Joanna Theiss is a lawyer who lives and works in Washington, D.C. She is a wannabe English major whose love of books and audiobooks runs in the family (her mom is also a reviewer for SoundCommentary.com).
Tue, Jun 01, 2010
Paolo Giordano won Italy's prestigious literary award, the Premio Strega, for The Solitude of Prime Numbers, his debut novel. Just twenty-seven years old, he is a professional physicist and is currently working on a doctorate in particle physics.
Tue, Jun 01, 2010
Carol Goodman is the author of The Lake of Dead Languages, The Seduction of Water, The Drowning Tree, The Ghost Orchid, The Sonnet Lover, and The Night Villa. The Seduction of Water won the Hammett Prize, and others of her novels have been nominated for the Dublin/IMPAC Award and the Mary Higgins Clark Award. Her fiction has been translated into eight languages. She lives in New York State with her family.
Thu, Jul 01, 2010
Timothy R. Pauketat is a professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His books include Chiefdoms and Other Archaeological Delusions and Ancient Cahokia and the Mississippians. He lives in Illinois.
Thu, Jul 01, 2010
STEPHANIE COWELL is the author of Nicholas Cooke: Actor, Soldier, Physician, Priest; The Physician of London (American Book Award 1996) and The Players: A Novel of the Young Shakespeare. She is the also the author of Marrying Mozart, which was translated into seven languages and has been optioned for a movie.
Sun, Aug 01, 2010
Jesse Kellerman is the author of three previous novels, The Genius, Trouble, and Sunstroke. His plays have also won several awards, including the 2003 Princess Grace Award, given to America's most promising young playwright. He lives in La Jolla, California.
Sun, Aug 01, 2010
WALLACE STEGNER (1903-1993) was the author of many books of fiction and non-fiction, including the National Book Award-winning The Spectator Bird (1976) and Crossing to Safety. Angle of Repose won the Pulitzer Prize in 1971.
Sun, Aug 01, 2010
Born in Peru and raised in Chile, Isabel Allende is the author of eight novels, including, most recently, Zorro, Portrait in Sepia, and Daughter of Fortune. She has also written a collection of stories; three memoirs, including My Invented Country and Paula; and a trilogy of children's novels. Her books have been translated into more than twenty-seven languages and have become bestsellers across four continents. In 2004 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Isabel Allende lives in California.
Wed, Sep 01, 2010
A native of Memphis, HAMPTON SIDES is an award-winning editor of Outside and the author of the bestselling histories Blood and Thunder and Ghost Soldiers.
Fri, Oct 01, 2010
ROBERT K. WITTMAN spent twenty years as an FBI special agent. He created and was senior investigator for the bureau's Art Crime Team. Today, he is president of the international art security firm Robert Wittman Inc. JOHN SHIFFMAN is an investigative reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer. He has won numerous writing awards and was a 2009 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Fri, Oct 01, 2010
Doris Lessing, winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature, is one of the most celebrated and distinguished writers of our time. Born in Iran in 1919, she is the recipient of the Prix Medicis for The Golden Notebook, 1976; an Honorary degree, Harvard University, 1995; the Companion of Honour, 1999; the Prince of Asturias Prize in Literature, 2001; the David Cohen British Literature Prize, 2001; the ST Dupont Golden PEN Award, 2002. She lives in north London.
Fri, Oct 01, 2010
Mark Wakely is a Sydney-based writer, and a journalist with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National. His first book, 'Dream Home'--a reflection on domestic architecture and the meaning of home--was short-listed for the 2004 NSW (Australia) Premier's Literary Award for non-fiction. Grant Cartwright is an award-winning actor who has performed extensively in Australia with the Melbourne Theatre Company, Sydney Theatre Company, The Victorian Arts Center, La Mama Theatre and many others. A 2005 graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, Grant recently returned from New York whre he performed with the Manhattan Repertory Theatre, and the 45th Street Theater.
Mon, Nov 01, 2010
Jonathan Franzen is the author of three novels—The Corrections, The Twenty-Seventh City, and Strong Motion—and two works of nonfiction, How to Be Alone and The Discomfort Zone, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He lives in New York City and Santa Cruz, California.
Wed, Dec 01, 2010
Nadifa Mohamed was born in Hargeisa, Somalia, in 1981 to a merchant marine father and a mother from a politically active family, and was trapped in exile when civil war erupted. She studied history and politics at Oxford, and has worked as a film researcher and scriptwriter.
Fri, Jan 01, 2010
David Sedaris is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Public Radio International's This American Life. He is the author of the books When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Naked, and Barrel Fever.
