Jonathan Lethem has 10 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 15 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 36 ratings. The most-rated is Motherless Brooklyn.
Motherless Brooklyn
Summary
Now a major motion picture from Warner Bros. Starring Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, and Willem Dafoe From America's most inventive novelist, Jonathan Lethem, comes this compelling and compulsive riff on the classic detective novel. Lionel Essrog is Brooklyn's very own Human Freakshow, an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark, count, and rip apart language in startling and original ways. Together with three veterans of the St. Vincent's Home for Boys, he works for small-time mobster Frank Minna's limo service cum detective agency. Life without Frank, the charismatic King of Brooklyn, would be unimaginable. When Frank is fatally stabbed, Lionel's world is suddenly turned upside down, and this outcast who has trouble even conversing attempts to untangle the threads of the case, while trying to keep the words straight in his head. A compulsively involving a and totally captivating homage to the classic detective tale.
©1999 Jonathan Lethem (P)2014 HarperCollinsPublishers
Gun, with Occasional Music
Summary
Gumshoe Conrad Metcalf has problems - not the least of which are the rabbit in his waiting room and the trigger-happy kangaroo on his tail. Near-future Oakland is an ominous place where evolved animals function as members of society, the police monitor citizens by their karma levels, and mind-numbing drugs such as Forgettol and Acceptol are all the rage. In this brave new world, Metcalf has been shadowing the wife of an affluent doctor, perhaps falling a little in love with her at the same time. But when the doctor turns up dead, our amiable investigator finds himself caught in the crossfire in a futuristic world that is both funny - and not so funny.
©1994 Jonathan Lethem (P)2009 BBC Audio
Girls with Bright Futures
Summary
Three women. Three daughters. And a promise that they'll each get what they deserve. College admissions season at Seattle's Elliott Bay Academy is marked by glowing acceptances from top-tier institutions and students as impressive as their parents are ambitious. But when Stanford alerts the school it's allotting only one spot to EBA for their incoming class, three mothers discover the competition is more cutthroat than they could have imagined. Tech giant Alicia turns to her fortune and status to fight for her reluctant daughter's place at the top. Kelly, a Stanford alum, leverages her PTA influence and insider knowledge to bulldoze the path for her high-strung daughter. And Maren makes three: single, broke, and ill-equipped to battle the elite school community aligning to bring her superstar daughter down. That's when, days before applications are due, one of the girls suffers a near-fatal accident, one that doesn't appear to be an accident at all. As the community spirals out of control, three women will have to decide what lines they're willing to cross to secure their daughters' futures...and keep buried the secrets that threaten to destroy far more than just college dreams.
©2021 Tracy Dobmeier and Wendy Katzman (P)2021 Recorded Books
On Beulah Height
Summary
They moved everyone that long hot summer fifteen years ago. They needed a new reservoir and an old community seemed a cheap price to pay. They even dug up the dead and moved them too. But four inhabitants of the valley they couldn't move, for nobody knew where they were. Three little girls had gone missing, and the prime suspect in their disappearance, Benny Lightfoot. This was Andy Dalziel's worst case and now fifteen years on he looks set to relive it. It's another long hot summer. A child goes missing in the next valley, and old fears arise as someone sprays the deadly message on the wall of Danby: BENNY'S BACK! Music and myth mingle as the Mid-Yorkshire team delve into their pasts and into their own reserves of experience and endurance in search of answers which threaten to bring more pain than they resolve.
©1998 Reginald Hill (P)2015 Audible, Ltd.
The Fortress of Solitude
Summary
This is the story of two boys, Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude. They are friends and neighbors, but because Dylan is white and Mingus is black, their friendship is not simple. This is the story of their Brooklyn neighborhood, which is almost exclusively black despite the first whispers of something that will become known as "gentrification." This is the story of 1970s America, a time when the most simple human decisions - what music you listen to, whether to speak to the kid in the seat next to you, whether to give up your lunch money - are laden with potential political, social and racial disaster. This is the story of 1990s America, when no one cared anymore. This is the story of punk, that easy white rebellion, and crack, that monstrous plague. This is the story of the loneliness of the avant-garde artist and the exuberance of the graffiti artist. This is the story of what would happen if two teenaged boys obsessed with comic book heroes actually had superpowers: They would screw up their lives. This is the story of joyous afternoons of stickball and dreaded years of schoolyard extortion. This is the story of belonging to a society that doesn't accept you. This is the story of prison and of college, of Brooklyn and Berkeley, of soul and rap, of murder and redemption. This is the story Jonathan Lethem was born to tell. This is The Fortress of Solitude.
