Showing results by narrator "Jefferson Mays" in All Categories

Bernhard Schlink burst onto the literary scene with the internationally best-selling Oprah’s Book Club selection The Reader. Through his unique brand of gripping narrative, Schlink scores again with The Weekend, the tale of old friends who come together for a remarkable reunion. One of the group is a convicted murderer and terrorist, fresh out of prison and joined by his devoted sister. But another guest has remained true to the cause that might spell trouble for them all.

Critically acclaimed author Shira Nayman has been praised by School Library Journal for her “breathtaking storytelling” and her ability to write with “stunning clarity.” Nayman’s debut novel, The Listener is a tale of madness and passion set in a psychiatric hospital just after the end of WWII.

Ben has just returned from a war waged against a nameless enemy. To avoid being nabbed by police and forced to work in a factory, he’ll need to find a wife. But to do that, he must wear a bachelor’s suit—and the tailor won’t make one for him.

High on a Czechoslovak hill, the Landauer House shines as a wonder of steel and glass. This radiant 1930s house, with its unique Glass Room, quickly tarnishes as the storm clouds of World War II gather. The house passes from hand to hand, from Czech to Russian, and bears witness to both the best and the worst of the history of Eastern Europe.

Per Petterson won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for his masterful novel Out Stealing Horses, hailed as a best book of the year by the New York Times. In I Curse the River of Time, he takes listeners to 1989, when Communism was crumbling all over Europe. Struggling through his divorce, an overwhelmed Arvid Jansen leaves Norway to reconnect with his Danish mother, who has terminal cancer.

In The Wishing Trees, Ian and his 10-year-old daughter Mattie are struggling with the passing of Kate—wife and mother—after her long battle with cancer. When Ian finally opens a letter Kate handed him before her death, he is surprised at the request inside: that he and Mattie travel across Asia while opening a series of letters from Kate, one at a time. As they complete each stage of the trip, they tie paper wishes to trees, which helps them come to terms with their loss.

Always on the verge of something better, Brown’s characters are often hard drinking and fast driving—tending to be both violent and religious. And as they grasp for hope, they sometimes make a leap into a new life.

National Book Award finalist Charles Baxter earns sweeping critical acclaim for his fiction, which is favorably compared to that of Anton Chekhov and William Trevor. In this compelling novel, graduate student Nathaniel Mason's life changes dramatically when he meets the unusual yet intriguing Jerome Coolberg at a party. Soon, Jerome seems to have appropriated Nathaniel's life, telling personal stories as though they are from his own experiences.

Seven years after the day of the bombs, Point Reyes was luckier than most places. Its people were reasonably normal—except for the girl with her twin brother growing inside her, and talking to her. Their barter economy was working. Their resident genius could fix almost anything that broke down. But they didn't know they were harbouring the one man who almost everyone left alive wanted killed...

A HISTORY TODAY BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Powerful, absorbing and endlessly thought-provoking' SINCLAIR MCKAY A radical new history of history's most brutal struggle for survival between imperial powers. In popular memory, World War II was an unalloyed victory for freedom over totalitarianism, and...

A gripping novel of historical espionage, about an 11th-hour attempt by members of the German elite to unseat Adolf Hitler, and its endlessly complex consequences. In late 1937, the young lieutenant Oskar Langweil is recruited to this cause while attending a party at the lavish home of a baroness. A high-ranking officer in Germany's counterintelligence agency brings Oskar into the fold because of their mutual involvement in a patriotic youth league, and soon dispatches him to Washington, DC.

Paris, 1929. For Harris Stuyvesant, his current assignment is a private investigator's dream - he's getting paid to trawl the cafés and bars of Montparnasse, looking for a pretty young woman. The missing person in question is Philippa Crosby, a 22-year-old from Boston, whose family have become alarmed at her lack of communication. As Stuyvesant follows Philippa's trail through Paris, he finds that she is known to many of its famous - and infamous - inhabitants, from Shakespeare and Company's Sylvia Beach to the surrealist photographer Man Ray. But when the evidence leads Stuyvesant to the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol in Montmartre, his investigation takes a sharp and disturbing turn.

In this wry, paranoid vision of the future, overpopulation has turned cities into crammed industrial anthills. For those sick of this dystopian reality, one corporation, Trails of Hoffman, Inc., promises an alternative: Take a teleport to Whale's Mouth, a colonized planet billed as the supreme paradise. The only catch is that you can never come back.

Following the success of Parrot and Olivier in America comes another wonderfully rich tale with historical themes from the twice Booker-winner. Catherine Gehrig, conservator at a London museum, learns of the unexpected death of her colleague and lover of thirteen years. Only the museum's director knew of the affair, and sends Catherine to work on a special project away from prying eyes.

When a repairman accidentally discovers a parallel universe, everyone sees it as an opportunity, whether as a way to ease Earth’s overcrowding, set up a personal kingdom, or hide an inconvenient mistress. But when a civilization is found already living there, the people on this side of the crack are sent scrambling to discover their motives. Will these parallel humans come in peace? Or are they just as corrupt and ill-intentioned as the people of this world?

In a drab utilitarian future, such arts as ceramic repair hold little value. Humble pot-hearler Joe Fernwright is broke and bored when the offer from the Glimmung comes along. It might just be the answer to both his financial and spiritual problems, even if it does mean working on a strange project on Plowman's Planet with other assorted odd creatures. The only thing is that the Glimmung may just be divine and ask for more than Joe's commitment to the job.

London, 1926. Harris Stuyvesant, agent of the US Bureau of Investigation, is on a mission. A series of bomb attacks on American soil, thought to be enacted by an up-and-coming British politician, have left him with a vendetta more personal than professional. But when his search for answers leads him to government official Aldous Carstairs, the US agent may find himself in over his head.

Steinbeck's only work of political satire turns the French Revolution on its head, as amateur astronomer Pippin Heristal is drafted in to rule the unruly French. Enchanting comedy ensues as Steinbeck creates the most hilarious royal court ever around the brief, bold reign of the corduroy-clad Pippin, his social-climbing wife, Maria, his star-struck daughter, Clotilde and her Californian beau, Todd.

When Catherine's secret lover dies suddenly, she has nowhere to turn to except her work. A middle-aged curator in a London museum, Catherine is given a very particular project: a box of intricate clockwork parts that appear to be the remains of a 19th century automaton - a beautifully made mechanical bird. When she discovers the diary of the man who commissioned the machine, she is partially rescued from one obsession by another: who was Henry Brandling?

Lars Powderdry and Lilo Topchev are counterpart weapons fashion designers for a world divided into two factions, Wes-bloc and Peep-East. Since the Plowshare Protocols of 2002, their job has been to invent elaborate weapons that only seem massively lethal. But when alien satellites hostile to both sides appear in the sky, the two are brought together in the dire hope that they can create a weapon to save the world, a task made all the more difficult by Lars falling in love with Lilo even as he knows she’s trying to kill him.