Risultati Editore "Brilliance Audio" in Narrativa storica

Effervescent bon vivant Lucy Eastlake is a young operetta singer whose star is on the rise in Edwardian London. Though struggling to maintain her beloved great-aunts’ household, she holds fast to the belief that “things will work out.” Now, with the fiftieth anniversary of a siege her great-aunt Lavinia lived through approaching, it looks like Lucy is right, because a fortune is due to be divided among the survivors.

Miss Prudence Canton loves her quiet life in the country, caring for her ailing father and their beloved horses. She's become adept at fending off the advances of gentlemen until a bold stranger named Lord Woodleigh makes a visit to the stables. For a brief moment lust takes over, but Prudence's father, and his gun, find them before things get out of hand. Now, in order to pay for those stolen kisses, Lord Woodleigh is forced to find a husband for the woman whose reputation he himself nearly ruined.

Agnes Hussein, descendant of the last sultan of Singapore and the last surviving member of her immediate family, has grown up among her eccentric relatives in the crumbling Kampong Glam palace, a once-opulent relic given to her family in exchange for handing over Singapore to the British. Now Agnes is seventeen and her family has fallen into genteel poverty, surviving on her grandfather’s pension and the meager income they receive from a varied cast of boarders.

A horrible storm off the cold coasts of 15th-century Iceland sends the Trinity crashing to shore, with nearly no survivors. For Ragna, the teenage daughter of a respected family who is betrothed to the dashing and wealthy Thorkell, the shipwreck presents a life-changing risk she cannot resist: a handsome sailor named Michael, who is seduced by her gentle singing during his stay in the hospital, then impregnates her and promptly disappears. Ragna is left barren from childbirth and stigmatized as a fallen woman.

Okano, a convenience store employee with a troubled past, is but one of the many unforgettable characters found in this collection of four stories. Among the others are three boys facing a frightening lesson in mortality, a woman using garbage to fill a hole in her heart, and a nurse struggling to cope with the oft-brutal cycle of birth, life, and death. Remaining constant even as it fades in and out of view is the great Mount Fuji, one of Japan’s Three Holy Mountains. It serves as the anchor for these characters’ lives, and for Randy Taguchi’s Fujisan, an exploration of redemption, discovery, loss, and remembrance.

This astonishing novel begins in 1907, when Josef Siedler, a science-fiction devotee, ventures deep into a series of caves in search of an entrance to the underworld. Disappointed in his quest, he nonetheless returns with a peculiar souvenir: a small rock sample that emits a strange humming sound. Upon Siedler’s death, the rock is bequeathed to his nephew, a significant step in what will become an extraordinary journey through the arc of history. For as the stone passes through the hands of a series of owners, we are told their stories....

His father bent on making him a true Spanish nobleman, romantic young Eduardo crosses the seas to join his bumbling, megalomaniacal uncle, Cortés. Once he arrives in the new world, Eduardo falls passionately in love with an Aztec princess yet still assumes his place as a reluctant conquistador.

The phone rings in the California home of businessman Nate Michaels before the sun is up on October 24, 1962. An hour later he's on an Air Force jet to Washington. Michaels hasn't seen or spoken to President Kennedy since they met at Stanford in the fall of 1940, but now JFK needs his help to defuse the threat posed by Soviet missiles in Cuba. In both the Pentagon and the Kremlin, pro-war generals want a showdown, not a humiliating compromise.

Expert swordsmen Basilio and Alejo have one last mission before they go their separate ways: they must recover their teacher Don Manuel's ancient fighting manual and take it to remote Cataluña in order to have it translated by the famous alchemist Paracelsus. Unbeknownst to them, however, Don Manuel has been murdered, and a host of powerful forces has come looking for the coveted book - everyone from old lovers and lifelong archenemies to the King's assassin, and the Spanish Inquisition.

When Stalina Folskaya flees her native Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, she sets out for America with her dreams - and her painful past - firmly in tow. In St. Petersburg, Stalina was a trained chemist, but in America, disillusioned with her profession, she takes a job as a maid at the Liberty, a seedy, “short-stay” motel on the outskirts of Hartford, Connecticut. Even here, gutsy Stalina sees opportunity, convincing the owner to let her transform the motel into a destination with fantasy settings.

