George Newbern has narrated 187 audiobooks on Listento.it by 183 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 2,798 ratings. The most-rated is Influence.
Happy Hour in Hell
Summary
I've been told to go to Hell more times than I can count. But this time I'm actually going. My name's Bobby Dollar, sometimes known as Doloriel, and of course, Hell isn't a great place for someone like me - I'm an angel. They don't like my kind down there, not even the slightly fallen variety. But they have my girlfriend, who happens to be a beautiful demon named Casimira, Countess of Cold Hands. Why does an angel have a demon girlfriend? Well, certainly not because it helps my career. She's being held hostage by one of the nastiest, most powerful demons in all of the netherworld - Eligor, Grand Duke of Hell. He already hates me, and he'd like nothing better than to get his hands on me and rip my immortal soul right out of my borrowed but oh-so-mortal body. But wait, it gets better! Not only do I have to sneak into Hell, make my way across thousands of miles of terror and suffering to reach Pan-demonium, capital of the fiery depths, but then I have to steal Caz right out from under Eligor's burning eyes and smuggle her out again, past demon soldiers, hellhounds, and all the murderous creatures imprisoned there for eternity. And even if I somehow manage to escape Hell, I'm also being stalked by an undead psychopath named Smyler who's been following me for weeks. Oh, and did I mention that he can't be killed? So if I somehow survive Hell, elude the Grand Duke and all his hideous minions, and make it back to the real world, I'll still be the most hunted soul in Creation. But at least I'll have Caz. Gotta have something to look forward to, right? So just pour me that damn drink, will you? I've got somewhere to go.
©2013 Tad Williams (P)2013 Penguin Audio
Players
Summary
For fans of Michael Lewis, the astounding untold story of how professional sports transformed, in the span of a single generation, from a cottage industry into a massive global business.
In the cash-soaked world of contemporary sports, where every season brings news of higher salaries, endorsement deals, and television contracts, it is mind-boggling to remember that as recently as the 1970s elite athletes earned so little money that many were forced to work second jobs in the off-season to make ends meet. Roger Staubach, for example, made only $25,000 in his first season as the starting quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys and wound up selling commercial real estate in the summer. Today, when Fortune reports that every athlete on its Top 50 list makes more than $20 million per year, it's clear that a complete reversal of power occurred under our eyes.
Players is the first book to chronicle the astonishing business story behind modern sports - a true revolution that moved the athletes from the bottom of the financial pyramid to the top. It started in 1960, when a Cleveland lawyer named Mark McCormack convinced a golfer named Arnold Palmer to sign with him. Within a few years, McCormack raised Palmer's annual income off the course from $5,000 to $500,000 and forever changed the landscape of the sports industry.
Futterman introduces a wide-ranging cast of characters to tell the story of athletes, agents, TV executives, coaches, and owners who together created the dominating and multifaceted industry we know today. Players is a riveting, fly-on-the-wall account of the creation and rise of the modern sports world and the people who fought to make it happen. From landmark moments such as the 1973 Wimbledon boycott and baseball pitcher Catfish Hunter's battle to become MLB's first free agent to the outsize influence of companies like IMG, Nike, and ESPN, this fascinating book details the wild evolution of sports into the extravaganza we experience today and the inevitable trade-offs those changes have wrought.
©2016 Matthew Futterman (P)2016 Simon & Schuster
Duty
Summary
From the former secretary of defense, a strikingly candid, vivid account of serving Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When Robert M. Gates received a call from the White House, he thought he'd long left Washington politics behind: After working for six presidents in both the CIA and the National Security Council, he was happily serving as president of Texas A&M University. But when he was asked to help a nation mired in two wars and to aid the troops doing the fighting, he answered what he felt was the call of duty.
©2014 Robert M. Gates (P)2014 Random House Audio
Blind Ambition
Summary
This New York Times best seller is an insider's account of the fall of Richard Nixon, and has remained an indispensable source into Nixon's presidency. Blind Ambition is an autobiographical account of a young lawyer who accelerated to the top of the Federal power structure to become Counsel to the President at 30 years of age, only to discover that when reaching the top, he had touched the bottom. Most striking in this chronicle is its honesty. Dean spares no one, including himself. But, as Time noted, Dean survived, despite the opposition of powerful foe, because he had no false story to protect and he had an amazing ability to recall the truth.
