Lawrence Osborne has 5 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 5 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.1★ across 250 ratings. The most-rated is Discrimination and Disparities.
Discrimination and Disparities
Summary
Discrimination and Disparities challenges believers in such one-factor explanations of economic outcome differences as discrimination, exploitation, or genetics. It is listenable enough for people with no prior knowledge of economics. Yet the empirical evidence with which it backs up its analysis spans the globe and challenges beliefs across the ideological spectrum. The point of Discrimination and Disparities is not to recommend some particular policy "fix" at the end, but to clarify why so many policy fixes have turned out to be counterproductive, and to expose some seemingly invincible fallacies behind many counterproductive policies. The final chapter deals with social visions and their human consequences.
©2018 Thomas Sowell (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Only to Sleep
Summary
Lawrence Osborne brings one of literature’s most enduring detectives back to life - as Private Investigator Philip Marlowe returns for one last adventure. Named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review and NPR Nominated for the Edgar and Shamus awards The year is 1988. The place, Baja California. And Philip Marlowe - now in his 72nd year - is living out his retirement in the terrace bar of the La Fonda hotel. Sipping margaritas, playing cards, his silver-tipped cane at the ready. When in saunter two men dressed like undertakers, with a case that has his name written all over it. For Marlowe, this is his last roll of the dice, his swan song. His mission is to investigate the death of Donald Zinn - supposedly drowned off his yacht, and leaving behind a much younger and now very rich wife. But is Zinn actually alive? Are the pair living off the spoils? Set between the border and badlands of Mexico and California, Lawrence Osborne’s resurrection of the iconic Marlowe is an unforgettable addition to the Raymond Chandler canon. Praise for Only to Sleep: “A new case for Philip Marlowe and - have a smell from the barrel, all you gunsels and able grables - it crackles.” (The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)) “Brilliant. Osborne and Chandler are a perfect match.” (William Boyd, author of Any Human Heart) “A Marlowe we at once know, but have never met before. As much a meditation on aging and memory as it is a crime thriller.” (Los Angeles Times) “It’s the kind of book where, when you read it, it turns the world to black and white for a half-hour afterward. It leaves you with the taste of rum and blood in your mouth. It hangs with you like a scar.” (NPR)
©2018 Lawrence Osborne (P)2018 Random House Audio
The Forgiven
Summary
In this stylish, haunting novel, journalist and novelist Lawrence Osborne explores the reverberations of a random accident on the lives of Moroccan Muslims and Western visitors who converge on a luxurious desert villa for a decadent weekend-long party. David and Jo Henniger, a doctor and children's book author, in search of an escape from their less-than-happy lives in London, accept the invitation of their old friends Richard and Dally to attend their annual bacchanal at their home deep in the Moroccan desert - a ksar they have acquired and renovated into a luxurious retreat. On the way, the Hennigers stop for lunch, and the bad-tempered David can't resist consuming most of a bottle of wine. Back on the road, darkness has descended, David is groggy, and the directions to the ksar are vague. Suddenly, two young men spring from the roadside, apparently attempting to interest passing drivers in the fossils they have for sale. Panicked, David swerves toward the two, leaving one dead on the road and the other running into the hills. At the ksar, the festivities have begun: Richard and Dally’s international friends sit down to a lavish dinner prepared and served by a large staff of Moroccans. As the night progresses and the debauchery escalates, the Moroccans increasingly view the revelers as the godless "infidels" they are. When David and Jo show up late with the dead body of the young man in their car, word spreads among the locals that David has committed an unforgivable act. Thus the stage is set for a weekend during which David and Jo must come to terms with David's misdeed, Jo's longings, and their own deteriorating relationship, and the flamboyant Richard and Dally must attempt to keep their revelers entertained despite growing tension from their staff and the Moroccan Berber father who comes to claim his son's body. With spare, evocative prose, searing eroticism, and a gift for the unexpected, Osborne memorably portrays the privileged guests wrestling with their secrets amid the remoteness and beauty of the desert landscape. He also gradually reveals the jolting backstory of the young man who was killed and leaves David’s fate in the balance as the novel builds to a shattering conclusion. Selected by The Economist as one of the Best Books of the Year 2012. Selected by Library Journal as one of the Year's Best Books 2012. Year's Best Books Chosen by Writers, selected by Lionel Shriver, The Guardian 2012.
©2012, 2013 Lawrence Osborne (P)2019 Random House Audio
Hunters in the Dark
Summary
From the novelist the New York Times compares to Paul Bowles, Evelyn Waugh, and Ian McEwan, an evocative new work of literary suspense. Adrift in Cambodia, Robert Grieve - pushing 30 and eager to sidestep a life of quiet desperation as a small-town teacher - decides to go AWOL. As he crosses the border from Thailand, he tests the threshold of a new future. And on that first night, a small windfall precipitates a chain of events involving a bag of "jinxed" money, a suave American, a trunk full of heroin, a hustler taxi driver, a corrupt policeman, and a rich doctor's daughter, in which Robert's life is changed forever. Hunters in the Dark is a sophisticated game of cat and mouse, where identities are blurred, greed trumps kindness, and karma is ruthless. Filled with Hitchcockian twists and turns, suffused with the steamy heat and pervasive superstition of the Cambodian jungle, and unafraid to confront uneasy questions about luck and the machinations of fate, this is a masterful novel that has the feel of an instant classic.
©2015 Lawrence Osborne (P)2015 Recorded Books
The Glass Kingdom
Summary
A New York Times Notable Book A New York Times Editors’ Choice A tense, stunningly well-observed novel of a young American on the run, from Lawrence Osborne, “an heir to Graham Greene” (The New York Times Book Review). “Bangkok is the star of this accomplished novel. Its denizens are aliens to themselves, glittering on the horizon of their own lives, moving - restless and rootless and afraid - though a cityscape that has more stories than they know.” (Hilary Mantel, Booker Prize-winning author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies) Escaping New York for the anonymity of Bangkok, Sarah Mullins arrives in Thailand on the lam with nothing more than a suitcase of purloined money. Her plan is to lie low and map out her next move in a high-end apartment complex called the Kingdom, whose glass-fronted façade boasts views of the bustling city and glimpses into the vast honeycomb of lives within. It is not long before she meets the alluring Mali doing laps in the apartment pool, a fellow tenant determined to bring the quiet American out of her shell. An invitation to Mali’s weekly poker nights follows, and - fueled by shots of yadong, good food, and gossip - Sarah soon falls in with the Kingdom’s glamorous circle of expat women. But as political chaos erupts on the streets below and attempted uprisings wrack the city, tensions tighten within the gilded compound. When the violence outside begins to invade the Kingdom in a series of strange disappearances, the residents are thrown into suspicion: both of the world beyond their windows and of one another. And under the constant surveillance of the building’s watchful inhabitants, Sarah’s safe haven begins to feel like a snare. From a master of atmosphere and mood, The Glass Kingdom is a brilliantly unsettling story of civil and psychological unrest and an enthralling study of karma and human greed.
©2020 Lawrence Osborne (P)2020 Random House Audio