Aaron Elkins has 26 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 16 narrators, with an average listener rating of 3★ across 130 ratings. The most-rated is A Darkness at Sethanon.
A Darkness at Sethanon
Summary
An evil wind blows through Midkemia. Dark legions have risen up to crush the Kingdom of the Isles and enslave it to dire magics. The final battle between Order and Chaos is about to begin in the ruins of the city called Sethanon. Now, Pug, the master magician sometimes known as Milamber, must undertake an awesome and perilous quest to the dawn of time to grapple with an ancient and terrible Enemy for the fate of a thousand worlds.
©2017 Raymond Feist (P)2017 Random House Audio
A Dangerous Talent
Summary
From the outside, Alix London appears to have it all: a glamorous career as an art consultant, a sumptuous condo in Seattle’s toniest neighborhood, a gorgeous figure, and a presence that positively exudes Ivy League breeding and old money. Unfortunately for Alix, what you see isn’t exactly what you get. A brilliant, once-promising art student, the daughter of a prominent New York art conservator, Alix and her world were left in ruins when her father went to prison for art forgery. Now a Harvard dropout with an emptied bank account, she is languishing in a career that has produced little more than a lucky house-sitting gig. Then she meets Christine Lemay, a novice art collector with deep pockets and a handle on a recently discovered painting by American master Georgia O’Keeffe. Chris needs the painting authenticated, and Alix’s career desperately needs the boost that will come from such a high-profile assignment. But when an attempted art theft goes horribly wrong, Alix is plunged into a tangled web of forgery, deceit - and murder. Only her connoisseur’s eye (and a little unlikely help from her roguish father) can give the FBI the expertise they need to crack the case…assuming the killer doesn’t come for her next. Witty and surprising, A Dangerous Talent introduces a clever and enchanting new sleuth to the ranks of American detective fiction.
©2012 Aaron Elkins and Charlotte Elkins (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
The Art Whisperer
Summary
When art conservator Alix London spots a forgery, she knows trouble will follow. So she’s understandably apprehensive when her connoisseur’s eye spots something off about a multimillion-dollar Jackson Pollock painting at Palm Springs’s Brethwaite Museum - her current employer. Alix is already under fire, the object of a vicious online smear campaign. Now the Brethwaite’s despicable senior curator, obsessed with the "maximization of monetized eyeballs," angrily refuses to decommission the celebrated Pollock piece. But it’s only when a hooded intruder attacks Alix in her hotel room that the real trouble begins. And when FBI Special Agent Ted Ellesworth - with whom Alix had inadvertently, but thoroughly, botched a budding relationship just a year prior - turns up to investigate the Pollock, Alix knows she’s about to have her hands full. In her third mystery, Alix London must see through mirages in the desert to uncover the knotted history of the painting - and save herself in the process.
©2014 Charlotte and Aaron Elkins (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved
A Cruise to Die For
Summary
This should be the cushiest job Alix London's ever had. The second Alix London Mystery finds the art restorer in a world brimming with idle luxury, spectacular locations, and deadly intrigue. Surrounded by art and wealth and the sun-drenched Greek isles, she's aboard a sumptuous mega-yacht with no responsibilities save the occasional lecture to the guests of her temporary employer, Panos Papadakis, one of the world's richest men. But there's a catch: Papadakis has long been suspected of being at the center of a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme and Alix is actually there as an undercover operative of FBI special agent Ted Ellesworth, a member of the Bureau's Art Crime Team. They hope Alix can gather the inside information they need to finally put the cagey Papadakis away. Alix's exposure to the enormous wealth of high-end collectors and the shadier aspects of the art trade - the avarice, naked greed, and ingenious scams - somehow brings her closer to her charming, "reformed" rogue of a father, and helps crystalize in her own mind just where she fits into the mix. Moguls, murders, a forged Manet, and the Albanian mafia all play a role and send this pleasure cruise into brutally dangerous waters. Set on the Aegean - Homer's fabled "wine-dark sea" - with stops at enchanted islands where ancient legends still live, A Cruise to Die For delivers a witty blend of suspense and mystery, as well as an insider's take on the contemporary art world and its eccentric characters. It's all served up with the style and sophistication with which Charlotte and Aaron Elkins have rewarded mystery listeners for the past 30 years.
