Visit Santa at the North Pole, witness the birth of Baby Jesus, go inside Noah's Ark and more--with these ten timeless short stories, by noted Spanish children's author Pedro Pablo Sacristan, that will charm and entertain your whole family! Produced with wonderful sound effects and music by veteran radio theater producer Joe Bevilacqua, and performed by husband and wife team Joe Bevilacqua and Lorie Kellogg. Christmas stories include: "The Best Choice," "A Forced Christmas," "Bula the Traveller," "Christmas Presents," "The Please-O-Meter," and "The Little Christmas Star." There are also the stories "The Tidy Toys," "The Match and the Toy Men," "Problems on the Ark," "A Colorful Head," "A Drop of Water," and "Balloon Acrobatics."
In this epic drama from beloved radio personality Tom Bodett, a host of unforgettable characters from the end of the road - Alaska - venture to the lower 48 to discover an America they barely recognize. The first to arrive is Ed Flannigan, who has one arm, no job, and not a clue about how to get on with his life. Somehow he winds up in Quartz Creek, Oregon, contending with New Age colonists, organic vegetables, and a cranky old farmer who gives him peculiar and good advice about growing peaches. Meanwhile, Lloyd and Evelyn Decker leave home and hit the road in a powder blue Road Ranger to find their wayward children; Oliver the Dreamer, a soft-spoken amnesiac, finds a home and a family under a bridge in Seattle; and Webster Cummings, a statistical research analyst, survives a fall from a commuter plane to bring together these and other strange and wonderful characters for an unexpected revelation that alters all their lives.
The classic short story, To Build a Fire, by American author Jack London, is brought to life in ways he probably never imagined when it was published in 1908. The subtle blending of narration and music create a vivid image of the "Man" and his "Wolf Dog" as they set out on foot along the Yukon in temperatures colder than -50 F. With plans to meet his friends at a logging camp by 6:00pm, the Man finds himself pitted in a life and death struggle with nature. Whether or not you've read this great American classic, you'll be riveted by this audio version with sound enhancements of the Man's harrowing adventure in the Gold Rush Era of Alaska.
From the author of the instant New York Times best seller Swamplandia! (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), a dazzling new collection of stories that showcases Karen Russell's gifts at their inimitable best.
In the collection's marvelous title story, two aging vampires in a sun-drenched Italian lemon grove find their hundred-year marriage tested when one of them develops a fear of flying. In "The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979," a dejected teenager discovers that the universe is communicating with him through talismanic objects left in a seagull's nest. "Proving Up" and "The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis"--stories of children left to fend for themselves in dire predicaments--find Russell veering into more sinister territory, and ultimately crossing the line into full-scale horror. In "The New Veterans," a massage therapist working with a tattooed war veteran discovers she has the power to heal by manipulating the images on his body. In all, these wondrous new pieces display a young writer of superlative originality and invention coming into the full range and scale of her powers.
List of Stories and Readers:
Vampires in the Lemon Grove read by Arthur Morey
Reeling for the Empire read by Joy Osmanski
The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979 read by Kaleo Griffith
Proving Up read by Jesse Bernstein
The Barn at the End of Our Term read by Mark Bramhall
Dougbert Shackleton's Rules of Antarctic Tailgating read by Michael Bybee
The New Veterans read by Romy Rosemont
The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis read by Robbie Daymond
Advance Praise for Vampires in the Lemon Grove
"An eight-tale adrenaline-delivery system packed with long-married, problem-beset monsters, abandoned children whose lives are in dire peril, teens with creepy sixth senses, and masseuses with inexplicable healing powers...Darkly inventive, demonically driven narratives set in the author's inimitable imaginative disturbia."
-Elle
From the author of the instant New York Times bestseller Tenth of December comes a darkly comic short story, a fable about the all too real impact that we humans have on the environment.
Fox 8 has always been known as the daydreamer in his pack, the one his fellow foxes regarded with a knowing snort and a roll of the eyes. That is, until Fox 8 develops a unique skill: He teaches himself to speak "Yuman" by hiding in the bushes outside a house and listening to children's bedtime stories. The power of language fuels his abundant curiosity about people-even after "danjur" arrives in the form of a new shopping mall that cuts off his food supply, sending Fox 8 on a harrowing quest to help save his pack. Told with his distinctive blend of humor and pathos, Fox 8 showcases the extraordinary imaginative talents of George Saunders, whom the New York Times called "the writer for our time."
