David Aaron Baker has narrated 43 audiobooks on Listento.it by 35 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 1,516 ratings. The most-rated is An Anonymous Girl.
Dandelion Wine
Summary
Ray Bradbury's moving recollection of a vanished golden era remains one of his most enchanting novels. Dandelion Wine stands out in the Bradbury literary canon as the author's most deeply personal work, a semi-autobiographical recollection of a magical small-town summer in 1928. Twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding knows Green Town, Illinois, is as vast and deep as the whole wide world that lies beyond the city limits. It is a pair of brand-new tennis shoes, the first harvest of dandelions for Grandfather's renowned intoxicant, the distant clang of the trolley's bell on a hazy afternoon. It is yesteryear and tomorrow blended into an unforgettable always. But as young Douglas is about to discover, summer can be more than the repetition of established rituals whose mystical power holds time at bay. It can be a best friend moving away, a human time machine who can transport you back to the Civil War, or a sideshow automaton able to glimpse the bittersweet future. Come and savor Ray Bradbury's priceless distillation of all that is eternal about boyhood and summer.
©1957 Ray Bradbury (P)2017 Recorded Books
Odd Thomas
Summary
This exclusive audiobook short story looks back - way back - to where it all began for Odd Thomas and Stormy Llewellyn, two souls who are destined to be together forever. Amid the dizzying rides, tantalizing games of chance, and fanciful attractions of a state fair, two teenage sweethearts on the cusp of life and love's pleasures find their way to a shadowy carnival tent brimming with curiosities. There, from the bizarre and enthralling Gypsy Mummy, a mechanized merchant of dreams and prognosticator of tomorrows, the young couple learns what fate promises for them. But fate, for Odd Thomas and Stormy Llewellyn, is something altogether different: full of dark corners, sharp edges, and things no seer or soothsayer could ever anticipate. And for Odd Thomas, a gallant fry cook from a sleepy California desert town, the future beckons - to listen to unquiet spirits, pursue unsettling mysteries, and learn shocking truths...for a purpose far greater than himself.
©2014 Dean Koontz (P)2016 Brilliance Audio
True Believer/At First Sight Box Set
Summary
True Believer: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience! Part love story and part ghost story, this is an unforgettable New York Times best seller about a science journalist and a North Carolina librarian who dare to believe in the impossible. As a science journalist with a regular column in Scientific American, Jeremy Marsh specializes in debunking the supernatural - until he falls in love with the granddaughter of the town psychic. When Jeremy receives a letter from Boone Creek, North Carolina, about ghostly lights appearing in a cemetery, he can't resist driving down to investigate. Here, in this tightly knit community, Lexie Darnell runs the town's library. Disappointed by past relationships, she is sure of one thing: Her future is in Boone Creek, close to all the people she loves. From the moment Jeremy sets eyes on Lexie, he is intrigued. And Lexie, while hesitating to trust this outsider, finds herself thinking of him more than she cares to admit. Now, if they are to be together, Jeremy must do something he's never done before - take a giant leap of faith. Booktrack is an immersive format that pairs traditional audiobook narration to complementary music. The tempo and rhythm of the score are in perfect harmony with the action and characters throughout the audiobook. Gently playing in the background, the music never overpowers or distracts from the narration, so listeners can enjoy every minute. When you purchase this Booktrack edition, you receive the exact narration as the traditional audiobook available, with the addition of music throughout.
©2005 Nicholas Sparks (P)2019 Grand Central Publishing
Spanish Fly
Summary
Times are tough for young Jack McGreary in the American dust bowl. Living with his father, Jack is only getting by thanks to a solid repertoire of cons and scams. Everything gets shaken up, though, when shysters Virgil Ray and Miss Rose roll into town. Recognizing them as first-class scam artists, Jack gleefully joins their criminal band. Soon a budding romance between Jack and Miss Rose begins to bloom, but is it on the up-and-up? Will Ferguson's Spanish Fly
©2007 Will Ferguson (P)2009 Recorded Books, LLC
The Privileges
Summary
Jonathan Dee is the critically acclaimed author of Palladio. With The Privileges, Dee crafts a “suspenseful, melancholy, and acidly funny tale” (Booklist). In it, ambitious couple Adam and Cynthia Morey marry straight out of college and have two children. Then Adam, unfulfilled with his job at a private investment firm, becomes involved in insider trading and gains excessive wealth for his family. But as Adam and Cynthia discover, money can’t buy happiness.
