Audiobooks narrated by Lorna Raver

What if you closed your eyes, blew out the candles, and your wish came true? Ellie Jerome is a young-at-heart seventy-five-year-old who feels she has more in common with her twenty-nine-year-old granddaughter, Lucy, than her fifty-five-year-old daughter, Barbara. Ellie’s done everything she can to stay young, and the last thing she wants is to celebrate another birthday. So when she finds herself confronted with a cake full of candles, Ellie wishes more than anything that she could be twenty-nine again, just for one day. But who expects a wish like that to come true? 29 is the story of three generations of women and how one magical day shakes up everything they know about each other. While Ellie finds that the life of a twentysomething is not as carefree as she expected, the sheer joy of being young again prompts her to consider living her life all over. Does she dare stay young for more than this day, even if it means leaving everyone she loves behind? Fresh, funny, and delightful, 29 is an enchanting adventure about families, love, and the real lessons of youth. “A joyful fairy tale that will sweep you up and captivate you from start to finish. Sweet, funny, and tender.”—Karen Quinn, author of The Ivy Chronicles

Adena Halpern (Author), Lorna Raver (Narrator)

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A Land More Kind Than Home

A stunning debut reminiscent of the beloved novels of John Hart and Tom Franklin, A Land More Kind Than Home is a mesmerizing literary thriller about the bond between two brothers and the evil they face in a small western North Carolina town For a curious boy like Jess Hall, growing up in Marshall means trouble when your mother catches you spying on grown-ups. Adventurous and precocious, Jess is enormously protective of his older brother, Christopher, a mute whom everyone calls Stump. Though their mother has warned them not to snoop, Stump can't help sneaking a look at something he's not supposed to-an act that will have catastrophic repercussions, shattering both his world and Jess's. It's a wrenching event that thrusts Jess into an adulthood for which he's not prepared. While there is much about the world that still confuses him, he now knows that a new understanding can bring not only a growing danger and evil-but also the possibility of freedom and deliverance as well. Told by three resonant and evocative characters-Jess; Adelaide Lyle, the town midwife and moral conscience; and Clem Barefield, a sheriff with his own painful past-A Land More Kind Than Home is a haunting tale of courage in the face of cruelty and the power of love to overcome the darkness that lives in us all. These are masterful portrayals, written with assurance and truth, and they show us the extraordinary promise of this remarkable first novel.

Wiley Cash (Author), Lorna Raver, Mark Bramhall, Nick Sullivan (Narrator)

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A Land More Kind Than Home

Winner of Specsavers 2012 Crime Thriller Award for best debut novel, A Land More Kind than Home keeps us guessing with some truly inventive and disturbing characters. This tragic and incredibly personal novel deserves all the praise it is receiving. 'We never should've gone up there...' One Sunday, nine-year-old Jess Hall watches in horror as his autistic brother is smothered during a healing service in the mountains of North Carolina. The unimaginable violence that follows must be untangled by a local sheriff with his own tragic past. A Land More Kind Than Home is a spellbinding, heartbreaking story about cruelty and innocence, and the failure of religion and family to protect a child. It is a novel thick with stories and characters connected by faith, infidelity, and a sense of hope that is both tragic and unforgettable.

Wiley Cash (Author), Lorna Raver, Mark Bramhall, Multiple Narrators, Nick Sullivan (Narrator)

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A Single Thread: The Cobbled Court Series, Book 1

Marie Bostwick weaves the unforgettable story of four very different women whose paths cross, changing their lives forever. It's a long way from Fort Worth, Texas, to New Bern, Connecticut, yet it only takes a day in the charming Yankee town to make Evelyn Dixon realize she's found her new home. The abrupt end of her marriage was Evelyn's wake-up call to get busy chasing her dream of opening a quilt shop. Finding a storefront is easy enough; starting a new life isn't. Little does Evelyn imagine it will bring a trio like Abigail Burgess, her niece Liza, and Margot Matthews through her door. Troubled and angry after her mother's death, Liza threatens to embarrass her aunt Abigail all over town unless she joins her for quilting classes. A victim of downsizing at the peak of her career, Margot hopes an event hosted by the quilt shop could be a great chance to network'and keep from dying of boredom. As they stitch their unique creations, Evelyn, Abigail, Liza, and Margot form a sisterhood they never sought'but one that they'll be grateful for when the unexpected provides a poignant reminder of the single thread that binds us all.

