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

*The Rembrandt Affair by Daniel Silva

Daniel Silva is the author of The Unlikely Spy, The Mark of the Assassin, The Marching Season, The Kill Artist, The English Assassin, The Confessor, A Death in Vienna, Price of Fire, The Messenger, The Secret Servant, Moscow Rules and The Defector. In 2009 Silva was appointed to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Council.

*Inside Out by Barry Eisler

Barry Eisler spent three years in a covert position with the CIA's Directorate of Operations, then worked as a technology lawyer and start-up executive in silicon Valley and Japan. His best-selling thrillers, including those featuring John Rain have won awards and have been translated into almost 20 languages.

*The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley

Alan Bradley is a retired Director of Televison Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan, where he lectured on screen writing. He is the author of the memoir, THE SHOEBOX BIBLE, as well as the first Flavia de Luce mystery, THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE, which won the Crime Wriers' Association Debut Dagger Award as well as the first Saskatchewan Writers Guild Award for Children's Literature. .

Nowhere to Run by C.J. Box

C.J. Box is the author of ten Joe Pickett novels and two stand- alones, and has won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, Gumshoe, and Barry awards, as well as the French Prix Calibre .38. He lives outside Cheyenne, Wyoming, with his family.

*No one would Listen by Harry Markopolos

HARRY MARKOPOLOS, a former securities industry executive turned independent financial fraud investigator, was the whistleblower who provided credible and detailed evidence several times from 2000–2008 that should have prompted an immediate investigation by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission into Bernie Madoff's $65 billion Ponzi scheme. Markopolos's investigation was assisted by his investigative team, including Frank Casey, Neil Chelo, and Michael Ocrant. For additional information and resources, visit www.noonewouldlisten.com

Desert Queen by Susanna De Vries

Susanna De Vries is an art historian and lectures at the University of Queensland. She was born in London and attended the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of Madrid.

Sweet Sorrow by Mark Wakely

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.

Of One Blood by Andrew White

A L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring: Lee Arenberg, John Cothran Jr., Judyann Elder, Arye Gross, Valerie Landsburg, Macon McCalman, Bruce Norris, David Schwimmer, Joey Slotnick, Renee Victor, Thomas Victor, Brian Wesley Thomas

*Hard-boiled wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo.

The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkapf

Born with a hearing impairment, Heather Gudenkauf became a voracious reader as a child and the seed of becoming a writer was planted. She lives in Dubuque, Iowa, with her husband, three children and German Shorthaired pointer. She is currently working on her next novel. Check out the author's website for more information: www.heathergudenkauf.com

Rules of Betrayal by Christopher Reichs

CHRISTOPHER REICH is the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Deception, Rules of Vengeance, Numbered Account, and The Runner. His novel The Patriots Club won the International Thriller Writers award for Best Novel in 2006.

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford

Jack Weatherford is a professor of anthropology at Macalester College in Minnesota. He is a specialist in tribal peoples and the author of Indian Givers, Native Roots, Savages and Civilization, and The History of Money.

This Body of Death by Elizabeth George

Elizabeth George is the New York Times best-selling author of fourteen novels of psychological suspense, one book of nonfiction, and two short-story collections. Her work has been honored with the Anthony and Agatha awards, the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere, and the MIMI, Germany's prestigious prize for suspense fiction. She lives in Washington State.

Red Hook Road by Ayelet Waldman

A former public defender, Ayelet Waldman left the legal life to write about topics close to her heart: marriage (she's married to fellow author Michael Chabon) and motherhood. She broke out with her clever series of Mommy-Track mysteries, and has garnered praise for the stand-alone novels Daughter's Keeper and Love and Other Impossible Pursuits.

The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy,who was born in 1840 in Dorsetshire, England and is critically esteemed for both his poetry and his novels, died in 1928.

*Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin in 1667. Although he spent most of his childhood in Ireland, he considered himself English, and, aged twenty-one, moved to England, where he found employment as secretary to the diplomat Sir William Temple. On Temple's death in 1699, Swift returned to Dublin to pursue a career in the church. By this time he was also publishing in a variety of genres, and between 1704 and 1729 he produced a string of brilliant satires, of which Gulliver's Travels is the best known. Between 1713 and 1742 he was dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin; he was buried there when he died in 1745.

*Watership Down by Richard Adams

Richard Adams grew up in Berkshire, England, the son of a country doctor. After an education at Oxford, he spent six years in the army and then went into the civil service. Her has written many other novels and short stories, including The Plague Dogs and Shardik. The winner of the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Award for Children's Literature, Richard Adams currently lives in Hampshire, England.

*There Are No Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz

ALEX KOTLOWITZ, a former staff writer at the Wall Street Journal, has won the George Foster Peabody Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, the George Polk Award, and the Thurgood Marshall Award. His work has appeared in numerous publications including the New Times Magazine, Atlantic, New Yorker, and NPR's This American Life, All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Frontline. He is also the author of Never a City So Real and The Other Side of the River.