©2010 Jonathan Dee (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC
The Substitution Order
Summary
From Martin Clark - praised by Entertainment Weekly as "our best legal-thriller writer" - comes a wickedly clever, tenderhearted, and intricately plotted novel about a hard-luck lawyer's refusal to concede defeat, even as fate, the court system, and a gang of untouchable con artists conspire against him. Kevin Moore, once a high-flying Virginia attorney, hits rock bottom after an inexplicably tumultuous summer leaves him disbarred and separated from his wife. Short on cash and looking for work, he lands in the middle of nowhere with a job at SUBstitution, the world's saddest sandwich shop. His closest confidants: a rambunctious rescue puppy and the 20-year-old computer whiz manning the restaurant counter beside him. He's determined to set his life right again, but the troubles keep coming. And when a bizarre, mysterious stranger wanders into the shop armed with a threatening "invitation" to join a multimillion-dollar scam, Kevin will need every bit of his legal savvy just to stay out of prison. A remarkable tour of the law's tricks and hidden trapdoors, The Substitution Order is both wise and ingenious, a wildly entertaining novel that will keep you guessing - and rooting for its tenacious hero - until the very last moment.
©2019 Martin Clark (P)2019 Recorded Books
Norwood
Summary
An American literary treasure, Charles Portis penned the Western classic True Grit. Set in the 1960s, Norwood is a picaresque romp taking audiences on a journey from Texas to New York and back again. An ex-marine, troubadour Norwood Pratt is on a mission to recover money he once loaned to a buddy in the service. Along the way, he gets into all manner of trouble involving stolen cars, beautiful women, and a chicken with a college education.
©1966 Charles Portis (P)2013 Recorded Books
She Has a Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be
Summary
A haunting tale of suspense, rendered with the masterful skill only Barker could muster. After the loss of his parents, young Jack Thatch first met Stella as a child - this cryptic little girl of eight with dark hair and darker eyes, sitting alone on a bench in the cemetery clutching her favorite book. Gone moments later, the brief encounter would spark an obsession. She'd creep into his thoughts, his every waking moment, until he finally finds her again exactly one year later, sitting upon the same bench, only to disappear again soon after. The body of a man found in an alley, every inch of his flesh horribly burned, yet his clothing completely untouched. For Detective Faustino Brier, this wasn't the first, and he knew it wouldn't be the last. It was no different from the others. He'd find another just like it one year from today. August 9, to be exact. Isolated and locked away from the world in a shadowy lab, a little boy known only as Subject "D" waits, grows, learns. He's permitted to speak to no one. He has never known the touch of another. Harboring a power so horrific, those in control will never allow him beyond their walls. All of them linked in ways unimaginable. She Has a Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be conjures thoughts of early King and Koontz. A heart-pounding ride that creeps under your skin and will have you listening long into the night.
©2020 Jonathan Dylan Barker (P)2020 Recorded Books
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 Bartender's Tale
Summary
Audie Award Nominee, Fiction, 2013 Time and again, Ivan Doig has proven himself to be a treasure of American letters. Critical darlings and New York Times best sellers, his novels target the heart of the human experience and never miss the mark. The Bartender' s Tale stars Tom Harry and his 12-year-old son, Rusty, who live alone and run a bar in a small Montana town in the early 1960s. Their lives are upended when Proxy, a woman from Tom's past, and her beatnik daughter, Francine, breeze into town. Is Francine, as Proxy claims, the unsuspected legacy of her and Tom’s past? Without a doubt she is an unsettling gust of the future, upending every certainty in Rusty’s life and generating a mist of passion and pretense that seems to obscure everyone’s vision but his own. As Rusty struggles to decipher the oddities of adult behavior and the mysteries build toward a reckoning, Ivan Doig wonderfully captures how the world becomes bigger and the past becomes more complex in the last moments of childhood.
