Showing results by narrator "Laurel Lefkow" in All Categories

I haven’t spoken to my mother or sisters in years, but everything changes when I lose my husband. And I know it’s finally time to tell them why I’ve pushed them away. But as I approach my childhood home, my heart drops at the sight of police tape across the porch, and it shatters when I’m told my mother’s body has been recovered from the lake behind the house. I’m too late. Pushing all our differences aside, my sisters and I desperately search her house for answers. But something isn’t right. Her clothes are missing, and everything is covered in a thick layer of dust.

Juliette and her husband have finally made it to France on the romantic getaway of her dreams—but as the days pass, all she discovers is quite how far they’ve grown apart. She’s craving a new adventure, so when she happens across a tiny, abandoned shop with a for-sale sign in the window, it feels fated. And she’s about to learn that the forgotten bookshop hides a lot more than meets the eye.

Life has the capacity of great moments and attainment, of lives well lived, fulfilling for ourselves and for those we touch. But for others life is arduous. There is no spark to ignite the curiosity, to explore and achieve a stability and a growth to their lives. Indeed their lives, in their own eyes, become almost meaningless, their sense of themselves subsumed under a myriad of problems, whether real or imagined. Seismic events in a life might crush them; the loss of a loved one for instance. Coping is difficult, support hard to find and isolation abounds.

Paradise-1. Earth's first deep space colony. For thousands of colonists, it was an opportunity for a new life. Until it went dark. No communication has been received from the colony for months. It falls to Firewatch Agent Alexandra Petrova and the crew of the Artemis to investigate. What they find is more horrifying than they could have imagined.

The Heroine’s Journey describes contemporary woman’s search for wholeness in a society where she has been defined according to masculine values. Drawing on cultural myths and fairy tales, ancient symbols and goddesses, and the dreams of contemporary women, Murdock illustrates the need for — and the reality of — feminine values in Western culture.

Almost every day we are bombarded with the seemingly incontrovertible message that we must reduce our consumption of meat and dairy—or eliminate them from our diets altogether. But what if the pervasive message that the plant-based diet will improve our health and save the planet is misleading—or even false? What if removing animal foods from our diet is a serious threat to human health, and a red herring in the fight against climate change.

On a perfect August morning, Elle Bishop heads out for a swim in the pond below 'The Paper Palace'—her family's holiday home in Cape Cod. As she dives beneath the water she relives the passionate encounter she had the night before, against the side of the house that knows all her darkest secrets, while her husband and mother chatted to their guests inside.... So begins a story that unfolds over 24 hours and 50 years, as Elle's shocking betrayal leads her to a life-changing decision—and an ending you won't be able to stop thinking about.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling author of Backlash comes In the Darkroom, an astonishing confrontation with the enigma of her father, and the larger riddle of identity consuming our age. When the feminist writer learned her 76-year-old father - long estranged and living in Hungary - had undergone sex reassignment surgery, that investigation would turn personal and urgent. How was this new parent who identified as "a complete woman now" connected to the silent, explosive, and ultimately violent father she had known?

More than 50 years ago, Peter Lovesey published a short story in an anthology. That short story caught the eye of the great Ruth Rendell, whose praise ignited Lovesey’s lifelong passion for short form crime fiction. On the occasion of his hundredth short story, Peter Lovesey has assembled this devilishly clever collection, 18 yarns of mystery, melancholy, and mischief, inhabiting such deadly settings as a theater, a monastery, and the book-publishing industry.

Leigh, Adriana and Emmy are best friends, all leading different lives and about to make some extreme choices. The three girls meet for dinner one evening and make a pact - they each have to change one thing in their lives by the end of the year.

Students and journalists, farmers and birdwatchers, ex-wives, adolescent lovers, and dancing girls. All are ordinary people. Or are they? In this splendid collection of short stories, Margaret Atwood maps the human motivation we scarcely know we have in a startlingly original voice, full of a rare intensity and exceptional intelligence. With brilliant flashes of fantasy, humor, and unexpected violence, these stories reveal the complexities of human relationships and bring to life characters that evoke laughter, compassion, terror, and recognition.

Daniel Miller murdered fourteen people before he vanished. His wife, Carrie, now faces trial as his accomplice. The FBI, the District Attorney, the media and everyone in America believe she knew and helped cover up her husband's crimes. Eddie Flynn won't take a case unless his client is innocent. Now, he has to prove to a jury, and the entire world, that Carrie Miller didn't know her husband's dark side. But so far, Eddie and his team are the only ones who believe that she had no part in the murders.

Susan Sontag was one of the most formidable, original, and influential thinkers of the last century. On Women presents seven essays and exchanges, spanning a range of subjects: the challenges and humiliations women face as they age; the relationship between women’s liberation and class struggle; beauty, which Sontag calls “that over-rich brew of so many familiar opposites”; feminism; fascism; and film. Taken together, these pieces—relentlessly curious, historically precise, politically robust, and allergic to easy categorization Sontag’s inimitable mind at work.

Exploring more than 80 of the big ideas and key theories in the field of sociology in a clear and simple way, narrated by Laurel Lefkow. This is the perfect introduction to the study of how humans live and interact with each other. Covering diversity and equality, globalization, human rights, modern urban living, and the role of work and institutions, The Sociology Book looks at the big questions of how we cooperate: What is society? What makes it tick? Why do we interact in the way that we do with our friends, co-workers, and rivals?

"My darling girls. You were once so happy in this house. Now I’m gone, all I ask is that you spend one last summer here together on Dune Island. And please forgive me, your Nana, for the secret I’m about to tell you..." Arriving at the honeysuckle-covered beach house inherited from her beloved grandmother, recently heartbroken Jill hopes to convince her two feuding sisters not to sell a place so full of happy childhood memories. But the envelope waiting on the driftwood table changes everything.

Single woman of 29, Lily Bart is Edith Wharton's quintessential trapped heroine. Orphaned following the death of her parents, Lily understands that she must use her beauty, grace, and charm to attain the social position she longs for, but she is caught between her desire for wealth and a strong moral conscience, which sabotages every opportunity she encounters.

A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an 1100-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe and built her back up again. At 22, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. After her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she decided to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State - alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than an idea: vague, outlandish, and full of promise.

Summer 1941. War rages in Europe. The Germans march towards Ukraine. Halya, Liliya and Vika are no strangers to sorrow. They lost family during the Holodomor, loved ones in Stalin's purges, and war looms once more on the horizon. These daughters of Ukraine will face devastation and loss as they fight to survive and protect the ones they love.

Natalie Collins hasn’t heard from her sister in more than half a year. The last time they spoke, Kit was slogging from mundane workdays to obligatory happy hours to crying in the shower about their dead mother. She told Natalie she was sure there was something more out there. And then she found Wisewood.

A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley start-up, Cassie finds herself trapped in a corporate nightmare. Between the long hours, toxic bosses, and unethical projects, she also struggles to reconcile the glittering promise of a city where obscene wealth lives alongside abject poverty and suffering. Ivy League grads complain about the snack selection from a conference room with a view of unhoused people bathing in the bay. Start-up burnouts leap into the paths of commuter trains, and men literally set themselves on fire in the streets.