Category: Audio Books

Posted on by — 3 Comments

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Being paid to perform such a gratifying activity as reading Mark Twain aloud felt powerfully akin to Tom Sawyer hoodwinking other boys into paying him for the privilege of whitewashing a fence. Let’s keep that between us.” (Narrator Nick Offerman)

With The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, not even Twain could have known that when he introduced readers to the inhabitants of the fictional town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, he would also be introducing two characters – one a clever and mischievous scamp, and the other a carefree, innocent ragamuffin – whose stories would ultimately shape the course of American literature. But whereas its sequel and companion piece, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, would harken an end to childhood, the story of Tom Sawyer is one that depicts the excitement and adventure of boyhood along the Mississippi.

Revisit this enduring classic and you will be struck not only by Twain’s skill at capturing a time and place so vividly but also by his uncanny ability to crystallize those oftentimes tumultuous and conflicting emotions that a child experiences at the precipice of adulthood: a longing to be free from the rules and obligations of adults while enjoying the laxity inherent in childhood; a love of all things macabre, like blood oaths, cemetery cures, and haunted houses, that reveal a true innocence – an unawareness of real-life consequences and one’s own mortality; and the pangs of guilt when knowing the right thing to do and doing the right thing appear to be at odds.

A natural storyteller and raconteur in his own right – just listen to Paddle Your Own Canoe and Gumption – actor, comedian, carpenter, and all-around manly man Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation) brings his distinctive baritone and a fine-tuned comic versatility to Twain’s writing. In a knockout performance, he doesn’t so much as read Twain’s words as he does rejoice in them, delighting in the hijinks of Tom – whom he lovingly refers to as a “great scam artist” and “true American hero” – while deftly delivering the tenderness and care Twain gave to his own characters.

Posted on by — 3 Comments

Her Last Goodbye: Morgan Dane, Book 2

Wall Street Journal bestselling author Melinda Leigh’s Morgan Dane series continues as the fearless attorney and her partner, investigator Lance Kruger, take on a disturbing disappearance…

Young mother Chelsea Clark leaves the house for a girls’ night out…and vanishes. Her family knows she would never voluntarily leave her two small children. Her desperate husband – also the prime suspect – hires Morgan to find his wife and prove his innocence.

As a single mother, Morgan sympathizes with Chelsea’s family and is determined to find her. She teams up with private investigator Lance Kruger. But the deeper they dig, the deadlier their investigation gets. When Morgan is stalked by a violent predator, everything – and everyone – she holds dear is in grave danger.

Now, Morgan must track down a deranged criminal to protect her own family…but she won’t need to leave home to find him. She’s his next target.

Posted on by — 3 Comments

The Alice Network: A Novel

In an enthralling new historical novel from national best-selling author Kate Quinn, two women – a female spy recruited to the real-life Alice Network in France during World War I and an unconventional American socialite searching for her cousin in 1947 – are brought together in a mesmerizing story of courage and redemption.

It’s 1947. In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family. She’s also nursing a desperate hope that her beloved cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, might still be alive. So when Charlie’s parents banish her to Europe to have her “little problem” taken care of, Charlie breaks free and heads to London, determined to find out what happened to the cousin she loves like a sister.

It’s 1915. A year into the Great War, Eve Gardiner burns to join the fight against the Germans and unexpectedly gets her chance when she’s recruited to work as a spy. Sent into enemy-occupied France, she’s trained by the mesmerizing Lili, the “Queen of Spies”, who manages a vast network of secret agents right under the enemy’s nose.

Thirty years later, haunted by the betrayal that ultimately tore apart the Alice Network, Eve spends her days drunk and secluded in her crumbling London house. Until a young American barges in uttering a name Eve hasn’t heard in decades and launches them both on a mission to find the truth…no matter where it leads.

Posted on by — 3 Comments

Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar is one of Shakespeare’s most compelling Roman plays. The plot against Caesar and the infamous assassination scene make for unforgettable listening. Brutus, the true protagonist of the play, is mesmerizing in his psychological state of anguish, forced to choose between the bonds of friendship and his desire for patriotic justice.

Posted on by — 3 Comments

Don’t Bullsh*t Yourself!: Crush the Excuses That Are Holding You Back

Jon Taffer, the popular host of Spike TV’s Bar Rescue, doesn’t sugarcoat – he tells it like it is. In Don’t Bullsh*t Yourself!, he teaches you how to stop fooling yourself and turn your excuses into solutions, to improve your life and business.

As host of SpikeTV’s hugely popular Bar Rescue, Jon Taffer gives struggling bars one last chance to succeed with a mixture of business acumen and tough love. Now, he offers his no-nonsense strategy for kicking excuses to the curb, with a dose of raw and refreshing honesty. He’ll help you identify your excuses and take practical steps to fix them.

We all love to make excuses; it’s only human. It’s so much easier to pin the blame on everyone and everything else than to admit our own shortcomings. But when we make excuses, we are lying to ourselves. Jon Taffer is here to shut it down. He argues that if we can identify the real issue behind the excuse and address it in a straightforward way, we have the power to turn our lives around completely.

