Caribbean Fiction

Listeners can set sail for adventure with this full-length retelling of the live-action Disney film. They'll follow every swashbuckling step as a brave young man teams up with a high-seas scoundrel to rescue the woman he loves from the clutches of a band of cursed pirates.

Corinne LaMer defeated the wicked jumbie Severine months ago, but things haven't exactly gone back to normal in her Caribbean island home. Everyone knows Corinne is half-jumbie, and many of her neighbors treat her with mistrust. When local children begin to go missing, snatched from the beach and vanishing into wells, suspicious eyes turn to Corinne. To rescue the missing children and clear her own name, Corinne goes deep into the ocean to find Mama D'Leau, the dangerous jumbie who rules the sea.

Self Help was published in 1859 by Samuel Smiles. It has been called "the bible of mid-Victorian liberalism". Self Help sold 20,000 copies within one year of its publication. By the time of Smiles' death in 1904, it had sold over a quarter of a million. Self-Help elevated Smiles to celebrity status; almost overnight, he became a leading pundit and much-consulted guru.

Things in the Middle Florida Keys aren’t as idyllic as they seem. If one looks closely, there’s a layer of dirt just below the surface. The butt-ugly kind of dirt that’s hard to get off. Things move slowly in the Keys—locals call it island time—but there are some for whom it seems that time is at a standstill; whose clocks revolve only around the tides, fish migrations, and the rising and setting of the sun and moon. Jesse McDermitt remembers the Keys the way he’d first found them as a young man.

Canadian Jordan Haines is on vacation in the Caribbean. After the summer he's had, a couple months of fun in the sun is just what the doctor ordered. What he didn't count on was meeting a beautiful woman on a private beach - or falling hard. Crown Princess Astrid of San Majoria seems to lead a charmed life. Just like everyone, there's tragedy in her past, but she lives in a palace, has aides to do everything - and paparazzi hounding her private moments. Her sanctuary on her family's beach is broken one day when a tired windsurfer takes refuge in her cove - and works his way into her heart.

In this fourth installment of the Jesse McDermitt series, Jesse faces an antagonist unlike any he's faced before, post-traumatic stress. A friend's son, who was dishonorably discharged from the Corps, is suffering from nightmares, brought on by the incident that was the catalyst for his discharge. With Jesse's help he learns to cope with his demons and gets his discharge overturned, so that he may once again serve the country he loves.

"Brother, you have often declared that you would not end your days in slavery. I see no possible way in which you can escape with us; and now, brother, you are on a steamboat where there is some chance for you to escape to a land of liberty. I beseech you not to let us hinder you. If we cannot get our liberty, we do not wish to be the means of keeping you from a land of freedom."

When the stones of her house begin to rattle and shift and call out mysterious messages to her in the middle of the night, Pauline Sinclair, age ninety-nine, knows she will not make it to her one-hundredth birthday. She has lived a modest life in Mason Hall, a rural Jamaican village, educating herself with stolen books, raising her two children, surviving by becoming a successful ganja farmers in the area, and experiencing both deep passion and true loss with her beloved baby father, Clive. Behind this seemingly benign façade, however, Miss Pauline has buried many secrets.

With great originality and wit, Orwell unfolds his views on subjects ranging from a revaluation of Charles Dickens to the nature of Socialism, from a comic yet profound discussion of naughty seaside postcards to a spirited defense of English cooking. Displaying an almost unrivalled mastery of English plain prose, Orwell’s essays created a unique literary manner from the process of thinking aloud and continue to challenge, move, and entertain.

A bittersweet reunion. Time running out. Will forever slip from their fingers? Nina Marie Robinson hates the idea she’ll end her life with one big regret. A motivational speaker who encourages women to celebrate their best lives, she’s still reeling from a medical emergency that revealed an incurable cancer diagnosis. And with only thirty days to live, she gathers her courage and asks her college sweetheart to join her on a vacation in the Bahamas. Andrew McCall’s dream is within his grasp. On the verge of achieving his lifetime goal of tenure, the assistant professor is thrown off ...

