Avery Brooks has narrated 5 audiobooks on Listento.it by 4 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.6★ across 150 ratings. The most-rated is Roots.
Roots
Summary
Audie Award Winner, Non-fiction, 2008 It begins with a birth in an African village in 1750, and ends two centuries later at a funeral in Arkansas. And in that time span, an unforgettable cast of men, women, and children come to life, many of them based on the people from Alex Haley's own family tree. When Alex was a boy growing up in Tennessee, his grandmother used to tell him stories about their family, stories that went way back to a man she called the African who was taken aboard a slave ship bound for Colonial America. As an adult, Alex spent 12 years searching for documentation that might authenticate what his grandmother had told him. In an astonishing feat of genealogical detective work, he discovered the name of the "African" - Kunta Kinte - as well as the exact location of the village in West Africa from where he was abducted in 1767. Roots is based on the facts of his ancestry, and the six generations of people - slaves and freedmen, farmers and lawyers, an architect, teacher, and one acclaimed author - descended from Kunta Kinte.
©1974 Alex Haley. Renewed 2004 by Myran Haley, Cynthia Haley, Lydia Haley, and William Haley; (P)2007 BBC Audiobooks (P)2007 BBC Audiobooks America
Year of the Monkey
Summary
Riveting, elegant, and humorous, New York Times best seller Year of the Monkey is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times. Following a run of new year’s concerts at San Francisco’s legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering. Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland, in which she debates intellectual grifters and spars with the likes of a postmodern Cheshire Cat. Then, in February 2016, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow. For Smith - inveterately curious, always exploring, always writing - this becomes a year of reckoning with the changes in life’s gyre: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America. Taking us from California to the Arizona desert, from a Kentucky farm to the hospital room of a valued mentor, Smith melds the Western landscape with her own dreamscape in a haunting, poetic blend of fact and fiction. As a stranger tells her, “Anything is possible. After all, it’s the Year of the Monkey.” But as Smith heads toward a new decade in her own life, she offers this balm to the listener: her wisdom, wit, gimlet eye, and above all, a rugged hope for a better world. Named one of NPR’s Best Books of the Year - now including a new chapter, "Epilogue of an Epilogue" - Year of the Monkey “reminds us that despair and possibility often spring from the same source” (Los Angeles Times).
©2019 Patti Smith (P)2019 Random House Audio
Sounder
Summary
The Newbery Medal-winning classic novel about the courage and faith - and the love of a dog - that give a family strength in the face of inhumanity. The boy knows that times are tough for his family. Every night, his father goes out hunting with their great coon dog, Sounder, to try to put food on the table. But even with the little they bring back, there is still never enough for the family to eat. When the boy awakens one morning to a sweet-smelling ham on the table, it seems like a blessing. But soon, the sheriff and his deputies come to the house and take the boy's father away in handcuffs. Suddenly the boy must grow up fast in a world that isn't fair, keeping hope alive through the love he has for his father's faithful dog, Sounder. Listeners who enjoy timeless dog stories such as Old Yeller and Where the Red Fern Grows will find much to love in Sounder, even as they listen through tears at times.
©1969 William H. Armstrong (P)2006 HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Disappearing Acts
Summary
Franklin is a construction worker who says he's tired of women and their demands. Zora is a struggling singer who also claims to have lost interest in romance. But when these hard-shelled survivors cross paths, the outcome is electric and perplexing. Beyond the joy of sex, Franklin and Zora see the possibility of a solid, lasting relationship; the trouble is, they're far from sure of how to get there. Disappearing Acts is a different kind of love story: frank and unsentimental, often uproariously funny, and graced throughout with moments of rare, hard-earned wisdom.
©1989 Terry McMillan (P)1993 Penguin HighBridge Audio
Roots
Summary
It begins with a birth in an African village in 1750, and ends two centuries later at a funeral in Arkansas. And in that time span, an unforgettable cast of men, women, and children come to life, many of them based on the people from Alex Haley's own family tree. When Alex was a boy growing up in Tennessee, his grandmother used to tell him stories about their family, stories that went way back to a man she called the African who was taken aboard a slave ship bound for Colonial America. As an adult, Alex spent twelve years searching for documentation that might authenticate what his grandmother had told him. In an astonishing feat of genealogical detective work, he discovered the name of the African - Kunta Kinte - as well as the exact location of the village in West Africa from where he was abducted in 1767. Roots is based on the facts of his ancestry, and the six generations of people - slaves and freed men, farmers and lawyers, an architect, a teacher, and one acclaimed author - descended from Kunta Kinte.
©1976 Alex Haley (P)2014 AudioGO