Ed Sala has narrated 39 audiobooks on Listento.it by 35 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 221 ratings. The most-rated is Tell No One.
Finn
Summary
One hundred and twenty years ago, Mark Twain left Huckleberry Finn’s father dead in a room crowded with oddities: a wooden leg, women’s underclothing, two black cloth masks, and more. Now, in a resonant and remarkable new novel, Jon Clinch tells the story of how the brutal and explosive Finn met his end in a room jammed with the telltale artifacts of his strange and mysterious life. Along the way, Clinch introduces the listener to a mesmerizing cast of characters: Finn’s own fearsome father, known only as the Judge; Finn’s brother, the sickly, sycophantic Will; the hermit Bliss, a blind moonshiner; the strong and quick-witted Mary, a former slave who becomes Finn’s mistress; and, of course, young Huck himself. Finn is a novel about race, the sin of slavery, and the burdens of paternity. Written in a style both precise and thunderous, understated and violently elemental, it draws from our literary heritage to create something new. Finn is a hypnotic, completely original, distinctive American story.
©2007 Jon Clinch (P)2007 Recorded Books, LLC
General Sherman's Christmas
Summary
General Sherman's Christmas opens on Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 24, 1864, one month before Christmas. Sherman was relentlessly pushing his troops across Georgia, reaching Savannah days before Christmas. His methodical encroachment of the city from all sides eventually convinced Confederate general W. J. Hardee to slip away in darkness across an improvised causeway toward South Carolina to the north. In freezing rain and terrifying fog, soldiers with their equipment crossed an improvised pontoon bridge across the mile-wide Savannah River. Three days before Christmas, the mayor, Richard Arnold, surrendered the city, populated now mostly by women and children and slaves who had not fled. Then General Sherman telegraphed to Abraham Lincoln, "I beg to present you as a Christmas-gift the city of Savannah." The end of the long war was in sight. The siege of Savannah took place as its inhabitants were preparing for Christmas, and Stanley Weintraub explores what remained of the holiday in the South by the last full year of the war. On Christmas Eve, the 33rd Massachusetts Regiment band serenaded Sherman and "a constant stream" of freed slaves filed by the house he had taken over for his headquarters. That he had come at Christmas was immensely symbolic to them. Including the voices of soldiers and civilians on both sides of the conflict, General Sherman's Christmas is the perfect holiday present for the history buff.
©2009 Stanley Weintraub (P)2009 Tantor
Heaven is a Long Way Off
Summary
Win Blevins has won popular and critical acclaim for his sweeping Western Rendezvous saga. The fourth chapter in the series, Heaven Is a Long Way Off finds Sam Morgan mourning the loss of his wife Meadowlark and determined to rescue his kidnapped daughter. But his journey is fraught with danger as Mexican authorities, Mojave Indians, and a host of other obstacles stand in his way.
©2006 Win Blevins (P)2011 Recorded Books, LLC
The Boys' War
Summary
We all know about the famous generals and the major battles of the Civil War. But for the soldiers who actually fought, the war was all too real. It was especially traumatic for the thousands of soldiers who ranged in age from 10 to 15. Some young soldiers joined the fray to escape the boredom of farm work or to "set the South straight". Many of them kept diaries and wrote letters home. Through their eyes, we see what life was like on the edge of chaos. Some of their writing describes the gruesome details of forced marches and deaths on the battlefield. Balanced with anecdotes of practical jokes they played on one another and interesting people they met, their stories touch our minds and hearts. Ed Sala's interpretation of this well-documented history brings the Civil War to life in a way that few historians could. These everyday details of the war, told in the straightforward language of the young, provide a moving, unforgettable history lesson.
©1990 Jim Murphy
The Fear Place
Summary
When the boys’ parents are called away by a family emergency, Doug and his older brother, Gordon, are left on their own in their Rocky Mountain campsite. The brothers are fighting, though, so it isn’t long before Gordon stomps away from the campsite, leaving Doug completely alone. When neither Gordon nor his parents return after three days, 12-year-old Doug fears the worst. He knows Gordon has gone to a high ridge in the Comanche Peak Wilderness - the Fear Place. Will Doug and a newfound friend - a cougar - find his brother? Or will Doug’s terror of heights prevent a rescue? Newberry Medal-winning author Phyllis Reynolds Naylor is the author of more than 80 children’s books. She drew on her own fear of heights to write The Fear Place, which is destined to become a children’s adventure classic. The combination of her award-winning, realistic writing style and Ed Sala’s well-paced narration is irresistible.
©1994 Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (P)1996 Recorded Books
The Big Wander
Summary
The Big Wander is a trip 14-year-old Clay Lancaster and his older brother Mike have planned for years. It’s Clay’s dream to find his ex-rodeo-star uncle, who quit the tour and disappeared somewhere in the vast and colorful Monument Valley. But Mike - heartbroken and unfocused after losing his girlfriend - soon heads for home. Clay, however, will not give up. He finds a job in a remote trading post, and follows a lead on his uncle’s whereabouts that takes him deep into Navajo country. There he learns the ways of the tribe, the dangers of the wilderness, and discovers, just in time, the secret of his long-lost uncle’s fate. Best-selling young adult author Will Hobbs won an ALA Best Book Award for The Big Wander. Hobb’s prose paired with Sala’s perfect pacing and authentic accents will make you feel you are in the American Southwest. His other award-winning books, Bearstone, Beardance, Kokopelli’s Flute, Changes in Latitudes, and Downriver are also available from Recorded Books, Inc.
