Fiction Audiobooks | LoveReading

"The remarkable first novel by a young, gay, black author who fashioned a deeply moving and compelling coming-of-age story out of the controversial issues of bisexuality and AIDS Law school, girlfriends, and career choices were all part of Raymond Tyler's life, but there were other, more terrifying issues for him to confront. Being black was tough enough, but Raymond was becoming more and more conscious of sexual feelings that he knew weren't 'right.' He was completely committed to Sela, his longtime girlfriend, but his attraction to Kelvin, whom he had met during his last year in law school, had become more than just a friendship. Fleeing to New York to escape both Sela and Kelvin, Raymond finds himself more confused than ever before. New relationships--both male and female--give him enormous pleasure but keep him from finding the inner peace and lasting love he so desperately desires. The horrible illness and death of a friend eventually force Raymond, at last, to face the truth. Invisible Life has been hailed as 'one of the most thought-provoking books--since James Baldwin's Another Country' (Richmond Voice), and Harris's 'stories have become the toast of bookstores, reading groups, men, women, and gay and straight people' (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)."

E. Lynn Harris (Author), Michael Boatman (Narrator)

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Just as I Am

"E. Lynn Harris's blend of rich, romantic storytelling and controversial contemporary issues like race and bisexuality have found an enthusiastic and diverse audience across America. Readers celebrate the arrival in paperback of his second novel, Just As I Am, which picks up where Invisible Life left off, introducing Harris's appealing and authentic characters to a new set of joys, conflicts, and choices. Raymond, a young black lawyer from the South, struggles to come to terms with his sexuality and with the grim reality of AIDS. Nicole, an aspiring singer/actress, experiences frustration in both her career and in her attempts to find a genuine love relationship. Both characters share an eclectic group of friends who challenge them, and the reader, to look at themselves and the world around them through different eyes. By portraying Nicole's and Raymond's joys, as well as their pain, Harris never ceases to remind us that life, like love, is about self-acceptance. In this vivid portrait of contemporary black life, with all its pressures and the complications of bisexuality, AIDS, and racism, Harris confirms a faith in the power of love -- love of all kinds -- to thrill and to heal, which will warm the hearts of readers everywhere."

E. Lynn Harris (Author), Brenda Braxton, Michael Boatman (Narrator)

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The Queen of the Damned

"In 1976, a uniquely seductive world of vampires was unveiled in the now-classic Interview with the Vampire ... in 1985, a wild and voluptous voice spoke to us, telling the story of The Vampire Lestat. Anne Rice continues her extraordinary Vampire Chronicles in a feat of mesmeric storytelling, a chillingly hypnotic entertainment in which the oldest and most powerful forces of the night are unleashed on an unsuspecting world. Three brilliantly colored narrative threads intertwine as the story unfolds: - The rock star known as Vampire Lestat, worshipped by millions of spellbound fans, prepares for a concert in San Francisco. Among the audience--pilgrims in a blind swoon of adoration--are hundreds of vampires, creatures who see Lestat as a 'greedy fiend risking the secret prosperity of all his kind just to be loved and seen by mortals,' fiends themselves who hate Lestat's power and who are determined to destroy him . . . - The sleep of certain men and women--vampires and mortals scattered around the world--is haunted by a vivid, mysterious dream: of twins with fiery red hair and piercing green eyes who suffer an unspeakable tragedy. It is a dream that slowly, tauntingly reveals its meaning to the dreamers as they make their way toward each other--some to be destroyed on the journey, some to face an even more terrifying fate at journey's end . . . - Akasha--Queen of the Damned, mother of all vampires, rises after a 6,000 year sleep and puts into motion a heinous plan to 'save' mankind from itself and make 'all myths of the world real' by elevating herself and her chosen son/lover to the level of the gods: 'I am the fulfillment and I shall from this moment be the cause' . . . These narrative threads wind sinuously across a vast, richly detailed tapestry of the violent, sensual world of vampirism, taking us back 6,000 years to its beginnings. As the stories of the 'first brood' of blood drinkers are revealed, we are swept across the ages, from Egypt to South America to the Himalayas to all the shrouded corners of the globe where vampires have left their mark. Vampires are created--mortals succumbing to the sensation of 'being enptied, of being devoured, of being nothing.' Vampires are destroyed. Dark rituals are performed--the rituals of ancient creatures prowling the modern world. And, finally, we are brought to a moment in the twentieth century when, in an astonishing climax, the fate of the living dead--and perhaps of the living, all the living--will be decided."

