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Endling: A Novel
By Maria Reva. 2025
DAISY audio (Direct to player), DAISY audio (Zip)
Humourous fiction, Serious and literary fiction, Family stories
Human-narrated audio
In the absurdist literary tradition of George Saunders and Percival Everett comes a brilliant debut novel by a writer who…
is "bang-on brilliant" (Miriam Toews), about a biologist in Ukraine battling to save the country’s snail species from the brink of extinction.One of Literary Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2025 • One of 49th Shelf's Most Anticipated 2025 Spring FictionUkraine, 2022. Yeva is a loner and a maverick scientist who lives out of her mobile lab. She scours the country’s forests and valleys, trying and failing to breed rare snails while her relatives urge her to give up, settle down and finally start a family of her own. What they don’t know: Yeva already dates plenty of men—not for love, but to fund her work—entertaining Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours believing they’ll find docile brides untainted by feminism and modernity. Nastia and her sister, Solomiya, are also entangled in the booming marriage industry, posing as a hopeful bride and her translator while secretly searching for their missing mother—a flamboyant protestor who vanished after years of fierce activism against the romance tours. So begins a journey of a lifetime across hundreds of miles: three angry women, a truckful of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a last-of-his-kind snail with one final shot at perpetuating his species. But their plans come to a screeching halt as Russia invades. In a stunningly ambitious and achingly raw metafictional spiral, Endling brilliantly balances horror and comedy, drawing on Reva’s own experiences as a Ukrainian expat tracking her family’s delicate dance of survival behind enemy lines. As fiction and reality collide on the page, Reva probes the hard truths of war: What stories must we tell ourselves to survive? To carry on with the routines of life under military occupation? And for those of us watching from overseas: can our sense of normalcy and security ever be restored, or have they always been a fragile illusion? Endling is a tour de force from an author on the cutting edge of fiction, weaving a story of love, loss, humor, and devastation that only she can tell.See Less
Julius Julius: A Novel
By Aurora Stewart de Peña. 2025
DAISY audio (Direct to player), DAISY audio (Zip)
Humourous fiction, Ghost and horror stories, Serious and literary fiction
Human-narrated audio
With biting wit, Aurora Stewart de Peña satirizes the creative industry she’s spent years in. From the people who brought…
you the invention of advertising comes Julius Julius, a rambling architectural wonder, outpost of the very first ad man of ancient Pompeii, built on the backs of generations of creative survivors who just want to lie on the floor of a conference room and cry about the lumber account without being sexually harassed.Welcome to the world’s oldest advertising agency, where ghosts control the board room AC, an ancient executive assistant runs a cave full of thousand year old billboards, and there are bones in the walls.In a trio of voices from different time periods, we move through the mythical Agency, interrogating the process of stoking desire for a living. We meet the Senior Brand Anthropologist, who’s being surprised by dirty bars of Irish Spring she can’t remember buying, the Creative Director, whose ascent involved an ad campaign starring his dead best friend, and the Account Supervisor, whose only crime is not being a genius. (But the Fisherman Jack Tuna Campaign was her idea, despite what it says on the awards submissions.) Stewart de Peña’s debut novel reveals the cracks in the veneer of the creative industries, and the crisis of consciousness underneath in a novel full of compassion, humour, and blonde sausage dogs.
Endling: A Novel
By Maria Reva. 2025
Braille (Contracted), Electronic braille (Contracted), DAISY Audio (Direct to Player), DAISY Audio (Zip), DAISY text (Direct to player), DAISY text (Zip), Word (Zip), ePub (Zip)
Family stories, Serious and literary fiction, Humourous fiction
Synthetic audio, Automated braille
In the absurdist literary tradition of George Saunders and Percival Everett comes a brilliant debut novel by a writer who…
is "bang-on brilliant" (Miriam Toews), about a biologist in Ukraine battling to save the country&’s snail species from the brink of extinction. One of Literary Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2025 • One of 49th Shelf's Most Anticipated 2025 Spring FictionUkraine, 2022. Yeva is a loner and a maverick scientist who lives out of her mobile lab. She scours the country&’s forests and valleys, trying and failing to breed rare snails, while her relatives urge her to settle down and finally start a family of her own. What they don't know: Yeva already dates plenty of men—not for love, but to fund her work—entertaining Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours believing they'll find docile brides untainted by feminism and modernity. Nastia and her sister, Solomiya, are also entangled in the booming marriage industry, posing as a hopeful bride and her translator while secretly searching for their missing mother, who vanished after years of fierce activism against the romance tours. Together they embark on the journey of a lifetime across hundreds of miles: three angry women, a truckful of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a last-of-his-kind snail with one final shot at perpetuating his species. But their plans come to a screeching halt when Russia invades. In a stunningly ambitious and achingly raw metafictional spiral, Endling brilliantly balances horror and comedy, drawing on Reva's own experiences as a Ukrainian expat tracking her family's delicate dance of survival behind enemy lines. As fiction and reality collide on the page, Reva probes the hard truths of war: What stories must we tell ourselves to survive? To carry on with the routines of life under military occupation? And for those of us watching from overseas: Can our sense of normalcy and security ever be restored, or have they always been a fragile illusion? Endling is a tour de force from an author who weaves a story of love, loss, humor, and hope that only she can tell.
Julius Julius: A Novel
By Aurora Stewart de Peña. 2025
Braille (Contracted), Electronic braille (Contracted), DAISY Audio (Direct to Player), DAISY Audio (Zip), DAISY text (Direct to player), DAISY text (Zip), Word (Zip), ePub (Zip)
Ghost and horror stories, Serious and literary fiction
Synthetic audio, Automated braille
With biting wit, Aurora Stewart de Peña satirizes the creative industry she&’s spent years in. From the people who brought…
you the invention of advertising comes Julius Julius, a rambling architectural wonder, outpost of the very first ad man of ancient Pompeii, built on the backs of generations of creative survivors who just want to lie on the floor of a conference room and cry about the lumber account without being sexually harassed.Welcome to the world&’s oldest advertising agency, where ghosts control the board room AC, an ancient executive assistant runs a cave full of thousand year old billboards, and there are bones in the walls.In a trio of voices from different time periods, we move through the mythical Agency, interrogating the process of stoking desire for a living. We meet the Senior Brand Anthropologist, who&’s being surprised by dirty bars of Irish Spring she can&’t remember buying, the Creative Director, whose ascent involved an ad campaign starring his dead best friend, and the Account Supervisor, whose only crime is not being a genius. (But the Fisherman Jack Tuna Campaign was her idea, despite what it says on the awards submissions.) Stewart de Peña&’s debut novel reveals the cracks in the veneer of the creative industries, and the crisis of consciousness underneath in a novel full of compassion, humour, and blonde sausage dogs.