Showing results by narrator "Laurel Lefkow" in All Categories

College campuses have become flashpoints of the current culture war and, consequently, much ink has been spilled over the relationship between universities and the cultivation or coddling of young American minds. Philosopher Sigal R. Ben-Porath takes head-on arguments that infantilize students who speak out against violent and racist discourse on campus or rehash interpretations of the First Amendment. Ben-Porath sets out to demonstrate the role of the university in American society and, specifically, how it can model free speech in ways that promote democratic ideals.

It was the day that changed everything. When the Nazis came and broke into our home. Destroyed everything that was safe for us. They took our home and our security. I thought it couldn’t get worse. But then they also took my sister. After that day nothing was the same again. I thought I’d never see her again. I thought she was lost to me forever. I joined the Resistance, vowing to fight against the evil German army with every last spark of fire in my body. I know what I have to do. And nothing can stop me.

The Rusel family is famous throughout Enderlain as breeders of enchanted horses, but their prestige is no match for their rising debts. To save her family’s ranch, Mikira Rusel is left with only one option: enter the Illinir, a cutthroat, cross-country horserace known for its high death rate as much as its flashy prize money. To have any chance of success, she’ll have to recruit Ari, an unlicensed enchanter who creates golems in place of enchanted animals, and Damien Adair, a lord in the midst of a succession battle.

Aging isn’t easy. But it can still be filled with joy—maybe even more joy than we expect. Alive Until You’re Dead offers a Zen approach to aging. Zen teacher and writer Susan Moon’s stories explore being present with what is, not turning away from what’s difficult, wishing for and working for the wellbeing of others, and being willing not to know what’s next. Moon writes of her most personal vulnerabilities in the service of connecting with everyone. These field notes from an old human being invite us to feel more alive in the final stretch, whatever it holds. 

Single-minded and spoilt, Undine Spragg arrives in New York determined to procure for herself a social status to match her family’s wealth. Ambition, greed and an arresting beauty soon secure her path to marriage...and also to divorce. The Custom of the Country is a sophisticated commentary on both, touching on the implications for a woman of ending a marriage at a time when the author herself was navigating that situation. As the mismatched Undine and Ralph travel to Europe, Wharton contrasts the pecuniary motivation of the nouveau riche in America with European tradition.

Sal Prentiss, orphaned and burdened with a terrible secret, just wants a place to belong. Sal lives with his uncles on a desolate ranch in the hills and finds himself at the centre of a brutal murder mystery when he discovers the body of his maths teacher, charred almost beyond recognition, half a mile from his uncles' compound. 

What does it mean to be a “woman” in America? Award-winning gender and sexuality scholar Lillian Faderman traces the evolution of the meaning from Puritan ideas of God’s plan for women to the sexual revolution of the 1960s and its reversals to the impact of such recent events as #metoo, the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, the election of Kamala Harris as vice president, and the transgender movement.

Wieland (1798) is an early American novel set in 1760s Pennsylvania. Based on a real case of a New York farmer who murdered his family, the story is imbued with suspense and intrigue, adopting Gothic devices such as ventriloquism and spontaneous combustion. The satanic interloper Carwin exercises his power over the narrator, Clara Wieland, wreaking havoc over the Wieland family with disastrous consequences. A central theme in the novel is the issue of the values that formed the basis of a new democratic and republican America.

Lorena Hickok meets Eleanor Roosevelt in 1932 while reporting on Franklin Roosevelt's first presidential campaign. Having grown up worse than poor in South Dakota and reinvented herself as the most prominent woman reporter in America, "Hick", as she's known to her friends and admirers, is not quite instantly charmed by the idealistic, patrician Eleanor. But then, as her connection with the future first lady deepens into intimacy, what begins as a powerful passion matures into a lasting love, and a life that Hick never expected to have. 

In Passionate Learners: How to Engage and Empower Your Students, author Pernille Ripp challenges both novice and seasoned teachers to create a positive, interactive learning environment where students drive their own academic achievement.