Anne Rice (Author), David Purdham, Kate Nelligan (Narrator)

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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

"Enriched Classics offer readers accessible editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and commentary. Each book includes educational tools alongside the text, enabling students and readers alike to gain a deeper and more developed understanding of the writer and their work. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn follows Tom Sawyer's best friend on his wildly entertaining exploits with runaway slave, Jim, recounted in vernacular English and vibrant descriptions of life along the Mississippi River. Set in a Southern antebellum society, which had ceased to exist at the time of its publication, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is often regarded as a scathing satire on the institution of racism and the attitudes that supported it. However, it is also a playful story about the joys and evils of childhood as well as the limitless possibilities it allows. Enriched Classics enhance your engagement by introducing and explaining the historical and cultural significance of the work, the author's personal history, and what impact this book had on subsequent scholarship. Each book includes discussion questions that help clarify and reinforce major themes and reading recommendations for further research. Read with confidence."

Mark Twain (Author), Jack Lemmon (Narrator)

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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

"Enriched Classics offer readers accessible editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and commentary. Each book includes educational tools alongside the text, enabling students and readers alike to gain a deeper and more developed understanding of the writer and their work. Originally published in 1876, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is the classic tale of a carefree and courageous boy’s coming-of-age in a rural Mississippi River town. Tom and his best friend, Huckleberry Finn, are two of literature’s most enduring and treasured creations. Enriched Classics enhance your engagement by introducing and explaining the historical and cultural significance of the work, the author’s personal history, and what impact this book had on subsequent scholarship. Each book includes discussion questions that help clarify and reinforce major themes and reading recommendations for further research. Read with confidence."

Mark Twain (Author), Paul Newman (Narrator)

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Standoff

"TV reporter Tiel McCoy is driving down Interstate 20 on her way to New Mexico for a well-earned vacation. But her itinerary is rewritten when she hears on the radio that the teenage daughter of a well-known Fort Worth multi-millionaire has been kidnapped, at least that's the official report. In truth, she is pregnant and has run away with her boyfriend. After calling her editor, Tiel abandons her holiday plans in favor of pursuing the story. During an innocuous visit to a convenience store in Rojo Flats, Tiel gets up close and personal with the barrel of a gun, two desperate young lovers -- and the scoop of a lifetime. In the electrifying standoff that follows, she learns why the two young runaways fear the wealthy father of one of them even more than the FBI...and why she must defend them against a world bent on their destruction. Poignant and riveting, Standoff is suspense at its best, as only Sandra Brown can create it."

Philip Melanchthon (Author), Enid Graham (Narrator)

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Rogue Warrior: Echo Platoon

"A brilliant virtuoso of violence, Richard Marcinko rose through Navy ranks to create and command one of this country's most elite and classified counterterrorist units, SEAL TEAM SIX. Now this thirty-year veteran recounts the secret missions and Special Warfare madness of his worldwide military career—and the riveting truth about the top-secret Navy SEALs. Marcinko was almost inhumanly tough, and proved it on hair-raising missions across Vietnam and a war-torn world: blowing up supply junks, charging through minefields, jumping at 19,000 feet with a chute that wouldn't open, fighting hand-to-hand in a hellhole jungle. For the Pentagon, he organized the Navy's first counterterrorist unit: the legendary SEAL TEAM SIX, which went on classified missions from Central America to the Middle East, the North Sea, Africa and beyond. Then Marcinko was tapped to create Red Cell, a dirty-dozen team of the military's most accomplished and decorated counterterrorists. Their unbelievable job was to test the defenses of the Navy's most secure facilities and installations. The result was predictable: all hell broke loose. Here is the hero who saw beyond the blood to ultimate justice—and the decorated warrior who became such a maverick that the Navy brass wanted his head on a pole, and for a time, got it. Richard Marcinko—ROGUE WARRIOR."

John Weisman, Richard Marcinko (Author), Richard Marcinko (Narrator)

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Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker

"New York City is not only The New Yorker magazine's place of origin and its sensibility's lifeblood, it is the heart of American literary culture. Wonderful Town, an anthology of superb short fiction by many of the magazine's most accomplished contributors, celebrates the seventy-five-year marriage between a preeminent publication and its preeminent context with this collection of forty-four of its best stories from (so to speak) home. East Side? Philip Roth's chronically tormented alter ego Nathan Zuckerman has just moved there, in 'Smart Money.' West Side? Isaac Bashevis Singer's narrator mingles with the customers in 'The Cafeteria' (who debate politics and culture in four or five different languages) and becomes embroiled in an obsessional romance. And downtown, John Updike's Maples have begun their courtship of marital disaster, in 'Snowing in Greenwich Village.' Wonderful Town touches on some of the city's famous places and stops at some of its more obscure corners, but the real guidebook in and between its lines is to the hearts and the minds of those who populate the metropolis built by its pages. Like all good fiction, these stories take particular places, particular people, and particular events and turn them into dramas of universal enlightenment and emotional impact. Each life in it, and each life in Wonderful Town, is the life of us all. Including these stories from the magazine's most iconic writers: "The Five-Fourty-Eight" by John Cheever "Distant Music" by Ann Beattle "Sailor off the Bremen" by Irwin Shaw "Physics" by Tama Janowitz "The Whore of Mensa" by Woody Allen "What it was Like, Seeing Chris" by Deborah Eisenberg "Drawing Room B" by John O'Hara "A Sentimental Journey" by Peter Taylor "The Balloon" by Donald Barthelme "Another Marvellous Thing" by Laurie Colwin "The Failure" by Jonathan Franzen "Apartment Hotel" by Sally Benson "Midair" by Frank Conroy "The Catbird Seat" by James Thurber "I See You, Bianca" by Maeve Brennan "You're Ugly, Too" by Lorrie Moore "Signs and Symbols" by Vladimir Nabokov "Poor Visitor" by Jamaica Kincaid "In Greenwich, There Are Many Gravelled Walks" by Hortense Calisher "Some Nights When Nothing Happens Are the Best Nights in this Place" by John McNulty "Slight Rebellion Off Madison" by J. D. Salinger "Brownstone" by Renata Adler "Partners" by Veronica Geng "The Evolution of Knowledge" by Niccolo Tucci "The Way We Live Now" by Susan Sontag "Do the Windows Open?" by Julie Hecht "The Mentocrats" by Edward Newhouse "The Treatment" by Daniel Menaker "Arrangement in Black and White" by Dorothy Parker "Carlyle Tries Polygamy" by William Melvin Kelley "Children Are Bored on Sunday" by Jean Stafford "Notes from a Bottle" by James Stevenson "Man in the Middle of the Ocean" by Daniel Fuchs "Me Spoulets of the Splendide" by Ludwig Bemelmans "Over by the River" by William Maxwell "Baster" by Jeffrey Eugenides "The Second Tree from the Corner" by E. B. White "Rembrandt's Hat" by Bernard Malamud "Shot: A New York Story" by Elizabeth Hardwick "A Father-To-Be" by Saul Bellow "Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer" by S. J. Perelman "Water Child" by Edwidge Danticat "The Smoker" by David Schickler"

David Remnicki (Author), Joe Morton, Maria Tucci, Tim Jerome, Tyne Daly (Narrator)

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Dubliners - Part II

"This volume continues the masterly unabridged reading of the short stories. It contains the last six stories from the collection: Clay, A Painful Case, Ivy Day in the Committee Room, A Mother, Grace, and perhaps the most well-known of all the stories (and the longest), The Dead. Jim Norton has established a special reputation for his recordings of Joyce for Naxos AudioBooks."

James Joyce (Author), Jim Norton (Narrator)

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Protect and Defend

"A compelling new novel from Richard North Patterson- a major departure, and that confirms his place among the most important popular novelists at work today. A newly elected president faces the unexpected chance to nominate a new chief justice of the Supreme Court. His first choice is a nationally respected Court of Appeals judge, a woman whose nomination faces two serious obstacles: a long-held personal secret; and the prospect that a volatile abortion case- a trial pitting a 15-year-old girl against her pro-life parents- will come before the court. And the Senate majority leader is determined to thwart the president's nomination for reasons that cross the boundary between the political and the personal. As these stories intertwine, building in complexity and suspense, Patterson gives us the resounding clash of competing ambitions between the president and the majority leader; the equally momentous collision of science and culture in the courtroom; and, in an unprecedented novelistic depiction of the legal process from the perspective of the judge rather than the lawyers, a revelation of both how the judicial system works and how it intersects with politics, for better or for worse. PROTECT AND DEFEND is a triumph- the definitive novel of politics and law at the dawn of the 21st century."

Richard North Patterson (Author), Patricia Kalember (Narrator)

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Gap Creek: The Story of a Marriage

"An Oprah's Book Club Selection An unflinching tale of turn-of-the-century Appalachian life, Gap Creek chronicles the challenging first year in the marriage of Julie Harmon and Hank Richards. After losing both her father and brother before turning 17, Julie faces fire, flood, grifters, sickness, and starvation with grim determination and remarkable stamina. By capturing the earthy details of rural life, including raw, riveting accounts of everything from hog slaughtering to childbirth, Robert Morgan weaves the human and the heroic that coexist in every individual."

Robert Morgan (Author), Jill Hill (Narrator)

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Death of an Eagle

Kirby Jonas (Author), James Drury (Narrator)

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