Showing results by narrator "Ragland Ragland" in All Categories

In this ingeniously comic work, Chuck Palahniuk’s first novel in four years, he does what he does best: skewer the absurdities in our society. Smug, geriatric politicians hatch a nasty fate for the burgeoning population of young males, working-class men dream of burying the elites and professors propound theories that offer students only the bleakest future. When it arrives, Adjustment Day inaugurates a new Disunited States of America.

Ed and Taylor, both aspiring young writers, fall in love during a summer of aimless drinking and partying in their university town of Missoula, Montana. Lonely and looking for love, they connect despite their profound differences: Ed is brooding, ambitious and self-destructive, living in denial of a mysterious tumour spreading from his limbs to his brain. Beautiful Taylor is a pure soul, positive, full of hope and emotional generosity. Their difficult relationship is intense, exciting yet doomed from the start, complicated further when Taylor falls pregnant.

A year's worth of novellas from twelve inspirational romance authors. Happily ever after guaranteed. Who can work in a house that's overrun by contractors and carpenters? Not Madeleine Houser, a successful novelist who gladly accepts the help of her octogenarian friend, Ginny, to arrange for a temporary office in the charming bed and breakfast owned by Ginny's friend, Arthur. Maddie's never met the innkeeper - but a friendship grows between them as Maddie and Arthur leave messages for each other each day.

Timothy Blake, ex-consultant for the FBI, now works in body disposal for a local crime lord. One night he stumbles across a body he wasn't supposed to find. He can't resist taking a bite. Having marked the body, Blake is forced to hide it. When the FBI calls Blake in to investigate the man's disappearance, Blake is the only one who knows the man is dead and in his freezer. Then another man goes missing. And another. There's a serial killer in Houston, Texas, and Blake is the only one who knows it for sure.

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Lucas Hedges, Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman, and written and directed by Joel Edgerton. The son of a Baptist pastor and deeply embedded in church life in small-town Arkansas, as a young man Garrard Conley was terrified and conflicted about his sexuality. When Garrard was a 19-year-old college student, he was outed to his parents and was forced to make a life-changing decision: either agree to attend a church-supported conversion therapy program that promised to 'cure' him of homosexuality or risk losing family, friends and the god he had prayed to every day of his life....

The seventh Jim Rook novel from the master of supernatural horror - Remedial English teacher and psychic Jim Rook has been feeling out of sorts all summer, and on the first day of the Fall semester he runs over and kills his pet cat, Tiddles. But halfway through his first class, enigmatic new Korean student Kim Dong Wook arrives... with a gift: a basket containing Tiddles, alive once more. The Korean spirit Kwisin, Jim is told, is saying “thank you” in advance. But what for? Jim can’t help but feel deeply uneasy...

In this series we listen to short stories that are NOT by perhaps the most well-known author of this type. But the many other rich talents in the volume may have treated the subject matter a little differently, or were perhaps just overlooked in the stampede to applaud the winner, but these authors are of equal merit.

The girl who wouldn’t die, hunting a killer who shouldn’t exist… A terrifying and original serial-killer thriller from award-winning author, Lauren Beukes.“It’s not my fault. It’s yours. You shouldn’t shine. You shouldn’t make me do this.”Chicago 1931. Harper Curtis, a violent drifter, stumbles on a house with a secret as shocking as his own twisted nature – it opens onto other times. He uses it to stalk his carefully chosen 'shining girls' through the decades – and cut the spark out of them.

Timothy Blake returns, with an insatiable appetite, in the thrillingly addictive follow-up to Hangman and Hunter. Timothy Blake, ex-FBI, finds himself at a remote house in rural Texas. The house is occupied by six criminals who believe Blake is their ally. Secretly, he intends to pick them off one by one. But when one of the psychopaths is found dead, he realises that someone else in the house may have the same plan - and he might be the next victim.

A tale of adolescence, transgression, and the conditions that have given rise to the trolls and tyrants of the new right. Adam Gordon is a senior at Topeka High School, class of 1997. His mother, Jane, is a famous feminist author; his father, Jonathan, is an expert at getting 'lost boys' to open up. They both work at the Foundation, a well-known psychiatric clinic that has attracted staff and patients from around the world.

Travel to the remotest reaches of deep space in this wondrous follow-up to the acclaimed Noumenon - a tale of exploration, adventure, science and humanity with the sweep and intelligence of the works of Arthur C. Clarke, Neal Stephenson and Octavia Butler. Generations ago, Convoy Seven left Earth on a journey to a distant star. Eons later, the convoy has returned to LQ Pyx to begin work on the Web, the alien megastructure that covers the star.

Bartleby is one of the final works of fiction published by Herman Melville before he slipped into despair over the continuing critical dismissal of his work after Moby Dick. Set in the mid-19th century on New York City's Wall Street, Bartleby is often thought of as Melville's most prescient story: what if a young man caught up in the rat race of commerce decides they have had enough, and chooses to live a different kind of life?

This is the story of the first human being born on Mars: Rose Fuller, who saw a better future than the one that came to pass. And Dylan Ward, a woman raised in the vast wilderness of the frontier, who will find her way back to it. It's a story about a man who went missing, and the man who wants to find out what he knew. It's a story about what makes us human - and how we might live once we leave our home. The story of the first murder on Mars.

A March Bride by Rachel Hauck: Susanna Truitt ( Once Upon a Prince) is three weeks from royalty. She'll soon marry King Nathaniel II of Brighton Kingdom. But when the government insists she renounce her American citizenship before the wedding, coupled with the lack of involvement by family and friends, Susanna's heart begins to doubt whether this marriage is God's plan for her.

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.

Murder comes in two familiar forms. Whether as a crime of passion with high emotions or a cold dispassionate plot to take life in order to gain in some way, the act strikes us all as somehow inhuman. Beneath us as civilised beings. But however we cloak our animal instincts the need to remove a human being and gain relief from abuse or gain from money, the term is just the same – MURDER. Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, J M Barrie, W W Jacobs and many others bring their literary heft to bear in as calculating a way as any killer could.

An unmissable paraquel to the internationally best-selling Skulduggery Pleasant series, The Skulduggery Pleasant Grimoire is at once a thrilling recap of the books so far, a reference guide to characters and a treasure-trove of bonus content. As the Skulduggery Pleasant series nears its end (again), relive the adventure in this compendium of all things Skulduggery. Featuring a unique run-down of the books so far, it also includes an invaluable reference tool for the dizzying cast of characters, as well as bonuses, surprises and a dark story all of its own.

Artistic expression is both Carter Anderson’s safe space and his livelihood, but his fading inspiration has him worried about his place in life. His encounters with Emma spark a passion to create that he hasn’t felt in years and he isn’t ready to let go of his new muse even if she’s threatening the sanctity of his art world with her digital technologies. As each tries to gain an advantage from the other, Emma and Carter discover they actually might be more compatible than they thought.

America entered the Vietnam War certain of its Cold War doctrines and convinced of its moral mission to save the world from the advance of communism. However, the war was not at all what the United States expected. Dr Andrew Wiest examines how, outnumbered and outgunned, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces resorted to a guerrilla war based on the theories of Mao Zedong of China, while the US responded with firepower and overwhelming force.

Bride-to-be Stella Carson can’t wait to marry her longtime sweetheart Marshall Henderson. But Marshall has been away serving his country and has suffered a head wound. After being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, he has distanced himself from Stella, asking her not to visit him in a Washington, D.C., hospital. Marshall returns to Louisiana just four weeks before the wedding, but as the big day draws near, Stella wonders if the man she’s loved for most of her life has become someone else.