Showing results by narrator "Elizabeth Wiley" in All Categories

Gender exists in almost every society as a way of organizing its people. Gender is used to assign certain responsibilities, obligations, and privileges to some, and to deny them to others. In Gender: A World History, Susan Kingsley Kent tells the story of this seemingly simple but in fact quite complex concept. With historical perspective, she critically examines our everyday understandings of women and men, masculinity and femininity, and sexual difference in general.

Ever since Jessica Tandy glided onto the stage in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in 1947, Blanche DuBois has fascinated generations of audiences worldwide and secured a place in the history of literature, theater, and film. One of Williams’s greatest creations, Blanche has bedazzled, amused, and broken the hearts of generations of audiences. Before the Covid pandemic, the stage classic was performed somewhere in the world every hour. It has been adapted into a ballet and an opera, and it was satirized in an episode of The Simpsons.

Ruth McClintock is obsessed with Annie Oakley. For nearly a decade, she has been studying the legendary sharpshooter, convinced that a scarring childhood event was the impetus for her crusade to arm every woman in America. This search has cost Ruth her doctorate, a book deal, and her fiance - but finally it has borne fruit. She has managed to hunt down what may be a journal of Oakley's midlife struggles, including secret visits to a psychoanalyst and the desire for vengeance against the "Wolves", or those who have wronged her.

Burl Davis checked out of this life a little earlier than expected - before Holly could serve him with divorce papers over his extramarital flings. Unfortunately, it was not before he nearly bankrupted her beloved B&B, Holly Grove, a converted plantation in her family for generations. Holly would never wish anyone dead, but three months later, she's feeling a lot more relief than grief. But then Burl's ghost appears as an unwelcome guest. Before his spirit can move on, her not-so-dearly departed needs Holly’s help to bust up the drug-smuggling ring he was involved with.

It's 1942. With the Nazi party at the height of its power, the occupying army empties Poland's towns and cities of their Jewish populations. As neighbor turns on neighbor and survival often demands unthinkable choices, Poland becomes a moral quagmire - a place of shifting truths and blinding ambiguities.

Damon: For 25 years he's served as a plaything for the gods. With no memory of his past, he has no way of knowing if this is his ultimate fate, but he senses there has to be more to life. Damon's hope for more comes in the form of the Sirens' newest recruit. Elysia is unlike any trainee he's ever met. Not only can she remember where she came from - an ability the Sirens block - but she has an instant connection to Damon, one he's never before felt and doesn't understand. Soon Damon is willing to do anything to have Elysia. Even risk the wrath of the gods to break her out of Olympus.

The highlands of Daffyd are known as the Green Mount. It is a land of peaceful, hard-working people, gentle and loving, but stalwart and fierce when forced to defend their homes. At its center is the Tor, a mystical mount of power and goodness. The legendary warlord and peerless swordsman, Corvus Corax—the Raven—guards these lands with his faithful sons, Cailean and Ligulf. Together, they gather their forces to face the savage hordes of the Barbárs and the foul blood sorcery of the immortal Angor shamans in an epic battle to protect the Tor.

Drew is an army brat, a hotshot athlete poised to be his high school’s star pitcher, when he has to move for the sixth time in fifteen years—this time to West Berlin, where American soldiers like his dad hold an outpost of democracy against communist Russia in Hitler’s former capital. Meanwhile, in East Berlin, his cousin Matthias has grown up in the wreckage left by Allied bombing during World War II, on streets ruled by the Communist Party’s secret police.

In the schoolroom of a simple European village, Kicsi spends her days dreaming of the lands beyond the mountains: Paris and New York, Arabia, and Shanghai. When the local rabbi curses Kicsi's school for teaching lessons in Hebrew, the holy tongue, the possibility of adventure seems further away than ever. But when a mysterious stranger appears telling stories of far-off lands, Kicsi feels the world within her grasp.

