Showing results by narrator "Laurel Lefkow" in All Categories

Mrs Olga Stych, daughter of an immigrant Ukrainian pig farmer, has finally made it to the top of the social pyramid of Tollemarche, a small town in Canada’s Bible Belt. But to get there, she has not only had to see off her most determined rival, she has also had to neglect her son Hank. With enemies outside her home, and a latchkey kid inside—Hank was left to fend for himself—Olga little realises that the moment of her decline is to arrive just when she appears to be at her most triumphant.

Sharply witty and entertaining in equal measure, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes presents the diary of the wily Lorelei Lee, a charming yet materialistic blonde from Little Rock, Arkansas. On a mission to live a luxurious life, Lorelei travels through Europe and New York using her beauty and charisma to attract wealthy suitors, securing various gifts, jewellery and an elevated social status in the process. Although seemingly naïve to the men she pursues, Lorelei is clever and calculating, often outsmarting the company she keeps.

A stunning coming-of-age tale, Bread Givers is a profoundly moving depiction of the Jewish–American experience in the early twentieth century. Set in New York's Lower East Side, Bread Givers recounts the early life of Sara Smolinsky and her complicated family, who have immigrated from Poland. Her father, an Orthodox Jew, has committed himself to studying the Torah, refusing to contribute to the family household's income in pursuit of his loftier endeavors. At first, Sara remains dutiful, selling herring on Hester Street to help pay rent.

Evacuated to the countryside, she realises there are more dangers than German bombs in wartime. In summer 1939, Canadian-born teacher Victoria McKaye takes up a new position at a London school, only to shortly coordinate the evacuation to the countryside with standoffish spinster Beatrice and young, quiet Nell. Arriving in the village of Hazelbury, Victoria sorts out billets for her young charges and meets Louis Granger, a naval officer. As their friendship turns to something more, she notices some strange behaviours - including him meeting with foreign men in secret locales.

Eleanor Roosevelt, Fighter for Justice shows young listeners how the former First Lady evolved from a poor little rich girl to a protector and advocate for those without a voice. Although now seen as a cultural icon, she was a woman deeply insecure about her looks and her role in the world. But by recognizing her fears and constantly striving to overcome her prejudices, she used her proximity to presidents and her own power to aid in the fight for Civil Rights and other important causes. This biography gives listeners a fresh perspective on her extraordinary life. 

In 1955 New York City is full of post-war euphoria and glamour, and the Barbizon Hotel - the place where Grace Kelly lived when she first came to the big city - is where young women from good families stay while they launch their careers and wait for Mr Right to come calling with a dozen roses and a date night at El Morocco.

WILL SELF is one of the most inimitable contemporary writers in the English language. In this brilliantly conceived new novel Self turns his forensic eye and technicolor imagination to the troubled life of his mother, Elaine. Standing by the mailbox outside 1100 Hemlock Street in Ithaca, New York, Elaine thinks of her husband and child inside her house and wonders: is this … it? As she begins to push back against the strictures of her life in 1950s America, she undertakes a disastrous affair that places her marriage to an Ivy League academic and former Communist Party member in peril.

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.

Set in modern-day America and France, Renaissance Italy and Boxer Rebellion China, these stories embrace whole lifetimes, much in the manner of Alice Munro and William Trevor. Joan Silber skilfully and subtly ties one story to the next, as a minor element in one becomes a major element in the next, until the last is tied convincingly to the first. Intense in subject yet restrained in tone, they are about longings—often held for years—and the ways in which sex and religion can become parallel forms of dedication and comfort.

Fifteen years ago Nora Watts gave her newborn daughter up for adoption. Now Bonnie has vanished, and when the police don't seem to care, her desperate parents turn to Nora as a last resort. Nora knows only too well what happens to missing girls, especially when they aren't blonde or white enough. Despite herself, she sets out to find the daughter she's never known protected only by her instincts and a freakish ability to detect truth from lies.

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.

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.

Joanna Smith Rakoff's richly drawn and immensely satisfying first novel details the lives of a group of Oberlin graduates whose ambitions and friendships threaten to unravel as they chase their dreams, shed their youth, and build their lives in Brooklyn during the late 1990s and the turn of the 21st century.

In Our Turn, Kirstine Stewart, Twitter's VP of North American media partnerships - and recently named as one of Canadian Business's Power 50 of 2016 list because she 'helps women discover their leadership potential' - draws on her extensive experience to share her smart and practical approach to business. She believes it's time we looked past the question of how women might create change in the working world and exploit the fact that profound change is already under way.

Rescued from a poverty-stricken mountain life, Charity Royall lives as ward to Lawyer Royall in the small New England town of North Dormer. However, Charity is bored by her job at the local library and feels thwarted by the order that governs her society–until a young man named Lucius Harney plucks her from the drabness of North Dormer life.

Eleanor Merritt, a do-gooding American family-planning worker, was drawn to Kenya to improve the lot of the poor. Unnervingly, she finds herself falling in love with the beguiling Calvin Piper despite, or perhaps because of, his misanthropic theories about population control and the future of the human race. Surely, Calvin whispers seductively in Eleanor's ear, if the poor are a responsibility, they are also an imposition.

Enjoy the holiday season with three festive mysteries set in coastal Maine. This anthology includes "Yule Log Murder" by Leslie Meier, "Death by Yule Log" by Lee Hollis, and "Logged On" by Barbara Ross.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. Human beings are, in the main, social animals, they like to gather, to herd together, to share experiences. But some do not. Either through choice or exclusion their way forward is difficult. In this volume our authors and their characters share their stories.

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.

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....