Suzanne Toren

"Nobody could accuse Frank Malloy of being a snob. As a former Irish Catholic policeman, he was, in fact, the kind of person snobs usually looked down on. He might be a millionaire now, but lots of people still looked down on him because he'd always be Irish no matter how much money he had. This was why he felt a little guilty about feeling snobbish about the prospective client who had just been escorted into his office. Hugh Breedlove, according...

On his deathbed, Dr. Joanne Intrator's father poses two unsettling questions: "Are you tough enough? Do they know who you are?" Joanne soon realizes that these haunting questions relate to a center-city Berlin building at 16 Wallstrasse that the Nazis ripped away from her family in 1938. But a decade is to pass before she will fully come to grasp why her father threw down the gauntlet as he did. Repeatedly, Joanne's restitution quest brings...

A thoughtful, gleeful encyclopedia of emotions, both broad and outrageously specific, from throughout history and around the world. How do you feel today? Is your heart fluttering in anticipation? Your stomach tight with nerves? Are you falling in love? Feeling a bit miffed? Do you have the heebie-jeebies? Are you antsy with iktsuarpok or filled with nakhes? Recent research suggests there are only six basic emotions. But if that makes you feel uneasy,...

This audiobook narrated by Suzanne Toren takes you on an amazing journey into the hidden realm of nature's sounds The natural world teems with remarkable conversations, many beyond human hearing range. Scientists are using groundbreaking digital technologies to uncover these astonishing sounds, revealing vibrant communication among our fellow creatures across the Tree of Life. At once meditative and scientific, The Sounds of Life shares fascinating...

Paper, kitchen garbage, rubber, hair, fat, rags, and bones-the Nazi empire demanded its population collect anything that could be reused. Citizens conjured up schemes to squeeze value from waste or invent new purposes for defunct or spent material, no matter the cost to people or the environment. As WWII dragged on, rescued loot-much of it waste-clogged transport routes and piled up in warehouses across Europe. Historicizing the much-championed ideal...

With the publication of Essay on the Principle of Population and its projection of food shortages in the face of ballooning populations, British theorist Thomas Robert Malthus secured a leading role in modern political and economic thought. In this startling new interpretation, Deborah Valenze reveals how canonical readings of Malthus fail to acknowledge his narrow understanding of what constitutes food production. Valenze returns to the eighteenth-century...

Cassoulet Confessions is an enthralling memoir by award-winning food and travel writer Sylvie Bigar that reveals how a simple journalistic assignment sparked a culinary obsession and transcended into a quest for identity. Set in the stunning southern French countryside, this honest and poignant memoir conveys hunger for authentic food and a universal hunger for home. In Cassoulet Confessions, Sylvie travels across the Atlantic from her home in New...

Set in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, Wait Till Next Year is Doris Kearns Goodwin's touching memoir of growing up in love with her family and baseball. She re-creates the postwar era, when the corner store was a place to share stories and neighborhoods were equally divided between Dodger, Giant, and Yankee fans. We meet the people who most influenced Goodwin's early life: her mother, who taught her the joy of books but whose debilitating illness...

A fascinating account of how Shakespeare's works were understood and valued by listeners and writers from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, before Shakespeare's biography came to dominate readings of his plays and poetry. For almost two centuries after his death, Shakespeare had no biography. The makings of one were not available. No chronology had been devised by which to coordinate the events in his life with the writing of his works....

How to Do Things is a fascinating window into life in early 20th century America, and was the first book to collect centuries of practical information, neighborly wisdom, and generational knowledge and compile it into one comprehensive volume. William Campbell is part outdoorsman, part writer. He resides on a 100-acre farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains with his wife and an Australian Shepherd named Tonto. He spends his days hunting, fishing, and reading...