Letters Literature

Dear Listener,
Have you ever gotten a letter that changed your life completely? It happened to me once. I still can feel the urgency that overtook me as I opened the envelope and the hunger I felt for whatever that letter would say. It seemed as if my entire life hung in the balance as I read.

"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.

"La Lettre à Ménécée" est une lettre écrite par le philosophe Épicure à son disciple Ménécée. Le texte résume la doctrine éthique d'Épicure et propose une méthode pour atteindre le bonheur, en même temps qu'elle en précise les conditions.

Gertrude Stein and Laura Riding enjoyed a fascinating if brief three-year friendship via correspondence between 1927 and 1930, and in A Description of Acquaintance, Logan Esdale and Jane Malcolm make the letters available to a larger audience for the first time. Riding and Stein are important figures in twentieth-century poetry and poetics and are considered progenitors of later movements such as L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry.

Collected here are some of Dostoyevsky's finest letters to his family and friends, as-well as reminiscences from those close to him. This audiobook also includes thoughts on his life and work from his contemporaries (including Ivan Turgenev and Leo Tolstoy). These letters give an insight into the work, life, and psychology of one of the greatest writers of all time.

Veronica and Gabe met when they were children at ballet class, and by the time they’d reached their teens, they knew they’d be dancing together forever. Only Gabe’s mother had other ideas.... Twenty-something years later, Veronica no longer dances and life hasn’t turned out how she thought it would. She’s divorced with a needy ex-husband, monosyllabic teenage sons, a sister who fancies herself as a long in the tooth ‘it girl’ and a mother who’s recently moved into a care home.

Heading back to work the day after she returns from her European honeymoon, Delaney Nichols is excited to get back to the Cracked Spine. But as she disembarks the bus and hurries toward the shop, she and another woman collide, sending a stack of books the woman is carrying to the ground. Delaney's hapless victim's name is Mary, and she and Delaney can't help but notice that they bear an uncanny resemblance to one another. According to Mary, they both also look like the long-beheaded Mary Queen of Scots.

Rose Pepper has kept her wartime past a secret for decades. Forty years ago, she fled communist Prague and left behind the love of her life. Now in her sixties and with two daughters, Rose discovers a bundle of unopened letters sent to her by her lost love. Confronted with the possibility of facing up to her past, she decides it’s finally time to go back to where her story began and uncover the truth that has been buried for so long…

Die Bühnenstücke des Heinrich von Kleist gehören nach wie vor zum festen Repertoire aller großen Theaterhäuser weltweit. Im direkten Schriftverkehr mit Angehörigen, Freunden, ehemaligen Weggefährten und und und offenbart sich nicht nur der Mensch Kleist mit seinen Bedürfnissen, Wünschen, Ansichten und Hoffnungen, sondern auch ein sehr außergewöhnlicher Intellekt und unglaublich reger Geist.

Love Letters for Other People has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.

It doesn’t take long for ambitious freshman and aspiring engineer Jessie Ahuja to learn about two university legends. One is the haunted history of Davidson Tower, where more than fifty years ago, two ill-fated lovers disappeared in a devastating fire. The other is Ravi Kumar, a privileged billionaire nepo baby who’s aggravatingly charming and occupying more brain space than Jessie has room for. Things change when a campus prank locks them both in the old tower’s ghostly library.

After surviving the accident that took her mother's life, Claire Broussard worked hard to escape her small Louisiana hometown. But these days, she feels something lacking. Abruptly leaving her lucrative job in Chicago, Claire returns home to care for her ailing grandmother. There, she unearths a beautiful sculpture that her great-grandfather sent home from Paris after World War II. At her grandmother's urging, Claire travels to Paris to track down the centuries old mask-making atelier where the sculpture was created.

In the 1980s, Nina Stibbe wrote letters home to her sister in Leicester describing her trials and triumphs as a nanny to a London family. There’s a cat nobody likes, a visiting dog called Ted Hughes (Ted for short) and suppertime visits from a local playwright. Not to mention the two boys, their favourite football teams, and rude words, a very broad-minded mother and assorted nice chairs.

Millie Ashton thinks London society is full of empty headed, arrogant fools, but when she meets Alex Radley she falls desperately in love with him. Fearing humiliation and rejection, she decides the only sensible thing to do is take her pride and go home to India. Men like Alex do not fall for girls like her, whereas every girl loses her heart to Alexander the Great. Alex Radley, Marquess of Brooke rules the ton like a god, but even gods are known to fall for mere mortals.

Although Paul Auster and J. M. Coetzee had been reading each other’s books for years, the two writers did not meet until February 2008. Not long after, Auster received a letter from Coetzee, suggesting they begin exchanging letters on a regular basis and, “God willing, strike sparks off each other.” Here and Now is the result of that proposal: the epistolary dialogue between two great writers who became great friends. Over three years their letters touched on nearly every subject, from sports to fatherhood, film festivals to incest, philosophy to politics....

It's 1942 and war is raging in Europe and slowly, London is coming undone at the seams. Life as Claire knew it is falling apart all around her. But she's determined to live a full life, to flirt and have fun as if nothing is wrong. And then she meets Thomas, the handsome American soldier, and with him comes the thrill of secrecy and a whirlwind love that sucks her in. She will wait for him forever, if that's what it takes.

Manchmal gebären die widrigsten und unmöglichsten Umstände, die man schlicht nicht erfinden kann, einen Autoren, dessen Literatur den Menschen den Atem verschlägt. Der unmögliche Fall, der so absurd klingt, dass er nur wahr sein kann. Ständige Geldnöte, Verurteilung zum Tode, mehrjährige Gefängnisstrafe in angeketteter Einzelhaft, Verbot des Aufenthalts in Moskau und in Sankt Petersburg, Spielsucht, um ein paar der Schwierigkeiten zu erwähnen, welche das Schicksal letztendlich zu Voraussetzungen umwandelte, die Dostojewski in die Lage versetzten zu einem Titanen der Welt-Literatur zu werden.

In 1922 Agatha Christie set sail on a 10-month voyage around the British Empire with her husband as part of a trade mission to promote the forthcoming British Empire Exhibition. Leaving her two-year-old daughter behind with her sister, Agatha set sail at the end of January and did not return until December, but she kept up a detailed weekly correspondence with her mother, describing in detail the exotic places and people she encountered as the mission travelled through South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii and Canada.

C'est par Boris Pasternak, alors au début de sa carrière d'écrivain, que Marina Tsvétaïeva entre en correspondance avec celui qui incarne la poésie, le grand Rainer Maria Rilke. "Poétesse-née", d'après les mots de Pasternak, elle séduit Rilke et leurs échanges deviennent très vite aussi amoureux que poétiques. Leur correspondance ne durera que quatre petits mois, entre mai et septembre 1926. Elle s'arrête brutalement, avec la maladie de Rilke et sa mort le 29 décembre 1926, sans qu'ils n'aient pu jamais se rencontrer.

With Christmas around the corner, it’s time for Amish families to include holiday greetings in their circle letters, each writer adding to a growing collection as it travels on to the next. In this delightful trio of stories, three cousins scattered across the country share their blessings - and reveal news of romantic surprises.