Books published by publisher HighBridge Audio

The original American full dramatization as broadcast on National Public Radio. In the ancient world of Middle-earth—a place of elves and dwarves, orcs and wizards, the darkest evil and the brightest good—a hobbit named Frodo Baggins embarks on a perilous quest: to carry the One Ring, ruler of all the Rings of Power, into the shadowy land of Mordor and destroy it in the fires where it was forged.

The "dean of Cold War historians" (New York Times) now presents the definitive account of the global confrontation that dominated the last half of the twentieth century.It began during the Second World War, when American and Soviet troops converged from east and west. Their meeting point-a small German city-became part of a front line that solidified shortly thereafter into an Iron Curtain. It ended in a climactic square-off between Ronald Reagan's America and Gorbachev's Soviet Union. In between were decades of global confrontation, uncertainty, and fear.Drawing on new and often startling information from newly opened Soviet, Eastern European, and Chinese archives, this thrilling account explores the strategic dynamics that drove the Cold War, provides illuminating portraits of its major personalities, and offers much fresh insight into its most crucial events. Riveting, revelatory, and wise, it tells a story whose lessons it is vitally necessary to understand as America once more faces an implacable ideological enemy.

An award-winning memoir and instant New York Times bestseller that goes far beyond its riveting medical mystery, Brain on Fire is the powerful account of one woman's struggle to recapture her identity.When twenty-four-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up alone in a hospital room, strapped to her bed and unable to move or speak, she had no memory of how she'd gotten there. Days earlier, she had been on the threshold of a new, adult life: at the beginning of her first serious relationship and a promising career at a major New York newspaper. Now she was labeled violent, psychotic, a flight risk. What happened?In a swift and breathtaking narrative, Susannah tells the astonishing true story of her descent into madness, her family's inspiring faith in her, and the lifesaving diagnosis that nearly didn't happen. "A fascinating look at the disease that . . . could have cost this vibrant, vital young woman her life" (People), Brain on Fire is an unforgettable exploration of memory and identity, faith and love, and a profoundly compelling tale of survival and perseverance that is destined to become a classic.

The most popular epic of Western culture springs to life in Allen Mandelbaum's magnificent translation.Homer's masterpiece tells the story of Odysseus, the ideal Greek hero, as he travels home to Ithaca after the Trojan War―a journey of ten years and countless thrilling adventures. Rich in Greek folklore and myth, featuring gods and goddesses, monsters and sorceresses, The Odyssey has enchanted listeners around the world for thousands of years. Mandelbaum's robust, romantic, lyrical translation has an openness and immediacy unsurpassed by any other. Read aloud, it is a wonderful way to experience this enduring classic.

Now back in print, a candid and insightful look at an era and a life through the eyes of one of the most remarkable Americans of the twentieth century, First Lady and humanitarian Eleanor Roosevelt.The daughter of one of New York's most influential families, niece of Theodore Roosevelt, and wife of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt witnessed some of the most remarkable decades in modern history, as America transitioned from the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, and the Depression to World War II and the Cold War.A champion of the downtrodden, Eleanor drew on her experience and used her role as First Lady to help those in need. Intimately involved in her husband's political life, from the governorship of New York to the White House, Eleanor eventually became a powerful force of her own, heading women's organizations and youth movements, and battling for consumer rights, civil rights, and improved housing. In the years after FDR's death she became a U.N. Delegate, chairman of the Commission on Human Rights, a newspaper columnist, Democratic party activist, world-traveler, and diplomat devoted to the ideas of liberty and human rights.This single volume biography brings her to life through her own words, illuminating the vanished world she grew up, her life with her political husband, and the postwar years when she worked to broaden cooperation and understanding at home and abroad.

An enchanting biography of the most resonant-and most necessary-chemical element on Earth.Carbon. It's in the fibers in your hair, the timbers in your walls, the food that you eat, and the air that you breathe. It's worth billions as a luxury and half a trillion as a necessity, but there are still mysteries yet to be solved about the element that can be both diamond and coal. Where does it come from, what does it do, and why, above all, does life need it?With poetic storytelling, earth scientist Robert Hazen leads us on a global journey through the origin and evolution of life's most ubiquitous element. The story unfolds in four movements-Earth, Air, Fire, and Water-and transports us through 14 billion years of cosmic history.From the archives of Harvard to the cliffs of Scotland and into the precious metal mines of Namibia, Symphony in C is a sweeping chronicle of carbon: the most essential element on Earth.

Just in time for the holidays: a collection of beloved Christmas stories and writings that every family will cherish.One of the many joys of Christmas comes from the traditions associated with it. Bestselling author Caroline Kennedy drew on her own family's traditions to create this charming collection of favorite stories, poems, and writings that celebrate the holiday spirit.In addition to excerpts and full texts of contemporary and classic writings, Family Christmas features a letter Caroline Kennedy herself wrote to Santa Claus as well as a letter written to President Kennedy from a little girl concerned about Santa Claus. The introduction, written and read by Caroline, relates the importance of the holiday to her family, and shares how the literature in this collection is an essential part of her own tradition.This warm and personal collection will delight all who make it a part of their own family Christmas.

America's northern border is the world's longest international boundary, yet it remains obscure even to Americans. Travel writer Porter Fox spent two years exploring its length by canoe, freighter, and car-and in Northland, he delivers the little-known history of the region and a riveting account of his travels. Fox follows explorer Samuel de Champlain's adventures; recounts the rise and fall of the iron, wheat, and timber industries; crosses the Great Lakes on a freighter; and tracks America's fur traders through the Boundary Waters. Northland is full of colorful characters (railroad tycoon James J. Hill, Chief Red Cloud of the Lakota Sioux, Captain Meriwether Lewis) and extraordinary landscapes (Glacier National Park, the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, Montana's Medicine Line country). Throughout, Fox weaves in his encounters with residents, border guards, Indian activists, and militia leaders to give a dynamic portrait of the northland wracked by climate change, water wars, and heightened border security.

Fourteen-year-old Lily Owens lost her beloved mother when she was only four—under tragic circumstances clouded by time and secrecy. She later found a fiercely protective "stand-in," her abusive father's outspoken housekeeper, Rosaleen. Ignoring differences in age and color—and the fact that racial hatred seethed during the summer of 1964 in rural South Carolina—these two unlikely companions set off on a seemingly aimless pilgrimage that ends at the home of a trio of eccentric bee-keeping black sisters.Lily tells her remarkable tale of longing and love in an idiom and accent heard far south of the Mason-Dixon Line, but the lessons learned during her odyssey into the world of bees and their "secret life" are universal and everlasting.In her debut novel, Sue Monk Kidd proves herself adept both at storytelling and at creating characters who are simultaneously outlandish and credible—in other words, worthy to join the ranks of such first-rate Southern stylists as Kaye Gibbons, Anne Rivers Siddons, and Ellen Gilchrist.

First published in 1949 and praised in the New York Times Book Review as "a trenchant book, full of vigor and bite," A Sand County Almanac combines some of the finest nature writing since Thoreau with an outspoken and highly ethical regard for America's relationship to the land.As the forerunner to such important books as Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire, and Robert Finch's The Primal Place, this classic work remains as relevant today as it was nearly sixty years ago.