Showing results for "Frank" in Family Life

Frank is a miserable old curmudgeon. An agoraphobic recluse and widower whose only company is the 'ghost' of his wife, Marcie. He is estranged from friends and family and is entirely cut off from the rest of the world. That is until he meets Red. Red is six years old. He's a funny, imaginative, and kind little boy who - following the separation of his parents - moves in next door. Red is fascinated by his new neighbour and seemingly oblivious to Frank's grumpy demeanour and strange ways.

Over the course of four celebrated works of fiction and almost forty years, Richard Ford has crafted an ambitious, incisive and singular view of American life as lived. Unconstrained, astute, provocative, often laugh-out-loud funny, Frank Bascombe is, here, once more our guide to the great American midway. Now in the twilight of life, a man who has occupied many colourful lives — sportswriter, father, husband, ex-husband, friend, real estate agent — Bascombe finds himself in the most sorrowing role of all; caregiver to his son, Paul, diagnosed with ALS.

For some boys fitting in means standing out. Meet Frank - he isn't like other kids. Intrepid explorer, sartorial connoisseur; he's as strange as he is brilliant. But Frank discovers the hard way that people don't like brilliant, and they hate strange. What Frank longs for - aside from a father - is a friend.

Life rarely stands still when you find yourself surrounded by a bunch of loveable crackpots. Certainly, that was the case for Frank and Stan. With their hugely successful "Le Mans" TT now behind them, thoughts turned to their next adventure and, inevitably, also to the topic of their own mortality.

Arthur and Jake are brothers yet worlds apart. Arthur is older, shy, dutiful and set to inherit his father's farm. Jake is younger, handsome and reckless, a dangerous man to know. When Laura arrives in their rural community, the fragile balance of the brothers' rivalry is pushed to the edge of catastrophe.

Awarded a three-month stipend to travel and work, a Swedish writer flies to Madrid, where in a bar she meets a man with an extraordinary story to tell. In exchange for somewhere to sleep and to hide out for a few days, he is willing to tell her the whole astonishing tale. What follows is an account of fantastic proportions and ingredients: the existence of a shadowy Internet TV show with a certain morality clause, a threat to the storyteller's life, a diabolical nun, and the story of a girl with a missing left thumb.

This audiobook contains eight Take It from Here radio episodes from the 1950s, featuring Ron and Eth Glum. Jimmy Edwards stars as the beer-swilling head of the Glum household, with Dick Bentley as Ron and June Whitfield as Eth.

Rebecca has been catapulted from her home, her marriage, and her children. She has escaped to Pawleys Island to hide herself from herself. But after Miss Olivia pries Rebecca's secrets from her, Huey and especially Abigail are challenged to reenter life outside the dream state their idyllic geography evokes. They will see that Rebecca has her day in court, but they never expect to provoke a national forum for discussion.

The Pelletiers are a prominent French family living in Beirut. The patriarch, Louis, has built a successful business manufacturing and exporting artisanal soaps. He hoped to pass the business on to his eldest son, Jean, but Jean doesn't have the sharpness or aptitude for such an enterprise. After nearly running the company into the ground, Jean marries a money-grubbing young woman who quickly makes him miserable, and they emigrate to Paris. But there's another reason Jean must leave - he has committed a terrible crime.

Colm Tóibín's Mothers and Sons is a sensitive and beautifully written meditation on the dramas surrounding this most elemental of relationships. Psychologically intricate and emotionally incisive, each finely wrought story teases out the delicate and difficult strands woven between mothers and sons. This is an acute, masterful and moving collection that confirms Tóibín as a great prose stylist of our time.

Meet Tom. Or Dr O’Grady, as he used to be called. When you pass him on the street, most people don’t even give him a second glance. You see, Tom isn’t living his best life. Burdened by grief, he’s only got his loyal dog, Bette Davis, for company and a rucksack containing his whole world. Then there’s Ruth and her son, DJ, who no longer have a place to call home. But Ruth believes that you can change the world by helping one person at a time - and Tom needs her help. There are a thousand ways to find your home - you just need to be brave enough to look for them.

