En octubre de 1947, Grace Holland atraviesa dos sequías simultáneas. Un verano extremadamente caluroso y seco ha convertido el estado de Maine en un polvorín. Grace y su esposo Gene han perdido el amor y ya casi no se hablan. Con cinco meses de embarazo y cuidando a dos niños pequeños, la vida de Grace se resume nada más a la soledad y sus labores domésticas. Una noche se despierta y descubre que los incendios arrasan la costa y se acercan cada vez más a su casa. Se ve obligada a arrojar sus hijos al mar para escapar de las llamas, mientras observa impotente cómo todo lo que conoce arde hasta los cimientos. Por la mañana, su vida cambiará para siempre: está sin hogar, sin dinero, esperando noticias sobre la suerte de su marido, y se encuentra abandonada frente a un futuro incierto en una ciudad que ya no existe. Con valentía y estoicismo, Grace supera una pérdida devastadora y, a pesar del humo, avista la oportunidad de reescribir su historia.
Testimony: A Novel: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience! *
At a New England boarding school, a sex scandal is about to break. Even more shocking than the sexual acts themselves is the fact that they were caught on videotape.
A Pandora's box of revelations, the tape triggers a chorus of voices--those of the men, women, teenagers, and parents involved in the scandal--that details the ways in which lives can be derailed or destroyed in one foolish moment.
Writing with a pace and intensity surpassing even her own greatest work, Anita Shreve delivers in TESTIMONY a gripping emotional drama with the impact of a thriller. No one more compellingly explores the dark impulses that sway the lives of seeming innocents, the needs and fears that drive ordinary men and women into intolerable dilemmas, and the ways in which our best intentions can lead to our worst transgressions.
*Booktrack is an immersive format that pairs traditional audiobook narration to complementary music. The tempo and rhythm of the score are in perfect harmony with the action and characters throughout the audiobook. Gently playing in the background, the music never overpowers or distracts from the narration, so listeners can enjoy every minute. When you purchase this Booktrack edition, you receive the exact narration as the traditional audiobook available, with the addition of music throughout.
A man receives a bill for a white chandelier that he never ordered and has never seen. This mysterious document turns out to be the hinge of his world and his attempts to make sense of it lead him to facts about himself, his marriage and his orderly life that had previously been hidden from him.
Set in New England and Florida during the 1920s, All He Ever Wanted gives us a marriage, betrayal and the search for redemption from the vantage points of both a husband and a wife.
The Last Time They Met focuses on the relationship between childhood sweethearts Linda Fallon and poet Thomas Janes. We begin in the year 2000 at a writers' festival in Toronto, and are propelled backwards in time, via the politically repressive Naiobi, to the small town in Massachusetts for their school days in the 1960's. Along the way the novel delves deeply into the destructive nature of life and the need for forgiveness.
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER
From the New York Times best-selling author of The Weight of Water and The Pilot's Wife (an Oprah's Book Club selection): an exquisitely suspenseful new novel about an extraordinary young woman tested by a catastrophic event and its devastating aftermath--based on the true story of the largest fire in Maine's history
In October 1947, after a summer long drought, fires break out all along the Maine coast from Bar Harbor to Kittery and are soon racing out of control from town to village. Five months pregnant, Grace Holland is left alone to protect her two toddlers when her husband, Gene, joins the volunteer firefighters. Along with her best friend, Rosie, and Rosie's two young children, Grace watches helplessly as their houses burn to the ground, the flames finally forcing them all into the ocean as a last resort. The women spend the night frantically protecting their children, and in the morning find their lives forever changed: homeless, penniless, awaiting news of their husbands' fate, and left to face an uncertain future in a town that no longer exists. In the midst of this devastating loss, Grace discovers glorious new freedoms--joys and triumphs she could never have expected her narrow life with Gene could contain--and her spirit soars. And then the unthinkable happens--and Grace's bravery is tested as never before.
An epic story, set against the backdrop of World War I, from bestselling author Anita Shreve.
