Life Fiction

Cat Cooper never imagined selling off her in-demand marketing firm would mean going from the pinnacle of success to a walking hot mess. Gouged from an unexpected divorce, Cat suddenly finds herself struggling through a new career as a business-savvy life coach for the hopelessly adrift in East Hampton and contending with Heather Holland - a spiteful neighbor who will do anything to bully her out of town. But her second act may very well continue behind bars when Heather's dead body turns up next to a shattered punchbowl...and Cat's pinned as the murderer.

Meri's family has been producing doctors for so many generations that no one remembers why, so when she flunks out of medical school, she runs as far from her parents as she can get. In the small mountain town of Canyon Mines, Colorado, she takes a job at the Inn at Hidden Run B&B. And waits. It's only a matter of time. What she doesn't count on is genealogist Jillian Parisi-Duffy and her father, Nolan, having her back when it takes everything she has not to bolt again but to stay and face the truth that only unfolding her family's history will reveal....

Miss Lazar, the janitor, likes to dance around the school with a mop. She has a secret room in the basement where she keeps the bad kids, and she's the weirdest custodian in the world.

At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother.

The merciless Cronus and his Titan buddies are in hot pursuit of Zeus, Hera, and Poseidon, who plan to travel across the treacherous boiling sea in order to save a fellow Olympian. They have a boat, but they also have a problem: Poseidon can't swim and is terrified of the water (well, really of the creatures that lurk in its depths). The group faces danger after danger as they battle singing sirens, a fishy and ferocious Titan named Oceanus, and people-eating monsters sent by Cronus himself.

The Krusty Krab is celebrating its eleventy-seventh anniversary, and Mr. Krabs is looking forward to selling lots of Krabby Patties. But just before the celebration is about to begin, Mr. Krabs, Squidward, Patrick, and SpongeBob accidentally lock themselves in the freezer! While they make their way through the maze of air shafts above the Krusty Krab, reminiscing about their favorite memories along the way, Plankton finally gets his hands on the Krabby Patty formula! Will they get out in time to save the formula and celebrate the eleventy-seventh anniversary?

Benjamin Carter Mason died last night. Maybe he threw himself off a bridge into Los Angeles Harbor, or maybe he burned to death in a house fire in San Pedro; it doesn't really matter. Today, Mason's starting a new life. He's back in boot camp, training for the only war left that matters a damn.

Since its publication in 1952, Charlotte's Web has become one of America's best-loved children's books. For fifty years, this timeless story of the pig named Wilbur and the wise spider named Charlotte who saved him has continued to warm the hearts of readers everywhere. This 1953 Newbery Honor Book comes to life in a delightful unabridged recording, read lovingly by the author himself.

Miss Small, the gym teacher, is teaching A.J., Andrea, and the gang to juggle scarves, balance feathers, and do the Chicken Dance! Is this any way to stay in shape? Whatever happened to good old dodgeball? In fact, all the grown-ups at A.J.'s school seem to have something wrong with them. What's going on here? What are A.J. and the kids in his class going to do? They've got to convince Miss Small to act her age before the end of the year! Never before has school been this mixed up -- or this much fun.

In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister.

Janner, Tink, and Leeli Igiby thought they were normal children with normal lives and a normal past. But now they know they're really the Lost Jewels of Anniera, heirs to a legendary kingdom across the sea, and suddenly everyone wants to kill them. In order to survive, the Igibys must flee to the safety of the Ice Prairies, where the lizardlike Fangs of Dang cannot follow. First, however, they have to escape the monsters of Glipwood Forest, the thieving Stranders of the East Ben, and the dreaded Fork Factory.

While Laura Ingalls grows up in a little house on the Western prairie, Almanzo Wilder is living on a big farm in New York State. Here Almanzo and his brother and sisters help with the summer planting and fall harvest. In winter there is wood to be chopped and great slabs of ice to be cut from the river and stored. Time for fun comes when the jolly tin peddler visits or, best of all, when the fair comes to town.

Abby has been through hell and has survived one of the most brutal childhoods imaginable. To the outside world, she is just a loner with an attitude. When her grandmother dies in a tragic explosion, Abby is left with questions - and nothing else. Homeless, sleeping in a junkyard, and on the run from a system that has failed her over and over again, she meets Jake, a tattooed, blue-eyed biker with secrets that rival her own. Two broken souls that can't be healed. They can't be saved.

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn’s startling book led, almost 30 years later, to Glasnost, Perestroika, and the "Fall of the Wall". One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich brilliantly portrays a single day, any day, in the life of a single Russian soldier who was captured by the Germans in 1945 and who managed to escape a few days later. Along with millions of others, this soldier was charged with some sort of political crime, and since it was easier to confess than deny it and die, Ivan Denisovich "confessed" to "high treason" and received a sentence of 10 years in a Siberian labor camp.

It seems like a lifetime ago that Thedeim was a mortal man. After a fatal accident, he was transported to a strange realm to begin again as a living low-level dungeon. But he didn't stay small for long. With a powerful will, he built his dungeon self into a force to be reckoned with, full of minions, creepy crawlies, and a hedge maze to die for. Except Thedeim isn't a place where delvers die. He's a different, friendlier kind of dungeon, which suits both him and his many allies just fine. But being a nice dungeon means taking on some not-so-nice entities.

Cecilia Murray has been wishing for a dog for as long as she can remember. And when a cute pug named Potato is brought in to Orphan Paws, the shelter where she volunteers, she knows he is the dog she's been waiting for. There's just one problem: Eric Chung - a popular, arrogant boy from school - adopts Potato first. What's worse, he hopes to train the little tater to become a show-dog superstar.

On the night he celebrates a big win, defense attorney Mickey Haller is pulled over by police, who find the body of a former client in the trunk of his Lincoln. Haller is immediately charged with murder but can’t post the exorbitant $5 million bail slapped on him by a vindictive judge. Mickey elects to represent himself and is forced to mount his defense from his jail cell in the Twin Towers Correctional Center in downtown Los Angeles.

Jane Bancroft has returned to Lovett, Tasmania after 20 years away, minus one ex-husband but plus one outraged teenage daughter. Life in the city – life in general – hasn’t quite panned out as she would have liked. With her mother unwell, now seems as good a time as any to come back to where it all began, and perhaps even start a new life here in the heart of Tasmanian apple country. But the legacy of Jane's wild apple youth has not been forgotten by small-town Lovett and her homecoming is haunted by past tragedy.

Donald J. Sobol’s pint-sized amateur detective has been a hit with young readers for over three decades. For 25 cents a day—plus expenses—Encyclopedia Brown will solve any case, big or small for the kids in his neighborhood. He also secretly works with his police chief father to crack the toughest investigations and keep the streets of Idaville safe. Here are 10 more beguiling mysteries that will have listeners scratching their heads.

Daisy meets Adam on their first day of university. Immediately, they become friends. But when tongues wag and their relationship is questioned, Adam shares his secret with Daisy, who promises to stand by him. When their grandmother dies, Adam’s older brother Ryan returns from abroad, and Daisy quickly falls for him. After a troubled upbringing at the hands of a drunken mother and jailbird father, Adam and Ryan have only each other. In adulthood, their bond holds firm, glued together by Daisy with whom they are now both in love.