Showing results by narrator "Jefferson Mays" in All Categories

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.

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.

French-born author Elena Mauli Shapiro vividly recreates Paris during World War I in this captivating novel. 13 Rue Thérèse follows Trevor Stratton, an American academic working in Paris who discovers a keepsake box dated back to the Great War. The box, Trevor discovers, belonged to a piano teacher named Louise Brunet. Inside it are mementos that give Trevor clues to Louise’s life, including the love she lost in the war and her affair with a neighbor. Mesmerized, Trevor begins to imagine what life was like for the mysterious Frenchwoman.

Alex Cross is going home. But what will he find when he gets there? When his cousin is accused of an unthinkable crime, Alex Cross returns to his North Carolina hometown for the first time in over three decades. As he tries to prove his cousin's innocence in a town where justice is hard to find, Cross unearths a family secret that forces him to question everything he's ever known. Chasing a ghost he believed was long dead, Cross gets pulled into a case involving a string of murders.

Before he can return to New York from Miami, Special Agent A.X.L. Pendergast is called to investigate something very strange that has happened on the west coast of Florida. Dozens of human feet, identically clad in blue, have washed up on beaches. All exhibit unmistakable signs of violence. Beyond that, nothing is known about the feet, except that they are fresh and haven't been in the water long. Pendergast reluctantly makes his way to the barrier islands off South Florida to investigate a case he believes to be outside his area of expertise and his interest.

Set in 1953 Cleveland during a carnival in the Italian immigrant neighborhood of Elephant Park, The End explores the lives of six people in the crowd and the tragedy that connects them. Fraught with racial tension and teeming with immigrant families fighting to survive, Scibona's brilliant tale lays bare this Ohio town for all to see.

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.

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.

Jeffery Deaver, best-selling author of The Stone Monkey and The Vanished Man, delivers a gripping thriller about a moral mobster turned government hitman.

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.

Hades, god of the dead, welcomes listeners on a dangerous tour of his underworld kingdom, filled with monsters, furies, giants, and vampire demons. Along the way, he reveals ancient death rites and sinister curses, tells hair-raising stories, and cracks jokes to die for. With his witty voice and ghoulish sense of humor, Hades is the perfect guide through this fresh and imaginative work of nonfiction that unfolds like a novel. Includes a glossary, bibliography, and index.

Ellis Hock runs a menswear store in Massachusetts but still dreams of the four years he spent in Malawi. When his wife leaves him, he realises that there is only one place for him to go: back to Malawi, where he can be happy again.

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.

Everyone in Cape Cod thinks that Mother is a wonderful woman: pious, hardworking, frugal. Everyone except her husband and seven children. To them she is a selfish and petty tyrant, endlessly comparing her many living children to the one who died in childbirth, keeping a viselike hold on her offspring even as they try to escape into adulthood. Welcome to Mother Land: a suffocating kingdom of parental narcissism.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.