Family Life Audiobooks | Fiction & Literature

Danielle Steel Value Collection Audiobook

This collection of three titles from one of America's bestselling authors is available at a special value price. Fine Things Bernie Fine had everything, even what he wanted most, a family. Unfortunately, tragedy strikes and he has to rebuild his life, care for his children and cope with his own loss until he gathers the strength to find a new beginning. Set against the backdrop of war, passion and international intrigue, Jewels is the story of a great house of gems, a rare family and an extraordinary marriage. Vanished tells the story of a man and woman faced with an almost unthinkable tragedy-the mysterious abduction of their young son.

Danielle Steel (Author), Boyd Gaines, Richard Thomas, Tim Curry (Narrator)

Audiobook

Before You Know Kindness

For ten summers, the Seton family, all three generations, met at their country home in New England to spend a week together playing tennis, badminton, and golf, and savoring gin and tonics on the wraparound porch to celebrate the end of the season. In the eleventh summer, everything changed. A hunting rifle with a single cartridge left in the chamber wound up in exactly the wrong hands at exactly the wrong time, and led to a nightmarish accident that put to the test the values that unite the family, and the convictions that just may pull it apart. Before You Know Kindness is a family saga that is timely in its examination of some of the most important issues of our era, and timeless in its exploration of the strange and unexpected places where we find love. As he did with his earlier masterpiece, Midwives, Chris Bohjalian has written a novel that is rich with unforgettable characters, and absolutely riveting in its page-turning intensity. 'Few writers can manipulate a plot with Bohjalian's grace and power.', The New York Times Book Review 'Chris Bohjalian's many fans will be glad to know he's back on the high wire, expertly balancing topical issues with the more timeless concerns of the human heart. His well-drawn, sympathetic characters deepen and intensify the novel's gripping plot rather than simply serving it. Before You Know Kindness is smart, first-rate storytelling.', Richard Russo, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls 'Once again, Chris Bohjalian dares to tackle the complexities, and complacencies, of modern society at its most vulnerable spot, where the personal clashes with the political, where the private is forced to go public. And once again, he forges a drama that will keep his readers on the edge of their seats...perhaps their conscience as well.', Julia Glass, winner of the National Book Award for Three Junes 'Chris Bohjalian's magnificent new novel, Before You Know Kindness, is the best work of fiction I've read about an American family since Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. It is one of the funniest, best-written, most compassionate, most engaging, and flat-out most enjoyable novels I've ever read.', Howard Frank Mosher, winner of the New England Book Award for A Stranger in the Kingdom 'Elegant, refined...a triumph.' , Booklist (starred review) Also available as a Random House AudioBook, a Large Print edition, and an eBook. From the Hardcover edition.

Chris Bohjalian (Author), Susan Denaker (Narrator)

Audiobook

Fair and Tender Ladies

Author of many novels and short stories, best-selling writer Lee Smith has received numerous awards for her works, including two O Henry Awards. Fair and Tender Ladies is an epistolary novel that traces the life of Ivy Rowe, born in the isolated Virginia mountain community of Sugar Fork. Through births and deaths, marriages and funerals, the decades of Ivy's life are captured in a rich dialect that carries the sounds and sights of the Appalachians in each syllable.

Lee Smith (Author), Kate Forbes (Narrator)

Audiobook

Eventide

One of the most beloved novels in recent years, Plainsong was a best-seller from coast to coast-and now Kent Haruf returns to the High Plains community of Holt, Colorado, with a story of even more masterful authority. When the McPheron brothers see Victoria Roubideaux, the single mother they'd taken in, move from their ranch to begin college, an emptiness opens before them-and for many other townspeople it also promises to be a long, hard winter. A young boy living alone with his grandfather helps out a neighbor whose husband, off in Alaska, suddenly isn't coming home, leaving her to raise their two daughters. At school the children of a disabled couple suffer indignities that their parents know all too well in their own lives, with only a social worker to look after them and a violent relative to endanger them further. But in a small town a great many people encounter one another frequently, often surprisingly, and destinies soon become entwined-for good and for ill-as they confront events that sorely test the limits of their resilience and means, with no refuge available except what their own character and that of others afford them. Spring eventually does reach across the land, and how the people of Eventide get there makes for an engrossing, profoundly moving novel rich in the wisdom, humor, and humanity for which Kent Haruf is justly acclaimed.

Kent Haruf (Author), George Hearn (Narrator)

Audiobook

I Know This Much Is True

At 40, Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear: by the schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and polish ex-Navy man and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid, self-conscious woman. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the boys are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities. But Dominick's talent for survival his escape from Ray's wrath and the genetic fate that is Thomas will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying story brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, of our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, and our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary audio experience that will leave no listener untouched.