When White House correspondent Sofie Morse gets a call from the office of First Lady Lara Caine asking her to come in for a private meeting, her curiosity is piqued. Sofie, like the rest of the world, knows only that Lara was born in Soviet Russia, raised in Paris, and worked as a model before moving to America and marrying the notoriously brash future president. Now Lara wants Sofie to write her official biography. After decades of silence, she is finally ready to speak candidly about her past: about her father's work for the KGB, and about her ill-fated relationship with Sasha.

Berlin, 1936. The Landau family are at the heart of their community, running a music shop in Berlin and just trying to survive. But their lives are unravelling as Hitler's power increases and the treatment of Jewish families deteriorates. Eldest daughter, Rachel, fears for her sisters' future and will do anything she can to keep them safe. Will she find hope in the darkness? Paris, 1936. As whispers of war travel over from Europe, American debutante Kay escapes her mother's grasp and travels as a reluctant spy from Paris to Berlin.

Based on letters and documents - not seen for 70 years - written by the Catholic Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur during the Nazi occupation of Belgium, this audiobook tells the remarkable story of these brave and faithful women and how they served to resist the German forces. In great detail, these letters document the lives of the sisters and convents under the Nazi regime, detailing the hardships of bombings, hunger and the executions of innocents. But they also tell the story of how these brave and faithful women worked to defeat the Nazis.

Art and life. Each the mirror of the other. This then is the classic definition of what ‘Realism’ as a writing form really is. Some might call it a fancy term for the mundane day to day pursuits but in the hands of an author it comes alive. We are drawn into characters and landscapes that we can empathize with, we can, metaphorically speaking, help shoulder their burden, be on the long trail with them whatever the landscapes, the hurdles, incidents and other people may place in their literary way.

Mental illness though can still carry a stigma. A case of ‘you’re not trying hard enough’, ‘or knuckling down and getting on with it’. But in more recent decades mental issues have come to be recognised as an illness, a disease rather than an affliction. We all remember horror stories of lobotomy’s and electric shock being used to ‘cure’ what society viewed as anti-social behaviour but illness, mental or physical is very real. Depression, schizophrenia, breakdown, psychosis are alarming events to have or to witness.

Sam Preston appears to be living the glamorous life of a journalist at the San Francisco Chronicle. If only that was the case... In reality, she's frustratingly single, stuck living in her parents' house, and, oh yeah, in love with her boss, Dave, who barely knows that she exists. Life seems like it will never change - until the day Sam is put on an assignment with Dave, reporting on the San Francisco Fashion Week. She hopes this might be a turning point in their relationship. But things never go to plan.

Federal prosecutor Nora Carleton has spent years building a case against a powerful New York mobster. She finally has a star witness: an insider whose testimony will lock the defendant away for good. But the courtroom can be an unpredictable place. While the killing of a disgraced former governor appears unconnected to the trial, the fallout from his death makes a guilty verdict hang in the balance.

Benét was born on 22nd July in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Prodigiously his first book was published at 17 and for he obtained his M.A. in English when he submitted a poetry volume as his thesis. Whilst travelling in France, in the early '20s, he met and quickly married a fellow writer and poet, Rosemary Carr. She would also collaborate with him on several works. In Paris he wrote the book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War ‘John Brown's Body’, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

The ballad is one of the oldest poetic forms in English and are simply poems or songs that tell a story. Maybe it’s because of childhood associations or that we all enjoy a cracking good story told in rhyme but as this volume demonstrates, the ballad has endless appeal. We include favourites such as Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s The Ballad of the Harp Weaver, Edgar Allan Poe’s Annabel Lee as well as classics such as Sir Patrick Spens, the Ballad of Reading Gaol by Wilde and La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Keats.

In this collection of short stories some of our most popular and well-known authors are grouped together with an unfortunate tag: dead at 44. These authors are not run-of-the-mill or ten a penny; they are literary leviathans who left enduring works of literature and sadly may have left us many more had they lived. We will never know.