Praise for George Saunders and Tenth of December
"The best book you'll read this year . . . more moving and emotionally accessible than anything that has come before."-The New York Times Magazine
"Saunders is a complete original, unlike anyone else."-Dave Eggers
"Affecting [and] wincingly funny . . . It's no exaggeration to say that the short story master George Saunders helped change the trajectory of American fiction."-The Wall Street Journal
"Subversive, hilarious, and emotionally piercing."-Jennifer Egan
"Not since Twain has America produced a satirist this funny."-Zadie Smith
"George Saunders makes the all-but-impossible look effortless. We're lucky to have him."-Jonathan Franzen
Cat O'Nine Tales is the fifth collection of irresistible short stories from the master storyteller. Ingeniously plotted, with richly drawn characters and Jeffrey Archer's trademark of deliciously unexpected conclusions, some of these thirteen stories were inspired by the two years Jeffrey Archer spent in prison, including the story of a company chairman who tries to poison his wife while on a trip to St Petersburg-with unexpected consequences. The Red King is a tale about a con man who discovers that an English Lord requires one more chess piece to complete a set that would be worth a fortune. In another tale of deception, The Commissioner, a Bombay con artist ends up in the morgue, after he uses the police chief as bait in his latest scam. The Perfect Murder reveals how a convict manages to remove an old enemy while he's locked up in jail, and then set up two prison officers as his alibi. In Charity Begins at Home, an accountant realizes he has achieved nothing in his life, and sets out to make a fortune before he retires. And then there is Archer's favorite, In the Eye of the Beholder, where a handsome star athlete falls in love with a three-hundred-pound woman...who happens to be the ninth richest woman in Italy. Jeffrey Archer is the only author to have topped international bestseller lists with his fiction, non-fiction, and his short stories. Cat O'Nine Tales is Archer at his best: witty, sad, surprising, and unforgettable.
Jorge Luis Borges has been called the greatest Spanish-language writer of our century. A selection of Borges' dazzling fictions are gathered in this audiobook, brilliantly translated by Andrew Hurley . These enigmatic, elaborate, imaginative inventions display Borges' talent for turning fiction on its head by playing with form and genre and toying with language. Together these incomparable works comprise the perfect compendium for all those who have long loved Borges, and a superb introduction to the master's work for those who have yet to discover this singular genius. Selections include : Borges and I, The Garden of Forking Paths, Man on Pink Corner, The Library of Babel, Death and the Compass, The Lottery in Babylon, The Maker, The Zahir, The Encounter, The Circular Ruins, Shakespeare's Memory, August 25, 1983, The Immortal, Parable of Cervantes and the Quixote, The Story from Rosendo Juárez, The Aleph, and Dreamtigers.
In 1995, the physical and social landscape of Japan was transformed by two events: the Kobe earthquake, in January, which destroyed thousands of lives, and the poison-gas attacks in the Tokyo subways in March, during the morning rush hour. Following these twin disasters, Haruki Murakami abandoned his life abroad and returned home to confront his country’s grief. The subway attack led to his recent Underground. And out of the quake come these six stories, set in the months between natural catastrophe and man-made terrorism. His characters find their resolutely normal everyday lives undone by events even more surreal (yet somehow believable) than we have come to expect in his fiction.
An electronics salesman, abruptly deserted by his wife, is entrusted to deliver a mysterious package but gets more than he bargained for at the receiving end; a Thai chauffeur takes his troubled charge to a seer, who penetrates her deepest sorrow; and, in the unforgettable title story, a boy acknowledges a shattering secret about his past that will change his life forever.
But the most compelling character of all is the earthquake itself—slipping into and out of view almost imperceptibly, but nonetheless reaching deep into the lives of these forlorn citizens of the apocalypse. The terrible damage visible all around is, in fact, less extreme than the inconsolable howl of a nation indelibly scarred—an experience in which Murakami discovers many truths about compassion, courage, and the nature of human suffering.
One of America’s premier writers, the bestselling author of Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, The Book of Daniel, and World’s Fair turns his astonishing narrative powers to the short story in five dazzling explorations of who we are as a people and how we live.
Ranging over the American continent from Alaska to Washington, D.C., these superb short works are crafted with all the weight and resonance of the novels for which E. L. Doctorow is famous. You will find yourself set down in a mysterious redbrick townhouse in rural Illinois (“A House on the Plains”), working things out with a baby-kidnapping couple in California (“Baby Wilson”), living on a religious-cult commune in Kansas (“Walter John Harmon”), and sharing the heartrending cross-country journey of a young woman navigating her way through three bad marriages to a kind of bruised but resolute independence (“Jolene: A Life”). And in the stunning “Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden,” you will witness a special agent of the FBI finding himself at a personal crossroads while investigating a grave breach of White House security.
