Showing results by narrator "Margaret Melosh" in All Categories

The story of "The Age of Innocence" is set in upper-class New York City in the 1870s, during the so-called Gilded Age. Newland Archer has the perfect life. He is rich, young, good looking and member of the New York High Society. Newland is engaged to a lovely, delightful girl, May Welland and later they get married. When her cousin (Ellen Olenska), comes back from Europe, her presence threatens their happiness as Newland develops feelings for her... Wharton manages to dissect the hypocrisy of a society where customs and position take center stage.

Helga Crane yearns to become more than she is and to feel the world more intensely. She consequently dismisses her native Chicago, New York's Harlem, Copenhagen even. She also passes on opportunities for extended family, for marriage, and for true love. What is always latent in this truly outstanding work; is how much the background of 1920's American racial segregation defines Helga's malaise, and how much - paradoxically - is of herown doing.

"Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" was one of the first books to address the struggle for freedom by female slaves; explore their struggles with sexual harassment and abuse; and their effort to protect their roles as women and mothers. These memoirs tell the atrocious but true story of slavery in the United States until the Civil War. It is the personal history of Harriet Jacobs and her enslavement and following escape to the North, after spending seven years concealed in a crawlspace. The stunned listener also gets to know of the abuse of the other slaves.

"Behind a Mask, or A Woman's Power" is a novel written by Louisa May Alcott. The story follows Jean Muir, the cunning governess of the rich Coventry family. With skillful manipulation, Jean Muir obtains the love, admiration, and eventually the fortune of the Coventry family. Of all her stories of femme fatales, "Woman's Power or Behind a Mask" is considered Alcott's chef-d'oeuvre in the genre of sensation fiction.

Carmilla is a Gothic novel by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. The story is told by a young woman preyed upon by a female vampire named Carmilla, later discovered to be Mircalla, Countess Karnstein (Carmilla is an anagram of Mircalla). Laura, one of the two central characters, recounts, beginning with her childhood in a "picturesque and solitary" castle in Styria, where she lives with her father, a wealthy English widower retired from service to the Austrian Empire.

Light-skinned black woman Irene Redfield encounters an old childhood friend - Claire- who is now "passing" as a white woman. Claire is married to a racist white man, who doesn't know she has African American blood. In spite of the danger of being found out by her husband and society at large; she finds herself helplessly drawn to Irene's world... "Passing" is a fascinating listening experience on many simultaneous levels.

Undine Spragg is a Midwestern girl who tries to ascend in New York City society. The Spraggs, a family of midwesterners from the fictional city of Apex who have made money through somewhat shady financial dealings, arrive in New York City at the encouragement of their beautiful, ambitious, but socially-naive daughter, Undine. She marries Ralph Marvell, a member of an old New York family that no longer enjoys significant wealth.

"Idylls of the King" is a series of twelve narrative poems which recite the legend of King Arthur, his knights, his love for Guinevere and her tragic betrayal of him, and the rise and fall of Arthur's kingdom. The whole work recounts Arthur's attempt and failure to lift up mankind and create a perfect kingdom, from his coming to power to his death at the hands of the traitor Mordred. Individual poems detail the deeds of various knights, including Lancelot, Geraint, Galahad, and Balin and Balan, and also Merlin and the Lady of the Lake.

"The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy" is a children's book which makes the stories of Homer's epic poems The Odyssey and The Iliad familiar to the young. By using narrative threads from the ancient poems, the author Padraic Colum presents to younger generation the legendary world of Ancient Greece.

The story is set in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts, where a visiting engineer recounts the story of his encounter with Ethan Frome, a man with a past of thwarted dreams and wishes. The amassed longing of Frome ends in an ironic turn of events. His original impressions are based on his observations of Frome going about his everyday tasks in Starkfield, and something about him catches the eye and curiosity of the visitor, but no one in the town seems interested in revealing many details about the man or his history - or perhaps they are not able to.

The Odd Women is set in a smoggy London, with heroines ranging from the idealistic, financially independent Mary Barfoot; to the Madden sisters who struggle to get by in low paying jobs... Being a fascinating, trailblazing and early work of feminism and social realism, this novel reflects the important sexual and cultural issues of the late nineteenth century. Here women are portrayed as "odd" and marginal in relation to an ideal.

The House of Mirth is the story of Lily Bart, a penniless woman of the high society of New York City, who was raised and educated to become wife to a wealthy man, a hothouse flower for conspicuous consumption. As an unattached woman with gambling debts and an uncertain future, Lily is destroyed by the society who created her. Written in the style of a novel of manners, the writing itself is an illustration of American literary naturalism.

The Fifth Queen is a historical novel. It tells the story of Katharine Howard's arrival at the Court of Henry VIII, her eventual marriage to the king, and her death. Katharine Howard is presented in the first book as a genuine Roman Catholic, penniless, young noblewoman escorted by her fiery cousin Thomas Culpeper. By accident, she comes to the attention of the king, in a minor way at first, is helped to a position as a lady in waiting for the then bastard Lady Mary, Henry's eldest daughter, by her old Latin tutor Nicholas Udal, a spy for Thomas Cromwell.

Molly Gibson is a young girl who has been raised by her widowed father. During a visit to the local aristocratic "great house" of Lord and Lady Cumnor, she loses her way in the estate and falls asleep under a tree. When she wakes up, she gets distressed at the thought of spending the night at the mansion, but to her relief, her father arrives to collect her. Seven years later, Molly is an attractive and rather unworldly young woman, which arouses the interest of one of her father's apprentices.

Captain Chris Baldry is in 1916 a shell-shocked captain suffering from amnesia. He returns home to the three women who have molded his life. Will these three strong and dedicated women help him regain his memory and his sense of purpose and send him back to the front; or will he descend further into the vaults of oblivion.

"What Maisie Knew" is an audiobook by Henry James. It tells the story of the sensitive daughter of divorced, irresponsible parents. The audiobook is also a masterly technical achievement by James, as it follows the title character from earliest childhood to precocious maturity. When Beale and Ida Farange are divorced, the court decrees that their only child, the very young Maisie, will shuttle back and forth between them, spending six months of the year with each. The parents are immoral and frivolous, and they use Maisie to intensify their hatred of each other.

Two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood; the former sensible, the latter impulsive both fall in love with men whose affections are otherwise engaged or, as in one case, are simply unreliable. The great pleasure for the listener is rejoicing in the author's delightful prose and hearing all this twisted mess become untangled in both very amusing and deeply moving ways.

The House of the Vampire is one of the first psychic vampire tales ever - where the vampire feeds off of more than just blood. The story was conceived by German-American poet and writer George Sylvester Viereck.

Charity Royal is bored with her life in the small town of North Dormer. She was born to poor parents from "up the Mountain" who gave her up to the town's learned person, Lawyer Royall, but she still dreams of an even better and more exciting life outside of the town. She secures a job at North Dormer's library, a job that she is neglectful of, in an attempt to save up money so she could eventually leave the town and Mr. Royall's care.

"Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave" is the story of an African prince who ultimately ends up in Surinam as a slave. It is also a touching love story of the prince and his one and only love, despite the common practice of polygamy. Tragedy and revenge, or tragic revenge, if you will, is also another strong component of the story. A fascinating tale, both historically and emotionally.