Showing results by narrator "Kathleen Gati" in All Categories

New York socialite Caroline Ferriday has her hands full with her post at the French consulate and a new love on the horizon. But Caroline's world is forever changed when Hitler's army invades Poland in September 1939 - and then sets its sights on France. An ocean away from Caroline, Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager, senses her carefree youth disappearing as she is drawn deeper into her role as courier for the underground resistance movement.

In a village at the edge of the wilderness of Northern Russia, where the winds blow cold and the snow falls many months of the year, a stranger with piercing blue eyes presents a new father with a gift - a precious jewel on a delicate chain, intended for his young daughter. Uncertain of its meaning, the father hides the gift away, and his daughter, Vasya, grows up a wild, willful girl, to the chagrin of her family. But when mysterious forces threaten the happiness of their village, Vasya discovers that she may be the only one who can keep the darkness at bay.

Hyacinth Smith can see things that others miss, stop attack dogs from attacking, and grow trees where no trees have grown before. But she's never had a real home. When her father tells them they've inherited a house from their great-aunt, Hyacinth sees trouble brewing. Their great-aunt has been playing with forces beyond her control, using her lightning-tree forest to create doors to other worlds. When one door opens, two boys tumble through...bringing with them a battle with the undying witch-queen, Nimiane.

Coupon-clipping police superintendent Jonah Merlin thinks he has an open-and-shut case on his hands after the body of a beautiful woman is found discarded in a run-down building in Tel Aviv. All evidence points to two suspects, but finding them will require unorthodox methods to decode the cryptic words sprayed at every crime scene. As the body count rises, graffiti expert Rai Zitrin and precocious 17-year-old Zoe Navon agree to help Merlin uncover the connection between the killing spree and the words of Polish writer Bruno Schulz.

It's 1803, and an adolescent Nadya is determined not to follow in her overbearing Ukrainian mother's footsteps. She's a horsewoman, not a housewife. When Tsar Paul is assassinated in St. Petersburg and a reluctant and naive Alexander is crowned emperor, Nadya runs away from home and joins the Russian cavalry in the war against Napoleon. Disguised as a boy and riding her spirited stallion, Alcides, Nadya rises in the ranks, even as her father begs the tsar to find his daughter and send her home.

It is the spring of 1939 and three generations of the Kurc family are doing their best to live normal lives, even as the shadow of war grows closer. The talk around the family Seder table is of new babies and budding romance, not of the increasing hardships threatening Jews in their hometown of Radom, Poland. But soon the horrors overtaking Europe will become inescapable, and the Kurcs will be flung to the far corners of the world, each desperately trying to navigate his or her own path to safety.

As Hitler’s reign of terror begins to loom large over Germany, Gerhard and Elsa Schliemann - like other German Jews - must flee with their children in search of sanctuary. But life elsewhere in Europe offers few opportunities for medical professor Gerhard and his fellow scientists. Then they discover an unexpected haven in Turkey, where universities and hospitals welcome them as valuable assets. But despite embracing their adopted land, personal and political troubles persist. 

Moscow is in flames, leaving its people searching for answers - and someone to blame. Vasilisa, a girl with extraordinary gifts, must flee for her life, pursued by those who blame their misfortune on her magic. Then a vengeful demon returns, stronger than ever. Determined to engulf the world in chaos, he finds allies among men and spirits. Mankind and magical creatures alike find their fates resting on Vasya's shoulders. But she may not be able to save them all.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden, read by Kathleen Gati. For a young woman in medieval Russia, the choices are stark: marriage or a life in a convent. Vasya will choose a third way: magic.... The court of the Grand Prince of Moscow is plagued by power struggles and rumours of unrest. Meanwhile, bandits roam the countryside, burning the villages and kidnapping its daughters.

In 1905, on her twenty-sixth birthday, Mimi Reventlow receives a marriage proposal from the vicar of her family’s church. But a future of housework, childcare, and servicing a parish doesn’t appeal to the restless and unconventional Mimi. She has ambitions of her own--to follow in the footsteps of her beloved uncle Josef and become a traveling photographer. Leaving behind all that has been mapped out for her, Mimi dares to pursue her passion and sets out alone to make her own mark. A visit to her ailing uncle in the idyllic mountain town of Laichingen, Germany, pauses Mimi’s journey.