Two of these stories have already won awards as the best fiction of the year published in American periodicals, and two have been chosen for annual best-story anthologies.
Composed in a variety of moods and voices, these remarkable portrayals of the American spiritual landscape show a modern master at the height of his powers.
One of the hobbies of Charles Lindley Wood, 2nd Viscount Halifax, was the collection of gruesome tales of the supernatural. These stories were told to him by friends, acquaintances and sent to him by strangers, and he duly recorded them in a book over the course of his long life – he lived to be 94. This is the complete collection in one volume.
• "The Harper of Inverary"
• "The Man in the Iron Cage"
• "The Secret of Glamis"
• "The Grey Man of Wrotham"
• "The Haunting of Hinton Ampner"
• "The Death of Lord Tyrone"
• "The Passenger with the Bag"
• "Marche!"
• "The Man in a Silk Dress"
• "The Strange Experience of the Reverend Spencer Nairne"
• "The Renishaw Coffin"
• "The Butler in the Corridor"
• "The Telephone at the Oratory"
• "The Strangling Woman"
• "Here I Am Again!"
• "Head of a Child"
• "The Woman in White"
• "The Corpse Downstairs"
• "The Murderers Dream"
• "The Mad Butler"
• "Lady Gorings Dream"
• "The Sexton of Chilton Polden"
• "The Last Appearance of Mr. Bullock"
• "The Corpse that Rose"
• "The Footsteps at Haverholme Priory"
• "I will pay you all to-morrow"
• "The Haunted Bungalow"
• "The Monk of Bolton Abbey"
• "The Gentleman with the Latch-Key"
• "The Bordeaux Diligence"
• "The Appearance of Mr. Birkbeck"
• "The Vampire Cat"
• "Lord Lytton and a Horoscope"
• "Colonel P.s Ghost Story"
• "Shrieks in the West Room at Flesbury"
• "The Shrouded Watcher"
• "The Ghostly Passenger"
• "The Fawn Lady of Burton Agnes"
• "The Ghost of Lord Conyers Osborne"
• "The Ghost of Lady Carnarvon"
• "The Ghost of Bishop Wilberforce"
• "The Ship in Distress"
• "The Widow in the Train"
• "Killed in Action"
• "The Troubled Spirit of Tintern Abbey"
• "Labédoyères Doom"
• "Exorcism at St. Donats Castle"
• "What the Gardener Saw"
• "Three in a Bed"
• "The Simla Bungalow"
• "The Cardinal of Waverley Abbey"
• "Someone by his Side"
• "Bishop Kings Escape"
• "Two Friends"
• "The Spanish Knife"
• "Turn to the Right!"
• "President Lincolns Dream"
• "John Arthingtons Escape"
• "Two Submarines"
• "The Fighting Rooks and the Black Mouse"
• "Lord Decies Ring"
• "The Death of Lord Hastings"
• "The Rustling Lady of Lincoln"
• "The Bloody Hand"
• "The Tweenie"
• "Waiting for a Submarine
• "The Restless Dead"
• "The Countess of Belvedere"
Playing three parts, Philip Roth gives a hilariously comic performance of two old men living in a cheap rooming house who pay a visit to a diffident graduate student to ask a convoluted and unusual favor.
***This title is presented as an excerpt***
Like the work of Cormac McCarthy, Denis Johnson, Richard Ford, and Annie Proulx, Battleborn represents a near-perfect confluence of sensibility and setting, and the introduction of an exceptionally powerful and original literary voice. In each of these ten unforgettable stories, Claire Vaye Watkins writes her way fearlessly into the mythology of the American West, utterly reimagining it. Her characters orbit around the region's vast spaces, winning redemption despite - and often because of - the hardship and violence they endure. The arrival of a foreigner transforms the exchange of eroticism and emotion at a prostitution ranch. A prospecting hermit discovers the limits of his rugged individualism when he tries to rescue an abused teenager. Decades after she led her best friend into a degrading encounter in a Vegas hotel room, a woman feels the aftershock. Most bravely of all, Watkins takes on - and reinvents - her own troubled legacy in a story that emerges from the mayhem and destruction of Helter Skelter. Arcing from the sweeping and sublime to the minute and personal, from Gold Rush to ghost town to desert to brothel, the collection echoes not only in its title but also in its fierce, undefeated spirit the motto of her home state.