When an American woman, Stella Bain, is found suffering from severe shell shock in an exclusive garden in London, surgeon August Bridge and his wife selflessly agree to take her in. A gesture of goodwill turns into something more as Bridge quickly develops a clinical interest in his houseguest. Stella had been working as a nurse's aide near the front, but she can't remember anything prior to four months earlier when she was found wounded on a French battlefield. In a narrative that takes us from London to America and back again, Shreve has created an engrossing and wrenching tale about love and the meaning of memory, set against the haunting backdrop of a war that destroyed an entire generation.
When an American woman, Stella Bain, is found suffering from severe shell shock in a London garden, surgeon August Bridge and his wife selflessly agree to take her in. However, Bridge quickly develops a clinical interest in his houseguest. Stella had been working as a nurse's aide near the front, but she can't remember anything prior to four months earlier when she was found wounded on a French battlefield.
'Poised and absolutely steady-handed, this is a gripping piece of deconstruction' SUNDAY TIMES on Testimony
Until now, Kathryn Lyons's life has been peaceful if unextraordinary: a satisfying job teaching high school in the New England mill town of her childhood; a picture-perfect home by the ocean; a precocious, independent-minded fifteen-year-old daughter; and a happy marriage whose occasional dull passages she attributes to the unavoidable deadening of time. As a pilot's wife, Kathryn has learned to expect both intense exhilaration and long periods alone - but nothing has prepared her for the late-night knock that lets her know her husband has died in a crash. As Kathryn struggles with her grief, she descends into a maelstrom of publicity stirred up by the modern hunger for the details of tragedy. Even before the plane is located in waters off the Irish coast, the relentless scrutiny of her husband's life begins to bring a bizarre personal mystery into focus. Could there be any truth to the increasingly disturbing rumors that he had a secret life?
A powerful and moving story of love, loss and recrimination, from the bestselling author of Testimony.
Peter Webster, a rookie paramedic, pulls a young woman from her wrecked car. Sheila Arsenault is a gorgeous enigma - streetwise and tough-talking, with haunted eyes and fierce desires. Soon Sheila and Peter are embroiled in an intense love affair. Eighteen years later and Peter is raising their teenage daughter, Rowan, alone. But Rowan is veering off course and Peter fears for her future. He seeks out the only person who may be able to help her...
Newlyweds Margaret and Patrick decide to spend a year in Kenya. Patrick practices medicine while Margaret works as a photojournalist. Then a British couple invite them on a climbing expedition to the summit of Mount Kenya. During their ascent an horrific accident occurs. In its aftermath, Margaret struggles to understand what happened on the mountain and how it has transformed her and her marriage, perhaps for ever.
A rookie paramedic pulls a young woman alive from her totaled car, a first rescue that begins a lifelong tangle of love and wreckage. Sheila Arsenault is a gorgeous enigma--streetwise and tough-talking, with haunted eyes, fierce desires, and a never-look-back determination. Peter Webster, as straight an arrow as they come, falls for her instantly and entirely. Soon Sheila and Peter are embroiled in an intense love affair, married, and parents to a baby daughter. Like the crash that brought them together, it all happened so fast. Can you ever really save another person? Eighteen years later, Sheila is long gone and Peter is raising their daughter, Rowan, alone. But Rowan is veering dangerously off track, and for the first time in their ordered existence together, Webster fears for her future. His work shows him daily every danger the world contains, how wrong everything can go in a second. All the love a father can give a daughter is suddenly not enough. Sheila's sudden return may be a godsend--or it may be exactly the wrong moment for a lifetime of questions and anger and longing to surface anew. What tore a young family apart? Is there even worse damage ahead? The questions lifted up in Anita Shreve's utterly enthralling new novel are deep and lasting, and this is a novel that could only have been written by a master of the human heart.
At a New England boarding school, a sex scandal is about to break. Even more shocking than the sexual acts themselves is the fact that they were caught on videotape. The tape triggers a chorus of voices - those of the men, women, teenagers, and parents involved in the scandal - that details the ways in which lives can be derailed or destroyed in one foolish moment.