Marie Bostwick (Author), Lorna Raver, Pam Ward (Narrator)

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An American Family Shakespeare Entertainment, Vol. 1

Blackstone Audio presents An American Family Shakespeare Entertainment, a sparkling adaptation based on Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb, augmented by miscellaneous scenes and soliloquies from Shakespeare's plays. Read by a full cast and featuring Elizabethan songs and dances in new arrangements for stringed instruments, this production is entertaining and accessible for young and old alike! The Two Gentlemen of Verona read by Stephen HoyeThe Comedy of Errors read by Arte JohnsonThe Taming of the Shrew read by Robert ForsterScene: Petruchio & Kate read by Gabrielle de Cuir & Stefan RudnickiA Midsummer Night's Dream read by John RubinsteinRomeo and Juliet read by Orson Scott CardThe Merchant of Venice read by David BirneySoliloquy: "Hath not a Jew..." read by David BirneyMuch Ado about Nothing read by Scott BrickMusic: "It Was a Lover and his Lass..." by Stefan RudnickiAs You Like It read by Stephanie ZimbalistHamlet read by Joe BarrettSoliloquy: "O What a Rogue... " read by Joe BarrettTwelfth Night read by Cassandra CampbellAll's Well That Ends Well read by Emily Janice CardMeasure for Measure read by Lorna Raver

Charles Lamb, Mary Lamb, Stefan Rudnicki (Author), A Full Cast, Arte Johnson, Cassandra Campbell, David Birney, Emily Janice Card, Full Cast, Gabrielle De Cuir, Joe Barrett, John Rubinstein, Lorna Raver, Orson Scott Card, Robert Forster, Scott Brick, Stephanie Zimbalist, Stephen Hoye (Narrator)

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Anna Karenina

Vladimir Nabokov called Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina "one of the greatest love stories in world literature." Set in imperial Russia, Anna Karenina is a rich and complex meditation on passionate love and disastrous infidelity. Married to a powerful government minister, Anna Karenina is a beautiful woman who falls deeply in love with a wealthy army officer, the elegant Count Vronsky. Desperate to find truth and meaning in her life, she rashly defies the conventions of Russian society and leaves her husband and son to live with her lover. Condemned and ostracized by her peers and prone to fits of jealousy that alienate Vronsky, Anna finds herself unable to escape an increasingly hopeless situation. Set against this tragic affair is the story of Konstantin Levin, a melancholy landowner whom Tolstoy based largely on himself. While Anna looks for happiness through love, Levin embarks on his own search for spiritual fulfillment through marriage, family, and hard work. Surrounding these two central plot threads are dozens of characters whom Tolstoy seamlessly weaves together, creating a breathtaking tapestry of nineteenth-century Russian society. From its famous opening sentence-"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way"-to its stunningly tragic conclusion, this enduring tale of marriage and adultery plumbs the very depths of the human soul.

Leo Nikolayevich 1828-1910 Tolstoy, Leo Tolstoy (Author), Lorna Raver (Narrator)

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Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties

This exuberant group portrait of four extraordinary writers-Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker, and Edna Ferber-mixes literary scholarship, social history, and gossip to evoke an era that continues to intrigue and captivate listeners. "This book is gossip, taken to the highest, cosmic level, a social movement explained in terms of trivial detail that makes everything "'real.'"-Washington Post

Marion Meade (Author), Lorna Raver (Narrator)

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Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties

This is an exuberant group portrait of four extraordinary writers—Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker, and Edna Ferber—whose loves, lives, and literary endeavors captured the spirit of the 1920s. Marion Meade re-creates the aura of excitement, romance, and promise of the 1920s, when these literary heroines did what they wanted, said what they thought, and kicked open the door for twentieth-century women, setting a new model for every woman trying to juggle the serious issues of economic independence, political power, and sexual freedom. But Meade also brings to light the anxiety and despair that lurked beneath the nonstop partying and outrageous behavior. She describes the men who influenced them, loved them, and sometimes betrayed them. And while she describes their social and literary triumphs, she also writes movingly of the penances they paid. A vibrant mixture of literary scholarship, social history, and scandal, Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin is a rich evocation of an era that will forever intrigue and captivate us.

Marion Meade (Author), Lorna Raver (Narrator)

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Bread and Roses, Too

Rosa’s mother is singing again, for the first time since Papa died in an accident in the mills. But instead of filling their cramped tenement apartment with Italian lullabies, Mamma is out on the streets singing union songs. Rosa is terrified that her mother and older sister, Anna, are endangering their lives by marching against the corrupt mill owners. After all, didn’t Miss Finch tell the class that the strikers are nothing but rabble-rousers–an uneducated, violent mob? Suppose Mamma and Anna are jailed or, worse, killed? What will happen to Rosa and little Ricci? When Rosa is sent to Vermont with other children to live with strangers until the strike is over, she fears she will never see her family again. Then, on the train, a boy begs her to pretend that he’s her brother. Alone and far from home, she agrees to protect him . . . even though she suspects that he is hiding some terrible secret. From a beloved, award-winning author, here is a moving story based on real events surrounding an infamous 1912 strike.

