Showing results for "A Birthday" in Genre Fiction

Ursula K. Le Guin has enthralled fans with her imagination, clarity, and moral vision. The recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the National Book Award, the Kafka Award, and five Hugo and five Nebula Awards, this renowned writer has created a provocative, ever-evolving universe filled with diverse worlds and rich characters reminiscent of our earthly selves. Now, in The Birthday of the World, this gifted artist returns to these worlds in eight brilliant short works, including a never-before-published novella, each of which probes the essence of humanity.

Irina McGovern's destiny hinges on a single kiss. Whether she gives into its temptation will determine whether she stays with her reliable partner, Lawrence, or runs off with Ramsey, a hard-living snooker player. Employing a parallel universe structure, Shriver spins Irina's competing futures with two drastically different men. An intellectual and fellow American, Lawrence is clever and supportive but rigid and emotionally withdrawn. A British celebrity, Ramsey is passionate and spontaneous but jealous and undereducated.

Valerie Wyatt is the queen of gracious living and the arbiter of taste with a successful TV show. Since her long-ago divorce, she’s worked hard to reach the pinnacle of her profession and to create a camera-ready life in her Fifth Avenue penthouse. So why is she so depressed? All the hours with her personal trainer, the careful work of New York’s best hairdressers, cosmetic surgeons, and her own God-given bone structure and great looks can’t fudge the truth or her lies about it: Valerie is turning sixty.

Before she became a glamorous fashion designer, Ellie de Florent-Stinson was a trailer-park teen about to turn 16. But a night of birthday celebration doesn’t go exactly as planned and descends into a night she’ll never be able to forget. Now, on the cusp of her 40th birthday, it appears Ellie has everything she ever wanted. Except everything is not quite as perfect as it looks on the outside - Ellie is keeping many secrets. But hiding those skeletons has a cost, and it all comes to a head the night of her fabulous birthday party in the desert.

Another summer is in full swing on the island of Roone, and preparations are underway for a big birthday party at the local hotel. But beneath the air of celebration, many of the islanders have their own struggles to contend with. Imelda, isolated by her recent heartbreak, has no memory of accepting a month-long bed and breakfast booking, but when a stranger turns up on her doorstep looking forward to his stay, she has little choice but to take him in.

She wanted a birthday surprise, just not the one she got.... The last thing Sally Summers expected from her husband on her special day was that he'd leave her for a Latvian lap dancer half her age. So with her world in tatters, Sally jets off to Turkey for some sun, sea and sanctuary. The Blue Bay resort brings new friends and the perfect balm for Sally's broken heart in gorgeous Dubliner James. He's just the birthday present she needs.

Dear Carys, Zoe and Andrea. Come and join me for my 40th birthday adventure weekend, full of mysteries and surprises the like of which you can't imagine. When Joanne's friends reluctantly accept an invitation to her birthday party, it quickly becomes clear that there is more to this weekend than they are expecting. One of them is hiding a secret. And Joanne is planning to reveal it.... A weekend away in a cottage in the woods sounds like fun - until no one can hear your cries for help.

New York in the 1990s - impoverished writer Jonathan Dainty takes his wife, Maddie, out to the beach for her birthday. Hours later he finds himself at the local police precinct trying to explain how on earth he let his wife get into a stranger's car and allowed it to drive her away. More than 20 years later, Maddie is presumed dead and Jonathan has channelled his grief into a best-selling series of crime novels. As far as he can, he is living the perfect life. Then one day he catches a glimpse of his dead wife, moving through a throng of people.

It all hinges on one kiss. Whether Irina McGovern does or does not lean in to a specific pair of lips in London will determine whether she stays with her disciplined, intellectual partner Lawrence or runs off with Ramsey, a hard-living snooker player. Using a parallel universe structure, we follow Irina's life as it unfolds under the influence of two drastically different men.