Wally Lamb (Author), Ken Howard (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Right Address

The Right Address sears through the upper crust of New York's glittering Park Avenue scene to dish the dirt on the ladies who lunch, the gents who club, and the desperate climbers who will stop at nothing to join the backstabbing, champagne-sipping, socialite-eat-socialite stratosphere. When Melanie Sartomsky, wily Floridian flight attendant, snares billionaire divorcée Arthur 'the coffin king' Korn, she is catapulted into the crème de la crème of Park Avenue society, where hiring the wrong decorator is tantamount to social suicide, and where, if you're anyone, your personal assistant has a personal assistant. But Melanie quickly discovers that in the world of the rich and idle, malicious gossip is as de rigeur as owning twenty pairs of Manolo Blahniks. And despite her frenzied plunge into the charity circuit and the right dinner reservations, her neighbors are Givenchy-clad vultures who see her as nothing more than a reinvented trailer trollop. To make matters worse, when a snide society-rag journalist rakes her over the coals, Melanie's reputation is toast. Meanwhile, Melanie is not the only billionaire in the neighborhood coming unhinged. Kleptomania, adultery, plagiarism, and a grisly Harlem sex murder are just a few of the secrets swirling under the pedigreed patina of furs and emeralds on Park Avenue. Authors Jill Kargman and Carrie Karasyov know a thing or two about their subject matter. They met at the Upper East Side's chic Spence School and claim that The Right Address is inspired by 'the insane socialites we've eavesdropped on our entire lives.' Meow. So kick off your Jimmy Choos, crack open the Veuve Clicquot, and get ready for a rollicking, unforgettable tour of the richer-and-bitchier-than-thou set.

Carrie Karasyov, Jill Kargman (Author), Bernadette Dunne (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Jungle

Few books have so affected radical social changes as The Jungle, first published serially in 1906. Exposing unsanitary conditions in the meat-packing industry in Chicago, Sinclair's novel gripped Americans by the stomach, contributing to the passage of the first Food and Drug Act. If you've never read this classic novel, don't be put off by its gruesome reputation. Upton Sinclair was a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who could turn even an exposE into a tender and moving novel. Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant, comes to America in search of a fortune for his family. He accepts the harsh realities of a working man's lot, laboring with naive vigor-until, his health and family sacrificed, he understands how the heavy wheels of the industrial machine can crush the strongest spirit.

Upton Sinclair (Author), George Guidall (Narrator)

Audiobook

Madame Bovary

Emma Bovary, the bored wife of a French provincial doctor, scans her solitude with desperate eyes, like a shipwrecked sailor searching for a white sail on the distant horizon. And when Emma's ship finally comes in, it carries with it vast and tragic consequences upon which her own life and the lives of those around her are wrecked.

Gustave Flaubert (Author), Davina Porter (Narrator)

Audiobook

Christmas, Present

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Deep End of the Ocean comes this heartwarming Christmas story of a family who comes together during the holiday season as they learn a powerful lesson about love and to live each year of their lives as if it were their last. A fourteenth wedding anniversary is nothing to sneeze at, Elliott Banner knows, but it's not exactly a landmark year—like fifteen, or twenty, when he plans to take his wife, Laura, to Paris. But when a headache on the drive home from their anniversary date—two days before Christmas—turns out to be more than a migraine, he wishes he had celebrated every year as though it were their last. In this poignant, touching, uplifting story, a woman calmly gathers her family around her during the Christmas holiday to celebrate their lives together—both past and future—and to truly count their blessings. A family history unfolds in a single night in this deeply affecting story that speaks volumes about love, trust, and letting go—a perfect holiday read that underscores the true meaning of the season. “Mitchard’s gift is her ability to present her characters in a compassionate light, even when revealing them at their weakest moments.”—Us Weekly

Jacquelyn Mitchard (Author), Jacquelyn Mitchard (Narrator)

Audiobook

A Perfect Day

Robert Harlan has three loves: his wife, his daughter, and his writing. But when his thirst for success causes him to lose focus on his happy family life, ambition begins to consume him. When a stranger appears with a mysterious message about the brevity of his future, he discovers the truth about himself: who he has become, what he has lost, and what it will take to find love again.

Richard Paul Evans (Author), David La Graffe (Narrator)

Audiobook

Nobody's Fool

Richard Russo's slyly funny and moving novel follows the unexpected operation of grace in a deadbeat town in upstate New York - and in the life of one of its unluckiest citizens, Sully, who has been doing the wrong thing triumphantly for fifty years. Divorced from his own wife and carrying on halfheartedly with another man's, saddled with a bum knee and friends who make enemies redundant, Sully now has one new problem to cope with: a long-estranged son who is in imminent danger of following in his father's footsteps. With its sly and uproarious humor and a heart that embraces humanity's follies as well as its triumphs, Nobody's Fool is storytelling at its most generous.

Richard Russo (Author), Ron McLarty (Narrator)

Audiobook

Evenings at Five: A Novel and Five New Stories

Every evening at five oclock, Christina and Rudy stopped work and began the ritual commonly known as Happy Hour. Rudy mixed Christinas drink with loving precision, the cavalier slosh of Bombay Sapphire over ice shards, before settling across from her in his Stickley chair with his glass of Scotch. They shared a love of language and music (she is an author, he a composer, after all), a delight in intense conversation, a fascination with popes, and nearly thirty years of life together. What did I think, that we had forever? muses Christina, seven months after Rudys unexpected death. While coming to terms with her loss, with the space that Rudy once inhabited, Christina reflects on their vibrant bond, with all its quirks, habits, and unguarded moments, as well as her passionate sorrow and her attempts to reposition herself and her new place in the very real world they shared. In this literary jewel, a bittersweet novella of absence and presence and the mysterious gap between them, Gail Godwin has performed a small miracle. In essence, Evenings at Five is a grief sonata for solo instrument transposed into words. Interwoven with meditations and movements, full of aching truths and a wicked sense of humor, it exquisitely captures the cyclical nature of commitment, and the eternal quality of a romance completed. From the Hardcover edition.

Gail Godwin (Author), Gail Godwin (Narrator)

Audiobook

Family Life Audiobooks in Fiction & Literature