Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in United States

A staggeringly popular work of fiction, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code has sold in its millions. But this fast-paced mystery is unusual in that the author states up front that the historical information in the book is all factually accurate. But is this claim true? As historian Bart D Ehrman shows in this informative and witty book, The Da Vinci Code is filled with numerous historical mistakes.

A treasured children’s classic, Susan Coolidge’s What Katy Did is a vivid story of childhood bravery with a feisty heroine at its heart. Twelve-year-old Katy is a dreamer. She invents exciting games, faraway lands and imagines that one day she’ll be charming and graceful. But in the...

The daughter of a hard-working restaurant owner, Louise Brooks always sees the best in people—and in helping them no matter how difficult her own life gets. She's lived through tragic loss and running the family business on her own, even in the face of a failed marriage. So, she's delighted when she finds a best friend in Della Thornton, a woman struggling with bad breaks and unlucky romances. When Louise's father and her prosperous second husband suddenly pass away, Louise takes Della in and makes her the restaurant’s right-hand woman as it grows more successful than ever . . .

From a young age Kerouac was a spiritual thinker and questioner, and he always considered himself a spiritual writer. Buddhism gave more meaning to Jack’s work as a writer: he was working not for personal accomplishment and glory but for human betterment. And Buddhism justified his lifestyle: with its vision of the material world as empty and illusory, he was free to do what he wanted.

It’s the 1960s in North Carolina, and Lorraine Delford has it all—an upstanding family, a perfect boyfriend, and an idyllic home complete with a white picket fence. Yet every time she looks through her father’s telescope, she dreams of leaving it all behind to go to space. It’s ambitious, but Lorraine has always been exceptional.

Widely acclaimed as a progenitor of 20th-century Latin American fiction, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), the son of a mulatto father and a washerwoman, was hailed in his lifetime as Brazil's greatest writer. His prodigious output of novels, plays, and stories rivaled contemporaries like Chekhov, Flaubert, and Maupassant, but, shockingly, he was barely translated into English until 1963, and still lacks proper recognition today. 

For over 40 years, Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan has inspired audiences to expand their world view beyond traditional Western forms. Originally published as Castaneda’s master’s thesis in anthropology, Teachings documents Castaneda’s supposed apprenticeship with a Yaqui Indian sorcerer, don Juan Matus. Dividing the work into two sections, Castaneda begins by describing don Juan’s philosophies, then continues with his own reflections.

When Mark Twain was growing up, all he wanted to be was a steamboat man. And so Twain ran away in pursuit of his dream. Life on the mighty river for Twain consisted of paddleboats and history, poker games and gamblers, larger-than-life characters and outlandish festivals like Mardi Gras. Twain recorded it all with his keen eye for detail and biting wit.

Lucy Hua comes from a long line of extraordinary women—Chinese perfumers gifted with the secret power to craft magical scents to stir hearts and ensure fortunes. For centuries, the Hua women held sway over the courts of emperors and the boardrooms of billionaires…and in every fifth generation, an eldest daughter is born with the rarest gift of all: the ability to summon true love.

Forty-something widow Jessie Tucker is beloved throughout Lexington, Alabama, for her kind heart and endless generosity. But she feels it’s past time she rewarded herself—especially when upstanding Hubert Wiggins tragically loses his wife and son. Making herself indispensable, yet discouraged by Hubert’s lack of romantic interest, Jessie cooks up a deception she knows will make pious Hubert do right by her …

‘Brilliant’—Publishers Weekly Starred Review The legendary Judge Dee Renjie investigates a high-profile murder case in this intriguing companion novel to Inspector Chen and the Private Kitchen Murder set in seventh-century China. Judge Dee Renjie, Empress Wu’s newly appointed Imperial...

Single mother Alice Chow is drowning. With a booming online cloth diaper shop, her resentful teenage daughter Luna, and her screen-obsessed son Luca, Alice can never get everything done in a day. It’s all she can do to just collapse on the couch with a bottle of wine every night.

Sweet Pea Chaisson has parked his pink Cadillac convertible full of hookers in the parking lot of a convenience store in Spanish Lake, Louisiana. He’s causing a commotion, but not because of the car or the women—his mother’s coffin is sticking out of the trunk. Welcome again to the world of Dave Robicheaux, the Bayou cop who works murder cases and a 12-step program with a unique mixture of gentleness and suppressed rage. On his beat in Iberia Parrish, ancient burial sites, a Vietnam war diary, an old affair, and a street hustler are stirring up trouble.

Widely hailed as a milestone in American literature, Sinclair Lewis' Main Street vividly describes a country on the verge of massive change, with traditional values being threatened by progress. The novel's heroine, Carol Milford, is a highly educated, ambitious woman who plans to join a newly enlightened society. But after marrying a small-town doctor, she finds herself trapped in the role of a dutiful wife. Carol's desires for social change conflict with the security of her comfortable married life, as she struggles to understand the cost of conformity...and rebellion. As relevant today as it was upon its 1920 publication, Main Street is both a masterful piece of writing and a fascinating microcosm of America's social evolution.

Jessamyn Teoh is closeted, broke, and moving back to Malaysia, a country she left when she was a toddler. So when Jess starts hearing voices, she chalks it up to stress. But there's only one voice in her head, and it claims to be the ghost of her estranged grandmother, Ah Ma. In life Ah Ma was a spirit medium, the avatar of a mysterious deity called the Black Water Sister. Now she's determined to settle a score against a gang boss who has offended the god - and she's decided Jess is going to help her do it. 

German-American novelist Erich Maria Remarque captured the emotional anguish of a generation in his World War I masterpiece, All Quiet on the Western Front, as well as in an impressive selection of novels, plays, and short stories. This exquisite collection revives Remarque’s unforgettable voice, presenting a series of short stories that have long ago faded from public memory. Eight Stories offers a beautiful tribute to the pain that war inflicts on soldiers and civilians alike, and resurrects the work of a master author whose legacy will endure for generations to come.

Baja California, 1979. Viridiana spends her days watching the dead sharks piled beside the seashore, as the fishermen pull their nets. There is nothing else to do. Yet her head is filled with dreams of Hollywood films, of romance, of a future beyond the drab town where her only option is to marry and have children. Three wealthy American tourists arrive for the summer, and Viridiana is magnetized. They offer excitement, and perhaps an escape. When one of them dies, Viridiana lies to protect her friends. Soon enough, someone’s asking questions....

Elsa Park is a particle physicist at the top of her game, stationed at a neutrino observatory in the Antarctic, confident she's put enough distance between her ambitions and the family ghosts she's run from all her life. But it isn't long before her childhood imaginary friend—an achingly familiar, spectral woman in the snow—comes to claim her at last. Years ago, Elsa's now-catatonic mother had warned her that the women of their line were doomed to repeat the narrative lives of their ancestors from Korean myth and legend. But beyond these ghosts, Elsa also faces a more earthly fate.

Since childhood, Yolanda Vance has forged her desire to escape poverty into a laser-like focus that took her through prep school and Harvard Law. So when her prestigious New York law firm is raided by the FBI, Yolanda turns in her corrupt bosses to save her career - and goes to work for the Bureau. Soon she’s sent undercover at Red, Black, and Green - an African-American “extremist” activist group back in her California college town. They claim a biotech corporation fueled by Pentagon funding is exploiting the neighborhood.

Villa Sepulveda is a storied relic of the Philippines’ past: a Spanish colonial manor, its moldering stonework filled with centuries-old heirlooms, nestled in a remote coconut plantation. When their patriarch dies mysteriously, his far-flung family returns to their ancestral home. Filipino-American student Adrian Sepulveda invites his college girlfriend, Sophie, a transracial adoptee who knows little about her own Filipino heritage, to the funeral of a man who was entwined with the history of the country itself.