Showing results by narrator "Anna Fields" in All Categories

Recovering from the death of her son and the end of her marriage, Kelsey Stewart goes to stay with her aunt at her seaside inn in Carmel, California, looking only for retreat. But a local emergency unexpectedly brings Kelsey's troubled heart back to life again. When a young boy falls from one of the sea cliffs, Kelsey, a therapist specializing in brain-damaged children, is recruited to help rehabilitated Jody.

Of Charles Dickens, Jane Smiley says that "his novels shaped his life as much as his life shaped his novels". Smiley's Charles Dickens is at once a sensitive profile of the great master and a fascinating meditation on the writing life. Smiley evokes Dickens as he might have seemed to his contemporaries: convivial, astute, boundlessly energetic, and lionized.

In a stunning follow-up to her best-selling debut, Mrs. Kimble, Jennifer Haigh returns with Baker Towers, a compelling story of love and loss in a western Pennsylvania mining town in the years after World War II.

As World War II threatens their comfortable life in Hong Kong, young Joan and Emma Lew escape with their family to spend the war years in Macao. When they return home, Emma has developed a deep interest in travel and new experiences, while Joan has turned to movies and thoughts of romance to escape the problems of ordinary life.

The Sage of Monticello is the sixth and final volume of Dumas Malone's epic masterwork, Jefferson and His Time, a biography begun in 1943 and awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history in 1975. More wide ranging than the preceding volumes, The Sage of Monticello recounts the accomplishments, friendships, and family difficulties of Jefferson's last 17 years, including his retirement from Washington and the presidency.

The image we have of Amelia Earhart today - a tousle-haired, androgynous flier clad in shirt, silk scarf, leather jacket, and goggles - is only one of her many personas, most of which have been lost to us through the years. Through years of research and interviews with many of the surviving people who knew Amelia, Susan Butler has recreated a remarkably vivid and multifaceted portrait of this enigmatic figure.

Daniel Hecht has created a plausible, heart-stopping ghost thriller. Relying on the science of parapsychology to spine-tingling effect, he brings to life a remarkably compelling character in Cree Black, as well as the ghosts she confronts.

A child's mind is hungry for knowledge, stimulation, the excitement of learning which school should provide, yet most American schools fall far short. From kindergarten through high school, our public educational system is among the worst in the developed world.

It’s a classic American success story: Cheryl Lightle, once an unemployed single mom, goes on to become the cofounder of one of the most successful direct-selling companies in the United States. Creative Memories reveals the 10 guiding principles she used to create her scrapbooking empire, teaching listeners how to use these principles to achieve success in their own lives.

No one knows better than Sally Quinn how to make parties work. She has thrown some of the most talked-about parties and has attended most of the others. Here, she turns her trademark sharp wit on the Washington social scene and offers an irreverent look at what goes on at the parties you read about in the columns. From seating debacles to real-life scandals, she reveals her firsthand experiences as a member of the Washington power elite to illustrate how to entertain for any occasion.

Arson investigator Billy Nightingale and his brother-in-law, Officer Sebastian Bly, are called in to investigate a house fire that killed two young children. The discovery of a baby hiding underneath the porch put Billy and Sebastian on the trail of a murderous mother while Sebastian and his wife, Annie, raise baby Meredith without revealing her dangerous and frightening past.

Alice Brill wakes up one day with a vague but nagging sensation of unease in her chest that signals trouble. Is it her marriage - drifting along for years on autopilot - that's so troubling? Her unrealized aspirations as a writer? Her unsettled younger son? Or is it something about her father, once a prominent surgeon but now slipping deeper into senility in a nursing home? There is also the matter of the writer whose book she's editing in her new profession as a "book doctor".

The fifth volume of the Jefferson series completes the story of his presidency, carrying him through his troubled second term, but also to the end of an official career that spanned some 40 years. Here is a vibrant account of Jefferson's disparate activities: sponsoring the Lewis and Clark Expedition, concluding the naval "war" with the Barbary pirates, engaging in a political duel with Chief Justice Marshall over the trial of Aaron Burr, and more.

In rural Turkey, Meryem is raped by her uncle. Outcast for shaming her family, she is expected to kill herself. Her commando cousin instead tells her he will take her to Istanbul. By chance, they meet Irfan, a celebrity professor who has left his wife, and the three embark on a journey that shows what unexpected things can happen in the space between wounded people.

Every small town has an eccentric or two, and Killdeer, New York, is no exception. Morgan Mason attracts more than a few stares and local resentments when he drives through town on his tractor wearing a skirt. But minor small-town annoyances become more serious when the Skirt Man is killed in a tragic house fire in what some say is a case of spontaneous human combustion.

Did you know that women once wore corsets under their bathing suits? Or that "semi-drowning" - the strip and plunge practice - was thought to be good for one's health? Or that Pudgy Stockton, the body-building queen of Muscle Beach, California, opened the country's first gym for women? From the bathhouses of the ancient Greeks to Venice Beach and Coney Island, Let's Go to the Beach takes a multifaceted and well-researched look at beaches and their attendant customs.

Once, Laura Chandler had dazzled all of Washington with her beauty and poise. But with the sudden death of her husband, the great senator Robert Chandler, she changed, afraid to care for anyone or anything. Now, in 1861, as the streets of Richmond are alive with the rumblings of civil war, a daring Yankee has sought Laura out. Chase Girard has been charged with the task of persuading the legendary Southern charmer to spy for the Union.

The mystery of how a wealthy New York socialite became a major American novelist is brilliantly explored in this fascinating critical biography, widely considered to be the most perceptive introduction to Edith Wharton's life and work.

The international media has been predicting the 21st Century as China's century. This book explains why. Subjects include international relations, the economy, trade, government, technology, and media.

It! is a smart, hip handbook on how to become a major player in any professional or social circle, from well-known New York Post "Page Six" columnist Paula Froelich. She goes to some of the top fame experts in the country to provide listeners with the keys to their success. What did they do to make their way to the top? How did they manage their careers to maximize their fame quotient? What can the average person take from their stories and use in daily life?