©2013 Charlotte and Aaron Elkins (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
The Trouble with Mirrors
Summary
Alix London, the art restorer and FBI consultant renowned as the Art Whisperer, can spot a counterfeit masterpiece before the paint even dries. What she can't see is why an elite European art dealer would offer her big money for a little mirror that's no more than a homemade gift from her beloved uncle Tiny. Not that Alix would part with it at any price. But when the mirror is abruptly stolen from her home, she realizes that someone sees more in the looking glass than mere sentimental value. When her uncle Tiny disappears mysteriously just after the mirror is stolen, the simple art theft becomes a personal and professional challenge Alix can't ignore. With backup from her friends in the FBI, her game-for-anything pal Chris, and an aging-but-dogged Italian police detective, she delves into the puzzling case, only to find that there is much more to this theft than meets the eye. Once the Mafia shows up on the scene, Alix's mission becomes a do-or-die race to find the one possible man with all the answers.
©2016 Charlotte and Aaron Elkins. (P)2016 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Switcheroo
Summary
The Skeleton Detective is back. A cold case dating from the 1960s draws forensic anthropologist Gideon Oliver to the Channel Islands decades later to shine a light on the mysterious connection between two men who died there on the same night. Swapped as young boys by their fathers during the Nazi occupation, wealthy Roddy Carlisle and middle-class George Skinner had some readjusting to do after the war ended - but their lives remained linked through work, trouble with the law, and finally, it would seem, through murder. Nobody expects that Gideon's modern-day investigation will turn up fresh bodies. But old bones tell many tales, and the Skeleton Detective has to be at his sharpest to piece together the truth before the body count mounts still higher. Declared "a series that never disappoints" by the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Gideon Oliver mystery series is highly recommended for fans of Agatha Christie and Kathy Reichs.
©2016 Aaron Elkins, all rights reserved. (P)2016 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Malice Domestic 1: An Anthology of Original Mystery Stories (Unabridged)
Summary
Malice Domestic distinguishes the personal and private aspects of crime from the public and impersonal. Our murderers don't kill for the fun of it (serial killers) or for a misguided ideal (assassins and terrorists) or for pay (hired hit men). They only do in people they know and love (or hate).
©1992 Martin Greenberg (P)2009 Phoenix
A Long Time Coming
Summary
It takes a real artist to solve a crime this big - in a brilliant, engrossing mystery by Edgar Award winner Aaron Elkins.... Art curator Val Caruso is not a happy camper. His promotion has just been nixed, his divorce has become final, and he’s dug himself into a nice little rut for his fortieth birthday. The uplift? A trip to Milan to help Holocaust survivor Sol Bezzecca recover a pair of cherished sketches by Renoir. They’d once been given to Sol’s family by the then-unknown artist, looted by the Italian Fascist militia, and now after decades in hiding have turned up for auction. It’s Val’s job to get them back. Unfortunately, his Italian adventure takes a dangerous turn when he becomes trapped in an intricate web that reaches back to World War II - and is still very sticky with art thieves, forgers, and somebody who wants Val out of the picture permanently. When the lost Renoirs are stolen yet again, Val is more determined than ever to hunt them down. The reward for reuniting an old man with his rightful past? Priceless. But doing it is going to be murder.
©2018 Aaron Elkins (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved
Nasty Breaks
Summary
Lee Ofsted has been hired to teach golf to the executives of a local salvage company on bucolic Block Island. The setting is lovely, and the $1,000-a-day salary will go a long way toward covering her expenses during her third year on the pro tour. But will it be compensation enough for solving a murder? After a bizarre, botched kidnapping of his sexy wife, the owner of the salvage company turns up dead on the beach. Lee soon discovers that nearly every manager at the company has a motive for murder. Plunging into the case, she asks her boyfriend, Graham Sheldon, a former cop, for his expert help. Before long, the two of them are involved in a tale of greed and ambition that stretches back in time almost 200 years, to a sunken treasure ship that went down in these very waters.
©1997 Charlotte and Aaron Elkins (P)1997 Blackstone Audio Inc.
Where There's a Will
Summary
Edgar® Award-winning author Aaron Elkins's creation - forensics professor Gideon Oliver - has been hailed by the Chicago Tribune as "a likable, down-to-earth, cerebral sleuth." Now the celebrated Skeleton Detective unearths a wealthy family's darkest secrets.... Alex Torkelsson has just gotten word: His late uncle Magnus's plane has been found south of Hawaii's Big Island after 10 long years. So too have Magnus' few skeletal remains, now handed over to the only man who can fit together the pieces of this mystery... What forensic detective Gideon Oliver discovers could shake the Torkelsson family tree to its very roots. But this time his work is yielding more questions about the past than answers. Questions about the long-ago execution-style murder of Magnus's brother...about a mysterious will that benefits - as well as incriminates - its heirs...and most disturbing of all: questions as to the true identity of the corpse in the lagoon. As lie upon lie is revealed, Gideon's only hope is to let the bones of the dead condemn the living-before the living take revenge.