©1979 John Dean (P)2016 Dreamscape Media, LLC
La Saison des Orages
Summary
Geralt de Riv, le Sorceleur, ne peut plus mener sa mission à bien. On lui a dérobé ses armes légendaires, l'empêchant d'exercer ses talents de tueur dans un monde qui a pourtant plus que jamais besoin de ses services. Alors qu'on lui demande d'assurer la sécurité du souverain pour ses noces, Geralt se trouve pris au cœur d'une intrigue politique qui le dépasse. Un complot dangereux que le Sorceleur va devoir déjouer sans s'attirer l'ire des puissants, tout en cherchant à mettre la main sur son voleur et, surtout, ses précieuses épées...
©2015 Bragelonne (P)2021 Hardigan
Basket Case
Summary
Once a hotshot investigative reporter, Jack Tagger now bangs out obituaries for a South Florida daily, "plotting to resurrect my newspaper career by yoking my byline to some famous stiff". Jimmy Stoma, the infamous front man of Jimmy and the Slut Puppies, dead in a fishy-smelling scuba "accident", might be the stiff of Jack’s dreams - if only he can figure out what happened. Standing in the way are (among others) his ambitious young editor, who hasn’t yet fired anyone but plans to "break her cherry" on Jack; the rock star’s pop-singer widow, who’s using the occasion of her husband’s death to relaunch her own career; and the soulless, profit-hungry owner of the newspaper, whom Jack once publicly humiliated at a stockholders’ meeting. With clues from the dead rock singer’s music, Jack ultimately unravels Jimmy Stoma’s strange fate - in a hilariously hard-won triumph for muckraking journalism, and for the death-obsessed obituary writer himself. "Always be halfway prepared" is Jack Tagger’s motto - and it’s more than enough to guarantee a wickedly funny, brilliantly entertaining novel from Carl Hiaasen.
©2002 Carl Hiaasen; 2013 Random House Audio
Say Nothing
Summary
Named a Best Book of 2017 by Library Journal and Kirkus Reviews Winner of the 2018 Library of Virginia People’s Choice Award Judge Scott Sampson doesn’t brag about having a perfect life, but the evidence is clear: A prestigious job. A loving marriage. A pair of healthy children. Then a phone call begins every parent’s most chilling nightmare. Scott’s six-year-old twins, Sam and Emma, have been taken. The judge must rule exactly as instructed in a drug case he is about to hear. If he refuses, the consequences for the children will be dire. For Scott and his wife, Alison, the kidnapper’s call is only the beginning of a twisting, gut-churning ordeal of blackmail, deceit, and terror. Through it all, they will stop at nothing to get their children back, no matter the cost to themselves...or to each other. “Outstanding - starts with a bang and gets tenser and tenser. Say Nothing shows Parks is a quality writer at the top of his form.” (Lee Child) “Terrific book. Truly terrific. Tension throughout and tears at the end.” (Sue Grafton) “The work of an author who continues to raise his sights and refine his immense talent.” (Richmond Times-Dispatch)
©2017 Brad Parks (P)2017 Penguin Audio
Last Kiss Goodnight
Summary
New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Gena Showalter ignites a thrilling new paranormal series with this breathtaking tale of a warrior enslaved by desire, and the woman who frees his soul. The Sweetest Temptation... Black ops agent Solomon Judah awakens caged and bound in a twisted zoo where otherworlders are the main attraction. Vika Lukas, the owner’s daughter, is tasked with Solo’s care and feeding. The monster inside him yearns to kill her on sight, even though she holds the key to his escape. But the human side of him realizes the beautiful deaf girl is more than she seem - she’s his. The ultimate price.... Vika endures the captives’ taunts and loathing, hoping to keep them alive even if she can’t free them. Only, Solo is different - he protects her. But as hostility turns to forbidden romance, his feelings for her will be used against him...and he’ll be put to a killer test.
©2012 Gena Showalter (P)2013 Simon & Schuster Audio
I Am Death
Summary
In top 10 Sunday Times (UK) best-selling author Chris Carter's electrifying follow-up to his "chilling" (Daily Mail) thriller An Evil Mind, the LAPD's Ultra Violent Crimes Unit lead detective, Robert Hunter, races to stop a serial killer whose past secrets rival those of Hunter himself. Seven days after being abducted, the body of a 20-year-old woman is found on a grassy area by the Los Angeles International Airport. She has been left with her limbs stretched out and spread apart, placing her in a five-point human star. The autopsy reveals that she has been tortured and murdered in a bizarre way, but the surprises don't end there. The killer likes to play, and he left something behind for the cops to find. Detective Robert Hunter is assigned to the case, but almost immediately a second body turns up. Detective Hunter quickly realizes that he is chasing a monster - a predator whose past hides a terrible secret, whose desire to hurt people and thirst for murder can never be quenched - for he is death. Fast paced, action packed, and filled with suspense, I Am Death is perfect for fans of Jeffery Deaver, Thomas Harris, and Chelsea Cain.
