Don Leslie has narrated 39 audiobooks on Listento.it by 52 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.3★ across 397 ratings. The most-rated is The Dispossessed.
Buried in the Bitter Waters
Summary
"Leave now, or die!" From the heart of the Midwest to the Deep South, from the mountains of North Carolina to the Texas frontier, words like these have echoed through more than a century of American history. The call heralded not a tornado or a hurricane, but a very unnatural disaster: a manmade wave of racial cleansing that purged black populations from counties across the nation. We have long known about horrific episodes of lynching in the South, but the story of widespread racial cleansing above and below the Mason-Dixon Line has remained almost entirely unknown. Time after time, in the period between Reconstruction and the 1920s, whites banded together to drive out the blacks in their midst. They burned and killed indiscriminately and drove thousands from their homes, sweeping entire counties clear of blacks to make them racially "pure". The expulsions were swift; in many cases, it took no more than 24 hours to eliminate an entire African-American population. Shockingly, these areas remain virtually all-white to this day. Based on nearly a decade of painstaking research in archives and census records, Buried in the Bitter Waters provides irrefutable evidence that racial cleansing occurred again and again on American soil, and fundamentally reshaped the geography of race.
©2007 Elliot Jaspin (P)2007 HighBridge Company
American Prince
Summary
He was the Golden Boy of the Golden Age. Dashing and debonair, Tony Curtis arrived on the scene in a blaze of bright lights and celluloid. His good looks, smooth charm, and natural talent earned him fame, women, and adulation - Elvis copied his look and the Beatles put him on their Sgt. Pepper album cover. But the Hollywood life of his dreams brought both invincible highs and debilitating lows. Now, in his captivating, no-holds-barred autobiography, Tony Curtis shares the agony and ecstasy of a private life in the public eye. No simple tell-all, American Prince chronicles Hollywood during its heyday. Curtis revisits his immense body of work and regales listeners with stories of his associations with Frank Sinatra, Laurence Olivier, director Billy Wilder, as paramours Natalie Wood and Marilyn Monroe, among others. Written with humor and grace, American Prince is a testament to the power of living the life of one’s dreams.
©2008 Tony Curtis (P)2008 Books on Tape
Take Two
Summary
The second book in the Above the Line series finds independent filmmakers Chase Ryan and Keith Ellison at the center of Hollywood wheeling and dealing. The two friends discover that all that glitters is not gold and that success in Tinsel Town could cost them everything: their relationships as well as their ideals.
©2009 Karen Kingsbury (P)2009 Zondervan
Take One
Summary
Two unknown producers struggle to fulfill their dreams to change lives through the power of film. With millions of investors' dollars on the line, everything starts to fall apart and they realize they may be in over their heads. Is it possible to beat the odds and make a movie unlike anything ever done before? Or will they lose everything in the process?
©2009 Karen Kingsbury (P)2009 Zondervan
Take Three
Summary
The third book in the Above the Line series follows filmmakers Chase Ryan and Keith Ellison as they celebrate their first successful movie. But in the midst of family relationships, broken budgets, and conflicting dreams, Chase and Keith must find their way through the maze of pain and questions that comes with everything they thought they wanted.
©2010 Karen Kingsbury (P)2010 Zondervan
Lone Star Nation
Summary
From best-selling historian and longtime Texan H. W. Brands, a richly textured history of one of the most fascinating and colorful eras in U.S. history - the Texas Revolution and the forging of a new America. "For better or for worse, Texas was very much like America. The people ruled, and little could stop them. If they ignored national boundaries, if they trampled the rights of indigenous peoples and of imported bondsmen, if they waged war for motives that started from base self-interest, all this came with the territory of democracy, a realm inhabited by ordinarily imperfect men and women. The one saving grace of democracy - the one that made all the difference in the end - was that sooner or later, sometimes after a terrible strife, democracy corrected its worst mistakes." (Lone Star Nation) Lone Star Nation is the gripping story of Texas's precarious journey to statehood, from its early colonization in the 1820s to the shocking massacres of Texas loyalists at the Alamo and Goliad by the Mexican army, from its rough-and-tumble years as a land overrun by the Comanches to its day of liberation as an upstart republic. H. W. Brands tells the turbulent story of Texas through the eyes of a colorful cast of characters who have become a permanent fixture in the American landscape: Stephen Austin, the state's reluctant founder; Sam Houston, the alcoholic former governor who came to lead the Texas army in its hour of crisis and glory; William Travis, James Bowie, and David Crockett, the unforgettable heroic defenders of the doomed Alamo; Santa Anna, the Mexican generalissimo and dictator whose ruthless tactics galvanized the colonists against him; and the white-haired President Andrew Jackson whose expansionist aspirations loomed large in the background. Beyond these luminaries, Brands unearths the untold stories of the forgotten Texans - the slaves, women, unknown settlers, and children left out of traditional histories - who played crucial roles in Texas’s birth. By turns bloody and heroic, tragic and triumphant, this riveting history of one of our greatest states reads like the most compelling fiction, and further secures H. W. Brands's position as one of the premier American historians.
