Narrations

Author Stephen Harrigan returns to his historical fiction roots, reimagining Abraham Lincoln’s early life, when he was a young lawyer and rising politician in Springfield, Illinois.

Told from the point of view of Lincoln’s best friend, it starts during the Blackhawk War (in which Lincoln served) and ends in the mid-1840s, when Lincoln goes off to Washington after being elected to Congress, and his friend heads west with the Donner party.

The novel is about a crucially formative period in Lincoln’s life, when he was ruled by an almost ungovernable ambition and beset by bouts of depression, sometimes ruthlessly trying to advance himself while tortured with self-doubt and questions of personal honor. It tracks his strange on-and-off relationship with Mary Todd, his sudden and puzzling marriage to her, the duel he almost fought with a political opponent, his pragmatic and sometimes contradictory stands on slavery, his desire to be a poet, and his true-to-life flirtation with suicide – all in all, a portrait of a young politician on the make, deeply principled but also deeply flawed.

©2016 Stephen Harrigan (P)2016 Recorded Books

In this epic Western by USA Today best-selling author William W. Johnstone, the distinction between lawman and outlaw gets hazy once the gun smoke thickens. Frank Morgan, legendary gunslinger turned town marshal, has disguised himself as an inmate at Yuma Prison – hoping to root out a bank-robbing plot. But even the straightest arrow can bend when shot into a corrupt hellhole like Yuma.

©2008 William W. Johnstone; (P)2008 Recorded Books,LLC

Pulitzer Prize, History, 2003

The liberation of Europe and the destruction of the Third Reich is a story of courage and enduring triumph, of calamity and miscalculation. In this first volume of the Liberation Trilogy, Rick Atkinson shows why no modern learner can understand the ultimate victory of the Allied powers without a grasp of the great drama that unfolded in North Africa in 1942 and 1943. That first year of the Allied war was a pivotal point in American history, the moment when the United States began to act like a great power.

Beginning with the daring amphibious invasion in November 1942, An Army at Dawn follows the American and British armies as they fight the French in Morocco and Algeria, and then take on the Germans and Italians in Tunisia. Battle by battle, an inexperienced and sometimes poorly led army gradually becomes a superb fighting force. Central to the tale are the extraordinary but fallible commanders who come to dominate the battlefield: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, Montgomery, and Rommel.

Brilliantly researched, rich with new material and vivid insights, Atkinson’s narrative provides the definitive history of the war in North Africa.

An Army at Dawn is the winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for History.

©2002 Rick Atkinson; 2013 Simon and Schuster

In the 12th novel in the New York Times best-selling Longmire series, Walt, Henry, and Vic discover much more than they bargained for when they are called in to investigate a hit-and-run accident near Devils Tower involving a young motorcyclist.

In the midst of the largest motorcycle rally in the world, a young biker is run off the road and ends up in critical condition. When Sheriff Walt Longmire and his good friend, Henry Standing Bear, are called to Hulett, Wyoming – the nearest town to America’s first national monument, Devils Tower – to investigate, things start getting complicated. As competing biker gangs; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; a military-grade vehicle donated to the tiny local police force by a wealthy entrepreneur; and Lola, the real-life femme fatale and namesake for Henry’s ’59 Thunderbird (and, by extension, Walt’s granddaughter) come into play, it rapidly becomes clear that there is more to get to the bottom of at this year’s Sturgis Motorcycle Rally than a bike accident. After all, in the words of Arthur Conan Doyle, whose Adventures of Sherlock Holmes the Bear won’t stop quoting, “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact”.

©2016 Craig Johnson (P)2016 Recorded Books

Craig Johnson’s mystery stories have earned him an esteemed position in the pantheon of contemporary crime novelists. In this fourth installment, Longmire is called to investigate a dead Vietnamese girl found along the Wyoming highway.Listen to all of Craig Johnson’s Walt Longmire mysteries.

©2008 Craig Johnson; (P)2008 Recorded Books,LLC

What the Critics Say
“Full of crackling dialogue, this absorbing tale demonstrates that Longmire is still the sheriff in town.” (Publishers Weekly)

Although Ella Lang is now known as Queen of the Outlaws, there was a day when she and Ranger Sam Burrack were deeply in love. Now they’re on opposite sides of the law and Burrack is out to rid the West of Lang’s motley gang of outlaws.Best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize nominee Ralph Cotton is hailed for his rough and tumble Westerns full of historical details.

©2005 Allison McGhee; (P)2006 Recorded Books, LLC

In 1939, as the armies of Europe mobilized for war, the British secret services undertook operations to impede the exportation of Roumanian oil to Germany. They failed. Then, in the autumn of 1940, they tried again….

So begins Blood of Victory, a novel rich with suspense, historical insight, and the powerful narrative immediacy we have come to expect from best-selling author Alan Furst. The book takes its title from a speech given by a French senator at a conference on petroleum in 1918: Oil, he said, the blood of the earth, has become, in time of war, the blood of victory.

November 1940. The Russian writer I. A. Serebin arrives in Istanbul by Black Sea freighter. Although he travels on behalf of an migr organization based in Paris, he is in flight from a dying and corrupt Europespecifically, from Nazi-occupied France. Serebin finds himself facing his fifth war, but this time he is an exile, a man without a country, and there is no army to join. Still, in the words of Leon Trotsky, You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. Serebin is recruited for an operation run by Count Janos Polanyi, a Hungarian master spy now working for the British secret services.

The battle to cut Germany’s oil supply rages through the spy haunts of the Balkans; from the Athene Palace in Bucharest to a whorehouse in Izmir; from an elegant yacht club in Istanbul to the river docks of Belgrade; from a skating pond in St. Moritz to the fogbound banks of the Danube; in sleazy nightclubs and safe houses and nameless hotels; amid the street fighting of a fascist civil war.

Blood of Victory is classic Alan Furst, combining remarkable authenticity and atmosphere with the complexity and excitement of an outstanding spy thriller. As Walter Shapiro of Time magazine wrote, “Nothing can be like watching Casablanca for the first time, but Furst comes closer than anyone has in years.”