Life went terribly wrong for Addie Bates in San Diego, and she's been running from dark memories ever since. For 15 years, the Sleepy Valley Nudist Colony has provided a safe haven for Addie to hide from the crime she committed. But when the residents pack up to go on exhibit at the 1935 world's fair in San Diego, Addie returns and must face the thrilling yet terrifying prospect of reuniting with her estranged sister, Wavey.

Despite that outrageous threat, plantation owner Boyd Jardine buys Caleb and puts him to work in the fields. But soon Jardine discovers that his new slave is both better educated and more widely traveled than himself. When Jardine's pregnant wife dies and Caleb saves the unborn child, Jardine grows increasingly dependent on him not only as a servant but also as a companion - and so their relationship as master and slave begins to change.

Writing under a man's name, Josephine Breaux is the finest reporter at Washington's Morning Clarion. Using her wit and charm, she never fails to get the scoop on the latest Union and Confederate activities. But when a rival paper reveals her true identity, accusations of treason fly. Despite her claims of loyalty to the Union, she is arrested as a spy and traitor.

Widely known as "master hairdresser of the seven seas," Sigismund Skrik is famous both as an artist of the scissors and comb, and as the soul of discretion. Not only will he give clients new, life-changing looks - he also gets to know all their secrets. But the days of transatlantic sailing are numbered. It's 1879, and Europeans immigrating to the United States are starting to prefer the huge new steamships that make the crossing ten times as fast.

is the summer of AD 1035, and three sons of Tancred de Hauteville are in ambivalent service to Guimar, Prince of Salerno. The three men, who have been trained by their father in the art of war since childhood, spend the sweltering afternoons practicing swordplay, trading barbs, and thinking of how many men they would need to take the prince's poorly fortified castle for themselves.

When timber baron Reuben Burke finds himself at the seaside Hotel del Coronado - a forced vacation arranged by his siblings - he discovers he's forgotten how to relax. For the last ten years, he's been too caught up in raising his younger brother and sister and building up the family business in Seattle to have time for himself, much less romantic attachments. But a chance encounter on the beach with a young widow from San Diego puts his life on a new course.

For successful lawyer Mimi, 1980s Washington, DC, is a far cry from the war-torn Vietnam of her childhood. Time and sheer force of will have allowed Mimi to put those turbulent years behind her - that is, until the postcards begin to arrive. Postmarked from Thailand, each card is simply yet beautifully rendered in the hand of an artist identified only as "Nam". Mimi can’t imagine who Nam might be, a prickly problem considering his brief notes make it clear he knows her quite well. Determined to unmask him, Mimi begins what will become a decade-long search for Nam.

Russia, 1945: For Petka, a rambunctious 12-year-old boy with dreams too big for his tiny village, the prospect of invasion is dangerously thrilling. He watches the Red Army troops march off to engage the enemy, and wages his own war - against boredom, bullies, and his lot in life as a bastard in a backwoods world. Secretly raising a wolf in his grandmother’s goat barn, happily raising hell with the local troops, stowing away in a shipment of bootleg booze destined for the combat zone, and defying death by the noose, Petka eagerly takes all he can from life.

During WWII, Avelino Carrillo spent four harrowing years in the South Pacific with one thought driving his survival: to return to his beloved home in Napa Valley. The Carrillos have a history in the valley that stretches deep, like grapevine roots in the soil. For a century, they worked the vineyard at their family home, la Casa de los Sueños, until they lost the property to a wealthy land baron. Now, Avelino is determined to reclaim the land and home he loves so much.

In fifteenth-century Italy, Paolo Uccello recognizes the artistic talent of his young daughter, Antonia, and teaches her how to create a masterpiece. The girl composes a painting of her mother and inadvertently sparks an enduring mystery. In the present day, a copyist painter receives a commission from a wealthy Chinese businessman to duplicate a Paolo Uccello painting. Together, the painter and his teenage daughter visit China, and in doing so they begin their escape from a tragic family past.