This collection of essays observes the perils of motherhood, wifehood, selfhood, and other assorted challenges. Since its publication in 1957, it has sold millions of copies and has been adapted into a Broadway play, a film, a TV series, and now an audiobook. Jean Kerr’s parodies of the clichéd 1950s prescription for glamorous or maternal feminine behavior still resonate today as we enter the twenty-first century.

Master wit Mark Twain selected these twenty-seven stories himself by fifteen of his favorite nineteenth century authors. The order follows that which Twain placed them in in the original anthology, published in 1888. He indulged his comic fancy rather than making a textbook in which all themes or authors are placed together, saying that "This way, you will have to peruse the whole thing before discovering that one of your favorites is not included." However, it is no joke that these are th...

Chuckle along with the best nineteenth-century humorists, who provide you with tall tales, puns, and witty ripostes. Seven of these twenty-seven gems are from Twain himself. No guarantees of political correctness, but they're sure to tickle your twenty-first century funny bone.Beginning with the piece that made Mark Twain famous, "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,"and ending with his fanciful "How I Edited an Agricultural Paper," this treasure trove of an anthology is...

Enduring stories that are as relevant today as they were when written at the turn of the century by influential women writers.This audio recording includes: On the Divide and The Garden Lodge by Willa Cather; A Point at Issue, Desiree's Baby, A Pair of Silk Stockings, and The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin; Three Thanksgivings and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; and The Pelican and The Fullness of...

I'm going to be totally honest. This is not the kind of audiobook that can help you. It's not a "how-to," a "when-to," or a "what-to-expect." It's not even endorsed by anyone remotely connected to the medical profession. (Although a cousin of mine who sells carpeting to doctors' offices not only found it "insightful" and "informative," but felt that, "if properly vacuumed, it should last a lifetime.")"A fine endorsement," you say. "But if I have only one audiobook to buy, shouldn't...

Few institutions are as loved, as loathed, and as historically important as the United States Postal Service, the subject of this landmark century-spanning social, political, and economic history. The United States Postal Service is a wondrous American creation. Seven days a week, its army of 300,000 letter carriers delivers 513 million pieces of mail, forty percent of the world's volume. It is far more efficient than any other mail service-more than twice as efficient as the Japanese and ...

In a town as peculiar as Maggody, Arkansas, it doesn't take much to tip the community into chaos. When Mayor Jim Bob Buchanon's SuperSaver Buy 4 Less takes out a full-page ad boasting the new supermarket's authentic tamales, gourmet deli counter, and various other bells and whistles, every restaurateur in town fears that Jim Bob is going to put him out of business. So when it comes time for the Buy 4 Less's gala opening, one citizen decides to play dirty, slipping something into Jim Bob's ...

Twelve-year-old Marion Parker was kidnapped from her Los Angeles school by an unknown assailant on December 15, 1927. Her body was found days later, delivered to her father by the killer, who fled with the ransom money. When William Hickman was hunted down and charged with the killing, he admitted to all of it, in terrifying detail, but that was only the start . . .His insanity plea was the first of its kind in the history of California, and the nature of the crime led to a media f...

As these eleven dark and wild stories demonstrate, fairy tales by Victorian women constitute a distinct literary tradition, one startlingly subversive of the society that fostered it. From Anne Thackeray Ritchie’s adaptations of “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood” to Christina Rossetti’s unsettling antifantasies in Speaking Likenesses, these are breathtaking acts of imaginative freedom, by turns amusing, charming, and disturbing. Besides their social and historical implications, the...

Police chief Arly Hanks tries to keep her head when the people of Maggody get UFO fever in this uproarious cozy mystery.Life is so boring in Maggody, Arkansas, population 755, the locals have resorted to reading supermarket tabloids, gobbling up every rumor of wolf men, zombies, and creatures from outer space they can get their hands on. And as the only sane woman in town, Chief of Police Arly Hanks just smiles and nods whenever her neighbors rave about the latest ...

Joan Hess, highly acclaimed author, is known for her wonderful sense of the bizarre and talent for spinning a web of intrigue. She perpetually packs her unique mystery series with murder and mayhem in the not-so-sleepy town of Maggody, Arkansas. Maggody Police Chief Arly Hanks is all shook up when she hears that her mother collapsed during a pilgrimage to Graceland and is in a Memphis hospital. Another member of the tour is pushed to her death from a hotel balcony. A prominent Maggody citi...

Murders plague a university library—and only an intrepid book cataloger can solve them.For the staff of the library at the center of The Widening Stain, it's easy enough to dismiss the death of a woman who fell from a rolling ladder as nothing more than an unfortunate accident. It's more difficult, however, to explain away the strangled corpse of a man found inside a locked room, surrounded by rare and obscure erotica. And that's not all—a valuable manuscr...