Literature Tragedy

Not sure that a modernized movie-version of Hamlet is your goblet of tea? Hear Frank Muller, the preeminent narrator of the audiobook world, play every part in arguably the best audio version of Hamlet available.

Iranian-American multimillionaires Ali and Homa Milani have it all—a McMansion in the hills of Los Angeles, a microwaveable snack empire, and four spirited daughters. There’s Violet, the big-hearted aspiring model; Roxanna, the chaotic influencer; Mina, the chronically-online overachiever; and the impressionable health fanatic Haylee. On the verge of landing their own reality TV show, the Milanis realize their deepest secrets are about to be dragged out into the open before the cameras even roll.

The Tragedy of Julius Caesar is a history play and tragedy by William Shakespeare first performed in 1599. It is one of several plays written by Shakespeare based on true events from Roman history, such as Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra. Set in Rome in 44 BC, the play depicts the moral dilemma of Brutus as he joins a conspiracy led by Cassius to murder Julius Caesar to prevent him from becoming dictator of Rome. Following Caesar's death, Rome is thrust into a period of civil war, and the republic the conspirators sought to preserve is lost forever.

Olivia Andrews is locally famous for her blog and podcast, Forget Me Not: A Crime Victim’s Storyboard, which is dedicated to telling the stories of victims of crime. Now she has a stunning story to tell about a decades-old murder mystery involving a prominent citizen of Pecan Springs—someone who isn’t the man everybody thinks he is. But she is killed by a hit-and-run driver while she’s out jogging early one morning. Was it an accident—or something else? Her sister wants to know.

Au XIème siècle, en Espagne, à la cour de Castille, un drame humain se noue. Don Rodrigue et Chimène s'aiment. Mais le Roi Don Ferdinand confie l'éducation de son fils à Don Diègue, le père de Rodrigue, ce qui provoque la jalousie et la déception de Don Gomès, le père de Chimène. Celui-ci donne une gifle à Don Diègue, le provoquant ainsi en duel. Le père de Rodrigue demande à son fils de laver son honneur, et Rodrigue se voit obliger de combattre le père de sa bien-aimée.

By the summer of 1660 the last remnants of the Republic have been swept away and the Stuarts have been restored under their king, Charles II. A list of forty-nine regicides believed to be involved in the death of Charles I is drawn up. Executions of the regicides begin to take place and the hunt intensifies for those who have gone into hiding or have fled. Although not a regicide, staunch Republican Damian Seeker is on a list of traitors to the king. Royalist spy Lady Anne Winter is employed to find evidence of guilt or innocence among the names on this Winter List.

The impossible has happened. Chief Inspector Reg Wexford has retired. He and his wife now divide their time between Kingsmarkham and a coachhouse in Hampstead belonging to their actress daughter, Sheila. For all the benefits of a more relaxed way of life, Wexford misses being the law. But a chance meeting in a London street, with someone he had known briefly as a very young police constable, changes everything. Tom Ede is now a detective superintendent, and is very keen to recruit Wexford as an adviser on a difficult case.

When Robert Pomeroy, a young undergraduate at Corpus Christi College, finds a letter slipped under his door in the early hours of a rainy day, he flies into a panic. He hurries to the railway station. But he doesn’t reach his destination alive. Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming are called upon to investigate this tragedy on the railway. It soon becomes apparent that Cambridge’s hopes of success in the forthcoming boat race rested on Pomeroy’s shoulders.

To the world it seems obvious: Kaylene Adams killed her daughter before taking her own life. Attorney Emilie Wesley knows a different story: Kaylene would never hurt anyone and was looking for a way out of a controlling, abusive relationship. Her death shakes Emilie’s belief that she can make a difference for women in violent marriages. Self-doubt plagues her as she struggles to continue her work in the wake of the tragedy.