In 1946, June and Bernard set off on their honeymoon. Fired by their ideals and passion for one another, they had planned an idyllic holiday, but in France they witness an event that alters the course of their lives entirely. Forty years on, their son-in-law is trying to uncover the cause of their estrangement and is led back to this moment on honeymoon and an experience of such darkness it was to wrench the couple apart.

Born and raised in idyllic Sullivan's Island, Susan Hayes navigated through her turbulent childhood with humor, spunk, and characteristic Southern sass. But years later, she is a conflicted woman with an unfaithful husband, a sometimes resentful teenage daughter, and a heart that aches with painful, poignant memories. And as Susan faces her uncertain future, she realizes that she must go back to her past. To the beachfront house where her sister welcomes her with open arms.

She was the small-town southern beauty transformed into a Hollywood love goddess. He was the legendary crooner whose voice transfixed the world. They were Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra. Separately they were irresistible; together they were an explosive combination. Ava’s star is rising just as Frank’s career—and public image as a family man—is taking a hit. Gone are the days of the screaming bobbysoxers and chart-topping hits. Ava, however, finds herself gracing the front page of every tabloid in America. Jealousy and cheating abound.

Can you resist the depths of the human heart? It is 1958, and 17-year-old Landon is revelling in his youth: dating girls and even claiming to have been in love. He is a world apart from shy, reclusive Jamie Sullivan, a Baptist's daughter who carries a Bible with her schoolbooks, cares for her widowed father and volunteers at the orphanage. But fate will intervene.

Die wilde Schönheit der Nordseeküste, ein geheimnisvolles Schiffswrack und zwei Frauen, verbunden durch das Meer. St. Peter, 1955: Tillas Welt ist das Meer. Sie will nicht heiraten, sondern tauchen. Nicht eingeengt werden, sondern die Freiheit der Wellen spüren. Dabei entdeckt sie in der Tiefe der Nordsee ein altes Schiffswrack, von dem sich die Fischer seit Generationen Legenden erzählen. In Tilla wächst der unbändige Wunsch, seine Geheimnisse zu lüften. Auf einer Nordseeinsel, 1633: Die junge Nes sucht mit ihrer Mutter in einem Beginenkonvent Zuflucht vor ihrer Vergangenheit.

Carlos Manuel Álvarez’s first novel is a masterful portrayal of a society in free fall. Diego, the son, is disillusioned and bitter about the limited freedoms his country offers him as he endures compulsory military service. Mariana, the mother, is unwell, prone to mysterious seizures, and forced to relinquish control over the household to her daughter, Maria, who has left school and is working as a chambermaid in a state-owned tourist hotel. The father, Armando, is a committed revolutionary, a die-hard Fidelista who is sickened by the corruption he perceives all around him.

What if the villain of your childhood turned out to be someone really rather extraordinary? A disgraced politician, Sir James Hastings is living out his retirement in a secluded Surrey village. He is unmoved by his centenarian mother's death - a woman he emotionally buried upon her abandonment. Raised by his father, a charismatic war-hero turned racing driver, the young James, torn between self-blame and longing, eventually dismissed her.

Unser Leben, unsere Welt werden durch unsere Erinnerungen zusammengehalten. Was geschieht mit uns, wenn wir sie verlieren, und welche Möglichkeiten tun sich auf, wenn andere unsere Erinnerungen wiederbeleben können? Der 74-jährigen Alma Konachek, die in einem Vorort von Kapstadt lebt, widerfährt genau dies. Sie verliert ihr Gedächtnis... Wie alle Werke Doerrs zeugt auch dieses von der Größe des Lebens - von der geheimnisvollen Schönheit der Fossilien, Wolken, Blätter - von dem atemberaubenden Glück, in diesem Universum zu leben.

Nature or nurture? The impact of traumatic childhood experiences reverberates into the grown-up world of Frank, Alice and Henry – children from three families suffering the fall-out from their early life. Frank, a working-class boy abused by his step-father. Alice, physically handicapped and frustrated. Henry, the less clever son of wealthy ambitious parents. From a rundown estate in Eastleigh, a small town in Darlington and an affluent Cotswold home, each character grapples with the life fate has handed them.