Showing results by narrator "Christa Lewis" in Literature & Fiction

The son of a sweetmaker, Karl Jochum has ambitions for a life beyond his father's shop. Through hard work and perseverance he determines to open a cafe in Berlin where the Emperor will one day dine. As the city grows and prospers, so too does Karl's business empire, and he rises to become the proprietor of Europe's finest and most luxurious hotel. Situated close to Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, the Hotel Quadriga is a glorious monument to Imperialist Germany.

Workaholic Camille Ashland is at the top of her game. She has built a thriving business, is raising a lovely daughter, and lives in a newly decorated home. Her life is full until a heart attack and near-death experience change everything.

Leonie Hastur has a high degree of laran, the telepathic power of the Comyn caste, and wants to be Keeper of Arilinn Tower, which will give her as much power as her twin brother Lorill, Heir to Hastur. But she has a premonition that something strange and disturbing will come from the sky and change their world forever. She is correct. Ysaye Barnett loves life on shipboard and would happily stay right there, with her beloved computers, forever.

Velveteen Vargas is an 11-year-old from Brooklyn who is granted a summer vacation in the country, courtesy of the nonprofit Fresh Air Fund. Her host family is a couple in upstate New York: Ginger, a failed artist on the fringe of Alcoholics Anonymous; and Paul, an academic who wonders what it will mean to "make a difference" in such a contrived situation.

In the summer of 1961, a wall of barbed wire goes up quickly in the dead of night, officially dividing Berlin. Luisa Voigt lives in West Berlin, but her grandmother lives across the border and is now trapped inside the newly isolated communist country of East Germany. Desperate to rescue her grandmother and aware of the many others whose families have been divided, Luisa joins a secret spy network, risking her life to help bring others through a makeshift underground tunnel to West Germany. Their work is dangerous, and not everyone will successfully escape or live to see freedom.

Six Award-Winning Authors have contributed new stories to A Timeless Romance Anthology: Mail Order Bride Collection, now a USA TODAY Bestseller! Six historical romance novellas set in the Old West.

Germany, 1945. The bloodiest war in history is at an end. Now the retribution and search for justice begin. In a series of Nuremberg trials, war criminals are hanged or commit suicide. Others are judged and sent to prison for their parts in the most heinous crimes of all time. But in the final trial, one in which ordinary Germans are forced to confront their complicity, a leading American defense counselor has to consider questions of good and evil when he defends a simple mechanic, a man who kept the gas chambers in working order.

The ideal of a new Germany swept up Sophie Scholl in a maelstrom of patriotic fervor - that is, until she realized the truth behind Hitler's machinations for the fatherland. Now she and other students in Munich, the cradle of the Nazi government, have banded together to form a group to fight for the truth: the White Rose. Risking everything to print and distribute leaflets calling for Germans to rise up against the evil permeating their country, the White Rose treads a knife's edge of discovery by the Gestapo.

In the South Carolina Hills, along the Savannah River Watershed, in the fall of 1829, 14-year-old, three-quarter Cherokee Sahani, whose Christian name is Charity, sets out on a journey with her 83-year-old white grandfather to Fort Charlotte for what she thinks is a trip to trade the pelts he has accumulated in order to replenish their supplies. However, Charity soon discovers that her grandfather's objective in making this trip is to get her married off and settled somewhere.

Maria von Wedemeyer knows the realities of war. Her beloved father and brother have both been killed on the battlefield. The last thing this spirited young woman needs is to fall for a man under constant surveillance by the Gestapo. How can she give another piece of her heart to a man so likely to share the same final fate? Yet when Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an old family friend, comes to comfort the von Wedemeyers after their losses, she discovers that love isn't always logical.

The heroine, Zadieyek of Gyre has been captured and sold as a slave, who has amnesia and remembers nothing of her life before the trip across the desert with the slavers - and, due to a head injury, remembers mercifully little of that. But she does know that she would rather fight in the arena than be a harlot for the men who do…While she remains a slave, she’s quite different from the typical 'slave girl' - she grows and develops, always searching for her memory and her past, convinced that this is not how her life is supposed to be. And, of course, she's right.

A dazzling debut about family, home, and grief, The Floating World takes listeners into the heart of Hurricane Katrina with the story of the Boisdores, whose roots stretch back nearly to the foundation of New Orleans. Though the storm is fast approaching the Louisiana coast, Cora, the family's fragile elder daughter, refuses to leave the city, forcing her parents, Joe Boisdore, an artist descended from a freed slave, and his white "uptown" wife, Dr. Tess Eshleman, to evacuate without her, setting off a chain of events that leaves their marriage in shambles and Cora catatonic.

When a five-year-old girl reports being saved by a mysterious being in the middle of a tornado, her story is readily dismissed. But less so the computer-assisted discovery of a pattern in a series of deaths that suggests they are no accident. Special agent Ilona Farris of the FBI puzzles over how a killer could predict the storm events so accurately, yet stops short at believing they are dealing with the thunder beings of Native American legend.

Writers & Lovers established Lily King as one of our most beloved authors of contemporary fiction. Now, for the first time ever, King collects 10 of her finest short stories, opening fresh realms of discovery for avid and new listeners alike.

Trillium Bay, 1889. Alexander Bostwick doesn't believe in ghosts, but the unexpected death of his bride has him feeling haunted. The lingering scent of her perfume—along with her personal possessions popping up in the most peculiar places—has him worried he's lost his senses as well as his wife. With half of Chicago feeling sorry for him and the other half suspecting he had a hand in her demise, Alex escapes to Trillium Bay, hoping peace and quiet might ease his troubled mind.

The Christodora is home to Milly and Jared, a privileged young couple with artistic ambitions. Their neighbour, Hector, a Puerto Rican gay man who was once a celebrated AIDS activist but is now a lonely addict, becomes connected to Milly's and Jared's lives in ways none of them can anticipate. Meanwhile, the couple's adopted son, Mateo, grows to appreciate the opportunities for both self-realization and oblivion that New York offers.

June 6, 1944. Allied forces hit the beaches of Nazi-occupied France. Among the countless lives shattered are those of five spirited women with starkly different lives. As the war reaches its tipping point, each of the women fight for the survival of themselves, their countries, and their way of life during one of the most pivotal days in history. Now, during the most perilous hours of their lives, all five women must summon courage they never knew they had as they confront the dangers of war alongside treacherous family secrets, heartbreak, and the ability to trust themselves.

Berlin. August 1961. The Cold War. When the Berlin Wall brutally divides East from West, Sabine is separated from her beloved brother, Dieter. Escape to the West is the only option if the family is to be reunited. But the Wall is guarded by soldiers operating a shoot-to-kill policy. And Sabine finds herself at the mercy of the Stasi and their brutal interrogation techniques. She must fight to escape. She must fight to survive.

Who killed 1940s screen goddess Gloria Reardon? Her unsolved murder hypnotized the public with its scandalous details and shocked two generations. Avid feminist and aspiring filmmaker Kate Bloom discovers long-lost footage that holds the key to who murdered her grandmother. Legendary movie star Gloria Reardon may be dead, but friends and lovers from the Golden Age of Hollywood’s heyday are still very much on the scene, and it seems everyone has something to gain or lose from Kate’s discovery.

In the summer of 1865, Emmaline Gulledge is 11 years old and stubborn as a mule. Determined to do exactly what she sets her mind to, she explores the mountains and valleys around her home with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and a keen eye that misses nothing. When her mother dies, Emmaline, Emmy for short, is thrust into the mystical, spiritual world of her mother's native peoples, the Tsalagi, better known as the Cherokee.