©2005 Aaron Elkins (P)2019 Tantor
Skeleton Dance
Summary
Les-Eyzies-de-Tayac is known for three things: pâte de fois gras, truffles, and prehistoric remains. The little village, in fact, is the headquarters of the prestigious Institute de Prehistoire, which studies the abundant local fossils. But when a pet dog emerges from a nearby cave carrying parts of a human skeleton - by no means a fossilized one - Chief Inspector Lucien Anatole Joly puts in a call to his old friend, Gideon Oliver, the famed “Skeleton Detective.” Once Gideon arrives, murder piles on murder, puzzle on puzzle, and twist follows twist in a series of unexpected events that threaten to tear the once sober, dignified Institut apart. It takes a bizarre and startling forensic breakthrough by Gideon to bring to an end a trail of deception 35, 000 years in the making.
©2000 Aaron Elkins (P)2019 Tantor
Fellowship of Fear
Summary
When anthropology professor Gideon Oliver is offered a teaching fellowship at US military bases in Germany, Sicily, Spain, and Holland, he wastes no time accepting. Stimulating courses to teach, a decent stipend, all expenses paid, plenty of interesting European travel...What's not to like? It does not take him long to find out. On his first night, he is forced to fend off two desperate, black-clad men who have invaded his Heidelberg hotel room with intent to kill. And then there are a few trivial details that the recruiting agency forgot to mention - such as the fact that the two previous holders of the fellowship both met with mysterious ends. From there, it is all downhill. Gideon finds himself the target in an unfamiliar game for which no one has bothered to give him the rules. What he does have is his own considerable intellect and his remarkable forensic skills. He will need them, for he is playing for some fairly high stakes: the security of Western Europe.
©1982 Aaron Elkins (P)2019 Tantor
Unnatural Selection
Summary
The Edgar Award-winning author of Where There's a Will returns with another bone-chilling mystery starring "Skeleton Detective" Gideon Oliver. Forensics professor Gideon Oliver accompanies his wife to the Isles of Scilly, which dot the sea like an emerald necklace 30 miles off the Cornwall coast. Julie's been invited here by Russian expatriate Vasily Kozlov, scientist, millionaire, and eccentric. At his home, Star Castle, he regularly hosts a consortium of guests with differing opinions - which makes for some very heated arguments. While Julie's stuck indoors, Gideon looks forward to puttering around the Neolithic sites nearby. But before day one is through, a newer bone turns up - this tibia is only a few years old - and all signs point to murder. And just as Gideon and the local law puzzle over the bone's origin, another murder happens at Star Castle. Could it just be bad luck, two murders within a couple of years? Or do Kozlov's lively debates have a way of turning deadly?
©2006 Aaron Elkins (P)2019 Tantor
Dying on the Vine
Summary
When Gideon Oliver and his wife, Julie, are in Tuscany visiting the Cubbiddu family, the renowned Skeleton Detective is asked to reexamine the remains of a mysterious family tragedy. Pietro Cubbiddu, former patriarch of the Villa Antica wine empire, is thought to have killed his wife and then himself in the remote mountains of the Apennines. It does not take long for Gideon to deduce that, whatever happened, a murder-suicide it was not. Soon Gideon finds himself in a morass of family antipathies, conflicts, and mistrust, to say nothing of the local authority's resentment. And when yet another Cubbiddu relation meets an unlikely end, it becomes bone-chillingly clear that the killer is far from finished....
©2012 Aaron Elkins (P)2020 Tantor
Make No Bones
Summary
There is not much left of the irascible Albert Evan Jasper, "dean of American forensic anthropologists," after his demise in a fiery car crash. But in accord with his wishes, his remains - a few charred bits of bone - are installed in an Oregon museum to create a fascinating if macabre exhibit. All agree that it is a fitting end for a great forensic scientist - until what is left of him disappears in the midst of the biannual meeting (a.k.a., the "bone bash and weenie roast") of the august WAFA - the Western Association of Forensic Anthropologists - in nearby Bend, Oregon. Like his fellow attendees, Gideon Oliver - the Skeleton Detective - is baffled. Only the WAFA attendees could possibly have made off with the remains, but who in the world would steal something like that? And why? All had an opportunity, but who had a motive? Soon enough, the discovery of another body in a nearby shallow grave will bring to the fore a deeper, more urgent mystery, and when one of the current attendees is found dead in his cabin, all hell breaks loose. Gideon Oliver is now faced with the most difficult challenge of his career - unmasking a dangerous, brilliant killer who knows every bit as much about forensic science as he does. Or almost.