©1992 Will Hobbs (P)1997 Recorded Books. LLC
New Stories From the South
Summary
Winners of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, O. Henry Award and Edgar Awards, the 19 writers in this 2005 edition are not just considered some of the best Southern writers, but among the best American writers period. With works by such writers as Dennis Lehane, Moira Crone, Robert Olen Butler, Cary Holladay, Tom Franklin, and Rebecca Soppe, this collection provides an electrifying current of deep, dark subjects set in the brutal, but charming south.
©2005 Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill (P)2005 Recorded Books, LLC
So Wild a Dream
Summary
Named Writer of the Year in 2003 by Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers, Win Blevins has built a considerable literary legacy with his novels set in America’s heartland of the early 19th century. Here a young man discovers adventure at every turn on the American frontier. Ambitious Sam Morgan leaps at the opportunity to escape his staid life in rural 1820s Pennsylvania. Setting off to make his fortune, he finds work on a riverboat helmed by a wily, cantankerous captain and crewed by a menagerie of eccentric ne’redo-wells. Amidst this group, Sam witnesses the dangers facing frontier traders, falls in love, becomes embroiled in civil conflicts, and finally learns his place in the world on a harrowing journey, alone, through America’s western wilderness. Drawing upon his extensive knowledge of early pioneer life, Blevins has created a classic hero bursting with youthful energy. Narrator Ed Sala lends additional immediacy to Sam’s mesmerizing odyssey.
©2003 Win Blevins (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC
The Winter Wolf
Summary
All the danger and excitement of Alaska's Klondike Gold Rush bursts from the page in this action-packed western. With his masterful storytelling, Richard Parry transports you to frozen boomtowns and the forbidding wilderness of the late 1800s northern frontier to travel alongside notorious gunfighter Wyatt Earp. Fifty-year-old Earp is ready to hang up his guns. Instead of enforcing the law, he and his wife are heading through the rugged Yukon territory to try their luck in the Alaskan gold fields. But young Nathan Blaylock - convinced he is Earp's illegitimate son - is tracking the famous gunslinger with his own deadly agenda of hate and revenge. A resident of Alaska, Richard Parry dramatically captures the untamed spirit and harsh natural beauty of our 49th state. Narrator Ed Sala provides the perfect voice for the tough-as-rawhide characters from both sides of the law.
©1996 Richard Parry (P)1999 Recorded Books, LLC.
The Legend of Colton H. Bryant
Summary
Best-selling author of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller presents this heart-rending true story of a simple man whose life is cut short. Colton H. Bryant loves Wyoming and loves life. And Wyoming loves him back - it's got everything he needs. He spends his school days dreaming about where he'll go fishing or how many jackrabbits he might be able to catch that night. And when he's old enough, like his father and his father's father before him, he gets a dangerous job on the oil rig. Colton always said everyone would feel sorry one day for making him waste all that time in school, and Colton was right.
©2008 Alexandra Fuller (P)2008 Recorded Books, LLC
Cowboy Slim
Summary
Young Slim has always dreamed of being a cowboy. That's why he quivers with excitement on his first day at the WJ Ranch. The sights, sounds, and smells of cowboy life thrill him so that he stays awake that night, writing beautiful poetry. When veteran cowhands find his pile of poems, they say he's not a real cowboy and make him ride behind the cows. And when he realizes how poor his riding, roping, and whipping skills are, Slim heads for home, thinking he's a failure. But just then, a violent thunderstorm stampedes the herd toward Deadman's Canyon and prompts Slim to do something the other cowboys couldn't do. Popular author Julie Danneberg has written a variety of innovative works for children, including a delightful book on Colorado history and geography. Ed Sala's whimsical narration helps this book's colorful and evocative words blossom with meaning.
©2006 Julie Danneberg and Margot Apple (P)2006 Recorded Books LLC
Sweep Dreams
Summary
Newbery Medalist Nancy Willard is the author of many award-winning children’s books. In this lyrical story, a man falls in love with a broom and they dance through the sky together—until one night the broom is stolen from its home. Someone else wants the powers of the broom for himself. Will the man be able to find his beloved broom and dance once again?
©2005 Nancy Willard (P)2005 Recorded Books, LLC
A Long and Winding Road
Summary
The fifth volume in Win Blevins’ epic Rendezvous series, A Long and Winding Road finds Sam Morgan picking up the pieces of his life a decade after he first left his home in Pennsylvania looking for adventure. When his lover, the widow Paloma Luna—who is dying of cancer—sets off to pray at the shrine of the Virgin de Guadalupe, Sam finds himself a mission of his own. Two Mexican girls have been abducted by Navajo Indians, and Sam heads off into the New Mexico wilderness to rescue them.
