Showing titles in World Literature

The Tattooist of Auschwitz is based on the true story of Lale and Gita Sokolov, two Slovakian Jews who survived Auschwitz and eventually made their home in Australia. In that terrible place, Lale was given the job of tattooing the prisoners marked for survival - literally scratching numbers into his fellow victims' arms in indelible ink to create what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust.

Athena Liu is a literary darling and June Hayward is literally nobody. When Athena dies in a freak accident, June steals her unpublished manuscript and publishes it as her own under the ambiguous name Juniper Song. But as evidence threatens June’s stolen success, she will discover exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves. What happens next is entirely everyone else’s fault.

Flying instructor Ellie Simpson has grown up a tomboy. She's never had an interest in the latest fashions or finding a husband; her only passion is flying her beloved Tiger Moth. But when war is declared, she is no longer be able to do what she loves most - fly.

Tooth and Claw follows Walt and Henry up to Alaska as they look for work after they both return from serving in Vietnam. While working for an oil company in the bitter cold of winter, they soon encounter a ferocious polar bear that seems hell-bent on their destruction. But it’s not too long until they realize that the danger does not lurk outside in the frozen Alaskan tundra, but with their co-workers, who are after priceless treasure and will stop at nothing to get it.

Free-spirited and easygoing Taylor Vandenberg left her hometown of Faircombe, Tennessee, as soon as she could, and in the twenty-five years since, she has rarely looked back. She wouldn't change anything about how her life has turned out—having traveled to nearly every country, never staying anywhere long enough to feel stifled. Brooke Watson has known Taylor for her entire life, and lifelong knowledge means that Brooke knows she's trouble: irresponsible, takes nothing seriously, and irritatingly attractive.

With deftness and skill, journalist Lili Anolik uses Babitz, Babitz's brilliance of observation, Babitz's incisive intelligence and, most of all, Babitz's diary-like letters, as the key to unlocking Didion. Franklin Avenue was the making of one great American writer: Joan Didion, a mystery behind her dark glasses and cool expression, her marriage to John Gregory Dunne as tortured as it was enduring. It was also the breaking and then the remaking - and thus the true making - of another great American writer: Eve Babitz.

In the second volume of Proust's great novel, the narrator emerges as an actor in the drama of his own life. Swann has now dwindled into a husband for his former mistress, Odette, and their daughter, Gilberte, becomes the adolescent narrator's playmate and tantalising love object. We move from Paris to the seaside town of Balbec, from ritualised social performances to midsummer spontaneity and from Gilberte to her successor Albertine.

Based on the harrowing life of Eleonore Hodys, The Mistress of Auschwitz follows the true story of a political prisoner detained in the notorious concentration camp. While experiencing all the horrors of the holocaust, Eleonore turns to friendship for survival. Through companionship with another female prisoner, Eleonore must decide if she has the courage to join the resistance movement which is planning the overthrow of their wicked oppressors.

From the author of The Christmas Hirelings comes this Audible Exclusive production of Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s classic sensation novel Lady Audley’s Secret. English actress Olivia Poulet gives an assured and captivating narration; a cornerstone of the genre and a scandal at the time of its publication, Lady Audley’s Secret is an entertaining and shocking tale of high drama and shifting perceptions.

A huge novel that follows five families through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for votes for women. It is 1911. The Coronation Day of King George V. The Williams, a Welsh coal-mining family, is linked by romance and enmity to the Fitzherberts, aristocratic coal-mine owners. Lady Maud Fitzherbert falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German Embassy in London.

The energetic, pretentious and sometimes malicious Lucia's reign over Riseholme's gentry is challenged by a dazzling diva, a fraudulent guru and the exposur eof her faulty Italian.

On a cool autumn morning, Torie Nash heads into her village pulling a rickety wagon filled with late-season peaches. As she nears an intersection, a mysterious drifter with grimy thumbs and smudged cheeks and eyes as dark as a raven's wing stops to ask her the way. She could turn left or cross over. But she does not. 'Go as a river,' he whispers. So begins a mesmerising story that unfolds over a tumultuous lifetime as Torie begins to absorb and follow his words.

When Sarah Jepson’s mother Annie dies, Sarah is left with her little brother Tommy to care for. Alone in the world, the two of them must make a life for themselves in the wake of the terrible upbringing they have endured. But when Tommy is struck down by illness, Sarah’s new life collapses. Lost in grief, she turns to the handsome Roger to save her – only to find that he is not who he seems....

By 1535 Thomas Cromwell, the blacksmith's son, is far from his humble origins. Chief Minister to Henry VIII, his fortunes have risen with those of Anne Boleyn, Henry’s second wife, for whose sake Henry has broken with Rome and created his own church. In Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel explores one of the most mystifying and frightening episodes in English history: the destruction of Anne Boleyn.

The fourth in the best-selling Alfred series from number-one historical novelist, Bernard Cornwell. The year is 885, and England is at peace, divided between the Danish kingdom to the north and Alfred's kingdom of Wessex in the south. But trouble stirs, a dead man has risen and new Vikings have arrived to occupy London. It is a dangerous time, and it falls to Uhtred, half Saxon, half Dane, a man feared and respected the length and breadth of Britain, to expel the Viking raiders and take control of London for Alfred.

For years they thought it was just them. Irritated and tormented by everything around them from call centres to nose studs, from speed bumps to ring tones. Then along came the BBC2 series Grumpy Old Men, and the subsequent best-selling book, and they knew they were not alone.

Captain Marryat's The Children of the New Forest is a wonderful tale in narrative, historically rich and quite fascinating. This story of adventure, treachery, and love takes place during the English Civil War, when fellow countrymen are found enemies, and are set against each other, Roundhead and Cavalier, Parliament and the King. Many hoped for the same thing: justice. But, for a long time, neither could find it. In the midst of all were the Beverlies, the family of a faithful Cavalier, who died in service of the king.

Soseki Natsume's comic masterpiece, I Am a Cat, satirizes the foolishness of upper-middle class Japanese society during the Meiji era. With acerbic wit and sardonic perspective, it follows the whimsical adventures of a world-weary stray kitten who comments on the follies and foibles of the people around him. A classic of Japanese literature, I Am a Cat is one of Soseki's best-known novels. Considered by many as the greatest writer in modern Japanese history, Soseki's I Am a Cat is a classic novel sure to be enjoyed for years to come.

In Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy, one of our very best writers brings the opulent world of the Tudors to bloody, glittering life. It is the backdrop to the rise and rise of Thomas Cromwell: lowborn boy, charmer, bully, master of deadly intrigue, and, finally, most powerful of Henry VIII’s coutiers. But the bloody theatre of Cromwell’s ascension will leave no one unscathed.

The New York Times best-selling author of seagoing epics now celebrates an American classic.Moby-Dick is perhaps the greatest of the Great American Novels, yet its length and esoteric subject matter create an aura of difficulty that too often keeps readers at bay. Fortunately, one unabashed fan wants passionately to give Melville's masterpiece the broad contemporary audience it deserves.