New York Times best-selling author David L. Robbins has entrenched himself as the master of the World War II novel. Telling the gripping story of the 1945 rescue of allied prisoners from the Los Baños camp near Manila, Broken Jewel received tremendous critical acclaim, including starred reviews from Library Journal and Kirkus Reviews.

©2009 David L. Robbins (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC

From Richard Zacks, best-selling author of Island of Vice andThe Pirate Hunter, a rich and lively account of how Mark Twain’s late-life adventures abroad helped him recover from financial disaster and family tragedy – and revived his world-class sense of humor.

Mark Twain, the highest-paid writer in America in 1894, was also one of the nation’s worst investors. “There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate,” he wrote. “When he can’t afford it and when he can.” The publishing company Twain owned was failing; his investment in a typesetting device was bleeding red ink. After losing hundreds of thousands of dollars back when a beer cost a nickel, he found himself neck-deep in debt. His heiress wife, Livy, took the setback hard. “I have a perfect horror and heart-sickness over it,” she wrote. “I cannot get away from the feeling that business failure means disgrace.”

But Twain vowed to Livy he would pay back every penny. And so, just when the 59-year-old, bushy-browed icon imagined that he would be settling into literary lionhood, telling jokes at gilded dinners, he forced himself to mount the “platform” again, embarking on a round-the-world stand-up comedy tour. No author had ever done that. He cherry-picked his best stories – such as stealing his first watermelon and buying a bucking bronco – and spun them into a 90-minute performance.

Twain trekked across the American West and onward by ship to the faraway lands of Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, India, Ceylon, and South Africa. He rode an elephant twice and visited the Taj Mahal. He saw Zulus dancing and helped sort diamonds at the Kimberley mines. (He failed to slip away with a sparkly souvenir.) He played shuffleboard on cruise ships and battled captains for the right to smoke in peace. He complained that his wife and daughter made him shave and change his shirt every day.

The great American writer fought off numerous illnesses and travel nuisances to circle the globe and earn a huge payday and a tidal wave of applause. Word of his success, however, traveled slowly enough that one American newspaper reported that he had died penniless in London. That’s when he famously quipped, “The report of my death was an exaggeration.”

Throughout his quest, Twain was aided by cutthroat Standard Oil tycoon H. H. Rogers, with whom he had struck a deep friendship, and he was hindered by his own lawyer (and future secretary of state) Bainbridge Colby, whom he deemed “head idiot of this century”.

In Chasing the Last Laugh, author Richard Zacks, drawing extensively on unpublished material in notebooks and letters from Berkeley’s ongoing Mark Twain Project, chronicles a poignant chapter in the author’s life – one that began in foolishness and bad choices but culminated in humor, hard-won wisdom, and ultimate triumph.

©2016 Richard Zacks (P)2016 Random House Audio

A defining American story, never before told with such breadth of scope, lavish research, and resounding spirit.

With more than three million foreign-born residents today, New York has been America’s defining port of entry for nearly four centuries, a magnet for transplants from all over the globe. These migrants have brought their hundreds of languages and distinct cultures to the city, and from there to the entire country. More immigrants have come to New York than all other entry points combined.

City of Dreams is peopled with memorable characters both beloved and unfamiliar, whose lives unfold in rich detail: the young man from the Caribbean who passed through New York on his way to becoming a Founding Father; the 10-year-old Angelo Siciliano from Calabria, who transformed into Charles Atlas, bodybuilder; Dominican-born Oscar de la Renta, whose couture designs have dressed first ladies from Jackie Kennedy to Michelle Obama.

Tyler Anbinder’s story is one of innovators and artists, revolutionaries and rioters, staggering deprivation and soaring triumphs, all playing out against the powerful backdrop of New York City, at once ever changing and profoundly, permanently itself. City of Dreams provides a vivid sense of what New York looked like, sounded like, smelled like, and felt like over the centuries of its development and maturation into the city we know today.

©2016 Tyler Anbinder (P)2016 Recorded Books

Award-winning author Craig Johnson’s critically acclaimed debut Western mystery takes listeners to the breathtaking mountains of Wyoming for a tale of cold-blooded vengeance.Two years earlier, four high-school boys were given suspended sentences for raping a Cheyenne girl. Now, two of the boys have been killed, and only Sheriff Walt Longmire can keep the other two safe.

Listen to all of Craig Johnson’s Walt Longmire mysteries.

©2004 Craig Johnson; (P)2006 Recorded Books LLC

What the Critics Say
“A strong sense of place, a credible plot, and deft dialogue lift Johnson’s good-humored debut novel.” (Publishers Weekly)
“Johnson, who lives in Ucross, Wyoming, knows the Western landscape well, and creates stunning and violent scenes of the Rocky Mountains.” (Bookmarks) “We in the West have a major new talent on our hands.” (The Denver Post)

Author Alan Furst has written several historical fiction novels. In Dark Star, Andre Szara, a Polish journalist who becomes a spy for the Soviet Union in the late 1930s, is ordered to complete many tasks of espionage in Paris. Through Szara’s character, the beginnings of World War II are revealed. George Guidall’s gripping narration complements this suspenseful tale.

USA Today best-selling author and former Pulitzer Prize nominee Ralph Cotton ranks among the best Western writers of all time. With over 25 novels under his belt, Cotton writes tales that are popular for their brand of frontier justice. He spins a yarn of intrigue and suspense in Dead Man’s Canyon.

Ranger Sam Burrack is hot on the trail of identical twin outlaws, but only one is alive when he catches up to them. Could Abel have killed his brother in self-defense as he claims? It seems the manhunt has only just begun.

©2004 Ralph Cotton (P)2005 Recorded Books, LLC

What the Critics Say
“Cotton’s blend of history and imagination works because authentic Old West detail and dialogue fill his books.” (Wild West magazine)

Lawman turned best-selling author Michael McGarrity presents this thrilling Kevin Kerney novel—packed with gritty action—that “series fans will relish” (Publishers Weekly). Called out of retirement, Kerney must take up the hunt for a psychotic killer who’s been blazing a path of carnage from Texas to Colorado. Fortunately he’ll have help from his half-Indian son, Sgt. Clayton Istee.