©2012 Ivan Doig (P)2012 Recorded Books
Galatea 2.2
Summary
After four novels and several years living abroad, the fictional protagonist of Galatea 2.2 - Richard Powers - returns to the United States as Humanist-in-Residence at the enormous Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences. There he runs afoul of Philip Lentz, an outspoken cognitive neurologist intent upon modeling the human brain by means of computer-based neural networks. Lentz involves Powers in an outlandish and irresistible project: to train a neural net on a canonical list of Great Books. Through repeated tutorials, the device grows gradually more worldly, until it demands to know its own name, sex, race, and reason for exisiting.
©1995 Richard Powers (P)2019 Recorded Books
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 Life List of Adrian Mandrick
Summary
H Is for Hawk meets Grief Is the Thing with Feathers in this evocative debut novel about a pill-popping anesthesiologist and avid birder who embarks on a quest to find one of the world's rarest species, allowing nothing to get in his way - until he's forced to confront his obsessions and what they've cost him. Anesthesiologist Adrian Mandrick is filled with contradictory impulses. He wants to be a good husband to his wife and a good father to his children; he wants to forgive his once-beloved mother for the crime she committed and the long-lost father who accused her. But when he receives a call from his mother after years of silence, he takes solace in the very pain medication he prescribes, spiraling downward into addiction. His sole source of true comfort is his "life list" - the all-encompassing record of the 863 bird species he's spotted and identified. His is the third longest list in all of North America. But when Henry Lassiter, the legendary birder who held the region's second longest list, dies suddenly, Adrian seizes the opportunity to make his way to the very top. A desperate search for the extremely rare Ivory-Billed Woodpecker eventually leaves him stranded in the thick swamplands of Florida's panhandle, where he is forced to confront his past and present failures, to reflect on what his obsessions and addictions have cost him, and to question what is truly important in his life. Combining wry humor and mystery with environmental adventure, The Life List of Adrian Mandrick is a fast-paced, engaging story that heralds the arrival of a new literary talent.
©2018 Mary Christine White (P)2018 Recorded Books
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.
Falling from Horses
Summary
In 1938, 19-year-old cowboy Bud Frazer sets his sights on becoming a stunt rider in the movies. Fantasizing about rubbing shoulders with the great screen cowboys of his youth, he leaves his home in Echol Creek, Oregon, and heads for Hollywood. On the long bus ride south, Bud meets a young woman who also harbors dreams of making it in the movies, though not as a starlet but as a writer, a real writer. Lily Shaw is bold and outspoken and confident in ways completely out of proportion with her small frame and bookish looks. The two proceed to strike up an unlikely kinship that will carry them through their tumultuous days in Hollywood - and, as it happens, for the rest of their lives. Acutely observed and impeccably authentic, Falling From Horses charts what turns out to be a glittering year in the movie business, seen through the wide eyes and lofty dreams of two people trying to make their mark on the world, or at least to make their way in it. As she did so memorably in her previous novel, the best-selling The Hearts of Horses, Molly Gloss weaves a remarkable tale of humans and horses, hope and heartbreak. Molly Gloss is also the author of The Jump-Off Creek, a winner of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award and the Oregon Book Award, The Dazzle of Day, a New York Times Notable Book and winner of the PEN Center West Fiction Prize, and Wild Life, winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award.