Jesse McDermitt is back, just as he promised. This time, he is thrust into the heart of the Florida Panhandle's Tate's Hell State Forest, where the tranquil surroundings belie a dangerous secret—a network of clandestine meth labs hidden against the backdrop of the Forgotten Coast’s natural beauty. Jesse, a retired Marine turned charter boat captain, has brought his family to Apalachicola “for the oysters.” But being who he is, the leisurely cruise soon spins into a gripping quest to unravel the truth behind the illicit operations threatening the region.

Finnegans Wake is the greatest challenge in 20th-century literature. Who is Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker? And what did he get up to in Phoenix Park? And what did Anna Livia Plurabelle have to say about it? In the rich nighttime and the language of dreams, here are history, anecdote, myth, folk tale and, above all, a wondrous sense of humor, colored by a clear sense of humanity. In this exceptional reading by the Irish actor Barry McGovern, with Marcella Riordan, the world of the Wake is more accessible than ever before.

Meeting by chance at a gambling hall in Europe, the separate lives of Daniel Deronda and Gwendolen Harleth are immediately intertwined. Daniel, an Englishman of uncertain parentage, becomes Gwendolyn's redeemer as she finds herself drawn to his spiritual and altruistic nature after a loveless marriage. But Daniel's path was already set when he rescued a young Jewess from suicide.

Jesse McDermitt lives alone on an isolated island in the Florida Keys where he runs a charter fishing business. Retired from the Marine Corps for six years, he wants nothing more than to relax, fish, dive and enjoy the laid back lifestyle of the islands. Russ, his former Platoon Sergeant and old friend, dies unexpectedly in a mysterious scuba diving accident and Jesse becomes suspicious.

Zane Obispo spends every day exploring the sleeping volcano in his backyard. "The Beast", as he calls it, is the one place where he can escape other kids, who make fun of him because he has a limp and walks with a cane. After a plane crashes into The Beast, a mysterious girl named Brooks shows up at Zane's doorstep, insisting that they meet at the volcano, where she will reveal a terrible secret. Zane agrees. Brooks tells him that the volcano is actually a centuries-old prison for the Mayan god of death, whose destiny is directly tied to Zane's.

A lifelong friend finds something deep in the Everglades that is so very odd, that when he calls Jesse McDermitt, at first the semi-retired former special operator is in total disbelief. But he is also very intrigued, and the duo set out on another adventure reminiscent of their childhood days. But their youthful quest had been all about fun and make-believe. This one was real, waiting nearly a century to be discovered.

Originally published in 1778, Evelina is Frances Burney's first and most beloved novel. It was a landmark in the development of the novel of manners and went on to influence such enduringly popular authors as Jane Austen. By turns hilarious and grim, witty and lyrical, the story follows young Evelina as she leaves the seclusion of her country home and enters into late eighteenth-century London society - both its pleasures and its dangers. Life in eighteenth-century England is vividly rendered as Evelina is educated in the ways of the world and, eventually, love.

On a kayak outing with friends, Jesse's daughter finds and rescues a manatee suffering from respiratory problems. The red tide has returned, and fish are dying by the thousands, along with dolphins, manatees, and sea birds. The algal bloom is a naturally occurring phenomenon, but this time it's much worse. Theories abound; it's something left over from the previous spring's coronavirus outbreak, it's caused by pollution, someone is intentionally creating a super-algae....But there's something far more sinister at work, and it's up to Jesse to find out what it is and put a stop to it.

Paradise isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. Few people know this as well as Jesse McDermitt, retired Marine and former government operative. In the aftermath of an intense mission in coastal Mexico, Jesse wants nothing more than to get back to his boat; to just sail away and forget all about the firefight and his warrior past. Jesse is forced to don the warrior’s mask once again. This time to catch a ghoulish killer who is stalking the villages and jungles outside Belize City.

Jesse McDermitt has returned to the Florida Keys. But things in the islands are different now. The locals are worried, but nobody can explain why. A sense of foreboding hangs in the humid July air. One of the locals, an investment banker, is waiting tables at the Rusty Anchor Bar and Grill. He seems a shell of the man he used to be—a hollow man whose fortune and wife are gone. Something very sinister is going on—Jesse smells it. He’s usually very good at rooting out the source of a problem, but is stumped this time.