On a spring morning, neighbors Valentina Kaplan and Oksana Savchenko wake up to an angry red sky. A reactor at the nuclear power plant where their fathers work - Chernobyl - has exploded. Before they know it, the two girls, who've always been enemies, find themselves on a train bound for Leningrad to stay with Valentina's estranged grandmother, Rita Grigorievna. In their new lives in Leningrad, they begin to learn what it means to trust another person.

As World War II approaches, two families run for their lives - and for the future of all they hold dear. 1930: As raids and violent arrests sweep through their Crimean village, two families are forced to make desperate choices in order to keep themselves - and their hope - alive. The Pfeiffers get out as quickly as they can, braving a last-minute escape in the dead of night. Their friends the Scholzes are less lucky. Captured and transported to labour camps in the icy Far North, the future seems a bleak, dark nightmare for the couple and their three children.

On the windswept shores of an East German island, Bettina Heilstrom struggles to build a life from the ashes. World War II has ended, and her country is torn apart. Longing for a family, she marries Werner, an older bureaucrat who adores her. But after joining the fledgling secret police, he is drawn deep into its dark mission and becomes a dangerous man.

Nadia's daily life in south Brooklyn is filled with small indignities, but the war back home is always at the forefront of her reality. On television, Vladimir Putin speaks of the "reunification" of Crimea and Russia, and the Ukrainian president makes unconvincing promises about a united Ukraine. The one reunion she has been waiting six years for - with her beloved daughter - is being eternally delayed by the Department of Homeland Security. And when Nadia finds out that her daughter has lost access to the medicine she needs to survive, she takes matters into her own hands.

It is 1914, and the world has been on the brink of war so often many New Yorkers treat the subject with only passing interest. Eliza Ferriday is thrilled to be traveling to St. Petersburg with Sofya Streshnayva, a cousin of the Romanovs. Eliza embarks on the trip of a lifetime to see the splendors of Russia. But when Austria declares war on Serbia, Eliza escapes back to America, while Sofya and her family flee to their country estate. In need of domestic help, they hire the local fortune-teller’s daughter, Varinka, unknowingly bringing intense danger into their household.

It officially began on February 28, 2006, when a handful of protesters from the nearby Six Nations reserve walked onto Douglas Creek Estates, then a residential subdivision under construction, and blocked workers from entering. The occupation is now in its fifth year. Throughout, Christie Blatchford has been observing, interviewing, and investigating with the tenacity that has made her both the doyen of Canadian crime reporters and a social commentator beloved for her uncompromising sense of right and wrong.

Love and War is the unbelievable true story of one man's desperate hunt for Osama bin Laden and the woman who was fatally drawn to his side. From the backwoods of New York State, to the confines of an Afghan prison and a drug-fueled sex den in Mexico, the story charts the wild life of Jonathan "Jack" Keith Idema, a Special Forces Reservist turned bounty hunter, convict, and kingpin.

In her new book, Women, Sex, Power & Pleasure, Evelyn Resh, a sexuality counselor and certified nurse-midwife, takes an innovative approach to helping women create the lives - and sex lives - they want. With a funny and compassionate, yet tell-it-like-it-is style, she looks at the relationship between feeling powerful in life and accessing life’s pleasures, and their combined effect on sexual desire. Resh introduces six essential qualities that women must have to live healthfully, stating that when these are out of balance women seem to exist in lives devoid of pleasure, self-empowerment, and sex.

December 1917. As World War I rages in Europe, 24-year-old Ruby Wagner, the jewel in a prominent Philadelphia family, prepares for her upcoming wedding to a society scion. Like her life so far, it’s all been carefully arranged. But when her beloved older brother is killed in combat, Ruby follows her heart and answers the Army Signal Corps’ call for women operators to help overseas. As one of the trailblazing “Hello Girls” deployed to war-torn France, Ruby must find her place in the military strata, fight for authority and respect, and work to secure a victory for the cause.

Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582) is one of the most beloved of the Catholic saints. In 1562, during the era of the Spanish Inquisition, Teresa sat down to write an account of the mystical experiences for which she had become famous. The result was this book, one of the great classics of spiritual autobiography. With this fresh translation of The Book of My Life, Mirabai Starr brings the inimitable Spanish mystic to life for a new generation, with contemporary English that mirrors Teresa's own earthy, vernacular Spanish, and that presents us with someone we feel we know.