John Oehler has 3 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is Tepui.
Tepui
Summary
In 1559, 49 Spaniards exploring a tributary of the Orinoco River reached a sheer-sided, cloud-capped mountain called Tepui Zupay. When they tried to climb it, all but six were slaughtered by Amazons. Or so claimed Friar Sylvestre, the expedition's chronicler. But Sylvestre made many bizarre claims: rivers of blood, plants that lead to gold. Jerry Pace, a burn-scarred botanist struggling for tenure at UCLA, thinks the friar was delusional. Jerry's best friend, the historian who just acquired Sylvestre's journal, disagrees. He plans to retrace the expedition's footsteps, and wants Jerry to come with him. Jerry refuses, until he spots a stain between the journal's pages - a stain that could only have been left by a plant that died out with the dinosaurs. Now he has to find that plant. But the Venezuelan wilderness does not forgive intruders. Battered and broken, they reach a remote Catholic orphanage where the old prioress warns of death awaiting any who would venture farther. But an exotic Indian girl leads them on, through piranha-infested rivers and jungles teaming with poisonous plants, to Tepui Zupay - the forbidden mountain no outsider has set eyes on since the Spaniards met their doom. This is a story about life's surprises - the challenges, risks - and how they transform us. It is also a tale of beauty and the beast.
©2015 John Oehler (P)2016 John Oehler
Aphrodesia
Summary
Unexplained deaths suddenly crop up all over the world. Their only link is to a perfume. Eric Foster had a dream - to become a master perfumer. While a student at the world's top perfume school, he creates an aphrodisiac fragrance of astonishing potency, the holy grail of the perfumer's art. His future seems assured. But when his creation is tied to an outbreak of passion-driven homicides, he becomes the NYPD's prime suspect, facing a charge of serial murder. Desperate to prove his innocence, Eric reluctantly teams up with Tanya Cole, a forensic chemist who seems born to exasperate him. Their quest takes them to Yemen and France and plunges them into the dark realms of organized crime, child labor, and Third World interrogation. Against increasingly violent adversaries, Eric's only advantage is his extraordinary sense of smell - and that of his rescued bloodhound, Daisy.
©2012 John Oehler (P)2016 John Oehler
Papyrus
Summary
Rika Teferi, a young woman who formerly led midnight raids in Eritrea's war for independence from Ethiopia, is working on her doctorate in the Cairo museum when catastrophe strikes. An accidental tea spill damages the royal papyrus she has been struggling to interpret, the papyrus purported to be Queen Tiye's last message to her son, Tutankhamun. But the spill also exposes hidden writing below the surface hieroglyphs. Horrified at the damage but aching to read the entire secret text, Rika agrees to let visiting remote-sensing expert David Chamberlain smuggle the priceless document out of the museum and scan it with instruments on his aircraft. The results are stunning. They show Tiye, previously a footnote in history, to have been the power behind the thrones of her husband and sons, as well as the architect of a monotheistic religion unique in ancient Egypt. Riveted by these revelations, Rika and David devise a covert plan to locate Tiye's tomb. But Major Hassam of the Egyptian Secret Police misreads their activities as a plot to overthrow the government and vows to stop them at all costs. Reared in revolution, Rika feels a spiritual bond with Tiye, an African commoner who revolutionized Egyptian society by introducing a religion that freed Egypt from the tyranny of the Amun priests. Rika's quest to find Tiye's tomb parallels the queen's last journey up the Nile, 3000 years before, to be buried alive in a tomb like no other.
©2013 John Oehler (P)2016 John Oehler