Literary Lives

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An unforgettable cast of small-town characters copes with love and loss in this “compulsively readable” (San Francisco Chronicle) novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Olive Kitteridge and My Name is Lucy Barton “This book, this writer, are...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST FICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE ONE OF ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY AND BUZZFEED’S BEST BOOKS OF THE DECADE ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR One of The New York Times’s 100...

1948, Japan. The celebrated painter Masuji Ono fills his days attending to his garden, his house repairs, his two grown daughters and his grandson; his evenings drinking with old associates in quiet lantern-lit bars. His should be a tranquil retirement. But as his memories continually return to the past - to a life and a career deeply touched by the rise of Japanese militarism - a dark shadow begins to grow over his serenity.

Fred Scully waits at the arrival gate of an international airport, anxious to see his wife and daughter. After two years in Europe, they are finally settling down. He sees a new life before them, a stable outlook again, a fresh start, a cottage in the Irish countryside that he's renovated by hand. He's waited, sweated on this reunion. He does not like to be alone—he's that kind of man.The flight lands, the doors at the airport hiss open...Scully's life falls apart.

Judd is the youngest of the four Mulvaney children - three boys and a girl - on their parents’ lush farm in upstate New York. In his childhood, Judd is swept along by the sheer energy of the Mulvaneys and their wealth of beloved family stories. But now, 30 years old, Judd looks back through his memories to tell the secrets that eventually ripped apart the fabric of his storybook family.

They are icons of the literary world whose soaring works have been discussed and analyzed in countless classrooms, homes, and pubs. Yet for most listeners, the living, breathing human beings behind the classics have remained unknown - until now. In this utterly captivating audiobook, Dr. Elliot Engel, a leading authority on the lives of great authors, illuminates the fascinating and flawed members of literature's elite. In lieu of stuffy biographical sketches, Engel provides fascinating anecdotes.

When Zikora, a DC lawyer from Nigeria, tells her equally high-powered lover that she’s pregnant, he abandons her. But it’s Zikora’s demanding, self-possessed mother, in town for the birth, who makes Zikora feel like a lonely little girl all over again. Stunned by the speed with which her ideal life fell apart, she turns to reflecting on her mother’s painful past and struggle for dignity. Preparing for motherhood, Zikora begins to see more clearly what her own mother wants for her, for her new baby, and for herself.

It was hell's season, and the air smelled of burning children.... With “one of the most arresting first sentences in contemporary writing” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution), Robert McCammon unfurls his visionary masterpiece of survival, redemption, and the astonishing transformations love...

June views the world differently than others. A keen horticulturist, she can name every flower species in the alphabet (J begins with the Jamaica Plum). Yet, when it comes to people and relationships, she's still cultivating an understanding. After her mother's unexpected death, June must vacate...

The Namesake follows the Ganguli family through its journey from Calcutta to Cambridge to the Boston suburbs. Ashima and Ashoke Ganguli arrive in America at the end of the 1960s, shortly after their arranged marriage in Calcutta, in order for Ashoke to finish his engineering degree at MIT...

In a North Carolina mountain town filled with moonshine and rotten husbands, Sadie Blue is only the latest girl to face a dead-end future at the mercy of a dangerous drunk. She's been married to Roy Tupkin for 15 days, and she knows now that she should have listened to the folks who said he was trouble. But when a stranger sweeps in and knocks the world off-kilter for everyone in town, Sadie begins to think there might be more to life than being Roy's wife.

It happens quietly one August morning. As dawn's shimmering light drenches the humid Iowa air, two families awaken to find their little girls have gone missing in the night. Now these families are tied by the question of what happened to their children. And the answer is trapped in the silence of unspoken family secrets.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “The visionary author of How to Do Nothing returns to challenge the notion that ‘time is money.’ . . . Expect to feel changed by this radical way of seeing.”—Esquire “One of the most important books I’ve read in my life.”—Ed Yong, author of An...

You are about to travel to Edgecombe St. Mary, a small village in the English countryside filled with rolling hills, thatched cottages, and a cast of characters both hilariously original and as familiar as the members of your own family. Among them is Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired), the...

This lush and suspenseful Good Morning America Book Club pick “will have you glued to every page” (HuffPost) as it follows a woman to Nigeria to uncover what happened to her missing estranged niece…no matter the cost. Previously published as The Nigerwife. Nicole Oruwari has the perfect...

It's the dead of winter in Winnipeg and Wendy Reimer, a 30-year-old trans woman, feels like her life is frozen in place. When her Oma passes away Wendy receives an unexpected phone call from a distant family friend with a startling secret: Wendy's Opa (grandfather) - a devout Mennonite farmer - might have been transgender himself. At first she dismisses this revelation, but as Wendy's life grows increasingly volatile, she finds herself aching for the lost pieces of her Opa's truth.

Twice in her life, college counselor Gayla Oliver fell in love at first sight. The first time was with Brian - a lean, longhaired, British bass player. Marriage followed quickly, then twins, and gradually their bohemian lifestyle gave way to busy careers in New York. Gayla's second love affair is with New Bern, Connecticut. Like Brian, the laid-back town is charming without trying too hard. It's the ideal place to buy a second home and reignite the spark in their 26-year marriage. Not that Gayla is worried. At least, not until she finds a discarded memo in which Brian admits to a past affair....

The story begins from nine-year-old Nate's point of view, etching the details of an unbalanced mind struggling to make sense of rampant thought patterns and heightened paranoia. Enter Ashley, Nate's mother and a hardworking advertising executive concerned that she's not giving her family enough of her time - especially now that she senses something might be wrong with her son. As the story moves deftly back and forth between the two perspectives, the narrative converges to reveal one family's journey of discovery as they strive to find balance in their lives.

This program features original sound design. "Together, [narrators] Almonte and Wetherell are the key to this exceptional novel. A brilliantly narrated immigrant story, spiked with heart and flair, that will have patrons rooting for Cara’s success." - Library Journal "Rossmery Almonte's...

Elegant, secretive Sabina may be empress of Rome, but she still stands poised on a knife's edge. She must keep the peace between two deadly enemies: her husband, Hadrian, Rome's brilliant and sinister emperor; and battered warrior Vix, who is her first love. But Sabina is guardian of a deadly secret: Vix's beautiful son, Antinous, has become the emperor's latest obsession.