Showing results by narrator "Kate Reading" in All Categories

Lewis Carroll created a curious and fantastical world in his classic book Alice in Wonderland, but he secretly recorded the true story of his actual travels to Wonderland in four journals which have been lost to the world...until now. Celia and Tyrus discover the legendary Lost Diaries of Wonderland and fall into a portal that pulls them into the same fantasy world as the White Rabbit and the Mad Hatter. However, Wonderland has vastly changed.

A remarkably fresh and engaging account of Britain’s long-reigning monarch, Queen Victoria, who ascended to the throne at 18, in 1837, and died in 1901. Lytton Strachey captures her essential spirit in concise and elegant prose, with an eye and an ear keenly attuned to human nature, and its foibles. Written only 20 years after her death, this biography exemplifies the emergence of modern thought from the Victorian Era.

With the island of Avalon far behind them, Meredith and her companions continue their search for Candidate One in the hope of finally discovering the secrets behind why they were brought to this strange, future-version of Earth. Wild adventures, mysterious technologies, and new friends will help Meredith on her journey. But the Adversary has its own plans for her, and soon she finds herself fighting for survival against an enemy unlike anything she has encountered before. There is only one hope for the future of humanity. Can Meredith handle the burden?

Magic has protected Tarsynium for a thousand years, shielding its people from a world ravaged by bloodthirsty demons. When a young ranger's apprentice named Owyn Lund discovers that the Arc of Radiance has been breached, he tries to warn anybody who will listen. But legends aren't supposed to be real. When a village is mysteriously destroyed, rangers, mages, and rebels all point the finger, blaming each other for the demons' brutality. However, Zara Dennel, a mage's ward, has heard Owyn's tale - and she's inclined to believe him.

In January of 1950, Mary Church Terrell, an 86-year-old charter member of the NAACP, headed into Thompson’s Restaurant, just a few blocks from the White House, and requested to be served. She and her companions were informed by the manager that they could not eat in his establishment, because they were “colored.” Terrell, a former suffragette and one of the country’s first college-educated African-American women, took the matter to court. Three years later, the Supreme Court vindicated her outrage: District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co., Inc. was decided in 1953.

In the sleepy Bavarian town of Gesternstadt, gossip was viewed by many as a local sport, a popular hobby, a harmless pastime that showed only the depth and enduring nature of the interest of one neighbour for another. In Gretel’s opinion, however, tittle-tattle sowed the seeds of malice among the fertile soil of jealousy, often watered by the tears of its victims. So it was that upon hearing from brother Hans of the whispers concerning a young woman, a married man and a thwarted lover, Gretel is compelled to rise from her beloved day bed to set things to rights.

Gretel has never had any time for sorcerers, considering them nothing more than show-offs with questionable fashion sense. It is with some reluctance and a deal of grumpiness, then, that she agrees to look into the matter of a murdered magician. All that is left of him is a grisly remnant, which the police quack confirms is the murdered man’s appendix. What has become of the rest of him is baffling the local constabulary, the Sorcerers’ Society, and, not least, the hapless trickster’s widow.

Gretel's latest investigation goes less than smoothly after a dead man is found in her rooms with her hunting knife sticking out of his chest in the whimsical second Brothers Grimm-inspired novel. Gretel (yes, that Gretel) is now 35, very large, still living with her brother Hans, and working as a private investigator.The small, sleepy town of Gesternstadt is shaken to its pretty foundations when the workshop of the local cart maker is burnt to the ground, and a body is discovered in the ashes. It is Gretel who notices that the cadaver is missing a finger.

Obstetrician Dr. Sophie Savard returns home to the achingly familiar rhythms of Manhattan in the early spring of 1884 to rebuild her life after the death of her husband. With the help of Dr. Anna Savard, her dearest friend, cousin, and fellow physician she plans to continue her work aiding the disadvantaged women society would rather forget. As Sophie sets out to construct a new life for herself, Anna's husband, Detective Sergeant Jack Mezzanotte calls on them both to consult on two new cases.

Big Anthony Tagliabue is a local character whose fiancee Agnes Ann owns a stable on the eponymous offshore island. She is secretly training a promising filly for the track when she discovers that Tagliabue also harbors a secret: He's a deep-cover operative who is called to duty when a Russian spy ship transits the coast on her way back to St. Petersburg. Giselle, Tagliabue's enigmatic and exotic handler, intimates that his mission to rescue a defector from the Leonov might also ameliorate his thirst to find the killers of his mate. Agnes Ann is not so sure about Giselle.

Eight years after the world changed forever, Sanctuary and her surrounding settlements had settled into their new way of life. And with the events in Andorra a distant memory, they were safe...or at least they thought they were. As Leah recounts their highs and lows, the memories of that fateful day come flooding back. The day violence visited them from the sea in a way they could never have anticipated. The way in which their whole way of life was threatened, and she was forced to battle more than just the invaders to keep her people, her family, and herself safe.

Here, collected in one volume and chosen by the author himself, are favorites such as "What Kind of Day Did You Have?", "Leaving the Yellow House", and a previously uncollected piece, "By the St. Lawrence". With his larger-than-life characters, irony, wisdom, and unique humor, Bellow presents a sharp, rich, and funny world that is infinitely surprising. With a preface by Janice Bellow and an introduction by James Wood, this is a collection to treasure for longtime Saul Bellow fans and an excellent introduction for new listeners.

The bond is broken. Ascension is coming. The Advent is rising. And the enemy is winning.

The Club is a blistering, timely, and gripping novel set at Cambridge University, centering around an all-male dining club for the most privileged and wealthy young men at Cambridge and following an outsider who exposes the dark secrets of this group, the Pitt Club.

For Meredith Gale, ending her life seems like her only choice, and that choice is the reason she’s dangling by her fingertips from a bridge high above the freezing water of the San Francisco Bay. But someone or some thing has other plans for Meredith, and as her fingers slip from the cold steel of the bridge, a disembodied voice asks her a simple question: “Candidate 13: Do you wish to be saved?” Realizing her mistake too late, Meredith screams “Yes!” and instantly finds herself transported to a mysterious island, alongside hundreds of other Candidates like her.

In a world where there are no rules, there is no greater hero than a 17-year-old girl. Life at the fortified town of Sanctuary is calm. The people, with their fearless leader at the helm, have created a haven where they can live out their lives in peace and safety. But it hasn't always been this...

By her thirties Lisa has her dream career and a glamorous life in Paris, but when her adopted daughter, Sabrina, is expelled from school, Lisa takes her to volunteer in a Ghanaian orphanage in the hope of getting her back on track. What she discovers there changes both their lives for good.

From the author of My Husband’s Sweethearts and The Pretend Wife comes a moving novel about love and hope in the face of loss, in which a small house in the French countryside may be responsible for mending hearts since World War II.

In 1973, on a remote beach on the Greek island of Samos, a movie star named Marilita Stephan murdered her boyfriend, his mother, and a powerful colonel in the military junta, a crime for which she was executed. Forty years later, Dinah Pelerin arrives on Samos to spend the summer with her Norwegian boyfriend, Thor, before she joins an archaeological dig nearby. Thor, a policeman on sabbatical, seems unduly fascinated by the 1973 murders, and Dinah soon discovers that he had more in mind than romance when he chose the island of Samos as their holiday destination.

Dinah Pelerin’s wealthy American uncle, dying of cancer, has summoned his entire family to a remote lodge in upper Australia, where he intends to end his life. Dinah hopes to at last learn the truth about her father, who died while committing a felony when she was a child. But the truth, she discovers, has darker ramifications than she’d bargained on.