Angelology by Danielle Trussoni

Danielle Trussoni grew up in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and attended the University of Wisconsin and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

The Harlem Renaissance Remembered: Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and the Sound of the Harlem Renaissance

Jonathan Gross, Ph.D. (Columbia University) is Professor of English at DePaul University and the author of more than five books. He has played with City Rhythm (1987-1992), Jimmy D. Lane (1993), Breezin' (1994-2009), and Lush Life, a jazz trio that has performed at fundraisers for Rahm Emanuel, Lookingglass Theatre, and the Chicago Cultural Center (2001-2005).

Wrecked by Carol Higgins Clark

Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt

Tony Judt was born in London in 1948. He was educated at King's College, Cambridge and the École Normale Supérieure, Paris, and taught at Cambridge, Oxford, Berkeley and New York University, where he was the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of European Studies and Director of the Remarque Institute, which he founded in 1995, which is dedicated to the study of Europe. He was the author of twelve books and a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, The New Republic, The New York Times and many other journals in Europe and the US. Professor Judt was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a Permanent Fellow of the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (Vienna). His book Reappraisals: Reflections On The Forgotten Twentieth Century and Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 was one of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of 2005, the winner of the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Professor Judt died in August, 2010.

*Bulldog Drummond by Sapper

Sapper is the pen name of Herman Cyril McNeile, born in 1888 at the Naval Prison in Bodmin, Cornwall, where his father was Governor. He served in the Royal Engineers (popularly known as 'sappers') from 1907-19, being awarded the Military Cross during World War 1. He started writing in France, adopting a pen name because serving officers were not allowed to write under their own names. When his first stories, about life in the trenches, were published in 1915, they were an enormous success. But it was his first thriller, Bulldog Drummond (1920) that launched him as one of the most popular novelists of his generation. It had several amazingly successful sequels, including The Black Gang, The Third Round and The Final Count. Another great success was Jim Maitland (1923), featuring a footloose English sahib in foreign lands. Sapper published nearly thirty books in total, and a vast public mourned his death when he died in 1937, at the early age of forty-eight. So popular was his 'Bulldog Drummond' series that his friend, the late Gerard Fairlie, wrote several Bulldog Drummond stories after his death under the same pen name, which had by then become synonymous with fast-paced, intelligent thrillers and complex, vibrant characters.

*The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

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.

The Vanishing of Katharina Linden by Helen Grant

Helen Grant was born in London. She studied classics at St. Hugh's College, Oxford, and then worked in marketing for ten years in order to fund her love of traveling. In 2001 she and her family moved to Bad Münstereifel in Germany, and while exploring the legends of this beautiful town she was inspired to write her first novel. She now lives in Brussels with her husband, her two children, and a small German cat.

Priceless by Robert K. Wittman and John Shiffman

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.

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse was born in 1877 in Germany. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946. He is the author of Steppenwolf, Narcissus and Goldmund, Journey to the East, The Glass Bead Game, and many other books.

*Chambers of Death by Priscilla Royal

Priscilla Royal is the author of the medieval mysteries Tyrant of the Mind and Wine of Violence. She was born in Seattle, grew up in British Columbia, and now resides in Northern California. She is a member of the California Writers Club and Sisters in Crime.

Deception by Jonathan Kellerman

Jonathan Kellerman has brought his expertise as a clinical psychologist to more than thirty bestselling crime novels, including the Alex Delaware series, The Butcher's Theater, Billy Straight, The Conspiracy Club, Twisted, and True Detectives. He is the author of numerous essays, short stories, scientific articles, two children's books, and three volumes of psychology, including Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children, as well as the lavishly illustrated With Strings Attached: The Art and Beauty of Vintage Guitars.

Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson is the author of seven previous novels. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

Born and raised in Saskatchewan, Kathleen Grissom is now happily rooted in south-side Virginia, where she and her husband live in the plantation tavern they renovated. The Kitchen House is her first novel. You can visit her website at www.kathleengrissom.com.

Fever Dream by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs

DOUGLAS PRESTON and LINCOLN CHILD are best-selling coauthors of 13 novels. Preston, a regular contributor to The New Yorker, worked for the American Museum of Natural History. He is an expert horseman who has ridden thousands of miles across the West. Child, a former book editor, is passionate about motorcycles, exotic parrots, and nineteenth-century English literature. The authors encourage readers to visit and send them e-mail at their Web site, www.prestonchild.com.

Death Echo by Elizabeth Lowell

Elizabeth Lowell is the author of many remarkable New York Times best-selling historical and contemporary novels. She lives in Washington with her husband with whom she writes mystery novels under a pseudonym.

*Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

Mrs Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) was a friend of Charlotte Bronte and Charles Dickens, who first accepted Cranford for publication in his magazine Household Words. Along with short stories and a biography of Charlotte Brontë, Gaskell published five more novels including Mary Barton (1848) and Wives and Daughters (1865).

The Search by Nora Roberts

Nora Roberts is the author of more than 170 novels, including Tribute, High Noon, Angels Fall, Blue Smoke, and many more. She is also the author of the bestselling futuristic suspense series written under the pen name J. D. Robb. Roberts has more than 300 million copies of her books in print.

Nancy Wake by Peter Fitzsimmons

Peter Fitzsimons is a writer and television and radio personality in Australia.