©2004 H.W. Brands (P)2004 Books on Tape, Inc.
LRRP Company Command
Summary
The new commander of the Company E, 52d Infantry LRRPs, Capt. George Paccerelli, was tough, but the men's new AO was brutal. It was bad enough that the provinces of Binh Long, Phuoc Long, and Tay Ninh bordered enemy-friendly Cambodia, but their vast stretches of double- and triple-canopy jungle were also home to four crack enemy divisions, including the Viet Cong's notorious 95C Regiment. Only the long-range patrols could deliver the critical strategic intelligence that the 1st Cav so desperately needed. Outmanned, outgunned, far from safety, these LRRPs stalked the enemy to his lair, staging bold prisoner snatches and tracking down hidden jungle bases. Hiding in ambush, surrounded by NVA, these teams either pulled off spectacular escape-and-evasion maneuvers in running firefights - or died trying. Former LRRP Kregg Jorgenson provides a gripping account of ordinary men with extraordinary courage and heroism.
©2000 Kregg P.J. Jorgenson (P)2001 Random House, Inc., Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio Publishing Group, A Division of Random House, Inc.
AND: The Gathered and Scattered Church
Summary
What is happening to the church in America today? By all appearances, it looks like we are “doing’ church better than we ever have. Our programs are effective, our pastors are relevant, and our buildings are increasing in size. In the past 30 years the number of mega-churches has increased from under 100 to over 7,500. In the past 10 years the number of multi-site churches has increased from under 100 to over 2,000. By the numbers, these church movements enjoy the national platform, the national voice, and the resources to profoundly impact the Kingdom. But to what end? In spite of the rapid growth of these prevailing church movements we are still losing ground, and the church in the West is in massive decline. Numerous studies and books have been written documenting the flight of members from the institutional church. Yet the local church is Jesus’ plan for reaching the world. The strength of the mega-church and multi-site models can be found in a strong emphasis on attracting people to the church, where they have an opportunity to encounter Jesus Christ. Yet many younger leaders are rejecting this model in favor of a more incarnational approach to ministry. These missional communities tend to focus their attention on trying to release people into ministry. In recent years a growing schism has emerged between those calling themselves incarnational leaders and those leading the prevailing church models. But what if we were able to incorporate the insights of both models into a cohesive understanding of the church? Can we bring together the very best of the attractional AND missional models for church ministry? Our focus on the form church is misguided when the vast majority of unchurched Christians and non-believers aren’t moving toward any form of church. Beautifully Sent will give permission for leaders to value existing church forms while catalyzing a missional movement of incarnational people into the world.
©2010 Hugh Halter (P)2010 Zondervan
Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show
Summary
Best-selling writer Orson Scott Card founded the online magazine Intergalactic Medicine Show in 2006. It has been a big success, drawing submissions from well-known science-fiction and fantasy writers, as well as fostering some amazing new talents. This collection contains some of the best of those stories. There is fiction from David Farber, Tim Pratt, and David Lubar among others, also four new Ender's Game universe stories by Card himself. This collection is sure to appeal to Card's fans and be a great ambassador to them for these other talented writers.
©2008 Orson Scott Card (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Robert Ludlum's The Altman Code
Summary
On the dark waterside docks of Shanghai, a photographer is recording cargo being secretly loaded when he's brutally killed and his camera destroyed. Shortly thereafter Covert-One director Fred Klein brings the word to the President that there's a Chinese cargo ship rumored to be carrying tons of chemicals to be used by a rogue nation to create new biological weapons. Klein is ordered to get the President solid proof of what the Chinese ship is ferrying. Covert-One agent Jon Smith is sent to Taiwan to meet with another agent who has acquired the ship's true manifest. But before Smith can get it, they are ambushed, the second agent is murdered, the proof is destroyed, and Smith escapes with only his life and scant clues to mystery behind the cargo ship. As the Chinese cargo ship draws ever closer to its end port, Smith must race against the clock to uncover the truth about the ship and its cargo, a truth that probes the deepest secrets of the Chinese ruling party, the faction in Washington working to undermine the elected government, and the international cabal who is thrusting the world to the very brink of war.