Katherine Paterson (Author), Lorna Raver (Narrator)

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Calling Me Home

A soaring debut interweaving the story of a heartbreaking, forbidden love in 1930s Kentucky with an unlikely modern-day friendship Eighty-nine-year-old Isabelle McAllister has a favor to ask her hairdresser, Dorrie Curtis. It's a big one. Isabelle wants Dorrie, a black single mother in her thirties, to drop everything and drive her from her home in Arlington, Texas, to a funeral in Cincinnati-with no clear explanation why-tomorrow. Dorrie, fleeing problems of her own and curious whether she can unlock the secrets of Isabelle's guarded past, scarcely hesitates before agreeing, not knowing it will be a journey that changes both their lives. Over the years, Dorrie and Isabelle have developed more than just a business relationship: they are friends. But Dorrie, fretting over the new man in her life and her teenage son's irresponsible choices, still wonders why Isabelle chose her. Isabelle confesses that, as a willful teen in 1930s Kentucky, she fell deeply in love with Robert Prewitt, a would-be doctor and the black son of her family's housekeeper-in a town where blacks weren't allowed after dark. The tale of their forbidden relationship and its tragic consequences makes it clear Dorrie and Isabelle are headed for a gathering of the utmost importance and that the history of Isabelle's first and greatest love just might help Dorrie find her own way. "If Julie Kibler's novel Calling Me Home were a young woman, her grandmother would be To Kill a Mockingbird, her sister would be The Help, and her cousin would be The Notebook. But even with such iconic relatives, Calling Me Home stands on her own; this novel uncovers a painful past that tells us so much about who we are, where we're going, and the people who are traveling with us."-Wiley Cash, New York Times bestselling author

Julie Kibler (Author), Bahni Turpin, Lorna Raver (Narrator)

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Calling Me Home

A moving love story inspired by a true story and perfect for fans of The Help In a time of hate, would you stand up for love? Shalerville, Kentucky, 1939. A world where black maids and handymen are trusted to raise white children and tend to white houses, but from which they are banished after dark. Sixteen-year-old Isabelle McAllister, born into wealth and privilege, finds her ordered life turned upside down when she becomes attracted to Robert, the ambitious black son of her family's housekeeper. Before long Isabelle and Robert are crossing extraordinary, dangerous boundaries and falling deeply in love. Many years later, eighty-nine-year-old Isabelle will travel from her home in Arlington, Texas, to Ohio for a funeral. With Isabelle is her hairstylist and friend, Dorrie Curtis - a black single mother with her own problems. Along the way, Isabelle will finally reveal to Dorrie the truth of her painful past: a tale of forbidden love, the consequences of which will resound for decades . . . 'If Julie Kibler's novel Calling Me Home were a young woman, her grandmother would be To Kill a Mockingbird, her sister would be The Help and her cousin would be The Notebook. But even with such iconic relatives, Calling Me Home stands on her own' Wiley Cash, New York Times bestselling author of A Land More Kind Than Home 'Julie Kibler's writing is so wise and assured. I laughed out loud in places and had tears in my eyes as I turned the last page' Diane Chamberlain 'If you liked The Help by Kathryn Stockett, you'll absolutely love Calling Me Home' Red magazine

Julie Kibler (Author), Bahni Turpin, Lorna Raver (Narrator)

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Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee

Long before Western writers had even conceived the idea of writing detective stories, the Chinese had developed a long tradition of literary works that chronicled the cases of important district magistrates. One of the most celebrated of these was Judge Dee, who lived in the seventh century a.d. This book, written anonymously in the eighteenth century, interweaves three of Judge Dee's most baffling cases: a double murder among traveling merchants, the fatal poisoning of a bride on her wedding night, and the suspicious death of a shop keeper with a beautiful wife. The crimes take him up and down the great silk routes, into ancient graveyards where he consults the spirits of the dead, and through all levels of society, leading him to some brilliant detective work.

Robert Van Gulik, Yuri Rasovsky (Author), Lorna Raver, Mark Bramhall, Stefan Rudnicki, Various Artists, Yuri Rasovsky (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Lorna Raver