Showing results by narrator "Robert Fass" in All Categories

A piercing and compassionate debut novel about how the new generations atone for the sins of the old in small-town America.

When Margaret's fiancé, John, is hospitalized for depression, she faces a choice: carry on with their plans or leave. She decides to marry him. This is the story of what unfolds from this act of love and faith, when their three children help their mother to care for Michael. Told in alternating points of view by all five members of the family, this searing, gut-wrenching and yet frequently hilarious novel brings alive with remarkable poignancy the depth of family love.

On a hot, insomniac night at the Hotel Metropol, the novelist Carlos Fuentes steps onto his balcony only to find another man on the balcony next door. The other man asks for news of the social strife turning into revolution in the unnamed city below them. He reveals himself as the 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, permitted to revisit Earth once a year for 24 hours based on his theory of eternal return.

On a black night in April 1912, fifteen hundred passengers and crew perish as the Titanic slowly sinks beneath the freezing waters of the North Atlantic. Charting the same perilous course through the icebergs is the SS Californian, close enough for her crew to see the eight white distress rockets fired by the Titanic. Yet the Californian fails to act, and later her crew insist that they saw nothing.

Presence, the Play offers a penetrating perspective on the vital role personal presence plays in the essence of life. This timely, captivating novel speaks to a growing hunger for a way of life that’s real and tangible, the opposite of an artificial existence lived in a realm of mediated connectivity.

Robert Stone was a singular American writer, a visionary whose award-winning novels - including Dog Soldiers, Outerbridge Reach, and Damascus Gate - earned him comparisons to literary lions ranging from Samuel Beckett to Ernest Hemingway to Graham Greene. Stone had an almost prophetic grasp of the spirit of his age, which he captured with crystalline clarity in each of his novels. Of course, he was also a sharp and brilliant observer of American life, and his nonfiction writing is revelatory.

On June 16, 1918, America’s leading voice of conscience, Eugene Victor Debs, stepped onto a stage in Canton, Ohio, and gave a soul-stirring speech against American intervention in WWI. He did so knowing the cost would be severe: Debs was charged with violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and sentenced to 10 years in a federal penitentiary for sedition. It has never been easy for any man to risk everything - from his possessions, his family, his freedom, or his health - to do what he knows is right. Debs’ crisis is dramatized in Debs in Canton.

On a crisp April morning, Sara Parcell disappears without a trace. No one saw a thing. Desperate, her family agree to take part in a reality TV show following Sara's case. Cameras swarm the house. Viewers tune in. The addiction begins. As the show gains traction, what began as a small-town crime becomes a global sensation. Everyone who knew Sara is questioned on camera - but the producers want more. Hungry for twists, they delve deeper into the story - and soon, it takes on a life of its own.

In a rose garden in Buenos Aires, a young American spy meets the beautiful daughter of a famous Argentinian revolutionary. They fall in love. But he is no ordinary spy - and she is no ordinary woman. For he has a hidden agenda - to avenge his father. In Luz he seems to have found an ally for his secret mission. But as his fate becomes further entwined with hers, he soon finds himself caught in a perilous web of passions, loyalties and lies.

The town of Soldiers Grove is nestled amongst the driftless hills of southwestern Wisconsin. Its winters are long; its warmer seasons bright and challenging. The population is fewer than 600, including those residing in the senior citizens home. Two of these seniors, Cyril and Louise, have come to live there. Unlikely as it may seem, for they come from very diverse backgrounds, they form a close friendship, and their growing attachment sparks them to adventures and unlikely locations.

In the near future, humankind has founded colonies on Mars and the inner planets as well as under the oceans, populating them via by direct genetic manipulation, changing us to suit the environment. The haves are those who are "ecomods" (genetically modified) or "surgenmods" (surgically modified); the have-nots are the "typics"—those who haven't undergone modification.

When Dave Cullen went to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in the wake of the shootings, he saw something radically different from what he had witnessed anywhere else in his 20 years covering the mass shootings epidemic. A handful of remarkable survivors seized control of their story, galvanised a nation and built a movement to capture its energy at lightning speed. Parkland is Cullen's intimate account of the birth of a movement and its stunning metamorphosis in the wake of the tragedy that ignited a revolution.

A brilliant young philosophy student bent on seducing her famous philosopher-mentor finds herself outmaneuvered; diabolically clever high school girls wreak a particularly apt sort of vengeance on sexual predators in their community; a woman stalked by a would-be killer may be confiding in the wrong former lover; a young woman is morbidly obsessed by her unfamiliar new role as “mother.” In the collection’s longest story, a much-praised cutting-edge writer cruelly experiments with “drafts” of his own suicide.

On a black night in April 1912, 1,500 passengers and crew perish as the Titanic slowly sinks beneath the freezing waters of the North Atlantic. Charting the same perilous course through the icebergs is the SS Californian, close enough for her crew to see the eight white distress rockets fired by the Titanic. Yet the Californian fails to act, and later her crew insist that they saw nothing. As news of the disaster spreads throughout America, journalists begin a feeding frenzy, desperate for stories. John Steadman is one such reporter.

This is the untold story of the American federal agent who captured the world's most wanted drug lord. Every generation has its larger-than-life criminal legend living beyond the reach of the law: Billy the Kid, Al Capone, Ronnie Biggs, Pablo Escobar. But for every one of these criminals, there's a Wyatt Earp, Pat Garrett or Slipper of the Yard. For Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán-Loera, aka 'El Chapo' - the 21st century's most notorious criminal - that man is DEA Special Agent Cole Merrell.

To Catch a Killer by Nele Neuhaus is a tightly plotted crime thriller with surprise twists at every turn and a story that sounds as though it's ripped from the headlines.... Police Detective Pia Kirchhoff is about to leave on her long-delayed honeymoon when she receives a phone call. An elderly woman has been shot and killed while walking her dog. A short while later, another murder is committed, and the modus operandi is eerily similar - a woman is killed by a bullet that smashes through her kitchen window...

On a rainy November day police detectives Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver von Bodenstein are summoned to a mysterious traffic accident: A woman has fallen from a pedestrian bridge onto a car driving underneath. According to a witness, the woman may have been pushed. The investigation leads Pia and Oliver to a small village, and the home of the victim, Rita Cramer. On a September evening eleven years earlier, two seventeen-year-old girls vanished from the village without a trace.

Roger Cortland came to the Orbital Complex to continue his life's work in virtual reality. Marissa Correa came to work with Cortland, and to observe this Utopian society up close. Jhana Meniskos came to work in "Orbital Park", the station's biodiversity preserve. But no Utopia is safe-from corruption, from sabotage, from corporate greed. And when this perfect world begins to unravel - attacked from Earth and from within - all three will have to fight to protect their work and their lives.