherhood, infidelity, desperation and an overriding will to survive. We meet Greta, a cookbook editor who is chosen by Tavi, the hottest writer of his generation, to edit his new book. The book becomes a best seller, and Greta is propelled out of her marriage by her own ambition and success.

Felicia, Lizbeth Rose's younger half-sister and student at the Grigori school within the capital of the New Holy Russian Empire in San Diego, is caught between secrets and powerful family struggles. As a distant relative to the Tsar, she provides an essential service to him by providing blood transfusions for his hemophilia, and she is thus given rare access and dismissed as if cattle. At the Grigori school she is seen as a charity case, a poor orphan with no prospects and no sign of magical prowess—the latter which Felicia keeps purposefully hidden.

Prudence Rutledge is terrified. She sits in her isolated New England farmhouse, fearing that her husband is stepping out on her. Seems like Saul has been seen down at the pond, meeting up with a young woman named Ora Brand. Trouble is, Ora Brand has been dead for over a year.

In April 1989, a white woman who came to be known as the 'Central Park jogger' was brutally raped and severely beaten, her body left crumpled in a ravine. Amid the staggering torrent of media coverage and public outcry that ensued, exposing the deep-seated race and class divisions in New York City at the time, five teenagers were quickly apprehended - four black and one Hispanic. All five confessed, were tried and convicted as adults despite no evidence linking them to the victim.

Award-winning author Anne Tyler is loved worldwide for her fiction exploring the intricacies of marriage and domesticity. These three acclaimed books, each set in Baltimore, describe the small triumphs and tragedies of everyday American family life, as relationships are made and broken, and families come together, drift apart and hurt and heal each other.

Tess has been determined to get revenge for her father, ever since he was falsely accused of misusing company funds and unceremoniously let go from Diamond Enterprises. Applying to be Executive Assistant to the elusive, elderly head of the company, Mr. King, seems the ideal way to get inside the firm and clear his name. But the job interview is not what she expects. Arriving at the company HQ, she is escorted to a helicopter, blindfolded and flown to a secret location. She meets a man whose voice is disguised, but introduces himself as Mr. King and says the job advertisement was a ruse.