Showing results by narrator "Edoardo Ballerini" in All Categories

Jim Parker, a honeybee expert, has retreated to a small island in Lake Michigan with his teenage daughter after a terrible family tragedy. He longs to hide from an increasingly dangerous world. In the midst of a global bee crisis, bees everywhere are dying and the food supply teeters on the brink of collapse. Pollination now relies on powerful mega-corporations known as Beelords. But this island is not the haven Jim once thought. Someone is torching his traditional beehives, people are disappearing, and an unknown threat is lurking in the woods behind his house.

In this urgent outpouring of American voices, our poets speak to us as they shelter in place, addressing our collective fear, grief, and hope from eloquent and diverse individual perspectives.

Centering us in Rome, but transporting us seamlessly into worlds as varied and exotic as they are emotionally real, these stories paint landscapes that are populated - vividly, hauntingly - by animals: from squawking, violent seagulls, to magical snakes, to a tiny dog on the side of a deserted road, to starlings circling the evening sky in exhilarating formation.

Bridge and Nicole are hired by a wealthy businessman to find his daughter, who’s been kidnapped. Ava Dermott has been taken by someone named Gemini, and Bridge follows the clues, with the case taking him back to an old place he’d rather not go. But there’s something more to this case than meets the eye. It’s not a simple kidnapping. There’s something else at play. But will Bridge and Nicole find out what it is before it’s too late? Someone will get double-crossed. The question is: Who?

From the rugged mudflats of the Northwestern frontier to a rusting strip mall, West of Here is a conversation between two epochs. In his eagerly awaited second novel, Jonathan Evison tells the stories of the people who first inhabited the mythical town of Port Bonita in Washington State from 1887-1891. Moving ahead more than a century to 2005-06, he introduces those who live there now and must deal with the damage done by their predecessors.

North Korea's deadliest weapon is sleeper agent Song Sun Young. Married with children and living the good life in New York City, she has waited seven years to activate the mission she was trained to do: infiltrate America's financial infrastructure. She prays the call from her handlers will never come, because she loves her husband and kids and affluent New York lifestyle. But the call does come. During volatile negotiations between the White House and Pyongyang, Song is hurled back into a reality she had hoped to leave behind forever.

Neal Stephenson's sweeping, prescient new novel transports listeners to a near-future world where the greenhouse effect has inexorably resulted in a whirling-dervish troposphere of superstorms, rising sea levels, global flooding, merciless heat waves, and virulent, deadly pandemics.

Someone is murdering the retired ladies of the lunch club. Jack McCall, ably assisted by Nora Burke and Max Logan, is hired by the governor - the brother of one of the victims. At the start, it seems a cushy job: nice weather, good pay, and an attractive Florida State cop is assigned to assist Jack. But in typical Jack McCall fashion, this murder case quickly turns screwy.

As rates of depression and anxiety continue to rise in the modern world, one proposed remedy garnering growing attention is meditation, and mindfulness meditation in particular. This practical and accessible guide shows you how this practice can relieve stress and anxiety, encourage deep mental and physical relaxation, enhance creativity, and release our true spiritual and emotional selves.

Karl Ove Knausgaard writes about his childhood and teenage years, his infatuation with rock music, his relationship with his loving yet almost invisible mother and his distant and unpredictable father and his bewilderment and grief on his father’s death. When Karl Ove becomes a father himself, he must balance the demands of caring for a young family with his determination to write great literature. Knausgaard has created a universal story of the struggles, great and small, that we all face in our lives.

Benjamin Honey- American, Bantu, Igbo- born enslaved- freed or fled at fifteen- aspiring orchardist, arrived on the island with his Irish wife, Patience, and discovered they could make a life together there. More than a century later, the Honeys' descendants remain, with an eccentric, diverse band of neighbours. Then comes the intrusion of 'civilization': officials determine to 'cleanse' the island, and a missionary schoolteacher selects one light-skinned boy to save. The rest will succumb to the authorities' institutions or cast themselves on the waters in a new Noah's Ark.

Set in three cities in three eras, The Mirror Thief calls to mind David Mitchell and Umberto Eco in its mix of entertainment and literary bravado. The core story is set in Venice in the 16th century, when the famed makers of Venetian glass were perfecting one of the old world's most wondrous inventions: the mirror.

It’s the start of the Hollywood on Hudson film festival, and New York City is swept up in the glamour. There’s a red carpet premiere every night; the most exclusive restaurants are filled with wealthy producers and pre-eminent directors; and thousands of fans gather with the paparazzi, hoping to catch a glimpse of the most famous and beautiful faces in the world. With so many celebrities in town, special task force NYPD Red is on high alert - and it can’t afford to make a single mistake.

A masterpiece of American individualism, Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience is considered by many to be one of the most important pieces of political and philosophical writings ever produced by an American. Thoreau wrote the essay because of his opposition to slavery and the Mexican-American War. When the government engages in actions that are unjust, he believed that citizens should completely withdraw their support of the government and stop paying taxes, even if it results in imprisonment or violence.

Washington, DC, is a town full of powerful people hiding ugly secrets. The blackmailer, a renaissance man, keeps his promise: Pay me, and I'll return the juicy evidence I have against you, and you'll never hear from me again. Jack McCall, a former operative for the US intelligence community and now a private investigator, hunts this wily and diabolical madman.

Hal is a mild-mannered IRS bureaucrat who suspects that his wife is cheating with her younger, more virile coworker. At a drunken dinner party, Hal volunteers to fly to Belize in search of Susan's employer, the protagonist of Lydia Millet's much-lauded novel How the Dead Dream, who has vanished in a tropical jungle, initiating a darkly humorous descent into strange and unpredictable terrain.

Autumn begins with a letter Karl Ove Knausgaard writes to his unborn daughter, showing her what to expect of the world. He writes one short piece per day, describing the material and natural world with the precision and mesmerising intensity that have become his trademark. With acute sensitivity he describes daily life with his wife and children in rural Sweden, drawing upon memories of his own childhood to give an inimitably tender perspective on the precious and unique bond between parent and child. Nothing is too small or too vast to escape his attention; this is a personal encyclopaedia on everything from chewing gum to the stars.

Originally published in 1860, Ivan Turgenev’s First Love follows a 16-year-old boy’s infatuation with an older princess, who has moved in next door.

Modern-day Rome: Two American archaeologists suddenly die in an underground passageway in the Roman Forum leading to the buried rooms of Emperor Nero's Golden Palace. The Italian authorities conclude the deaths were caused by a devastating and highly contagious virus. Tom Stewart, an NYU forensic archaeologist who was present when the deaths occurred, becomes entangled in the race to find the supply of the virus - a race involving many powerful players desperately seeking the deadly contagion.

Jean Zimmerman's new novel tells of the dramatic events that transpire when an alluring, blazingly smart eighteen-year-old girl named Bronwyn, reputedly raised by wolves in the wilds of Nevada, is adopted in 1875 by the Delegates, an outlandishly wealthy Manhattan couple, and taken back East to be civilized and introduced into high society. Bronwyn hits the highly mannered world of Edith Wharton - era Manhattan like a bomb. A series of suitors, both young and old, find her irresistible, but the willful girl's illicit lovers begin to turn up murdered.