©2015 Chris Carter. First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd. A CBS Company. All rights reserved. (P)2015 Simon & Schuster Audio UK. All rights reserved.
Sick Puppy
Summary
When Palmer Stoat notices the black pickup truck following him on the highway, he fears his precious Range Rover is about to be carjacked. But Twilly Spree, the man tailing Stoat, has vengeance, not sport-utility vehicles, on his mind. Idealistic, independently wealthy, and pathologically short-tempered, Twilly has dedicated himself to saving Florida's wilderness from runaway destruction. He favors unambiguous political statements - such as torching Jet-Skis or blowing up banks - that leave his human targets shaken but re-educated. After watching Stoat blithely dump a trail of fast-food litter out the window, Twilly decides to teach him a lesson. Thus, Stoat's prized Range Rover becomes home to a horde of hungry dung beetles. Which could have been the end to it had Twilly not discovered that Stoat is one of Florida's cockiest and most powerful political fixers, whose latest project is the "malling" of a pristine Gulf Coast island. Now the real Hiaasen-variety fun begins.... Dognapping eco-terrorists, bogus big-time hunters, a Republicans-only hooker, an infamous ex-governor who's gone back to nature, thousands of singing toads and a Labrador retriever greater than the sum of his Labrador parts - these are only some of the denizens of Carl Hiaasen's outrageously funny new novel. Brilliantly twisted entertainment wrapped around a powerful ecological plea, Sick Puppy gleefully lives up to its title and gives us Hiaasen at his riotous and muckraking best.
©2000 Carl Hiaasen (P)2013 Random House Audio
American Shaolin
Summary
Bill Bryson meets Bruce Lee in this raucously funny story of one scrawny American's quest to become a kung fu master at China's legendary Shaolin Temple. Growing up a 90-pound weakling tormented by bullies in the schoolyards of Kansas, young Matthew Polly dreamed of one day journeying to the Shaolin Temple in China to become the toughest fighter in the world, like Caine in his favorite 1970s TV series, Kung Fu. While in college, Matthew decided the time had come to pursue this quixotic dream before it was too late. Much to the dismay of his parents, he dropped out of Princeton to spend two years training with the legendary sect of monks who invented kung fu and Zen Buddhism. Expecting to find an isolated citadel populated by supernatural ascetics that he had seen in countless badly dubbed chop-socky flicks, Matthew instead discovered a tacky tourist trap run by Communist party hacks. But the dedicated monks still trained in the rigorous age-old fighting forms - some even practicing the "iron kung fu" discipline, in which intensive training can make various body parts virtually indestructible-even the crotch. As Matthew grew in his knowledge of China and kung fu skill, he would come to represent the temple in challenge matches and international competitions, and ultimately the monks would accept their new American initiate as close to one of their own as any Westerner had ever become. Laced with humor and illuminated by cultural insight, American Shaolin is an unforgettable coming-of-age tale of one young man's journey into the ancient art of kung fu - and a funny and poignant portrait of a rapidly changing China.
©2018 Matthew Polly (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Strike Me Down
Summary
In this “whip-smart thriller featuring a brilliant female protagonist, a finely-tuned plot, and some truly spectacular writing” (Cristina Alger, USA Today best-selling author) from the author of Leave No Trace, a high stakes crime triggers a woman’s complicated and potentially deadly search for the truth. Nora Trier catches thieves. As a forensic accountant, she’s unearthed millions in every corner of the world. She prides herself on her independence, the most essential currency of accounting, until her firm is hired by Strike. An anti-corporate, feminist athletic empire, Strike is owned by Logan Russo, a brash and legendary kickboxer, and her marketing genius husband, Gregg Abbott. They’re about to host a major tournament with 20 million dollars in prize money, and the chance for the champion to become the new face of the company. But Gregg suspects his wife already has a new face in mind in the form of a young trainer. When the prize money goes missing days before the tournament begins, Gregg hires Nora’s firm to find both the thief and the money - but Nora has a secret connection to Strike. Her partner pressures her into taking the case anyway, hinting he has information that could change the course of the investigation in a shocking and deadly way. A tense and unpredictable thriller, Strike Me Down “crackles with obsession, greed, lust, and plenty of ambition, and it’s loaded with more twists and turns than a spy novel” (Kirkus Reviews).