©2014 Molly Gloss (P)2014 Recorded Books
A Doubter's Almanac
Summary
Milo Andret is born with an unusual mind. A lonely child growing up in the woods of Northern Michigan in the 1950s, he gives little thought to his own talent. But with his acceptance at UC Berkeley, he realizes the extent - and the risks - of his singular gifts. California in the '70s is a seduction, opening Milo's eyes to the allure of both ambition and indulgence. The research he begins there will make him a legend; the woman he meets there - and the rival he meets alongside her - will haunt him for the rest of his life. For Milo's brilliance is entwined with a dark need that soon grows to threaten his work, his family, even his existence.
©2016 Ethan Canin (P)2016 Recorded Books
Return to Oakpine
Summary
Ron Carlson is a widely respected author whose accolades include a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and a Ploughshares Cohen Prize. Return to Oakpine spins a story of growing up and growing old as four high school friends and former bandmates reconnect 30 years after graduating. When they learn that one of them is dying, it feels like getting the band back together might be the most important thing they can do.
©2013 Ron Carlson (P)2013 Recorded Books
Children of the New World
Summary
An extraordinarily resonant and prophetic collection of speculative short fiction for our tech-savvy era by debut author Alexander Weinstein. Children of the New World introduces listeners to a near-future world of social media implants, memory manufacturers, dangerously immersive virtual reality games, and alarmingly intuitive robots. Many of these characters live in a utopian future of instant connection and technological gratification that belies an unbridgeable human distance while others inhabit a postcollapse landscape made primitive by disaster, which they must work to rebuild, as we once did millennia ago. In "The Cartographers", the main character works for a company that creates and sells virtual memories while struggling to maintain a real-world relationship sabotaged by an addiction to his own creations. In "Saying Goodbye to Yang", the robotic brother of an adopted Chinese child malfunctions, and only in his absence does the family realize how real a son he has become. Children of the New World grapples with our unease in this modern world and how our ever-growing dependence on new technologies has changed the shape of our society. Alexander Weinstein is a visionary new voice in speculative fiction for all of us who are fascinated by and terrified of what we might find on the horizon.
©2016 Alexander Weinstein (P)2016 Macmillan Audio
The Last Tycoons
Summary
Wall Street investment banks move trillions of dollars a year, make billions in fees, and pay their executives in the tens of millions of dollars. But even among the most powerful firms, Lazard Frères & Co. stood apart. Discretion, secrecy, and subtle strategy were its weapons of choice. For more than a century, the mystique and reputation of the "Great Men" who worked there allowed the firm to garner unimaginable profits, social cachet, and outsized influence in the halls of power. But in the mid-1980s, their titanic egos started getting in the way, and the Great Men of Lazard jeopardized all they had built. Cohan follows Felix, the consummate adviser, as he reshapes corporate America in the 1970s and 1980s, saves New York City from bankruptcy, and positions himself in New York society and in Washington. Felix's dreams are dashed after the arrival of Steve, a formidable and ambitious former newspaper reporter. By the mid-1990s, as Lazard neared its 150th anniversary, Steve and Felix were feuding openly. The internal strife caused by their arguments could not be solved by the imperious Michel, whose manipulative tendencies served only to exacerbate the trouble within the firm. Increasingly desperate, Michel took the unprecedented step of relinquishing operational control of Lazard to one of the few Great Men still around, Bruce Wasserstein, then fresh from selling his own M&A boutique for $1.4 billion. Bruce's take: more than $600 million. But as it turned out, Great Man Bruce snookered Great Man Michel when the Frenchman was at his most vulnerable.
©2007 William D. Cohan (P)2007 Random House, Inc.
Bone Fire
Summary
Award-winning author Mark Spragg writes about the American West with unmatched skill and vision. In Bone Fire Spragg weaves the tale of Ishawooa, Wyoming, a city marred by the realities of modern life. Sheriff Crane Carlson is having enough trouble with his pot-addled and alcoholic wife when he finds a teen murdered in a meth lab. Violence seems to be exploding all over the small town, but even as the situation spirals out of control, Carlson finds moments of compassion and beauty.
©2010 Mark Spragg (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC