Showing results by narrator "Laurel Lefkow" in All Categories

Biographer Alexandra Popoff traces the life and creative achievement of Ayn Rand (1905–1982), one of America’s most provocative writers and whose best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged have enjoyed impressive longevity. Born into a Jewish family in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Rand (then Alisa Rosenbaum) lived through the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Civil War, and the onset of Soviet totalitarian dictatorships––experiences that made her profoundly anticommunist.

Three years after a virus wiped out 99 percent of the men on earth, a mother and son are on the run. All Cole has left in the world is her boy, Miles. With men now a prised commodity, keeping him safe means breaking hastily written new rules - and leaving her own sister for dead. All Miles has left in the world is his mother.

A mesmerising literary story about a lost man in search of connection - a meditation on love, art and commitment, set against the backdrop of one of the greatest art events in modern history, Marina Abramovic's The Artist Is Present.

For a beginner, investing can be an overwhelming and intimidating topic, and finding which investment options are right for you is an almost impossible task. Idiot's Guides: Beginning Investing helps the new investor understand all of the most common investment options, how to choose the right ones for your needs and goals, and how to increase your chances for success.

A mother moves to Geneva with her husband and their two young children. In their beautiful new rented apartment, surrounded by their rented furniture, and several Swiss instructions to maintain quiet, she finds herself totally isolated. Her husband’s job means he is almost never present, and her entire world is caring for her children - making sure they are happy, and fed and comfortable, and that they can be seen as the happy, well-fed, comfortable family they should be. Everything is perfect. But, of course, it’s not....

In one of America's Happiest Cities, Elen is trapped under the shadow of the snow-capped Cascade Mountains. Elen is alone, and unmoored. Her husband has left her. Her belongings are in the boot of her car. Her days are filled mostly with silence and drinking. When she meets four English teenagers in a decaying bar, she is enamoured. The teenagers are wealthy squatters, drifting between ski resorts and breaking into empty AirBnBs. When they bring Elen into their fold, she initially remains on the outskirts, invisibly separated by their privilege.

A droll and dazzling compendium of observations, stories, lists and brief essays about babies. One August day a baby was born, or, as it seemed to Rivka Galchen, a puma moved into her apartment. Her arrival felt supernatural; she seemed to come from another world. And suddenly the world seemed ludicrously, suspiciously, adverbially sodden with meaning. But Galchen didn't want to write about the puma. She had never been interested in babies or in mothers before. Now everything seemed directly related to them.

Leigh, Adriana and Emmy are best friends, all leading different lives and about to make some extreme choices. The three girls meet for dinner one evening and make a pact - they each have to change one thing in their lives by the end of the year.

These novelists burst with a literary energy that is hard to contain. They cover a myriad of styles and themes, narratives packed full of fully-formed characters in powerful tales that have become an essential and integral part of our literary heritage.

Gertrude Stein’s pioneering triptych Three Lives portrays the lives of three working-class women in the fictional American town of Bridgepoint (Baltimore). A progenitor of the "stream of consciousness" technique later adopted by Joyce and Woolf, Stein takes us into the minds of three distinct women, who are each trapped in their societal positions. "The Good Anna" follows a stern but kind German immigrant, "Melanctha" the tragic life of an African-American woman of the same name, and "The Gentle Lena" a dreamy and unopinionated servant whose passiveness becomes her undoing.

In 2006, Julia Lerner is recruited by Russia's largest intelligence agency. By 2018, she's in Silicon Valley as COO of Tangerine, one of America's most famous technology companies. She funnels intelligence back to the motherland, but now Russia's asking for more, and Julia's getting nervous. Alice Lu is a first generation Chinese American whose parents are delighted she's working at Tangerine. One afternoon, while performing a server check, Alice discovers some unusual activity, and now she's burdened with two suspicions.

The power of economics to affect everyone's lives has become increasingly important in recent years, so The Complete Idiot's Guide to Economics is here to help you master the basics. It covers micro and macroeconomics, looking at everything from inflation and international trade to savings and supply and demand. This audiobook makes difficult economic concepts clear and easy to grasp, and key issues such as global climate change, the environment and the social safety net are covered from an economic perspective.

Making art—giving form to the images that arise in our mind's eye, our dreams, and our everyday lives—is a form of spiritual practice through which knowledge of ourselves can ripen into wisdom. This book offers encouragement for everyone to explore art making in this spirit of self-discovery—plus practical instructions on material, methods, and activities.

When Ava O’Reilly is wrongly accused of stealing from her employer, she has no option but to flee Ireland. The law is after her, and she has only one chance at escape - the Titanic. Aboard the ship of dreams, she runs straight into the arms of Captain 'Buck' Blackthorn, a dashing gentleman gambler who promises to be her protector. He is intrigued by her Irish beauty and manages to disguise her as the maid of his good friend, the lovely Countess of Marbury. Little does he realise, that the Countess is also in love with him.

A heart-warming and touching romance from James Patterson. When her beloved grandmother is hospitalised, Jennifer returns to the lakeside home where she spent a magical childhood. There she finds a package of letters addressed to her that tell of passion, intrigue, and desire. This is the real tale of her grandmother's life. It's a shocking family secret, concealed for decades, and the most moving love story Jennifer has ever heard.

After a lifetime spent living firmly in English, Lauren Collins finds herself adrift in French-speaking Geneva. Having fallen in love with Olivier, a Frenchman, Lauren wakes up one day to the realisation that she is living in a community where she cannot speak the language and that she is married to a man whose name she doesn't dare speak in public, for fear of mispronunciation. A New Yorker journalist skilled at making a living through her writing, Lauren is suddenly no longer able to communicate with the local shop owners, let alone her in-laws.

On a cold winter day in 1955, Kate Arden got on a train to go home for Christmas. This is the story of what happened when she got off that train. In 1943. In 1943 Kate Arden was engaged to the man she loved, Jeffrey Rushbrooke. She was devastated and heartbroken when he was called up for wartime duty and later killed on a secret mission in France. But what if Kate could change that? What if she could warn him and save his life? Or will fate have a bigger surprise in store for her?

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.

In 1935, six-year-old Emily Evans vanishes from her family's summer house on a remote Minnesota lake. Her mother and two sisters spend the rest of their lives at the lake house, keeping a decades-long vigil for the lost child. Sixty years later, Lucy, the middle sister, lives in the lake house alone. Before her death, she leaves the house to her grandniece, Justine. For Justine, the lake house offers freedom and stability - a way to give her daughters the home she never had. But the long Minnesota winter is just beginning....

Sarah McAdams needs a fresh start. So she's come home to the shores of Oregon's wild Columbia river, to renovate the old Victorian mansion where she grew up. Her daughters, Jade and Gracie, aren't impressed by the run-down property, and as soon as they pull up the isolated drive, Sarah too is beset by uneasy memories - of her cold, distant mother, of the half-sister who vanished without a trace, and of a long-ago night when Sarah was found outside, feverish and delirious.