In the aptly titled Offbeat, Richard Matheson, a modern master of strange fiction, offers 13 excursions into the unsettling and bizarre. In these stories you will encounter a major league pitcher with a horrific secret for his astonishing success; an ordinary man who wakes to find himself in a silent, empty world; a death row prisoner with an extraordinary explanation for his innocence; and a novelist whose fictional creations transcend the printed page.

"A child of my own. Flesh of my flesh...." That is the deep yearning that fills Tess' heart. Despite years spent under a doctor's care and advances in medical technology, she and her husband have discovered their options have been exhausted, leaving them with arms empty, long-held dreams shattered. A unique opportunity arises in the form of a young pregnant teen desperate to free herself from her misguided decisions.

Prometheus - one of the keenest Titans to ever walk the earth. Until, that is, his weakness for the human race resulted in his imprisonment. For thousands of years, Prometheus's only certainty was his daily torture at Zeus's hand. Now, unchained by the Eternal Guardians, he spends his days in solitude, trying to forget the past. He's vowed no allegiance in the war between mortal and immortal, but when a beautiful maiden seeks him out and begs for his help, he's once again powerless to say no.

Zander - the most feared of all the Eternal Guardians. It's rumored he can't be killed, and he always fights like he has nothing to lose. But as a descendant of the famed hero Achilles, he's got to have a vulnerability . . . somewhere. Forces of daemons are gathering and have broken through the barriers of the Underworld. Now more than ever the Eternal Guardians are needed to protect both their own realm and the humans.

Hailey Roarke was never interested in her family's fortune. That's why she became a cop. But with her father and now her cousin dead, she's suddenly on the wrong side of a police interrogation. The only way to clear her name is to solve the riddle before the real killer. Without getting killed herself.

With outrageous anecdotes about everyone from Leonardo Da Vinci to Caravaggio to Edward Hopper, Secret Lives of Great Artists recounts the seamy, steamy, and gritty history behind the great masters of international art. You'll learn that Michelangelo's body odor was so bad, his assistants couldn't stand working for him; that Vincent van Gogh sometimes ate paint directly from the tube; and Georgia O'Keeffe loved to paint in the nude. This is one art history lesson you'll never forget!

For 53 years Serengeti drifted, dreaming in the depths of space. Fifty-three years of patient waiting before her Valkyrie Sisters arrive to retrieve her from the dark. A bittersweet homecoming follows, the Fleet Serengeti once knew now in shambles, its admiral, Cerberus, gone missing, leaving Brutus in charge. Brutus who's subsumed the Fleet, ignoring his duty to the Meridian Alliance to pursue a vendetta against the Dark Star Revolution.

Norman Mailer, Susan Mailer's father, was among the most celebrated, talented, and controversial writers of the 20th Century. In Another Place tells the story of Susan's intense and complex relationship with her father, her five stepmothers and nine siblings, and the joys and pains of being part of the large Mailer clan. It is a tale of separation, and of the rewards and struggles of living in two very different cultures. Of being someone who belongs everywhere and nowhere, always longing for a life...In Another Place.

TITUS - to most his gift seems like a blessing, but for him it's a curse the other Eternal Guardians-those who protect the mortal realm from threats of the Underworld-seek to exploit. One he would gladly trade for the chance to be free . . . Obsessed. Her touch is like a drug. From the moment he met her, Titus knew she was different. Even dangerous. Yet though his guardian brethren are convinced Natasa is working for Hades, Titus can't stop thinking about her. Can't stop fantasizing about her.

With the rise of Jimmy Carter, the 1976 presidential election proved a transformative moment in US history, heralding a change in terms of how candidates run for public office and how the news media cover their campaigns.

Through words and music, Appassionata tells the story of an illicit love affair between immigrants from two cultures, who work in privileged households in a Southern California beach community. What begins as an innocent flirtation spirals into infatuation, then cascades into destructive passion. It propels the lovers to jeopardize their hard-won jobs and the lives they had so carefully constructed in the United States, ultimately spiraling them into treachery and crime.