©2002 Jonathan Lethem (P)2003 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.
The Arrest
Summary
From the award-winning author of The Feral Detective and Motherless Brooklyn comes an utterly original post-collapse yarn about two siblings, the man that came between them, and a nuclear-powered super car. The Arrest isn’t post-apocalypse. It isn’t a dystopia. It isn’t a utopia. It’s just what happens when much of what we take for granted - cars, guns, computers, and airplanes, for starters - quits working.... Before the Arrest, Sandy Duplessis had a reasonably good life as a screenwriter in L.A. An old college friend and writing partner, the charismatic and malicious Peter Todbaum, had become one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. That didn’t hurt. Now, post-Arrest, nothing is what it was. Sandy, who calls himself Journeyman, has landed in rural Maine. There he assists the butcher and delivers the food grown by his sister, Maddy, at her organic farm. But then Todbaum shows up in an extraordinary vehicle: a retrofitted tunnel-digger powered by a nuclear reactor. Todbaum has spent the Arrest smashing his way across a fragmented and phantasmagorical United States, trailing enmities all the way. Plopping back into the siblings’ life with his usual odious panache, his motives are entirely unclear. Can it be that Todbaum wants to produce one more extravaganza? Whatever he’s up to, it may fall to Journeyman to stop him. Written with unrepentant joy and shot through with just the right amount of contemporary dread, The Arrest is speculative fiction at its absolute finest. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 Jonathan Lethem (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
Magick and Mischief
Summary
Magic, Mischief, and Kilts! A modern-day Scottish warlock paranormal romance by New York Times best-selling author Michelle M. Pillow. Kenneth doesn’t have room for anything in his life beyond his responsibilities as an immortal warlock and a father. Being a single dad is difficult, especially when that toddler is more powerful than his entire magickal family combined. Standing against forces who want nothing more than to harness his daughter’s power takes focus, dedication, and the willingness to put his life on hold. So when the mysterious yet beautiful Andrea appears on his doorstep, he can’t help but distrust her. For two years, Andrea Breaux has been running from a dangerous supernatural force. She’s learned to stay on the move, to never allow grass to grow under her feet, and to be suspicious of everyone and everything. When she finds herself in a house surrounded by magicks and a powerful child who would rather she not leave, Andrea isn’t sure what to do or if she even wants to go. But staying puts everyone at risk, especially the Scottish hottie in a kilt, Kenneth MacGregor. Warning: Contains yummy, hot, mischievous MacGregors who are almost certainly up to no good on their quest to find true love. And Uncle Raibeart.
©2020 The Raven Books LLC (P)2020 The Raven Books LLC
The Feral Detective
Summary
Jonathan Lethem’s first detective novel since Motherless Brooklyn. “One of America’s greatest storytellers.” (Washington Post) Phoebe Siegler first meets Charles Heist in a shabby trailer on the eastern edge of Los Angeles. She’s looking for her friend’s missing daughter, Arabella, and hires Heist to help. A laconic loner who keeps his pet opossum in a desk drawer, Heist intrigues the sarcastic and garrulous Phoebe. Reluctantly, he agrees to help. The unlikely pair navigates the enclaves of desert-dwelling vagabonds and finds Arabella is in serious trouble - caught in the middle of a violent standoff that only Heist, mysteriously, can end. Phoebe’s trip to the desert was always going to be strange, but it was never supposed to be dangerous.... Jonathan Lethem’s first detective novel since Motherless Brooklyn, The Feral Detective is a singular achievement by one of our greatest writers. Bonus: Stay tuned after the end of the audiobook to hear an exclusive conversation between Zosia Mamet and Jonathan Lethem.
©2018 Jonathan Lethem (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers
Girl in Landscape
Summary
At the age of 13, Pella Marsh emigrates with her family to the Planet of the Archbuilders. These enigmatic aborigines have names like Lonely Dumptruck and Hiding Kneel, and a civilization that baffles and frightens their human visitors. As the spikily independent Pella becomes an uneasy envoy between two species, Girl in Landscape deftly interweaves themes of exploration and otherness, loss, and sexual awakening.
©1999 Jonathan Lethem (P)2007 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.
Selected Shorts: Even More Laughs
Summary
From silly chuckles to rueful ironic glee to deep cosmic laughter, this new volume of humorous tales samples the best of recent seasons of the popular public radio series Selected Shorts.
©2010 Symphony Space (P)2010 Symphony Space