More mayhem? Listen to all of our Kevin Kerney titles.

©2009 Michael McGarrity (P)2009 Recorded Books, LLC

William Johnstone has over a million copies of his popular Westerns in print. Rolling into the small town of San Remo, Frank Morgan and his faithful companion Dog bear witness to a violent range war. Frank gets drawn in deeper when he’s recruited by one side against the other. Weary from a life of settling scores with pistols, Morgan sides with the townsfolk and reluctantly accepts their marshal’s badge in the hopes of ending the bloodshed.Round ’em up: listen to more in the Last Gunfighter series.

©1981 Anne Perry; (P)2001 Recorded Books, LLC

Don Quixote is the classic story. Called the first modern novel, this marvelous book has stood the test of time to become irrevocably intertwined with the fabric of society. Sixteenth-century Spanish gentleman Don Quixote, fed by his own delusional fantasies, takes to the road in search of chivalrous adventures. But his quest leads to more trouble than triumph. At once humorous, romantic, and sad, Don Quixote is a literary landmark. This fresh edition, by award-winning translator Edith Grossman, brings the tale to life as never before.

©2003 Edith Grossman (translation) (P)2003 Recorded Books

Hans Fallada wrote this stunning novel in only 24 days—just after being released from a Nazi insane asylum. Based on a true story, Every Man Dies Alone tells of a German couple who try to start an uprising by distributing anti-fascist postcards during World War II. But their dream ultimately proves perilous under the tyranny that dominates every corner of Hitler’s Germany.

©2009 Melville House Publishing; Translation, Michael Hofman (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC
 
What the Critics Say
“The book has the suspense of a John le Carré novel, and offers a visceral, chilling portrait of the distrust that permeated everyday German life during the war.” (The New Yorker)

There is no more decorated American writer living today than Philip Roth, the New York Times best-selling author of American Pastoral, The Human Stain, and The Plot Against America. He has won a Pulitzer Prize, two National Book Awards, two National Book Critics Circle Awards, two PEN/Faulkner Awards, and numerous other distinctions.The hero of Everyman is obsessed with mortality. As he reminds himself at one point, “I’m 34! Worry about oblivion when you’re 75.” But he cannot help himself. He is the ex-husband in three marriages gone wrong. He is the father of two sons who detest him, despite a daughter who adores him. And as his health worsens, he is the envious brother of a much fitter man. A masterful portrait of one man’s inner struggles, Everyman is a brilliant showcase for one of the world’s most distinguished novelists.

Listen to an interview with Philip Roth on Fresh Air.

©2006 Philip Roth; (P)2006 Recorded Books, LLC.

What the Critics Say

2007 PEN/Faulkner Award, Fiction

“Roth continues exercising his career-defining, clear-eyed, intelligent vision of how the psychology of families works.” (Booklist)

“This is an artful yet surprisingly readable treatise on…well, on being human….Through it all, there’s that Rothian voice: pained, angry, arrogant, and deeply, wryly funny.” (Publishers Weekly)

“Our most accomplished novelist. . . . [With Everyman] personal tenderness has reached a new intensity.” (The New Yorker)

Counterterrorism operative Mitch Rapp and his colleague Mike Nash may have met their match. The CIA has detected and intercepted two terrorist cells, but a third is feared to be on the loose. Led by a dangerous mastermind obsessed with becoming the leader of al-Qaeda, this determined and terrifying group is about to descend on America.

Rapp needs the best on this assignment, and Nash, who has served his government honorably for sixteen years, is his choice. Together, they have never wavered in the fight against the jihadists and their culture of death. Both have fought the war on terrorism in secret without accolades or acknowledgment of their personal sacrifices. Both have been forced to lie to virtually every single person they care about, and both have soldiered on with the knowledge that their hard work and lethal tactics have saved thousands of lives. But the political winds have changed in America, and certain leaders on Capitol Hill are pushing to have men like Rapp and Nash put back on a short leash. And then one spring afternoon in Washington, DC, everything changes.

Using his insider knowledge of intelligence agencies and the military, Flynn once again delivers an all-too-real portrayal of a war that is waged every day by a handful of brave, devoted souls. Smart, fast-paced, and jaw-droppingly realistic, Extreme Measures is the political thriller of our time.…

After winning both popular and critical acclaim with his first novel, She’s Come Undone, New York Times best-selling author Wally Lamb is back with another masterpiece. Joining its predecessor as an Oprah’s Book Club selection, I Know This Much is True is a mystical, deeply moving saga of personal growth and survival. All his life, Dominick Birdsey has been angry and afraid. The elusive identity of his biological father, a bullying adoptive father, and a paranoid schizophrenic identical twin have haunted his struggle for sanity and wholeness. Now his brother has committed an unthinkable act, and middle-aged Dominick is in a tailspin. As he turns to his grandfather’s handwritten memoir for answers to the secrets locked within himself, he discovers some unexpected lessons about the complexities of being human. George Guidall’s exquisite narration highlights the joyous, profound, and mystical experience of arriving with Dominick at comforting answers to some of life’s most unsettling questions. A special interview with the author is on the final tape of this recording.

New York Times best-selling author Wally Lamb weaves an evocative, deeply affecting tapestry of one baby boomer’s life – Felix Funicello, introduced in Wishin’ and Hopin’ – and the trio of unforgettable women who have changed it in this radiant homage to the resiliency, strength, and power of women.

I’ll Take You There centers on Felix, a film scholar who runs a Monday night movie club in what was once a vaudeville theater. One evening, while setting up a film in the projectionist booth, he’s confronted by the ghost of Lois Weber, a trailblazing motion picture director from Hollywood’s silent film era. Lois invites Felix to revisit – and in some cases relive – scenes from his past as they are projected onto the cinema’s big screen.