©2003 Myn Pyn, LLC (P)2003 Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC.
Falls the Shadow
Summary
A beautiful young woman is dead, her husband convicted of the murder. In seeking a new trial for the husband, defense attorney Victor Carl must confront not only a determined prosecutor and a police detective who might have set up his client, but also a strange little busybody named Bob. Bob has the aspiration, one could even say compulsion, to help those around him. And it usually works out well for all concerned, except when it ends in blood. But Victor doesn't know that...yet. Thanks to Bob, Victor is suddenly dressing better, dating a stunning woman, and his economic prospects and teeth are both gleaming. It's all good, until Victor finds a troubling connection between Bob and the murdered wife. Is Bob a kind of saint or is this obsessive Good Samaritan in reality a murderer? Filled with the keen wit, deep poignancy, twisting suspense, and dark realism that has entranced readers, impressed reviewers, and made William Lashner's previous novels best sellers, Falls the Shadow is a riveting novel that is sure to leave readers eager for more.
©2005 William Lashner (P)2005 HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Pull Up a Chair
Summary
Since 1950, the instantly recognizable voice of Vin Scully has invited listeners to “pull up a chair” for his peerless play-by-play sports reporting. Recruited and mentored by the legendary Red Barber, Scully has narrated NBC’s Game of the Week, 12 All-Star Games, 18 no-hitters, and 25 World Series, describing players from Duke Snider to Orel Hershiser to Manny Ramirez, with hundreds in between. Scully has made every sportscasting Hall of Fame, received an Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and been named Sportscaster of the 20th Century by the American Sportscasters Association. This long overdue biography of Vin Scully is written by Curt Smith, called “the voice of authority on baseball broadcasting” (USA Today).
©2009 Potomac Books, Inc. (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Diary of an Airborne Ranger
Summary
Perhaps the most accurate story of LRRPs at war! When Frank Johnson arrived in Vietnam in 1969, he was 19, a young soldier untested in combat like thousands of others - but with two important differences: Johnson volunteered for the elite L Company Rangers of the 101st Airborne Division, a long range reconnaissance patrol (LRRP) unit, and he kept a secret diary, a practice forbidden by the military to protect the security of LRRP operations. Now, more than three decades later, those hastily written pages offer a rare look at the daily operations of one of the most courageous units that waged war in Vietnam. Johnson served in I Corps, in Northern Vietnam, where combat was furious and the events he recounts emerge, stark and compelling: walking point in the A Shau Valley, braving enemy fire to rescue a downed comrade, surviving days and nights of relentless tension that suddenly exploded in the blinding fury of an NVA attack. Undimmed and unmuddied by the passing of years, Johnson's account is unique in the annals of Vietnam literature. Moreover, it is a timeless testimony to the sacrifice and heroism of the LRRPs who dared to risk it all.
©2000 Frank Johnson (P)2001 Random House, Inc., Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio Publishing, a Division of Random House, Inc.
Secret Ingredients
Summary
Since its earliest days, The New Yorker has been a tastemaker - literally. As the home of A. J. Liebling, Joseph Wechsberg, and M. F. K. Fisher, who practically invented American food writing, the magazine established a tradition that is carried forward today by irrepressible literary gastronomes including Calvin Trillin, Bill Buford, Adam Gopnik, Jane Kramer, and Anthony Bourdain. Now, in this indispensable collection, The New Yorker dishes up a feast of delicious writing on food and drink, from every age of its fabled 80-year history. There are memoirs, short stories, tell-alls, and poems - ranging in tone from sweet to sour and in subject from soup to nuts. M. F. K. Fisher pays homage to “cookery witches,” those mysterious cooks who possess “an uncanny power over food,” while John McPhee valiantly trails an inveterate forager and is rewarded with stewed persimmons and white-pine-needle tea. There is Roald Dahl’s famous story “Taste,” in which a wine snob’s palate comes in for some unwelcome scrutiny, and Julian Barnes’s ingenious tale of a lifelong gourmand who goes on a very peculiar diet for still more peculiar reasons. Adam Gopnik asks if French cuisine is done for, and Calvin Trillin investigates whether people can actually taste the difference between red wine and white. We journey with Susan Orlean as she distills the essence of Cuba in the story of a single restaurant, and with Judith Thurman as she investigates the arcane practices of Japan’s tofu masters. Closer to home, Joseph Mitchell celebrates the old New York tradition of the beefsteak dinner, and Mark Singer shadows the city’s foremost fisherman-chef. Selected from the magazine’s plentiful larder, Secret Ingredients celebrates all forms of gustatory delight.
