Showing results by narrator "Anna Fields" in All Categories

In their second book on our current White House occupant, Ivins and Dubose take the wire brush to the Bush presidency and show how he has applied the same flawed strategies he used in governing Texas to running the largest superpower in the world.

No one knows better than Sally Quinn how to make parties work. She has thrown some of the most talked-about parties and has attended most of the others. Here, she turns her trademark sharp wit on the Washington social scene and offers an irreverent look at what goes on at the parties you read about in the columns. From seating debacles to real-life scandals, she reveals her firsthand experiences as a member of the Washington power elite to illustrate how to entertain for any occasion.

In the entire canon of tough-girl sleuths, gumshoes, PIs, detectives, and investigators, there's no one quite like Fritillary Quilter. A New York arson investigator, a sassy, fresh spirit with a nose for arson and an eye for dubious burn patterns, "Tilly" pushes the envelope of the traditional female investigator with a young, hip outlook and indefatigable zeal.

Troubles begin for sports reporter A.B. Berkowitz when she is assigned to cover the Washington Senators, who are having a lousy season. When A.B. points out the team's ineptitude, the players refuse to talk to her, except to attempt to gross her out as often as possible. Into this mix come the team's televangelist owner, her hard-core editor, a two-timing boyfriend, and an aging All-Star catcher who is becoming romantic.

The mystery of how a wealthy New York socialite became a major American novelist is brilliantly explored in this fascinating critical biography, widely considered to be the most perceptive introduction to Edith Wharton's life and work.

A journey back in time, The Golden Mountain is the gripping tale of four generations of Chinese women who live and die under the restrictions of their culture, except for one, the author. Her story tells of growing up in Hong Kong and of her transition to New York City where she struggled to meld the American dream with her ethnic background. Finally, at age 50, she dares to move into the present and understand the true nature of dreams and what it means to live.

To succeed in business today, you must be strong, smart, competitive, resilient, tenacious, and fearless. If you want to be heard at work, you must speak up. If you want to drive change, you need an action plan. If you want to keep your job in an increasingly competitive world, you must show on a daily basis how you add value to your company. In short, if you want to succeed, you need good, old-fashioned backbone.

This is the delightfully intimate story of the tenth-century Byzantine princess, Theophano, wife of Otto II, the Holy Roman Emperor. When her husband was killed in battle, Theophano became Regent for her infant son, Otto III, and ruled the Holy Roman Empire for a decade. The novel's rousing climax is one of the great Dark Ages wars of succession, when Theophano's son became a pawn in the hands of the Frankish king.

Oh no, I'm turning into my mother! Every woman is familiar with the poignant, funny, baffling, or horrifying echoes that resonate at that moment when she first hears her own mother's voice coming out of her mouth. But this moment of recognition is more than ironic: It's at the root of how we see ourselves, and how we plot and follow the arc that goes from childhood to motherhood.

Sofie Metropolis is the newest PI on the mean streets of Astoria, Queens. She's known for her trademark frappes and her itchy trigger finger. Uncle Tolly was acting odd right before he disappeared. The proof? The brand-new Mercedes Tolly just bought. And the business' books, which show that Uncle Tolly was laundering more than just clothes. Which is where the mob comes in, in the darkly handsome figure of Tony DiPiazza.

In rural Turkey, Meryem is raped by her uncle. Outcast for shaming her family, she is expected to kill herself. Her commando cousin instead tells her he will take her to Istanbul. By chance, they meet Irfan, a celebrity professor who has left his wife, and the three embark on a journey that shows what unexpected things can happen in the space between wounded people.

When crime reporter Molly Cates’s father died more than twenty-five years ago, the case was ruled a suicide, and Molly’s efforts to prove otherwise led to nothing but anguish and the breakup of her family. But now new information has come her way and she reopens the investigation–and a rush of old wounds–with a vengeance. Soon the personal becomes dangerously political as Molly’s search for the truth leads her from the stately halls of Texas government to the mean streets of Austin’s down-and-out–and ultimately to a moral dilemma she never could have anticipated.

Elizabeth "Bette" Leigh Black comes of age in the years before WWII. Although money is scarce in the aftermath of the Depression, her home with her mother, Chloe, and her stepfather is happy. But as the war taints their sheltered world, Bette begins to realize life is sometimes cruel, and not everyone has the happiness she does. She finishes school and briefly becomes involved in anti-Nazi espionage until she marries.

Alice Brill wakes up one day with a vague but nagging sensation of unease in her chest that signals trouble. Is it her marriage - drifting along for years on autopilot - that's so troubling? Her unrealized aspirations as a writer? Her unsettled younger son? Or is it something about her father, once a prominent surgeon but now slipping deeper into senility in a nursing home? There is also the matter of the writer whose book she's editing in her new profession as a "book doctor".

Here's a compulsively listenable, hilarious novel told through the e-mail messages of Martin Lukes. Martin Lukes is a man who is good at taking credit where it isn't due; a man who works hard at personal growth but consistently lets down everyone around him; a man who communicates with his sons by e-mail and fails to notice how smart his wife, Jenny, really is; a man - in short - who loves jargon but totally lacks understanding.

Regina Cutter is the mother of two grown children and the victim of her husband's midlife crisis. Out of a marriage, an income, and a place to live, she has relocated to Boston's Back Bay where her psychic aunt bequeathed her a townhouse...and some paranormal ability.

Linda Leigh Sinclair is born in the aftermath of WWII. Raised near Ivy Manor, enveloped in the love of her family, Leigh has everything she could possibly need, but not everything she wants. Her overwhelming need for freedom for herself and others leads her into the modern civil-rights movement.

Carly Leigh Sinclair grew up in the last decades of the 20th century in the home of her independent, ambitious mother, Leigh. Scarred by a childhood trauma, Carly finds that hiding her fears from her mother only causes them to mount. In an attempt to face them head on, Carly decides to join the Army.

Charles Schwab and his daughter Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz know whereof they speak. Now these nationally known financial services specialists make their knowledge available to families in a close, father-daughter conversation about money that families can take to heart. Addressing one of the most difficult topics for families, the pair offer advice about how to have these essential yet sometimes delicate conversations with one's spouse, parents, and children.

This last great work by one of the century’s great writers is a large and original novel of betrayal and self-delusion, madness and consuming passions, that recreates to chilling effect the political turbulence of the American Left and the clamor and menace of the McCarthy Right. Not since her classic The Man Who Loved Children has Stead fashioned such willful and memorable characters as Emily Wilks and Stephen Howard.