In these magical movies, the medium of film becomes the lens for Felix to reflect on the women who profoundly impacted his life. There’s his daughter, Aliza, a Gen Y writer for New York Magazine who is trying to align her postmodern feminist beliefs with her lofty career ambitions; his sister, Frances, with whom he once shared a complicated bond of kindness and cruelty; and Verna, a fiery would-be contender for the 1951 Miss Rheingold competition, a beauty contest sponsored by a Brooklyn-based beer manufacturer that became a marketing phenomenon for two decades. At first unnerved by these ethereal apparitions, Felix comes to look forward to his encounters with Lois, who is later joined by the spirits of other celluloid muses.

Against the backdrop of a kaleidoscopic convergence of politics and pop culture, family secrets, and Hollywood iconography, Felix gains an enlightened understanding of the pressures and trials of the women closest to him and of the feminine ideals and feminist realities that all women of every era must face.

©2016 Wally Lamb (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers

One of the great classics of world literature and the inspiration for the most beloved stage musical of all time, Les Misérables is legendary author Victor Hugo’s masterpiece. This extraordinary English version by renowned translator Julie Rose captures all the majesty and brilliance of Hugo’s work. Here is the timeless story of the quintessential hunted man—Jean Valjean—and the injustices, violence, and social inequalities that torment him.

©2008 Random House (P)2011 Recorded Books, LLC

The ghosts of a 1925 multiple murder stalk Doc Ford in the electrifying new novel in the New York Times best-selling series.

Doc Ford has been involved in many strange cases. This may be one of the strangest.

A legendary charter captain and guide named Tootsie Barlow has come to him, muttering about a curse. The members of his extended family have suffered a bizarre series of attacks, and Barlow is convinced it has something to do with a multiple murder in 1925, in which his family had a shameful part.

Ford doesn’t believe in curses, but as he and his friend Tomlinson begin to investigate, following the trail of the attacks from Key Largo to Tallahassee, they, too, suffer a series of near-fatal mishaps. Is it really a curse? Or just a crime spree? The answer lies in solving a near-hundred-year-old murder and probing the mind of a madman.

©2017 Randy Wayne White (P)2017 Penguin Audio

A new Western adventure from the USA Today best-selling author of Golden Riders.

A town on the edge.

When Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack arrives in Mesa Grande with a few outlaws in tow, he finds the town in chaos. The sheriff’s just been shot, and the new deputy – supposedly out in search of the gunman – is acting suspicious. Now it’s up to Burrack to sort out who can be trusted and who needs to be put behind bars. But just as he starts putting the pieces together, a new kind of threat descends on Mesa Grande: Scalp hunters ride in – with a band of wrathful Apache warriors hot on their trail.

©2015 Ralph Cotton (P)2016 Recorded Books

Cape Town is an unlikely setting for Islamic terror, but in Bo-Kaap, the city’s peaceful Muslim enclave, Imam Rauf preaches a theology of austerity, obedience, and sacrifice.

When the multi-billionaire Goldwyn family settles in the Western Cape, they learn firsthand the implications of a radical imam’s preaching. Cultures collide in the wake of a family crisis as the Goldwyns face off with an insidious form of jihad that has long existed but always been ignored.

Mother City leaves listeners with a coldly objective impression of the postmodern world where danger lurks at every turn, even in unexpected places, and where unilateral actions beyond state control may indeed constitute the most effective way to protect the West.

Reviews

“A fast-paced thriller, Mother City takes readers from Cape Town to Washington, Jerusalem, and the Persian Gulf in the fight against global terror. Well researched and provocative, readers will understand what policymakers and counterterrorism specialists already know: what newspaper headlines say and what the real world is are often two very different things.” – Michael Rubin, PhD Foreign Policy Scholar American Enterprise Institute

“Mother City highlights the extent to which radical Islam poses a threat to the hopes and values of us all–Christians, Jews, Muslims, and atheists alike. Bravo, Starner Jones.” – Michael J. Horowitz, LLB Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute

In the next thrilling novel in the number-one New York Times best-selling Mitch Rapp series, the anti-terrorism operative heads to Pakistan to confront a mortal threat he may not be prepared for. In fact, this time he might have met his match.

Mitch Rapp is used to winning.

But in this follow-up to number-one New York Times best-selling The Survivor, the CIA operative finds himself chasing false leads from continent to continent in an effort to keep Pakistani nukes from falling into the hands of terrorists. Together with friend and colleague Scott Coleman, Rapp struggles to prevent the loss of these lethal weapons, particularly because Russia is also interested in the nukes, though not for the same reason as Rapp and Coleman.

Soon, it becomes alarmingly clear that the forces in Moscow are bent on fomenting even more chaos and turmoil in the Middle East and Rapp must go deep into Russian territory, posing as an American ISIS recruit. There, he uncovers a plan much more dangerous and insidious than he ever expected, one that could have far-reaching and catastrophic consequences.

Written with the same breathless tension and heart-racing action as Vince Flynn’s greatest novels, Mitch Rapp’s latest adventure is as timely and provocative as ever.

©2016 Vince Flynn and Kyle Mills (P)2016 Simon & Schuster

Philip Roth’s “death of a life insurance salesman” won the National Book Critic’s Circle Award in 1991. The insurance salesman was his father. This great work is made greater still by George Guidall’s magnificent performance. Guidall plays the dying father with an outrage that is both heroic and slightly absurd. The novelist is horrified by the old man, but also deeply in love. Losing life, Herm Roth decides to save cash. He fires the cleaning lady and stops the newspaper. Robbed at gunpoint, he advises the escaping felon: “Now don’t go spend it on crap.” This clear-eyed but adoring book asks a single question: “Why should a man die at all?” When the man helps the boy, they both laugh. When the boy helps the man, they both cry. B.H.C. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine [Published: JUN/ JUL 04]

Published in time for the 75th anniversary, a gripping and definitive account of the event that changed 20th-century America – Pearl Harbor – based on years of research and new information uncovered by a New York Times best-selling author.