Fri, Jan 01, 2010
Gary Shteyngart was born in Leningrad in 1972 and came to the United States seven years later. His debut novel, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. His second novel, Absurdistan, was named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review, as well as a best book of the year by Time, The Washington Post Book World, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, and many other publications. He has been selected as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, and Travel + Leisure and his books have been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in New York City.
Tue, Feb 01, 2011
WALLACE STEGNER (1903-1993) was the author of many books of fiction and non-fiction, including the National Book Award-winning The Spectator Bird (1976) and Crossing to Safety. Angle of Repose won the Pulitzer Prize in 1971.
Tue, Feb 01, 2011
Fritz Leiber, who died in 1992, was one of the most important SF and fantasy writers of the century. The Big Time is his most famous SF novel. "[His] awards for fantasy included the 1975 Grand Master of Fantasy Award, the 1976 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, the 1981 Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America, 6 Hugos, 4 Nebulas, and about 20 other awards.
Tue, Mar 01, 2011
The Waiter waited his first table at age thirty-one. In 2004 the author started his wildly popular blog, www.WaiterRant.net, winning the 2006 "Best Writing in a Weblog" Bloggie Award. He is interviewed regularly by major media as the voice for many of the two million waiters in the United States. The Waiter lives in the New York metropolitan area.
Tue, Mar 01, 2011
Spinning fantastical tales for adults and children alike -- from the hit kids' series The Hamlet Chronicles to the decidedly more grown-up adventures played out in Wicked and Mirror, Mirror, Gregory Maguire has cast a potent literary spell on readers of all ages.
Fri, Apr 01, 2011
Anne Brontë (1820–1849), a British novelist and poet, was the youngest member of the famous Brontë literary family. She wrote a volume of poetry with her sisters, Charlotte and Emily, entitled Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, and she is the author of the novels Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Anne's two novels, written in a sharp and ironic style, are completely different from the romanticism followed by her more famous sisters. She wrote in a realistic, rather than a romantic style.
Fri, Apr 01, 2011
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was a major twentieth-century British author, a great novelist and essayist, and a key figure in literary history as a feminist and a modernist. In 1917, she and her husband founded the Hogarth Press, which published the work of T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, and Katherine Mansfield, as well as the earliest translations of Sigmund Freud. Her major novels include Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, The Waves, The Years, Between the Acts, Night and Day, Jacob's Room, A Room of One's Own, and Three Guineas. The Voyage Out is Virginia Woolf’s first published novel.
Sun, May 01, 2011
Edgar Wallace ( 1875-1932) was a prolific writer with more than 170 published Books. Wallace is also credited as the most filmed author – his work has appeared in over 160 TV programs and films.
Sun, May 01, 2011
George Eliot was the nom de plume of Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880). She began her literary career as a translator and later was editor of the Westminster Review. In 1857 she published Scenes of Clerical Life, the first of eight novels she would publish under the name George Eliot. “She lived one of the most sexually unconventional and intellectually independent lives of her time, yet her works demonstrate a deep moral conviction concerning the virtue of integrity and the reward of virtue that would sit comfortably with many Anglican parsons.”---Roy McMillan, Naxos Audio.
Wed, Jun 01, 2011
The Paris Wife is a fictional account of the life of Hadley Richardson, Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, from when she first met Ernest in Chicago in the 1920s ….The Roaring Twenties are in hectic motion: the gin is flowing in Chicago, despite Prohibition, as is the absinthe in the bohemian cafes of Paris.
Wed, Jun 01, 2011
The main character of Townie is a product of the streets…. There is no doubt that Dubus tells his story better than anyone else could, both in the prose and in the narration.
Wed, Jun 01, 2011
Gormenghast is abridged and the second in the series, but its simple themes and straightforward plot meant that these factors did not draw away from this colorful work of fantasy
Fri, Jul 01, 2011
Open City is like walking into a crowded room, where hundreds of people are speaking at the same time, but through all of the chatter there is a persistent whisper that you can just barely hear, until everyone stops speaking at once.
Tue, Aug 02, 2011
Ann Packer’s Swim Back to Me contains six stories, two of which are openly linked, the rest linked by Packer’s distinctive narrative voice: man or woman, young or old, her narrators tend to be a little timid, either by nature or by circumstance, and are generally led by a more charismatic, exuberant force into action, usually to their consternation.
Mon, Aug 01, 2011
Charlotte Parry is an accomplished reader, and her vocalization of Ellen adds to the lightness of Exit the Actress: young Ellen sounds naïve and sweet, while the Ellen of some eight years later sounds much more world-weary.
Mon, Aug 01, 2011
David Aaron Baker hits the mark with his narration of The Tragedy of Arthur—he is self-deprecating and a little bashful just like our conflicted protagonist, and his gruff, gritty narration as Arthur’s aging, retired convict father is heart-wrenchingly real.
