Sound Commentary - Your Wise Guide to Audiobooks and Audio Book Reviews

*Murder in the High Himalayas by Jonathan Green

Jonathan Green is an award-winning journalist and reporter who has had demanding assignments in West Africa, Sudan, Borneo and Alaska. His writing has been published in major publications, including the New York Times and Esquire.

Possession In Death by J.D. Robb

Nora Roberts is the bestselling author of more than 150 novels, including High Noon, Angels Fall, Blue Smoke, and Northern Lights. She is also the author of the bestselling futuristic suspense series written under the pen name J. D. Robb. There are more than 280 million copies of her books in print.

The Town that Food Saved by Ben Hewitt

Ben Hewitt was born in northwestern Vermont and raised in a two-room cabin; his father was a poet and his mother worked on a nearby dairy farm. He now lives with his wife and two sons on a diversified, 40-acre farm in Vermont, where they produce dairy, beef, pork, lamb, vegetables, and berries. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, including Best Life, Men's Journal, National Geographic Adventure, the New York Times Magazine, Outside, and Skiing.

The Lazarus Vault by Tom Harper

Tom Harper (real name Edwin Thomas) won the CWA debut award in 2001 for The Blighted Cliffs. He also wrote The Mosaic of Shadows, Knights of the Cross, Siege of Heaven, Lost Temple and Book of Secrets.

Truth by Peter Temple

Katie Up and Down the Hall by Glenn Plaskin

Glenn Plaskin, a resident of New York City, is surrounded by more than 300 dogs in his Battery Park City complex, a neighborhood that inspired this book and the remarkable events in it.

Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd

William Boyd is the author of ten novels, including A Good Man in Africa, winner of the Whitbread Award and the Somerset Maugham Award; An Ice-Cream War, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Brazzaville Beach, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; Any Human Heart, winner of the Prix Jean Monnet; and Restless, winner of the Costa Novel of the Year.

Worth Dying For by Lee Child

LEE CHILD is the author of fifteen Jack Reacher thrillers, including Persuader, The Enemy, One Shot, and The Hard Way, 61 Hours, Gone Tomorrow, Bad Luck and Trouble, and Nothing to Lose. His debut, Killing Floor, won both the Anthony and the Barry awards for Best First Mystery, and The Enemy won both the Barry and Nero awards for Best Novel. A native of England and a former television director, Child lives in New York City, where he is at work on his next thriller.

*The Silent Country by Di Morrissey

World traveler, journalist and television host, Di Morrissey is a popular Australian author of more than 18 best selling books.

Vortex by Troy Denning

Troy Denning is the author of Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Abyss; Star Wars: Tatooine Ghost; Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Star by Star; the Star Wars: Dark Nest trilogy: The Joiner King, The Unseen Queen, and The Swarm War; and Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Tempest, Inferno, and Invincible—as well as Pages of Pain, Beyond the High Road, The Summoning, and many other novels. He is also a former game designer and editor.

Free Agent by Jeremy Duns

Jeremy Duns is a journalist who grew up mainly in Africa and Asia. His work has been published in MOJO, The Independent, Time Out, and Japanese Playboy

Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff

Stacy Schiff is the author of Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Saint-Exupéry, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; and A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, winner of the George Washington Book Prize and the Ambassador Book Award. Schiff has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. The recipient of an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she lives in New York City.

The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay by Beverly Jensen

Beverly Jensen earned an MFA in drama from Southern Methodist University. After her death in 2003, her story "Wake" was published in the New England Review, included in The Best American Short Stories of 2007, and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

The first novel of the fantasy classic Gormenghast trilogy (as Titus Groan, Gormenghast, and Titus Alone are slightly inaccurately known) this novel was published in 1946,

Vlad by C.C. Humphreys

C.C. Humphreys is the author of eight previous novels including THE FRENCH EXECUTIONER, which was runner-up for the CWA STEEL DAGGER. His series of Jack Absolute novels have been published in many languages around the world. He lives with his family in Vancouver, Canada.

The Prostitute's Ball by Stephen J. Cannell

In his thirty-five-year-career, Emmy Award-winning writer (author of 15 crime novels) and television producer STEPHEN J. CANNELL (1941-2010) created over forty TV series, including The Rockford Files, Silk Stalkings, The A-Team, 21 Jump Street, Hunter, The Greatest American Hero, Renegade, Wiseguy, and The Commish.

The Way between the Worlds by Ian Irvine

Ian Irvine is a marine scientist who has developed some of Australia's national guidelines for the protection of the oceanic environment, as well as an author of bestselling fantasy novels and futuristic eco-thrillers. Check out his website: www.ian-irvine.com

The Wave by Susan Casey

Susan Casey, the author of the bestseller The Devil’s Teeth, is the Editor-in-Chief of O, the Oprah Magazine, and has also served as creative director of Outside magazine.

Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

Stephen King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. Among his most recent are Blockade Billy, Under the Dome, Just After Sunset, the Dark Tower novels, Cell, From a Buick 8, Everything's Eventual, Hearts in Atlantis, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Lisey's Story and Bag of Bones. His acclaimed nonfiction book, On Writing, was recently re-released in a tenth anniversary edition. King was the recipient of the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and in 2007 he was inducted as a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America.

Sunset Park by Paul Auster

Paul Auster is the bestselling author of Invisible, Man in the Dark, Travels in the Scriptorium, The Brooklyn Follies, and Oracle Night. I Thought My Father Was God, the NPR National Story Project anthology, which he edited, was a national bestseller. His work has been translated into thirty-five languages.

Strangers by Mary Anna Evans

Mary Anna Evans, award-winning author of the six Faye Longchamp mysteries, has degrees in physics and engineering, but her heart is in the past. Faye lives the exciting life of an archaeologist, and Mary Anna envies her a little. Her books have found an unexpected home in schools, and when she's not writing her novels, Mary Anna works with teachers to develop ways to use popular fiction to teach math and science and history to kids who are surprised to find out that those subjects are interesting.

The Next Queen of Heaven by Gregory Maguire

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.

*Gold Boy, Emerald Girl by Yiyun Lee

Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing and came to the United States in 1996. Her stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, O Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. Her debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, Guardian First Book Award, and California Book Award for first fiction; it was also shortlisted for Kiriyama Prize and Orange Prize for New Writers. Her novel, The Vagrants, won the gold medal of California Book Award for fiction. She was selected by Granta as one of the 21 Best Young American Novelists under 35, and was named by The New Yorker as one of the top 20 writers under 40.

Keep the Change by Steve Dublanica

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.

*Freedom Summer by Bruce Watson

Bruce Watson's previous books include Sacco and Vanzetti, a finalist for the Edgar Award, and Bread and Roses, a New York Public Library Book to Remember. His journalism has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Smithsonian, and Reader's Digest. He lives in Massachusetts.

*The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

Wells is the Charles Dickens of popular science who coined the terms 'death ray' and 'time machine'. Although he is best known and remembered for his science fiction books, he was an energetic man with broad interests whose prolific writings included histories, polemics romances, fantasies, comedies, short stories, film scripts, utopias, dystopias, articles, essays, and non fiction.

Spies of the Balkans by Alan Furst

Alan Furst is widely recognized as the master of the historical spy novel. Now translated into seventeen languages, he is the bestselling author of Night Soldiers, Dark Star, The Polish Officer, The World at Night, Red Gold, Kingdom of Shadows, Blood of Victory, Dark Voyage, and The Foreign Correspondent. Born in New York, he now lives in Paris and on Long Island.

All about Lulu by Jonathan Evison

All About Lulu won the Washington State Book Award. In 2009, Jonathan Evison was the recipient of a Richard Buckley Fellowship from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation.

Mr. Toppit by Charles Elton

Charles Elton worked as a designer and editor in publishing before becoming a literary agent. Since 1991 he has worked in British television and for the past ten years has been the executive producer in drama at ITV. Among his productions are the Oscar-nominated short Syrup, The Railway Children, Andrew Davies’s adaptation of Northanger Abbey, and the recent series Time of Your Life, all produced in association with WGBH Boston's Masterpiece Theater.

*Spider Bones by Kathy Reichs

Kathy Reichs, like her character Temperance Brennan, is a forensic anthropologist, formerly for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in North Carolina and currently for the Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de mÉdecine lÉgale for the province of Quebec. A professor in the department of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, she is one of only seventy-nine forensic anthropologists ever certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology, is past Vice President of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, and serves on the National Police Services Advisory Board in Canada.

Amandine by Marlena DiBlasi

Marlena de Blasi, who has worked as a chef and as a food and wine consultant, lives in Italy, where she plans and conducts gastronomic tours of its various regions. She is the author of four previous memoirs—That Summer in Sicily, A Thousand Days in Venice, A Thousand Days in Tuscany, and The Lady in the Palazzo—as well as three books on the foods of Italy.

The Art Detective by Philip Mould

Philip Mould appears frequently on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow. He is an art adviser to the British House of Commons, and owns an art gallery in London.

Time, Flow Softly by Nancy Cato

Nancy Fotheringham Cato was an Australian writer who published more than twenty historical novels, biographies and volumes of poetry. Cato was also known for her work campaigning on environmental