Courtney Maum has 5 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 8 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 9 ratings. The most-rated is Touch.
Touch
Summary
From the author of the acclaimed I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You, a satirical and moving novel in the spirit of Maria Semple and Jess Walter about a New York City trend forecaster who finds herself wanting to overturn her own predictions, move away from technology, and reclaim her heart. Sloane Jacobsen is the most powerful trend forecaster in the world (she was the foreseer of "the swipe"), and global fashion, lifestyle, and tech companies pay to hear her opinions about the future. Her recent forecasts on the family are unwavering: the world is overpopulated, and with unemployment, college costs, and food prices all on the rise, having children is an extravagant indulgence. So it's no surprise when the tech giant Mammoth hires Sloane to lead their groundbreaking annual conference, celebrating the voluntarily childless. But not far into her contract, Sloane begins to sense the undeniable signs of a movement against electronics that will see people embracing compassion, empathy, and "in-personism" again. She's struggling with the fact that her predictions are hopelessly out of sync with her employer's mission and that her closest personal relationship is with her self-driving car when her partner, the French "neo-sensualist" Roman Bellard, reveals that he is about to publish an op-ed on the death of penetrative sex - a postsexual treatise that instantly goes viral. Despite the risks to her professional reputation, Sloane is nevertheless convinced that her instincts are the right ones and goes on a quest to defend real-life human interaction while finally allowing in the love and connectedness she's long been denying herself. A poignant and amusing call to arms that showcases her signature biting wit and keen eye, celebrated novelist Courtney Maum's new book is a moving investigation into what it means to be an individual in a globalized world.
©2017 Courtney Maum (P)2017 Penguin Audio
This Is Not Your Fault
Summary
From acclaimed author Courtney Maum, a short story about a couple in the throes of divorce during COVID-19 that will remind listeners of the heartfelt humor and acuity of her critically acclaimed and beloved debut novel, I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You. Hal Beekman is exhausted. With all of his energy devoted to his real estate developments, he doesn’t have the bandwidth to figure out why his wife is sad. As for Stacey Beekman, a transplanted Midwesterner with divorce-whisperer friends, the only solution for a husband who doesn’t desire her is to find a second husband who does. But with Stacey left alone in a new house to parent her tech-addicted children and Hank isolated in a Greenwich McMansion that neither of them ever loved, COVID-19 has surprises in store for the Beekmans, including the realization that they might be making a mistake. Alternating between the husband and wife’s legal paperwork and co-parenting forms - braided with desperate missives from overeager lawyers - Maum’s portrait of a strained marriage in an unprecedented time - like quarantine life itself - is a powerful reminder about what we really hold dear.
©2020 Courtney Maum (P)2020 Audible Originals, LLC.
Before and After the Book Deal
Summary
Everything you've ever wanted to know about publishing but were too afraid to ask is right here in this funny, candid guide by acclaimed author Courtney Maum. Before and After the Book Deal: A Writer's Guide to Finishing, Publishing, Promoting, and Surviving Your First Book has over 150 contributors from all walks of the industry, including internationally best-selling authors Anthony Doerr, Roxane Gay, Garth Greenwell, Lisa Ko, R. O. Kwon, Rebecca Makkai, and Ottessa Moshfegh, alongside cult favorites Sarah Gerard, Melissa Febos, Mitchell S. Jackson, and Mira Jacob. Agents, film scouts, film producers, translators, disability and minority activists, and power agents and editors also weigh in, offering advice and sharing intimate anecdotes about even the most taboo topics in the industry. Are MFA programs worth the time and money? How do people actually sit down and finish a novel? Did you get a good advance? What do you do when you feel envious of other writers? And why the heck aren't your friends saying anything about your book? Covering questions ranging from the logistical to the existential (and everything in between), Before and After the Book Deal is the definitive guide for anyone who has ever wanted to know what it's really like to be an author.
©2020 Courtney Maum (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Costalegre
Summary
"A lush chronicle of wealth, art, adventure, loneliness, love, and folly told by a narrator you won't be able to forget."--Kirkus, starred review
One of Literary Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2019.
A Best Book of Summer at amNY, Moda Operandi, Publishers Weekly, Southern Living, and Thrillist.
A Best Book of July at The Washington Post, Hello Giggles, Refinery 29, TIME Magazine, and Mind Body Green.
It is 1937, and Europe is on the brink of war. In the haute-bohemian circles of Austria, Germany, and Paris, Hitler is circulating a most-wanted list of “cultural degenerates" - artists, writers, and thinkers whose work is deemed antithetical to the new regime. To prevent the destruction of her favorite art (and artists), the impetuous American heiress and modern art collector, Leonora Calaway, begins chartering boats and planes for an elite group of surrealists to Costalegre, a mysterious resort in the Mexican jungle, where she has a home.
The story of what happens to these artists when they reach their destination is told from the point of view of Lara, Leonora’s neglected 15-year-old daughter, who has been pulled out of school to follow her mother to Mexico. Forced from a young age to cohabit with her mother’s eccentric whims, tortured lovers, and entourage of gold-diggers, Lara suffers from emotional, educational, and geographical instability that a Mexican sojourn with surrealists isn’t going to help. But when she meets the outcast Dadaist sculptor Jack Klinger, a much older man who has already been living in Costalegre for some time, Lara thinks she might have found the love and understanding she so badly craves.
Sinuous and striking, heartbreaking and strange, Costalegre is heavily inspired by the real-life relationship between the heiress Peggy Guggenheim and her daughter, Pegeen. Acclaimed author Courtney Maum triumphs with this wildly imaginative and curiously touching story of a privileged teenager who has everything a girl could wish for - except for a mother who loves her back.
©2019 Courtney Maum (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing., Inc., all rights reserved.
I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You
Summary
Despite the success of his first solo show in Paris and the support of his brilliant French wife and young daughter, 34-year-old British artist Richard Haddon is too busy mourning the loss of his American mistress to appreciate his fortune. But after Richard discovers that a painting he originally made for his wife, Anne, has sold, it shocks him back to reality and he resolves to reinvest wholeheartedly in his family life - just in time for his wife to learn the extent of his affair. Rudderless and remorseful, Richard embarks on a series of misguided attempts to win Anne back while focusing his creative energy on a provocative art piece to prove that he's still the man she once loved.
©2014 Courtney Maum (P)2014 Dreamscape Media, LLC