Mon, Aug 01, 2011
Experienced actor and director, David Colacci seems to be another American with a zest for Italy: his pronunciation of Venetian place names and characters, as well as his voicing of the occasional Italian word or phrase sound wholly authentic.
Thu, Sep 01, 2011
Steve West, a British actor, has a beautiful voice that can turn chilling in an instant; his sickly, breathy vocalizations of the ghost made my skin crawl on a sunny afternoon.
Thu, Sep 01, 2011
We seem to love fiction that explores the idea of female criminals, especially the wildly insane or seductively murderous.
Sat, Oct 01, 2011
“A critically acclaimed actor and An Audie award winning narrator, Dion Graham reads like he is performing with his whole body, as if he were on stage.”
Sat, Oct 01, 2011
---“Travel to foreign places, especially by one’s self and on a budget, is an endlessly romantic idea: the freedom, the ability to be whoever you want and to do whatever you wish, the adventure of having to figure it out as you go along.”
Thu, Dec 01, 2011
“Many of Remembering Laughter’s characters are immigrants, including the tormented Scots about whom the story centers, and narrator Cassandra Campbell reads all of these characters with flawless accents.”
Thu, Dec 01, 2011
...it is a delight to come back to Robert Louis Stevenson’s original story and to be disturbed and revolted anew by Stevenson’s mild-mannered Dr. Jekyll and his horrifying alter-ego, Mr. Hyde.
Fri, Dec 02, 2011
“The novelist’s and storyteller's obvious fondness for one another, and the resilence and charm of Enait, make In the Sea There Are Crocodiles a captivating read, and Enait a modern hero.”
Thu, Dec 01, 2011
“...Maine plays with a theme that faces all women, not just the Kellehers: the pressure to raise families instead of cultivating careers, and the bitterness that often follows.”
Thu, Dec 01, 2011
While Ten Thousand Saints is about growing up, it is also reminds us. . . that each one of us is a brain, a jock, a princess, and a criminal.
Sat, Jan 01, 2011
“...fascinating as a glimpse into the mind of a successful poet before that success really hit.”
Sat, Jan 01, 2011
“...like [Patti Smith’s] music, Just Kids is poetic, edgy, and sometimes plain weird, focusing on the exciting and confusing time when she and her lover and best friend, Robert Mapplethorpe, were just kids.
Wed, Feb 01, 2012
“Narrator Myra Lucretia Taylor’s throaty, musical voice hits the perfect note in Lord of Misrule. She practically sings out the feelings of these mesmerizing and fascinating characters.
Thu, Mar 01, 2012
In Cline’s sadly believable version of the 2040s, the recession of the early twenty-first century never ended, nor did the energy crisis, and so without the means to purchase fuel or find jobs, the majority of the U.S. population has crammed itself into metropolitan areas, leading to intense overcrowding and pervasive poverty.
Thu, Mar 01, 2012
The black tulip has come to be synonymous with the concept of artificial demand: that anything, if arbitrarily deemed rare or valuable enough, can become so expensive that it’s real worth is forgotten.
Thu, Mar 01, 2012
“Anita Desai’s The Artist of Disappearance, captures refined longing in all of its lonely, repressed majesty.”
Sun, Apr 01, 2012
“Narrator Kimberly Farr reads Blue Nights with clarity, dignity, and a bit of droll humor, thus capturing Didion’s voice in this lovely memoir exactly.”
Sun, Apr 01, 2012
“In The Candy Machine, Tom Feiling, an English journalist and filmmaker, explores cocaine’s trade routes, detailing the environmental, economic and political problems that the war on drugs has wrought in South and Central America, the Caribbean, the United States and Europe.”
Sun, Apr 01, 2012
“The Orphan Master’s Son is brought to life by the powerful contributions of three readers....”
Tue, May 01, 2012
“The audiobook is read by the author, which is fitting for this work because it could easily be mistaken for a memoir (though it is billed as a novel)....”
Tue, May 01, 2012
“Ackerley’s superb writing and grasp of the range of human feeling towards animals, recommends My Dog Tulip even to those largely impervious to the charms of the dogs among us.”
Tue, May 01, 2012
“The Great Leader, A Faux Mystery, by Jim Harrison, has the earmarks of a traditional mystery, especially the grizzled, semi-retired detective, on the trail of one last bad guy, but this novel is aptly titled a "faux mystery" because it heads into territory which few traditional mysteries would dare walk.”
Tue, May 01, 2012
“Narrator Wanda McCaddon gives her usual polished performance in her reading, succeeding in enhancing Barry’s sad but lovely tale....”
Tue, May 01, 2012
“Reader Gildart Jackson, with his deep voice and English accent, is perfectly suited to Just My Type because he is able to introduce the right amount of mock seriousness and whimsy to this playful work.”
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