Showing results by publisher "Phoenix Books" in Literary Fiction

Journey to the dusty little Texas town of Lonesome Dove and meet an unforgettable assortment of heroes and outlaws, whores and ladies, Indians and settlers. Richly authentic, beautifully written, always dramatic, Lonesome Dove will make listeners laugh, weep, dream, and remember.

Four Chinese women, drawn together by the shadow of their past, meet in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks, eat dim sum, and to "say" stories to each other. Nearly 40 years later, one of the women has died, and her daughter arrives to take her place. However, the daughter never expected to learn of her mother's secret lifelong wish - and the tragic way in which it has come true. The revelation creates among the women an urgent need to remember the past.

Edward Lannion is to marry the lovely Marian Fox. But on the eve of the wedding, Marian's note leaves everyone in a tizzy and full of questions: Where is Marian? And who is Jackson? In this intricately plotted novel, a mysterious, charismatic English butler derails the marriage of his master, a young aristocrat, and his fiancé, sending them both off on strange, dark, and amusing paths.

Funny, sad, full of wonderful characters and the perfect dialogue of which he is the master, McMurtry brings the Thalia saga to an end with Duane confronting depression in the midst of plenty. Surrounded by his children, who all seem to be going through life crises involving sex, drugs, and violence; his wife, Karla, who is wrestling with her own demons; and friends like Sonny, who seem to be dying, Duane can't seem to make sense of his life anymore.

Lucas Corso, middle-aged, tired, and cynical, is a book detective, a mercenary hired to hunt down rare editions for wealthy and unscrupulous clients. When a well-known bibliophile is found hanged, leaving behind part of the of the original manuscript of Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, Corso is brought in to authenticate the fragment. Soon the unsuspecting Corso is drawn into a swirling plot involving devil worship, occult practices, and swashbuckling derring-do.

Three decades ago, the young Socrates Fortlow, in a burst of drunken rage, murdered a man and a woman. Free again, after 27 years of hard time, Fortlow is living in an abandoned building, scavenging bottles and delivering groceries to barely eke out a living.

For decades, a quartet of Chinese women who have emigrated to San Francisco gather to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk—they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Over the years, their stories have informed the lives of four daughters who feel the weight of family and world history on their shoulders. With wit and sensitivity, this novel explores the deep, complicated, and sometimes painful connections between mothers and daughters.

Sissy Hankshaw, an almost flawlessly beautiful small-town girl with big-time dreams, hitchhikes her way into your heart, your hopes, and your sleeping bag in Tom Robbins's magical, funny, and most famous novel. Follow Sissy's amazing odyssey from Virginia to chic Manhattan to the Dakota Badlands, where FBI agents, cowgirls, and ecstatic whooping cranes explode in a deliciously drawn-out climax.

From the author of the highly acclaimed A Fine Balance, comes a brilliantly evocative novel that confirms Mistry's reputation as one of the finest writers of our time. "As close to perfect as a novel can get," raves Booklist.

This wondrous tale of cosmic adventure immerses the listener in a world of heroes, gods, and demons. It tells the story of the Lord Rama, the 7th incarnation of Lord Vishnu. At about 50,000 lines the original Ramayana is one of the largest epic poems in history - as well as one of the world's most important literary and spiritual masterpieces. This translation by William Buck makes the ancient text accessible to the modern Western world, while preserving the richness of the original.

Imagine this: When the stock market crashes on the Thursday before Easter, you, an ambitious broker, not overly successful or ethical, know you're facing the Weekend from Hell. With only 72 hours to scheme and scramble your way out of this nightmare, you find yourself confronted with a 300-pound psychic, a tattooed stranger, African rituals, legendary amphibians, outer space, and your own sexuality.

Living in an abandoned apartment building in South-Central L.A., Socrates is one step away from the streets. He bags groceries at the supermarket, collects bottles and cans to recycle for pennies, and feels himself slipping toward invisibility - that is, until he meets 11-year-old Darryl, whose already committed murder and is perilously close to slipping into a life filled with only violence and bloodshed. Socrates' determination to fight for and save Darryl lights his own pathway to self-forgiveness.

This novel, Robert James Waller's next after his best selling The Bridges of Madison County, is a passionate story of choices and loss and the intense power of instant attraction.

Sita Dulip has missed her flight out of Chicago. But instead of listening to garbled announcements in the airport, she discovers a method of bypassing the crowds at the desks, a nasty lunch, whimpering children, their punitive parents, and the blue plastic chairs bolted to the floor: she changes planes—literally. Sita discovers entire planes of existence and visits societies not found on Earth—bizarre societies that share similarities with Earth's cultures and sometimes open doors into the alien.

The late Nobelist's masterpiece takes a candid look into the lives of Holocaust survivors during the late 40s. Set in New York City, Shadows on the Hudson, Volume 2, the second in a four volume audiobook series, draws us into the intertwined lives of a circle of prosperous Jewish refugees.

This timeless saga traces the intertwined lives of a group of prosperous Jewish Holocaust survivors in New York City after World War II. A chain of events disrupts the close-knit community as each refugee struggles to reconcile the horrific past with the difficult present and explores both the nature of faith and the nature of love. Marriages and affairs fall apart; age and death take their toll; the wisdom of the scripture and kabbalah and the precepts of the great philosophers and avatars of modern science are passionately debated in extended conversations that seethe with drama.

Three strangers who are trying to find their way in the wake of loss become entwined in an identity theft scheme, which has a resounding impact on them all. A gorgeously written psychological study, and a meditation on identity in the modern world, this is a literary novel with the haunting momentum of a thriller.

Winnie and Helen have kept each other's worst secrets for more than 50 years. Now, because she believes she is dying, Helen wants to expose all that has been concealed, when she decides to celebrate the Chinese New Year by unburdening herself of everybody's hidden truths - her own and Winnie's, as well as the dreadful news that Winnie's daughter, Pearl, has been keeping from her mother.

Mother of Pearl is populated by wonderfully rich and original characters. The paths of Even Grade, a black man who grew up an orphan, and Valuable Komer, a white girl who is the daughter of the town whore, cross through Joody Two Sun, a seer, who becomes Even's lover. Both Even and Valuable are seeking the family, love, and commitment they never had, and their search ultimately takes both of them to places they never dreamed they'd go.

In vignettes both comic and sexy, the owner of a coffee shop recalls the day his first wife seemed to achieve a moment of simple perfection, while she remembers the women's softball game during which she was stricken by the beauty of the shortstop. A young couple spends hours at the coffee shop fueling the idea of their fierce love. A professor of philosophy, stopping by for a cup of coffee, makes a valiant attempt to explain what he knows to be the inexplicable workings of the human heart.