The America we live in today was born not on July 4, 1776, but on December 7, 1941, when almost 400 Japanese planes attacked the US Pacific Fleet, killing 2,400 men and sinking or damaging 16 ships. In Pearl Harbor: From Infamy to Greatness, Craig Nelson follows, moment by moment, the sailors, soldiers, pilots, admirals, generals, emperors, and presidents, all starting with a pre-polio assistant secretary of the navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, attending the laying of the keel of the USS Arizona at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, against the backdrop of the imperial, military, and civilian leaders of Japan lurching into ultranationalist fascism, all culminating in an insanely daring scheme to shock the Allies with a technologically revolutionary mission in one of the boldest military stories ever told – one with consequences that continue to echo in our lives today.

Besides the little-understood history of how and why Japan attacked America, we can hear the abandoned record player endlessly repeating “Sunrise Serenade” as the Japanese bombs hit the deck of the California; we feel terror as navy wives, helped by their Japanese maids, upturn couches for cover and hide with their children in caves from a rumored invasion; and we understand the mix of frustration and triumph as a lone American teenager shoots down a Japanese bomber. Backed by a research team’s five years of efforts with archives and interviews, producing nearly a million pages of documents, as well as a thorough reexamination of the original evidence produced by federal investigators, this definitive history provides a blow-by-blow account from both the Japanese and American perspectives and is a historical drama on the greatest scale. Nelson delivers all the terror, chaos, violence, tragedy, and heroism of the attack in stunning detail and offers surprising conclusions about the tragedy’s unforeseen and resonant consequences.

©2016 Craig Nelson (P)2016 Simon & Schuster

Audie Award Nominee, Literary Fiction, 2013

New York Times best-selling author Stephen Harrigan lit up the publishing world with his Spur Award-winning The Gates of the Alamo. The remarkable follow-up to that acclaimed hit, Remember Ben Clayton further cements Harrigan’s place as a premier voice in American fiction.

Exiled to Texas with his grown daughter, sculptor Francis “Gil” Gilheaney is commissioned to create a statue for a man who recently lost his son in World War I. But as work on the statue progresses, secrets slowly reveal themselves and Gil’s fragile family threads begin to fray.

©2011 Stephen Harrigan (P)2011 Recorded Books, LLC

The loner, Erlendur, has recently joined the police force as a young officer. The beat on the streets in ReykjavIk is busy: traffic accidents, theft, domestic violence, contraband…. And an unexplained death. When a tramp he met regularly on the night shift is found drowned in a ditch, no one seems to care. But his fate haunts Erlendur and drags him inexorably into the strange and dark underworld of the city.

©2012 Arnaldur Indridason, 2014 Victoria Cribb (P)2015 Recorded Books

“Sometimes I wonder…. Can a ghost find you if she wants to?”

An intricate tale of love, haunting memories, and renewal, Second Glance begins in current-day Vermont, where an old man puts a piece of land up for sale and unintentionally raises protest from the local Abenaki Indian tribe, who insist it’s a burial ground. When odd, supernatural events plague the town of Comtosook, a ghost hunter is hired by the developer to help convince the residents that there’s nothing spiritual about the property.

Enter Ross Wakeman, a suicidal drifter who has put himself in mortal danger time and again. He’s driven his car off a bridge into a lake. He’s been mugged in New York City and struck by lightning in a calm country field. Yet despite his best efforts, life clings to him and pulls him ever deeper into the empty existence he cannot bear since his fiancée’s death in a car crash eight years ago. Ross now lives only for the moment he might once again encounter the woman he loves. But in Comtosook, the only discovery Ross can lay claim to is that of Lia Beaumont, a skittish, mysterious woman who, like Ross, is on a search for something beyond the boundary separating life and death.

Thus begins Jodi Picoult’s enthralling and ultimately astonishing story of love, fate, and a crime of passion. Hailed by critics as a “master” storyteller (Washington Post), Picoult once again “pushes herself, and consequently the reader, to think about the unthinkable” (Denver Post). Second Glance, her eeriest and most engrossing work yet, delves into a virtually unknown chapter of American history – Vermont’s eugenics project of the 1920s and ’30s – to provide a compelling study of the things that come back to haunt us – literally and figuratively. Do we love across time or in spite of it?

©2003 Jodi Picoult (P)2003 Simon & Schuster

Swann’s Way is the first and best-known part of Proust’s monumental work, Remembrance of Things Past. Often compared to a symphony, this complex masterpiece is ideally suited for audio. Listening lets you appreciate anew the incredible beauty of Proust’s language and the uniqueness of his style. The novel’s narrator, Marcel, finds the true meaning of experience in memories stimulated by some random object or event. He recalls his childhood, and eventually reconstructs the story of Monsieur Swann and his passion for Odette, a beautiful, but socially inferior woman. Marcel’s waking reverie gives rise to fascinating questions about the meaning of time. Swann’s Way, with its long passages of intricate introspection, becomes much more accessible and enjoyable with George Guidall’s lucid narration.—Includes an exclusive interview with Mary Ann Caws, Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at CUNY.

Public Domain (P)1999 Recorded Books, LLC

The Greatest Western Writer of the 21st Century

The MacCallister family is legendary on the American frontier. And wherever a MacCallister travels, the legend – and the guns – follow.

Fight Like the Devil

When Duff MacCallister journeys to Texas to deliver 100 head of Angus cattle, he finds a land on fire. Unruly, lawless teams of fence cutters, branded Blue Devils by the locals, are rampaging across grazing land and cutting fences in the name of an Eastern land company. The ranchers are fighting back, and Duff joins the fray. But the fight leads to Austin and into an even deadlier mission.

The governor’s daughter has been kidnapped by Blue Devils. Duff and his partner, Elmer, are willing to go after her, but they’re going to need more men and a lot more firepower. The best the governor can do is three outlaws who once served honorably in war. Now Duff MacCallister is going up against a fanatical, highly trained enemy, riding with gunmen he cannot fully trust. Once the shooting starts, there is no turning back – because Duff and his posse are heading straight into the bloody depths of hell.

©2016 J. A. Johnstone (P)2016 Recorded Books

Ancient myths speak eloquently of the affairs of immortal gods and shining heroes, while linking us to our cultural history. Bulfinch captures these fables in one graceful, lyrical collection which has been an enduring success for over 140 years. Now, through George Guidall’s lucid two-part narration, The Age of Fable takes on new life and power. Part One includes the fascinating tales of Prometheus, Hercules, and Ulysses. Part Two completes the collection with the adventures of Aeneas, Thor, Beowulf, and other heroes.