©2007 David Remnick (P)2007 Books on Tape
X - The Erotic Treasury
Summary
If you can only have one audiobook of erotica on your listening device, this is it. From Susie Bright, the "grand dame" of erotica and the editor of The Best American Erotica series, comes this compelling collection, featuring 40 of the best and most relished contemporary erotic short stories to date. Explicit Language Warning: You must be 18 years or older to purchase this title.
©2008 Susie Bright (P)2009 Audible, Inc.
Victory Square
Summary
Upon reaching the tumultuous 1980s, Olen Steinhauer's literary crime series set in Eastern Europe comes full circle as one of the People's Militia's earliest cases reemerges to torment its inspectors, including militia chief Emil Brod, the original detective on the case. His arrest of a revolutionary leader in the late 1940s resulted in the politician's imprisonment, but at the time Brod was too young to understand how great the cost would be. Only now, in 1989, when he is days from retirement and spends more and more time looking over his shoulder, does he realize that his actions in the line of duty may get him - and others - killed. Steinhauer masterfully brings together a story of revenge at any cost with the portrait of a country on the brink of collapse.
©2007 Olen Steinhauer (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Vengeance
Summary
The enemy of her enemy is...still her enemy. All Cyn wants is justice. Kolya Kurev murdered her family in cold blood and got away with it. Single-minded in her determination, Cyn becomes the killer she needs to be. Until she meets Lee, a man also deeply wronged by Kurev. Cyn's new problem? Lee. Lee is stealing her revenge and screwing with the carefully carved life she’s made for herself. As if his mere presence and counter-productive ambitions weren’t enough, he’s going to get her caught. The FBI has been on her tail for several years now, but they haven’t even come close to finding her. Cyn has been leaving fake evidence at her crime scenes and counting on the one thing the FBI hasn’t figured out yet: Their most-wanted criminal is just a girl. Vengeance is the first book in the Vendetta Trifecta. While it can be listened to as a stand-alone, be prepared to reach for book two as you finish this one.
©2010 A.J. Scudiere (P)2019 A.J. Scudiere
Take Four
Summary
The Above the Line Series follows two dedicated Hollywood producers as they seek to transform the culture through the power of film. After Chase Ryan returns to his family and a job in his hometown, his best friend and fellow filmmaker Keith Ellison pairs up with former Hollywood heartthrob Dayne Matthews to finish following the dream—making movies that might change the world. In this unabridged audio of Take Four, filmmakers Keith Ellison and Dayne Matthews have finally inked a deal to have the nation’s top young actor star in their current film. But at the same time, the actor takes a very public fall that threatens his reputation among his fan base. Meanwhile, healing happens for Andi Ellison in her relationship with God, her family, and those she loves, but is it too late? The new producers find they must truly act as missionaries in order to help save the film, their families, and the young movie star. Breakthroughs take place that the public will never know about, as the possibility of saving the world through film is finally a very real possibility.
©2010 Karen Kingsbury (P)2010 Zondervan
The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008
Summary
In 1999, in The Return of Depression Economics, Paul Krugman surveyed the economic crises that had swept across Asia and Latin America, and pointed out that those crises were a warning for all of us: like diseases that have become resistant to antibiotics, the economic maladies that caused the Great Depression were making a comeback. In the years that followed, as Wall Street boomed and financial wheeler-dealers made vast profits, the international crises of the 1990s faded from memory. But now depression economics has come to America: when the great housing bubble of the mid-2000s burst, the U.S. financial system proved as vulnerable as those of developing countries caught up in earlier crises and a replay of the 1930s seems all too possible. In this new, greatly updated edition of The Return of Depression Economics, Krugman shows how the failure of regulation to keep pace with an increasingly out-of-control financial system set the United States, and the world as a whole, up for the greatest financial crisis since the 1930s. He also lays out the steps that must be taken to contain the crisis, and turn around a world economy sliding into a deep recession. Brilliantly crafted in Krugman's trademark style - lucid, lively, and supremely informed - this new edition of The Return of Depression Economics will become an instant cornerstone of the debate over how to respond to the crisis.
©2008 Paul Krugman (P)2008 Rando House Audio