Showing results by narrator "Liza Ross" in All Categories

Represented here are 16 short stories by seven great American writers, dating from the 19th and 20th centuries. Different in atmosphere and writing style, they nevertheless caught the mood and concerns of the day in a way that was distinctly American.

Walt Whitman said, "...poetry is the voice of the nation, expressing its deepest concerns, ambitions and longings," which is certainly true of the great classic poetry of America. This wide-ranging anthology, from the earliest poets of the 16th century to the present day, reflects the changing preoccupations and visions of Americans, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, E.E. Cummings, and more.

When two girls are abducted and killed in Missouri, journalist Camille Preaker is sent back to her home town to report on the crimes. Long haunted by a childhood tragedy and estranged from her mother for years, Camille suddenly finds herself installed once again in her family's mansion, reacquainting herself with her distant mother and the half sister she barely knows - a precocious 13-year-old who holds a disquieting grip on the town.

As far as Carol Spencer is concerned, the war has spoiled everything. She and Don had been engaged for years and were on the verge of marriage when he was shot down in the South Pacific, leaving Carol on the verge of spinsterhood at 24. She wants to take some kind of job in the war effort, but her invalid mother demands that Carol accompany her to the family's summer home in Maine. But when they arrive at the faded mansion, they find it completely locked up. The servants are gone, the lights are dark - and there is a body in the closet.

Nell McDaragh never knew her grandfather, the celebrated Irish poet Phil McDaragh. But his love poems seem to speak directly to her. Restless and wryly self-assured, at twenty-two Nell leaves her mother Carmel’s orderly home to find her own voice as a writer (mostly online, ghost-blogging for an influencer) and to live a poetical life. As she chases obsessive love, damage, and transcendence, in Dublin and beyond, her grandfather’s poetry seems to guide her home.

Cloud Atlas features six characters in interlocking stories, each interrupting the one before it: a reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified dinery server on death row; and Zachry, a young Pacific islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation.

Eleven-year old orphan Anne Shirley has red hair, a vivid imagination and cannot stop talking. Quite a shock for old Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert who wanted a boy to help them on the farm... Anne is soon the talk of the town with her funny ways and endless adventures, but it is not long before she has won the hearts of everyone. This classic story is set in Canada at the beginning of the 20th century and is one of the most enduring favorites of children's literature.

This novel anthology, is to mark the 10th anniversary of the "Realms of..." novel anthologies. There have been eight Forgotten Realms anthologies (see below) and Wizards of the Coast are inviting FR fans to select which short stories from those anthologies should be included in this new collection. A new short story by R A Salvatore is to be included in the collection.

On the eve of a recurring catastrophic event known to extinguish nations and reshape continents, a troubled orphan evades death and slavery to uncover her own bloody past - while a world goes to war with itself. In the frozen kingdom of Saiduan, invaders from another realm are decimating whole cities, leaving behind nothing but ash and ruin.

Drawing on the enduring wisdom of the Buddha, Confucius, Rumi, Gandhi, and others, The Art of Quiet Influence shows anyone, not just bosses, how to use influence without authority, a key mindfulness principle, to get things done at work and in life. Through the classic wisdom of 12 Eastern sages, relevant insights from influence research, and anecdotes and advice from 25 contemporary experts, Davis lays out a path for becoming a "mainspring", an unobtrusive yet powerful influencer.

Elizabeth Bell runs a quiet household, with no family and no more than the usual number of servants. She passes her time thinking about crime and working on her biography of a relative. When a young cousin comes to stay, life in the house becomes uncharacteristically lively. First, cousin Judy burns a hole in Miss Bell's desk. Next, they spy a burglar on the staircase - a shadowy figure who vanishes without a trace. And finally, Sarah, the nurse, takes the dogs for a walk and never returns.

America. The 1960s. Stuck on a remote farm with her awful aunt, twelve-year-old orphan Ruth spends every night gazing at the stars, dreaming of adventure. One night she spots a flying saucer blazing across the sky…before crash-landing in a field. When the spaceship opens and reveals a mysterious alien, all Ruth’s dreams come true. But does this visitor from another planet have a giant secret?

Sixteen thrilling and chilling stories by some of the greatest writers of horror and the supernatural, including Bram Stoker, H.P. Lovecraft, Charles Dickens, Ambrose Bierce, R.L.Stevenson, Guy de Maupassant and John Polidori, who is held to be the creator of the first vampire tale. An audio treat for Halloween or any other night when the moon is high, these stories are rich in imagination, humor, and characterization.

Wallace James Stevens was born on October 2nd, 1879, in Reading, Pennsylvania. His father, a lawyer, sent Wallace to Harvard as a non-degree special student, after which he moved to New York City and worked briefly as a journalist. In 1923 ‘Harmonium’ was published. At last, at age 38, he was an overnight success. His career was not prodigious in quantity but its quality was exceptional and he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Collected Poems in 1955.

Moments of change, chance encounters, twists of fate that create a new way of thinking or being: The stories in Dear Life build to form a radiant, indelible portrait of just how dangerous and strange ordinary life can be. The collection includes four powerful pieces, "autobiographical in Feeling", set during the time of Munro's own childhood, in the area where she grew up.

Now Anne is sixteen and a half and is about to start teaching at the very same school she hefself attended. Those of you who know Anne will realise that she has always been delighfully, accident prone, falling into scrapes because of her plans and adventures.

This intensely dramatic and moving novel has remained a best-selling classic since it was first published in 1852. The slaves Eliza and George make a desperate bid to escape to Canada, while Uncle Tom is sold to two successive and very different owners. Abraham Lincoln himself acknowledged the role played by this seminal text in the Civil War, the aim of which was (in part) to emancipate the slaves of the southern states.

Sixteen classic stories from masters of the genre: "The Judge's House", by Bram Stoker; "A Jug of Sirup", by Ambrose Bierce; "The Reconciliation", by Lafcadio Hearn; "The Woman With a Candle" by W. Bourne Cooke; "The Ebony Frame", by E. Nesbit; "On the Northern Ice", by Elia W. Peattie; "The Haunted Doll's House", by M. R. James; "The Old House in Vauxhall Walk", by Charlotte Riddell; "The Underground Ghost", by John Berwick Harwood; "Haunted", by Anon (from Tinsley's Annual); plus five more....

Loyalties are tested when worlds collide.... Every 2,000 years, the dark star Oma appears in the sky, bringing with it a tide of death and destruction. And those who survive must contend with friends and enemies newly imbued with violent powers. The kingdom of Saiduan already lies in ruin, decimated by invaders from another world, who share the faces of those they seek to destroy. Now the nation of Dhai is under siege by the same force.