©2007 Win Blevins (P)2011 Recorded Books, LLC
Bluegrass
Summary
Widely published journalist William Van Meter returned to his hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky, to research this harrowing account of a horrifying crime that occurred at Western Kentucky University. In 2003, attractive college student Katie Autry was found dead in her dorm room after being raped, stabbed, and set on fire. As Van Meter delves into the facts of the case, further disturbing information surfaces.In telling the true story of this shocking crime, Bluegrass describes the devastation of not one but three families. Two young men, whose lives seem preordained to intertwine, are jailed for the crime: DNA evidence places Stephen Soules, an unemployed, mixed-race high-school dropout, at the scene, and Lucas Goodrum, a 21-year-old pot dealer with an ex-wife, a girlfriend still in high school, and an inauspicious history of domestic abuse, is held by an ever-changing confession. The friends of the suspects and the foster and birth families of the victim form complex and warring social nets that are cast across town. And a small southern community, populated by eccentrics of every socioeconomic class, from dirt-poor to millionaire, responds to the horror. Like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, this tale is redolent with atmosphere, dark tension, and lush landscapes.
©2009 William Van Meter (P)2009 Recorded Books, LLC
Coal Black Horse
Summary
Author Robert Olmstead's work has been called "brilliant and compelling" by the Chicago Tribune. Here, he takes us back to the Civil War. Robey Child, only 14, must go to the battlefield to bring his injured father home. Clad in a homemade uniform, gray on one side, blue on the other, and riding a powerful coal black horse, Robey sets out on a journey that will make him a man.
©2007 Robert Olmstead (P)2007 Recorded Books
New Stories From the South
Summary
Pages magazine says this collection represents “the absolute best in short literary fiction.” This installment exhibits a fresh batch of immensely talented writers, all of whom exemplify the level of accomplishment that has kept this acclaimed series running strong since 1985. Comprising 20 stories, this rich and varied collection features everything from a fresh take on the classic Southern gothic to a velvet-smooth work of erotic suspense.
©2006 Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill (P)2007 Recorded Books, LLC
Beauty for Ashes
Summary
Historian, screenwriter, and best-selling author Win Blevins also won the Spur Award and the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award for fiction. Here he taps his extensive knowledge of fur-trade era America to pen the continuing adventures of Sam Morgan. Disenchanted by his return to Pennsylvania, 19-year-old Sam once again leaves home for the American plains. This time out, he is determined to rejoin Meadowlark, the Crow Indian maiden he was forced to abandon two years prior. He returns to her village and immerses himself in Crow traditions to earn her hand in marriage. But their reunion is short-lived, thanks to warring Lakotas and another suitor. Now Sam will have to overcome numerous perils to win Meadowlark’s heart for good. The second installment of Blevins’ Rendezvous series, Beauty for Ashes takes listeners on a mesmerizing tour of early 19th-century America. Renowned narrator Ed Sala captures the wonder and awe in Sam’s grand plains adventures.
©2004 Win Blevins (P)2011 Recorded Books, LLC
Night Comes to the Cumberlands
Summary
After its publication in 1962, Harry M. Caudill’s acclaimed portrait of the southern Appalachian Mountains became a rallying cry for action against the poverty plaguing the region. Here Caudill explores the area’s history, from its first settlement to the Civil War, and from the rise of coal barons to the economic despair of the 1950s and 1960s.
©2001 Anne F. Caudill (P)2012 Recorded Books
The Year That Changed the World
Summary
"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" President Ronald Reagan's famous exhortation when visiting Berlin in 1987 has long been widely cited as the clarion call that brought the Cold War to an end. The United States won, so this version of history goes, because Ronald Reagan stood firm against the USSR; American resoluteness brought the evil empire to its knees. Michael Meyer, who was there at the time as a Newsweek bureau chief, begs to differ. In this extraordinarily compelling account of the revolutions that roiled Eastern Europe in 1989, Meyer shows that American intransigence was only one of many factors that provoked world-shaking change. He draws together breathtakingly vivid, on-the-ground accounts of the rise of the Solidarity movement in Poland, the stealth opening of the Hungarian border, the Velvet Revolution in Prague, and the collapse of the infamous wall in Berlin. But the most important events, Meyer contends, occurred secretly, in the heroic stands taken by individuals in the thick of the struggle - leaders such as poet and playwright Vaclav Havel in Prague; the Baltic shipwright Lech Walesa; the quietly determined reform prime minister in Budapest, Miklos Nemeth; and the man who privately realized that his empire was already lost and decided, with courage and intelligence, to let it go in peace, Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet general secretary of the Communist party. Reporting for Newsweek from the frontlines in Eastern Europe, Meyer spoke to these players and countless others. Alongside their deliberate interventions were also the happenstance and human error of history that are always present when events accelerate to breakneck speed.
©2009 Michael Meyer (P)2009 Tantor