Public Domain (P)1995 Recorded Books, LLC

“The singular remarkable fact about the Basques is that they still exist,” best selling author Mark Kurlansky says. The Basque people truly believe they should live in their own private country. This book includes their entire history, from their political and war involvement, to culinary taste, to economic and social life.Inhabiting the small corner where France meets Spain, the Basque speak their own language, Euskera. Evidence of their culture showed up as early as 218 BC, and now, with a population of 2.4 million, their influence on our world has been all-pervasive. Listeners will be enthralled as Kurlansky delves into the roots of an intriguing population, and shows us why they continue.

Enjoy Mark Kurlansky’s books? Listen to an interview with the author on To the Best of Our Knowlege.

©1999 Mark Kurlansky; (P)2002 New Millennium Audio, All Rights Reserved

What the Critics Say
“Entertaining and instructive…[Kurlansky] intersperses his political and military chronicle with lively anecdotes and digressions.” (The New York Times Book Review)
“A delectable portrait of an uncanny, indomitable nation.” (Newsday)

Number one New York Times best-selling author Daniel Silva delivers another spellbinding international thriller – one that finds the legendary Gabriel Allon grappling with an ISIS mastermind. 

Gabriel Allon, the art restorer, spy, and assassin described as the most compelling fictional creation “since Ian Fleming put down his martini and invented James Bond” (Rocky Mountain News), is poised to become the chief of Israel’s secret intelligence service. But on the eve of his promotion, events conspire to lure him into the field for one final operation. ISIS has detonated a massive bomb in the Marais district of Paris, and a desperate French government wants Gabriel to eliminate the man responsible before he can strike again.

Acclaimed novelist Daniel Silva has thrilled, entertained, and educated readers with 18 thoughtful and gripping spy novels featuring a diverse cast of compelling characters and ingenious plots that have taken them around the globe and back – from the United States to Europe, Russia to the Middle East. From its shocking opening to its explosive denouement in Washington, DC, The Black Widow reveals itself as Silva’s most timely and powerful novel yet. Following the success of his smash hit The English Spy, this electrifying thriller showcases Silva’s consummate skill and brilliant imagination and is sure to be a must-listen for his multitude of current and future fans.

©2016 Daniel Silva (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers

Homicide is always an abomination, but there is something exceptionally disturbing about the victim discovered in a high, lonely place: a corpse with a mouth full of sand, abandoned at a crime scene seemingly devoid of tracks or useful clues. Though it goes against his better judgment, Navajo tribal police lieutenant Joe Leaphorn cannot help but suspect the hand of a supernatural killer. There is palpable evil in the air, and Leaphorn’s pursuit of a wolf-witch is leading him where even the bravest men fear – on a chilling trail that winds perilously between mysticism and murder.

©1970 Anthony G. Hillerman (P)1990 Recorded Books

National Book Award, Fiction, 2001

The Corrections is a grandly entertaining novel for the new century – a comic, tragic masterpiece about a family breaking down in an age of easy fixes. After almost 50 years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson’s disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives.

The oldest, Gary, a once-stable portfolio manager and family man, is trying to convince his wife and himself, despite clear signs to the contrary, that he is not clinically depressed. The middle child, Chip, has lost his seemingly secure academic job and is failing specatcularly at his new line of work. And Denise, the youngest, has escaped a disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain on an affair with a married man – or so her mother fears.

Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to. Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home.

Stretching from the Midwest at midcentury to the Wall Street and Eastern Europe of today, The Corrections brings an old-fashioned world of civic virtue and sexual inhibitions into violent collision with the era of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental health care, and globalized greed. Richly realistic, darkly hilarious, deeply humane, it confirms Jonathan Franzen as one of our most brilliant interpreters of American society and the American soul.

©2010 Jonathan Franzen (P)2010 Simon and Schuster

All good things must come to an end, Constant Listener, and not even Stephen King can write a story that goes on forever. The tale of Roland Deschain’s relentless quest for the Dark Tower has, the author fears, sorely tried the patience of those who have followed it from its earliest chapters. But attend to it a while longer, if it pleases you, for this volume is the last, and often the last things are best.

Roland’s ka-tet remains intact, though scattered over wheres and whens. Susannah-Mia has been carried from the Dixie Pig (in the summer of 1999) to a birthing room (really a chamber of horrors) in Thunderclap’s Fedic Station; Jake and Father Callahan, with Oy between them, have entered the restaurant on Lex and 61st with weapons drawn, little knowing how numerous and noxious are their foes. Roland and Eddie are with John Cullum in Maine, in 1977, looking for the site on Turtleback Lane where “walk-ins” have been often seen. They want desperately to get back to the others, to Susannah especially, and yet they have come to realize that the world they need to escape is the only one that matters.

Thus the audiobook opens, like a door to the uttermost reaches of Stephen King’s imagination. You’ve come this far. Come a little farther. Come all the way. The sound you hear may be the slamming of the door behind you. Welcome to The Dark Tower.

Set in a world of extraordinary circumstances, filled with stunning visual imagery and unforgettable characters, The Dark Tower series is unlike anything you’ve ever heard. Here is Stephen King’s most visionary piece of storytelling, a magical mix of fantasy and horror that may well be his crowning achievement. Don’t miss the other volumes of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower.

©2004 Stephen King; (P)2004 Simon & Schuster Inc. AUDIOWORKS is an imprint of Simon & Schuster Audio Division, Simon & Schuster Inc.

