The Corrections
January 30, 2012
Unabridged by Jonathan Franzen. Narrated by Dylan Baker
Our Price: $ 26.6
Summary:
After almost 50 years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson’s disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives. The oldest, Gary, a once-stable portfolio manager and family man, is trying to convince his wife and himself, despite clear signs to the contrary, that he is not clinically depressed. The middle child, Chip, has lost his seemingly secure academic job and is failing spectacularly in his new line of work. And Denise, the youngest, has escaped a disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain on an affair with a married man – or so her mother fears. Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home.
Stretching from the Midwest at midcentury to the Wall Street and Eastern Europe of today, The Corrections brings an old-fashioned world of civic virtue and sexual inhibitions into violent collision with the era of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental health care, and globalized greed. Richly realistic, darkly hilarious, deeply humane, it confirms Jonathan Frazen as one of our most brilliant interpreters of American society and the American soul.
Sample:
Length: 9 hours
Release date: 06. Sep 01
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Icy Sparks
January 30, 2012
Unabridged by Gwyn Hyman Rubio. Narrated by Kate Miller
Our Price: $ 24.47
Summary:
Rural Kentucky in the 1950s is not an easy place to grow up, and it’s especially hard for 10-year-old Icy Sparks, an orphan suffering from undiagnosed Tourette Syndrome, who lives with her grandparents. Icy’s adolescence is marred by the humiliation of her illness. Its all-too-visible signs are the source of endless mystery and hilarity as everyone around her offers an opinion about what’s troubling the girl. Eventually, Icy finds solace in the company of Miss Emily, an obese woman who knows what it’s like to be an outcast in this tight-knit community. Narrated by now-grown Icy, this novel shimmers with warmth and humor as it recounts a young girl’s painful and poignant journey into womanhood – and the many lives she touches and enriches along the way.
Sample:
Length: 7 hour 4 min
Release date: 19-OCT-2001
Publisher: HighBridge Company
Ellen Foster
January 30, 2012
Unabridged by Kaye Gibbons. Narrated by Kaye Gibbons
Our Price: $ 14.6
Summary:
When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy. I would figure out this or that way and run it down through my head until it got easy.
So begins the tale of Ellen Foster, the brave and engaging heroine of Kaye Gibbons’ first novel, which won the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Wise, funny, affectionate and true, Ellen Foster is, as Walker Percy called it, “The real thing. Which is to say, a lovely, sometimes heart-wrenching novel…[Ellen Foster] is as much a part of the backwoods South as a Faulkner character, and a good deal more endearing.”
Sample:
Length: 2 hour 56 min
Release date: 11-MAY-2000
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Cry, the Beloved Country (Unabridged)
January 30, 2012
Unabridged by Alan Paton. Narrated by Michael York
Our Price: $ 22.99
Summary:
This is the most distinguished novel that has come out of South Africa in the 20th century, and it is one of the most important novels that has appeared anywhere in modern times. Cry, the Beloved Country is in some ways a sad book; it is an indictment of a social system that drives the native races into resentment and crime; it is a story of Fate, as inevitable, as relentless, as anything of Thomas Hardy’s. Beautifully wrought with high poetic compassion, Cry, the Beloved Country is more than just a story, it is a profound experience of the human spirit. And beyond the intense and insoluble personal tragedy, it is the story of the beautiful and tragic land of South Africa, its landscape, its people, its bitter racial ferment and unrest.
Sample:
Length: 9 hours and 47 min.
Release date: 15-DEC-1999
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Mother of Pearl
January 30, 2012
Unabridged by Melinda Haynes. Narrated by Nana Visitor
Our Price: $ 21
Summary:
Set in small town Mississippi in the late 1950s, Mother of Pearl is populated by wonderfully rich and original characters with themes of identity and the true meaning of family interwoven throughout. The story revolves around 28-year-old Even Grade, a black man who grew up an orphan, and Valuable Komer, a 15-year-old white girl who is the daughter of the town whore and an unknown father. Their paths cross through Joody Two Sun, a seer, who becomes Even’s lover. Both Even and Valuable are seeking the family, love, and commitment they never had, and their search ultimately takes both of them to places they never dreamed they’d go.
Sample:
Length: 9 hours
Release date: 18. Feb 00
Publisher: Phoenix Audio