In The Eating of the Gods, the distinguished Polish critic Jan Kott reexamines Greek tragedy from the modern perspective. As in his earlier acclaimed Shakespeare, Our Contemporary, Kott provides startling insights and intuitive leaps which link our world to that of the ancient Greeks. The title refers to the Bacchae of Euripides, that tragedy of lust, revenge, murder, and "the joy of eating raw flesh" which Kott finds paradigmatic in its violence and bloodshed.

As a child, Faith acquired the ability to see when and how people would die—a “gift” she neither wanted nor could get rid of. After foreseeing a family tragedy and being ostracized, Faith learns to control her visions and returns to perform in her family’s traveling carnival. But when an unruly customer attacks her, she has a vision in full view of a crowd. She is banned from the carnival she loves—and loses her only source of income to support her dying mother. Desperate to support her mother and with only one friend standing by her, she sees no reason to continue hiding her ability.

When Celine Lowry leaves Viewpoint, Virginia for the west with her husband and four children, the last thing she expects is to lose her whole family and be captured by Indians. Thinking that her life might be over, she’s surprised when she gets a second chance at love with a recently widowed man too.

The Tragedy Paper follows the story of Tim Macbeth, a seventeen-year-old albino and a recent transfer to the prestigious Irving School, where the motto is “Enter here to be and find a friend.” A friend is the last thing Tim expects or wants - he just hopes to get through his senior year unnoticed. Yet, despite his efforts to blend into the background, he finds himself falling for the quintessential “It” girl, Vanessa Sheller, girlfriend of Irving’s most popular boy. To Tim's surprise, Vanessa is into him, too, but she can kiss her social status goodbye if anyone ever finds out.

A gothic fiction book set in New England during nearly two centuries. Silent Sorrow invites readers to step into the haunting world of the Pyncheon family and their ancestral home, the House of the Seven Gables. This evocative tale reveals the intricate web of guilt, prophecy, and redemption woven through generations, beginning with the dark legacy of an ancestor wrongfully executed for witchcraft. As the Pyncheons confront their family's tragic past, the story unfolds against a backdrop of ambition, betrayal, and the heavy burden of a curse that lingers through the ages. Delving deep into ...

Still reeling from a personal tragedy, investigative journalist Rooker Lindström finds a grim hideaway from the world. It’s the dilapidated cabin on Minnesota’s Deer Lake bequeathed to him by his late father—one of the most notorious serial killers in the state. If the walls of this murder house could talk, they’d scream. Detective Tess Harlow needs something from Rooker only he can provide: a window into the mind of a murderer. A copycat is on the prowl, following in the footsteps of Rooker’s father.

Raskolnikov, a student in St. Petersburg, murders an old woman, a money-lender, to prove his theory that violence purifies the strong. But no sooner is the deed done than Raskolnikov begins to feel remorse. What follows is one of the greatest psychological studies in world literature.

This classic novel describes an ambitious poor relative of a rich man who secures an opportunity in his uncle’s factory and has a social leap to prospectively marry another rich man’s daughter in town. Similar to Gatsby and published in the same year, 1925.

Claire Griffith has it all, a thriving career, a gorgeous boyfriend, glamorous friends. She always knew she was destined for more than the life her conservative parents preached to her. Arriving in Los Angeles flat broke, she has risen to become a popular fitness coach and social media influencer. Having rebranded herself as Cleo Ray, she stands at the threshold of realizing her biggest dreams. One summer day, Cleo and a woman named Beck Alden set off in a canoe on a serene mountain lake. An hour later, Beck is found dead in the water, and Cleo is missing.

A WW1 vet with extreme PTSD struggles to hold on to his sanity while living with the harsh reality of the Great Depression in 1933.

When the Rosens moved to New Rochelle, in 1973, Jonathan Rosen and Michael Laudor became inseparable. Both children of professors, the boys were best friends and fierce rivals who soon followed each other to Yale University. Michael blazed through Yale in three years, graduating summa cum laude and landing a top-flight consulting job. Then one day, Jonathan received a devastating call: Michael had suffered a psychotic break and was in the locked ward of a psychiatric hospital. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Michael was still in hospital when he learned he'd been accepted to Yale Law School.