In David Ignatius’ gripping new novel, spies don’ t bother to steal information…they change it, permanently and invisibly. Graham Weber has been director of the CIA for less than a week when a Swiss kid in a dirty T-shirt walks into the American consulate in Hamburg and says the agency has been hacked, and he has a list of agents’ names to prove it. This is the moment a CIA director most dreads. Weber isn’ t sure where to turn until he meets a charismatic (and unstable) young man named James Morris who runs the Internet Operations Center. He’ s the CIA’ s in-house geek. Weber launches Morris on a mole hunt unlike anything in spy fiction – one that takes the listener into the hacker underground of Europe and America and ends up in a landscape of paranoia and betrayal. Like the new world of cyber-espionage from which it’ s drawn, The Director is a maze of deception and double-dealing – about a world where everything is written in zeroes and ones and nothing can be trusted.

©2014 David Ignatius (P)2014 Recorded Books

Audie Award, Best Male Narrator, 2016

Number one New York Times best-selling author Daniel Silva delivers another stunning thriller in his latest action-packed tale of high-stakes international intrigue featuring the inimitable Gabriel Allon.

First there was The English Assassin.

Then there was The English Girl.

Now comes The English Spy….

Master novelist Daniel Silva has thrilled readers with 17 thoughtful and gripping spy novels featuring a diverse cast of compelling characters and ingenious plots that have taken them around the globe and back – from the United States to Europe, Russia to the Middle East. His brilliant hero, Gabriel Allon – art restorer, assassin, spy – has joined the pantheon of great fictional secret agents, including George Smiley, Jack Ryan, Jason Bourne, and Simon Templar.

Following the success of his smash hit The Heist, Daniel Silva returns with another blockbuster – a powerhouse novel that showcases his outstanding skill and brilliant imagination and is sure to be a must -listen for both his multitudes of fans and growing legions of converts.

©2015 Daniel Silva (P)2015 HarperCollins Publishers

New York Times best-selling author Tony Hillerman packs his flawless mysteries with evocative southwestern scenery, Native American lore, and finely-crafted characters. In The First Eagle, fear has been sweeping the Navajo reservation ever since a vicious killer and an unusually virulent strain of bubonic plague started claiming victims. When Tribal policeman Jim Chee discovers a blood-stained Hopi man hovering over a young officer’s body, it looks like an open-and-shut case. The Hopi will be heading for the gas chamber soon. But retired Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn isn’t so sure-his current missing person investigation is about to blow Chee’s perfect case wide open. Today’s fast-moving world and the rich traditions of the past meet head on in Edgar and Grand Master Award-winner Tony Hillerman’s absorbing tale. Veteran narrator George Guidall’s dramatic performance will whisk you to the high desert and enable you to follow in the footsteps of Leaphorn and Chee through the windswept plains and craggy boulders.

Sheriff Walt Longmire and Henry Standing Bear embark on their latest adventure in this novella set in the world of Craig Johnson’s New York Timesbest-selling Longmire series – the basis for the hit drama Longmire, now on Netflix.

When Wyoming highway patrolman Rosey Wayman is transferred to the beautiful and imposing landscape of the Wind River Canyon, an area the troopers refer to as no-man’s-land because of the lack of radio communication, she starts receiving “officer needs assistance” calls. The problem? They’re coming from Bobby Womack, a legendary Arapaho patrolman who met a fiery death in the canyon almost a half century ago.

With an investigation that spans this world and the next, Sheriff Walt Longmire and Henry Standing Bear take on a case that pits them against a legend: The Highwayman.

©2016 Craig Johnson (P)2016 Recorded Books

When high-school teacher Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, while Caelum is away, Maureen finds herself in the library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed. Miraculously, she survives. But when Caelum and Maureen flee to an illusion of safety on the Quirk family’s Connecticut farm, they discover that the effects of chaos are not easily put right.

While Maureen fights to regain her sanity, Caelum discovers five generations’ worth of diaries, letters, and newspaper clippings in his family’s house. As unimaginable secrets emerge, Caelum grapples with the past and struggles to fashion a future from the ashes of tragedy. His quest for meaning is at once mythic and contemporary, personal and quintessentially American.

©2008 Wally Lamb; (P)2008 HarperCollins Publishers

The magnificence of this timeless tale is highlighted by the eloquent reading of George Guidall. His guttural anger; sprightly joys; loud, authoritative commands; quiet, tender tones; and pithy asides hold the listener’s attention from the very first book. He has the strength and stamina of Achilles and Agamemnon themselves, and his performance demonstrates a deep understanding of the epic, making this audiobook a fine teaching tool. There’s no doubt that the best place for this tape is the high school or college classroom. Students will enjoy and understand the massive work so much better when their own reading is augmented by Guidall’s masterful interpretation. D.D.G. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: JUNE 95]

Audible Editor Reviews
Before there was Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollan, or Morgan Spurlock, there was Upton Sinclair. Sinclair’s classic novel – an exposé of the Chicago meatpacking industry at the at the turn of the twentieth century – achieves new life as an audiobook. Narrator George Guidall’s passionate rendering of the text makes it possible to visualize the vicious and grotesque conditions inside the slaughterhouses, and the impoverished immigrants who worked there, in a way that reading the text alone might not convey.
Publisher’s Summary
Few books have so affected radical social changes as The Jungle, first published serially in 1906. Exposing unsanitary conditions in the meat-packing industry in Chicago, Sinclair’s novel gripped Americans by the stomach, contributing to the passage of the first Food and Drug Act. If you’ve never read this classic novel, don’t be put off by its gruesome reputation. Upton Sinclair was a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who could turn even an exposé into a tender and moving novel.

Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant, comes to America in search of a fortune for his family. He accepts the harsh realities of a working man’s lot, laboring with naive vigor – until, his health and family sacrificed, he understands how the heavy wheels of the industrial machine can crush the strongest spirit.

Public Domain (P)1994 Recorded Books, LLC

This novel reveals more about the Battle of Gettysburg than any piece of learned nonfiction on the same subject. Michael Shaara’s account of the three most important days of the Civil War features deft characterizations of all of the main actors, including Lee, Longstreet, Pickett, Buford, and Hancock. The most inspiring figure in the book, however, is Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, whose 20th Maine regiment of volunteers held the Union’s left flank on the second day of the battle. This unit’s bravery at Little Round Top helped turned the tide of the war against the rebels.

The grand saga of an American ranching family continues in The Last Ranch, the final, mesmerizing book of New York Times best seller Michael McGarrity’s gripping and richly authentic American West trilogy.