Doing what you’ve always done will get you nowhere. Taffer breaks excuses down into six major categories, offering real-life examples that are sure to instruct and inspire, such as:

Marcus Luttrell, the lone survivor of a SEAL team mission in Afghanistan, who faced his fears one step at a time to avoid almost certain death in Taliban territory.
Christine King, founder and CEO of Your Best Fit, who, despite being paralyzed in a horrific Jet Ski accident, was able to build a company that shows people how to transform their lives with fitness.
Mark Itkin, longtime television agent at William Morris Endeavor, who worked his way up from the mailroom, going against the grain to transform the television industry with the creation of Real World and other reality TV megahits.
Derrick Coleman, the deaf former Seattle Seahawks fullback, who, despite always being picked last in school, was able to overcome his circumstance to turn his deafness into an asset on and off the field.

You are your own worst enemy – if you own your failure, you can fight it. Jon Taffer in Don’t Bullsh*t Yourself! gives you a chance to throw away your excuse crutches so you can get back to winning.

Posted on by — 3 Comments

A Brief History of Time

Was there a beginning of time? Could time run backwards? Is the universe infinite or does it have boundaries? These are just some of the questions considered in an internationally acclaimed masterpiece by one of the world’s greatest thinkers. It begins by reviewing the great theories of the cosmos from Newton to Einstein, before delving into the secrets which still lie at the heart of space and time, from the Big Bang to black holes, via spiral galaxies and strong theory. To this day A Brief History of Time remains a staple of the scientific canon, and its succinct and clear language continues to introduce millions to the universe and its wonders. This new edition includes updates from Stephen Hawking with his latest thoughts about the No Boundary Proposal and offers new information about dark energy, the information paradox, eternal inflation, the microwave background radiation observations, and the discovery of gravitational waves. It is published to accompany the launch of a new app, Stephen Hawking’s Pocket Universe.Stephen Hawking, one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists in history, wrote the modern classic A Brief History of Time to help nonscientists understand the questions being asked by scientists today: Where did the universe come from? How and why did it begin? Will it come to an end, and if so, how? Hawking attempts to reveal these questions (and where we’re looking for answers) using a minimum of technical jargon. Among the topics gracefully covered are gravity, black holes, the Big Bang, the nature of time, and physicists’ search for a grand unifying theory. This is deep science; these concepts are so vast (or so tiny) as to cause vertigo while reading, and one can’t help but marvel at Hawking’s ability to synthesize this difficult subject for people not used to thinking about things like alternate dimensions. The journey is certainly worth taking, for, as Hawking says, the reward of understanding the universe may be a glimpse of “the mind of God.” –Therese Littleton

Posted on by — 3 Comments

Bones Don’t Lie: Morgan Dane, Book 3

Shocking evidence hits close to home for attorney Morgan Dane and PI Lance Kruger as Wall Street Journal bestselling author Melinda Leigh’s acclaimed series continues.

Private investigator Lance Kruger was just a boy when his father vanished twenty-three years ago. Since then he’s lived under the weight of that disappearance – until his father’s car is finally dredged up from the bottom of Grey Lake. It should be a time for closure, except for the skeleton found in the trunk. A missing person case gone cold has become one of murder, and Lance and attorney Morgan Dane must face the deadly past that’s risen to the surface.

For Lance, the investigation yields troubling questions about a man he thought he knew. But memories can play dirty tricks. For Morgan, uncovering each new lie comes with a disquieting fear that someone is out there watching, because someone is killing every witness tied to this decades-old crime. Morgan and Lance follow in the shadows of a relentless killer and walk right into the crossfire.

Posted on by — 3 Comments

Palace of Treason: A Novel

The pulse-pounding sequel to the best-selling, Edgar Award-winning Red Sparrow that The New York Times Book Review called “terrifically good”: Star-crossed spies Dominika Egorova and CIA agent Nate Nash return in a cat-and-mouse race to the finish.

Captain Dominika Egorova of the Russian Intelligence Service (SVR) has returned from the West to Moscow and the Center, the headquarters of her service. She finds things worse than when she left. She despises the men she must serve, the oligarchs and crooks and thugs of Putin’s Russia. What no one knows is that Dominika is working for the CIA as Washington’s most sensitive penetration of SVR and the Kremlin.

As she expertly dodges exposure, Dominika deals with a murderously psychotic boss; survives an Iranian assassination attempt; escapes a counterintelligence ambush; rescues an arrested agent and exfiltrates him out of Russia; and has a chilling midnight conversation in her nightgown with President Putin in one of the tsar’s palaces. Complicating the risks is the fact that Dominika is in love with her CIA handler, Nate Nash, and their lust is as dangerous to both of them as committing espionage in Moscow. And when a mole in the SVR finds Dominika’s name on a restricted list of sources, it is a virtual death sentence. She must face off alone against her psycho boss, who’s got an eight-inch knife up his sleeve.

Just as fast paced, heart pounding, and action packed as Red Sparrow, Jason Matthews’ second novel proves he is “an insider’s insider and a masterful storyteller” (Vince Flynn, number-one New York Times best-selling author).