Showing results by narrator "T Ryder Smith" in All Categories

In this powerful work, Henning Mankell tells the story of a young African orphan adopted by a Swedish man and whisked away to his new father’s country. There the boy, dubbed Daniel, finds himself swallowed by a bizarre landscape of snow and mud. Always in his mind are thoughts of his murdered parents, calling him back to Africa. But Daniel’s path is marked by tragedy, and his homecoming seems an impossible dream.

The author of nine novels, Clyde Edgerton has built a reputation as a sage commentator on the American experience. In The Night Train, Edgerton weaves the ultimately uplifting tale of friends Dwayne, a James Brown-inspired crooner, and Larry, apprentice to a jazz musician. One black, one white, Dwayne and Larry face daunting challenges to their friendship - and futures - in 1960s America.

Burroughs’ first novel, a largely autobiographical account of the constant cycle of drug dependency, cures, and relapses, remains the most unflinching, unsentimental account of addiction ever written. Through time spent kicking and time spent dealing, through junk sickness and a sanatorium, Junky is a field report from the American postwar drug underground. A cult classic, it has influenced generations of writers with its raw, sparse, and unapologetic tone.

Celebrating Failure is the definitive how-to manual for leaders seeking to embrace the power of failure as a learning tool to improve their organizations and achieve ever-greater goals. The business world (and, lately, the political arena) is convinced that the number one topic is change. Heath posits that it might well be failure, because if you do it right, failure can become a launching pad for change.

Joel Dunn Jr. tells the story of how he did everything he could to save his family after his mother left and his father's tenuous hold on sanity unraveled. On a journey from the town of Trent, North Carolina, to the coast, Joel and his little brother Tank thread their way back to their mother, fueled by potato chips, Coke, and the soundtrack of the powerful soul music that their daddy taught them to love.

In this spare and powerful story set in the Old West, people in a small town live in constant worry of another visit from the Outlaw. Then the Outlaw suddenly and mysteriously disappears. Time passes, and one day a stranger rides into town. He takes it upon himself to fix everything that is in disrepair - the clapboard schoolhouse, the train station platform. He even builds a horse trough. But when someone recognizes him as the Outlaw, the crowd turns on him. It takes the courage of a small boy to change the course of events.

After a mysterious, silent child is found abandoned on the beach clutching a handheld video game, residents and tourists alike find themselves utterly unable to sleep. Exhaustion impairs judgment, delusions become hysteria, and mob rule explodes into shocking violence.

A Tree or a Person or a Wall gives us Matt Bell at his most inventive and uncanny: parents and children, murderers and monsters, wild renditions of the past, and acute takes on the present, all of which build to a virtuoso reimagining of our world. A Tree or a Person or a Wall brings together Bell's previously published shorter fiction - the story collection How They Were Found and the acclaimed novella Cataclysm Baby - along with seven dark and disturbing new stories, to create a collection of singular power.

Multiple Edgar Award nominee Thomas H. Cook is the author of dark, terrifying thrillers like Places in the Darkand Red Leaves. In Master of the Delta, it's 1954 down in Mississippi and Jack Branch has finally come home, taking a job as a high school teacher. He soon learns that one of his students is the son of a notorious local murderer, the Coed Killer. And as they say, like father, like son.

After surviving one brutal night against a creature they call the obayifo, Cent and Torres are unexpectedly reunited when both are recruited by the mysterious billionaire Harold Campbell to join his fight against the creatures that lurk in the shadows. For Cent, it’s an easy decision: Find and kill the obayifo and rid the world of their scourge. For Torres, it’s a little more complicated. There are forces turning her against people she trusts, with her future—and those of the people she loves—in the balance.

Your Believers is a powerful, cathartic story of casual evil and of how the worst things can be faced so that we might not only survive, but grow. A young woman goes missing, and her mother uproots her life to find her daughter. But it is not just the heartbreak or the deep mystery of the hunt for lost loved ones that Bradley so convincingly explores. Rather, with the help of an amazingly dedicated searcher, family and friends somehow learn to move past unspeakable horror and celebrate the tenacity of the human spirit.

A great collection of stories from the author of Fight Club. In 'Zombies', the best and brightest of a high school become tragically addicted to the latest drug craze: electric shocks from cardiac defibrillators. While in 'Tunnel of Love', a massage therapist runs the curious practice of providing 'relief' to dying clients. And in 'Excursion', Fight Club fans will be thrilled to find a side of Tyler Durden never seen before.

From the acclaimed author of Every Secret Thing comes an imaginative novel sizzling with suspense. After a string of personal losses, Harry Sterling has hit rock bottom. He takes a teaching job at a small Florida college, but can't abandon his journalistic roots. So when he learns that a world-famous physicist may have stolen a revolutionary idea from a student, Harry launches an investigation - and soon finds himself in terrible danger.

This tightly constructed tale by PEN/Faulkner finalist Steve Yarbrough tells the story of a Mississippi history teacher who’s determined to unravel the truth about one tragic day in 1962. Even as he pursues an affair with a long-lost friend, he wonders if she could hold the missing piece to this racially charged puzzle.

A breathtaking audiobook by award-winning author Ari Berk about a young bat setting off into the world using only his good sense! Sense is the song you sing out into the world, and the song the world sings back to you. With these words, Chiro's mother sends him off into the night for the first time alone. It's an adventure, but how will he find his way? And how will he find his way home? As the young bat discovers, navigating the world around him is easy as long as he uses his good sense.

The Communist's Daughter is a sweeping novel of love and betrayal spanning the trenches of the Great War to the horrors of Spain and China. Norman Bethune was a visionary whose dedication touched millions. Rebelling in childhood against his father's religion, he finds a calling himself, saving lives on the battlefield. In Republican Spain he fulfills his idealism, yet before long politics destroy his romance and drive him to seek refuge in China.

The Convict and Other Stories is a superb collection of stories set in and around the American Deep South and its charismatic people.

Sonny and Clara Myers struggle on their Kansas farm in the late 1930s, a time the Lord gave up on: their land's gone dry, barren, and worthless; the bankers are greedy and hungry, trying to squeeze them and other farmers out of their homes; and, on top of that, their marriage is in trouble. The couple can struggle or surrender and hightail it to California like most of the others. Sonny refuses to abandon the family farm, so Clara takes off westward in their old battered truck. Alone on the farm and determined to get back Clara and the good old days, Sonny comes up with an idea....

Mr. Coats is freezing cold. No matter how many heaters he turns on, how many blankets he sleeps under at night, or how many layers he wears, he can simply never get warm. Being this cold all the time is lonely. And loneliness is a chilly feeling. Mr. Coats thinks he'll be alone in the cold forever, but he's wrong. There's someone out there just like him.

Jodi Angel's new collection You Only Get Letters from Jail comes at listeners "with a voice dripping with sweat and Schlitz” ( Esquire magazine). These moving and beautifully written stories follow young men caught in the confusing space between boyhood and adulthood, in situations that nobody can possibly prepare you for....