When acclaimed writer, television broadcaster, and gifted audiobook narrator, Steve Matchett, was asked to name his three favorite authors, he swiftly volunteered the names of Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, and Jerome K. Jerome. The last of these may not be as widely known, but this only highlights the immense value Matchett places on Jerome’s work. Best known for his comic masterpiece of 1889, Three Men in a Boat, Jerome's captivating tale of an unhurried boat trip along old England’s river Thames.

It’s Poppy Kinsey’s birthday. She should be blowing out candles and opening presents, but hers falls on the type of heart-wrenching, agonising anniversary she would far rather forget. The worst day of them all. The day her mother died. But this year is special because the person she misses most in the world has left her a set of letters, one for each of her next 10 birthdays. As Poppy opens them year by year, she discovers that no matter how tough life gets, her mum will always be by her side, guiding her along the way.

From the author of the award-winning Kindle single, Cornbread, comes a story about Cumberland Bixby, a minor league baseball player turned B-list actor who wakes up on his 34th birthday to find he's been dead for nearly nine hours. Seeking answers, Cumberland crisscrosses Manhattan on foot, his last glimpses of the city disappearing behind him. Happy Birthday, Cumberland Bixby is a story about life and death in the era of self-promotion, and what it means to be truly seen.

Eight years ago, Elliott Nash’s daughter was murdered. Since then, everything the brilliant former criminal psychologist had is a memory - his child, his career, his wife, and his home. Now he lives on the streets around Washington, DC, with only a bottomless well of guilt and nightmares to make him feel alive. Until Amy Scowcroft solicits his help.

An everyday tragedy brought into stark relief and elevated to high drama by the skilled pen of Maria Krestovskaya, as she focuses her listeners' attention on someone whose life would have otherwise gone unnoticed.

Rumor around town is a certain matriarch of the Bailey family is having a big birthday! It’s even spurred a few of the Bailey kids to return home to celebrate with their beloved great-grandmother, Dori. In fact, now that there are 26 Bailey great-grandchildren, the event is going to be overflowing with laughter and love.

The Actual Star takes listeners on a journey over thousands of years and six continents—collapsing three separate timelines into one cave in the Belizean jungle. An epic saga of three reincarnated souls, this novel demonstrates the entanglements of tradition and progress, sister and stranger, love and hate. The book jumps forward and backward in time among a pair of twins who ruled a Maya kingdom, a young American on a trip of self-discovery, and two dangerous charismatics in a conflict that will determine the fate of the few humans left on Earth after massive climate change.

Isabelle's not in the market for a relationship-not even close. But she can't stop thinking about her one-night stand with a stranger on his birthday.

In 1976, a uniquely seductive world of vampires was unveiled in the now-classic Interview with the Vampire ... in 1985, a wild and voluptuos voice spoke to us, telling the story of The Vampire Lestat. Anne Rice continues her extraordinary Vampire Chronicles in a feat of mesmeric storytelling, a chillingly hypnotic entertainment in which the oldest and most powerful forces of the night are unleashed on an unsuspecting world.

Stephen Detals played professional baseball before flaming out in whiskey-fueled catastrophe. His father and grandfather killed themselves on their 39th birthdays. Stephen is 38. He battles alcoholism, abandonment, suicidal tendencies, and lethal family history to survive his impending birthday. This novel chronicles the final eight days before Stephen Detals' 39th birthday. His relapse into addiction forces Stephen back to the Neches River and the Piney Woods of Southeast Texas.

When overwhelmed with growing up without Mama, will young Kate survive? As Kate’s 11th birthday approaches, she fears no one will remember her tradition of dressing up in her mother’s heirloom wedding gown for her birthday portrait. She grieves that their handprints won’t be on the back of the birthday photograph, and there’ll be no special letter from her mother to go in her Book of My Life this year. Precocious Kate gets a few more life’s-not-always-fair lessons as she struggles and finds the courage to ask the hard questions about life.