©1991 Aaron Elkins (P)2019 Tantor
Uneasy Relations
Summary
Buried ceremoniously, high in a cave on the Rock of Gibraltar, lies the skeleton of a human woman, clutching the skeleton of a part-human, part-Neanderthal child. Fascinated, Professor Oliver jumps at the chance to visit the site. But two deaths, possibly murders, have rocked Gibraltar. As Oliver tries to piece things together, he's about to fall for some deadly tricks. After all, unlike the Gibraltar Boy, he's only human.
©2008 Aaron Elkins (P)2019 Tantor
Icy Clutches
Summary
Edgar Award-winning series: On a trip to Glacier Bay, Alaska, the Skeleton Detective pursues a cold-hearted killer who buries evidence in an avalanche. Gideon Oliver expects to be amicably bored when he takes on the role of "accompanying spouse" at a lodge in the magnificent wild country of Glacier Bay, Alaska, where his forest ranger wife, Julie, is attending a conference. But it turns out to be exactly his cup of tea. There is another group at the lodge: six scientists on a memorial journey to the site of a 30-year-old glacial avalanche that killed three of their colleagues. Their leader is TV's most popular science personality, the unctuous M. Audley Tremaine, who is the sole survivor of the fatal avalanche. But he does not survive long and is soon found hanged in his room. If that is not upsetting enough, shocked hikers discover human bones emerging from the foot of the glacier-are they the shattered remains of the three who died, finally seeing daylight after their two-mile, three-decade journey within the glacial flow? When the FBI seeks expert help, everyone agrees how fortunate it is that Dr. Oliver, the famed Skeleton Detective, is on the scene. Everybody, that is, but the person who wants ancient history to stay that way - and who believes that murder is the surest way to keep the past buried.
©1990 Aaron Elkins (P)2019 Tantor
Good Blood
Summary
What was supposed to be an Italian vacation for forensic anthropologist Gideon Oliver and his wife turns into a busman's holiday when their hosts' only child goes missing - and nearby construction workers unearth human bones. The family awaits Oliver's conclusions with both dread and cautious hope. But along the way, he'll expose some extraordinary deceptions that lay bare the long-hidden secrets at the dark heart of a highborn family.
©2004 Aaron Elkins (P)2019 Tantor
The Dark Place
Summary
Gideon Oliver earns his moniker "The Skeleton Detective" in this riveting entry to the Edgar Award-winning mystery series "that never disappoints" (The Philadelphia Inquirer). Deep in the primeval rainforest of Washington state's Olympic Peninsula, the skeletal remains of a murdered man are discovered. And a strange, unsettling tale begins to unfold, for forensic anthropologist Gideon Oliver determines that the murder weapon was a primitive bone spear of a type not seen for the last 10,000 years. And whoever - or whatever - hurled it did so with seemingly superhuman force. Bigfoot "sightings" immediately crop up, but Gideon is not buying them. But something is continuing to kill people, and Gideon, helped by forest ranger Julie Tendler and FBI special agent John Lau, plunges into the dark heart of an unexplored wilderness to uncover the bizarre, astonishing explanation. Fans of authors Kathy Reichs and Tess Gerritsen and television shows like Bones will be fascinated by Aaron Elkins's award-winning landmark forensic detective series.
©1983 Aaron Elkins (P)2019 Tantor
Twenty Blue Devils
Summary
The dead man is the manager of Tahiti's Paradise Coffee Plantation, producer of the most expensive coffee bean in the world, the winey, luscious Blue Devil. Nothing tangible points to foul play behind his fall from a cliff, but FBI agent John Lau, a relative of the coffee-growing family, has his suspicions. What he needs is evidence, and who better to provide it than his friend, anthropologist Gideon Oliver, the Skeleton Detective? Gideon is willing to help, but surprisingly - and suspiciously - both the police and the other family members refuse to okay an exhumation order. As a result, Gideon, to his surprise and against his better judgment, finds himself sneaking into a graveyard under cover of night with John, a flashlight, and a shovel. Gideon prefers his bones ancient, dry, and dusty, but the body he must examine had lain in the tropical sun for a week before it was found and then buried native style - shallow, with no casket - so it is not exactly his...well, cup of tea. But it is not the state of the remains that bothers him the most, it is the deeper human ugliness that his examination uncovers: subtle clues that do indeed point to foul play, to mistaken identity, and to a murderous conspiracy that may have percolated through the family for decades - and brewed a taste for murder.
©1997 Aaron Elkins (P)2019 Tantor