When Matthew Kerney returns to his ranch in the beautiful San Andres Mountains after serving in Sicily during World War II, he must not only fight to recover physically and emotionally from a devastating war injury, but he must also battle attempts by the US Army to seize control of his land for expanded weapons testing.

Forced off public grazing lands, banned from gathering his cattle on high mountain pastures, and confronted by military police guarding a high security army post on the northern reaches of the range, Matt finds himself at the center of a heavy-handed government land-grab. The reasons behind this surge of secrecy and control become clear when Matt witnesses the boiling, blinding explosion of the first atom bomb at Trinity Site.

As he struggles with an aging, stove-up father no longer able to carry a heavy load at the ranch, an ex-convict intent on killing him, and a failing relationship with a woman he dearly loves, Matt must draw upon all his mental and physical resources to keep his world-and the people in it – from collapsing.

Following the New York Times best-selling Hard Country and its sequel Backlands, The Last Ranch enthralls with the deeply rich, sometimes heartbreaking Kerney family saga as it steps brilliantly into the mid-20th-century world of the new American West.

©2016 Michael McGarrity (P)2016 Recorded Books

International best-selling author Arturo Pérez-Reverte, a celebrated master of smart, gripping thrillers, draws favorable comparisons to such literary legends as Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, and Patrick O’Brian. Translated into 19 languages, his books have sold more than three million copies worldwide.

At a maritime auction in Barcelona, Merchant Marine Officer Manuel Coy sees an intense bidding war erupt over a seemingly innocuous 18th-century atlas. The auction winner is the beautiful Tanger Soto, who is obsessed with a Jesuit ship sunk by pirates in the 17th century. Joining forces, Tanger and Manuel hit the seas in search of Dei Gloria and its precious, yet unidentified, cargo. Their quest sends them not only into dangerous waters, but also into the perilous recesses of the human heart.

Full of adventure and suspense, The Nautical Chart is a masterful romance of the sea. George Guidall’s thrilling reading makes for an unforgettable listening experience.

©2000 Arturo Pérez-Reverte (P)2002 Recorded Books

The Osama bin Laden I Know is the definitive history of the world’s most wanted man. Author Peter Bergen is CNN’s terrorism analyst and an acclaimed journalist who actually spent time with bin Laden prior to the events of September 11, 2001. The book features interviews with people from each stage of bin Laden’s life, from childhood to the present day, and reveals both formative moments and intimate details that reveal his character and personality. The only book of its kind, this is the authoritative account of al Qaeda’s notorious leader.©2006 Peter L. Bergen; (P)2006 Recorded Book, LLC.

What the Critics Say
“A detailed, well-researched narrative that persuasively answers dozens of questions that are still painfully relevant today.” (The Washington Post)

To unmask a CIA mole, John Wells must resume his old undercover identity as an al Qaeda jihadi – and hope he can survive it – in the new cutting-edge novel from the best-selling author.

It is the most dangerous mission of John Wells’ career.

Evidence is mounting that someone high up in the CIA is doing the unthinkable – passing messages to ISIS, alerting them to planned operations. Finding out the mole’s identity without alerting him, however, will be very hard, and to accomplish it Wells will have to do something he thought he’d left behind forever. He will have to reassume his former identity as an al Qaeda jihadi, get captured, and go undercover to befriend an ISIS prisoner in a secret Bulgarian prison.

Many years before, Wells was the only American agent ever to penetrate al Qaeda, but times have changed drastically. The terrorist organizations have multiplied: gotten bigger, crueler, more ambitious, and powerful. Wells knows it may well be his death sentence. But there is no one else.

©2017 Alex Berenson (P)2017 Penguin Audio

The latest thriller from the New York Times best-selling author of Twelve Days, Alex Berenson.

John Wells has just barely managed to stop an operation designed to drive the United States and Iran into war, but the instigator himself disappeared behind an impenetrable wall of security. Now it’s time for him to pay, and Wells has made it his personal mission. There are plenty of crosscurrents at work, though. The White House doesn’t want anybody stirring the pot; his old CIA bosses have their own agendas; and other countries are starting to sniff around, sensing something unusual. It is when Russia and China enter the mix, however, that the whole affair is set to combust. With alarming speed, Wells is once again on his own…and the wolves are closing in.

©2016 Alex Berenson (P)2016 Penguin Audio

Under Western Eyes, Conrad’s novel of political treachery and oppression, begins with a bomb that kills a hated Russian minister of police along with innocent bystanders. A young student named Razumov hides the perpetrator, then betrays him and becomes a spy among his exiled comrades. He faces a moral dilemma from which there is no escape.

This masterwork, published six years before the Russian Revolution, is a chillingly accurate prophecy of what was to come.

Public Domain (P)2016 Recorded Books

Inspector Erlendur returns in this award-winning international best-seller.

The Christmas rush is at its peak in a grand ReykjavIk hotel when Inspector Erlendur is called in to investigate a murder. The hotel Santa has been stabbed to death, and Erlendur and his fellow detectives find no shortage of suspects between the hotel staff and the international travelers staying for the holidays. As Christmas Day approaches, Erlendur must deal with his difficult daughter, pursue a possible romantic interest, and untangle a long-buried web of malice and greed to find the murderer. Voices is a brutal, soulful noir from the chilly shores of Iceland.

©2003 Arnaldur Indridason, Translation: 2006 Bernard Scudder (P)2016 Recorded Books

At age 26 Franz Sedelmayer went to St. Petersburg Russia where he built a successful police supply and training company. One of his biggest supporters was St. Petersburg’s young deputy mayor, Vladimir Putin. Putin and Franz bonded and Putin became one of Franz’s biggest supporters.  But when Franz’s company was expropriated by President Boris Yeltsin, Putin did nothing to help his friend. Franz sued for damages. He won, but Russia–and its new President, Vladimir Putin–refused to pay. But Franz persevered, and he won: he foreclosed on Russian properties in Europe. Incredibly, Franz is the only individual ever to collect money from Vladimir Putin’s Russia.