©2020 Mindy Mejia (P)2020 Simon & Schuster Audio
To Die in Vienna
Summary
Soon to be a major motion picture starring Jake Gyllenhaal. He’s seen something that could get him killed. But what? Freddie Makin is a spy for hire. For a year he’s been watching Jiang Cheng, an academic whose life seems suspiciously normal. To Freddie it’s just a job: he never asks who’s paying him and why - until the day someone is sent to kill him, and suddenly the watcher becomes the watched. On the run from whoever wants him dead, Freddie knows he must have seen something incriminating. The only trouble is, he has no idea what. Is the CIA behind all this - or does it go higher than that? Have his trackers uncovered his own murky past? As he’s forced into a lethal dance across Vienna, Freddie knows one thing for sure: his only hope for survival is keeping the truth from the other side, and making sure the secrets from his past stay hidden.
©2018 Kevin Wignall (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
What Can I Do?
Summary
A call to action from Jane Fonda, one of the most inspiring activists of our time, urging us to wake up to the looming disaster of climate change and equipping us with the tools we need to join her in protest. "This is the last possible moment in history when changing course can mean saving lives and species on an unimaginable scale. It's too late for moderation." In the fall of 2019, frustrated with the obvious inaction of politicians and inspired by Greta Thunberg, Naomi Klein, and student climate strikers, Jane Fonda moved to Washington, DC, to lead weekly climate change demonstrations on Capitol Hill. On October 11, she launched Fire Drill Fridays and has since led thousands of people in nonviolent civil disobedience, risking arrest to protest for action. In What Can I Do?, Fonda weaves her deeply personal journey as an activist alongside conversations with and speeches by leading climate scientists and inspiring community organizers, and she dives deep into the issues, such as water, migration, and human rights, to emphasize what is at stake. Most significantly, Fonda equips us all with the tools we need to join her in protest so that everyone can work to combat the climate crisis. No stranger to protest, Fonda's life has been famously shaped by activism. And now she is once again galvanizing the public to take to the streets. Many are already aware of the looming disaster of climate change and realize that a moral responsibility rests on our shoulders. In 2019, we saw atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases hit the highest level ever recorded in human history, and our window of opportunity to act is quickly closing. We are facing a climate crisis, but we're also facing an empathy crisis and an inequality crisis; the surge of protests over police violence against Black Americans has once again highlighted the links between racism and environmental degradation in our country. It isn't only earth's life-support systems that are unraveling. So too is our social fabric. This is going to take an all-out war on drilling, fracking, deregulation, racism, misogyny, colonialism, and despair all at the same time. As Annie Leonard, executive director of Greenpeace USA and Fonda's partner in developing Fire Drill Fridays, has declared, "Change is inevitable; by design, or by disaster." Together, we can commandeer change for the positive - but it will require collective actions taken by social movements on an unprecedented scale. The problems we face now require every one of us to join the fight. The fight for not only our immediate future, but for the future of generations to come. One hundred percent of the author's net proceeds from What Can I Do? will go to Greenpeace This audiobook program includes a PDF of photographs and graphs. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 Jane Fonda (P)2020 Penguin Audio
Seven at Sea
Summary
Erik and Emily skillfully reveal that it is possible to live big on a shoestring budget while giving their family an astonishing education in adventure, creativity, purpose, and grit. Working the night shift as a temp in a high-rise cubicle, Erik Orton knew something had to change. He felt the responsibility of providing for his wife and their five children, the youngest with Down syndrome, but craved a life that offered more than just surviving. Watching the sailboats on the Hudson River during his sunset dinner breaks, Erik dared to dream. What would it be like to leave the hustle of the city and instead spend a year on a sailboat, somewhere beautiful, as a family? Despite having no sailing experience, his wife Emily's phobia of deep water, and already stretching every dollar to pay rent and buy groceries, the family of seven turned their excuses into reasons and their fears into motivation. Sure, they would miss their friends, they could go broke, they could get injured or die. Worst of all, they could humiliate themselves by trying something audacious and failing. But the little time they still had together as a family, before their oldest daughter left for college, was drifting away. The Ortons cast off the life they knew to begin an uncertain journey of 5,000 miles between New York City and the Caribbean, ultimately arriving at a new place within themselves. A portrait of a captivating and resilient family and a celebration of the courage it takes to head for something over the horizon, this is a deeply compelling story, told alternately by Erik and Emily, for all those who dream of leaving routine in their wake.
©2019 Erik Orton and Emily Orton (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Age of Radiance
Summary
From the New York Times best-selling author of Rocket Men and the award-winning biographer of Thomas Paine comes the first complete history of the Atomic Age, a brilliant, magisterial account of the men and women who uncovered the secrets of the nucleus, brought its power to America, and ignited the 20th century. When Marie Curie, Enrico Fermi, and Edward Teller forged the science of radioactivity, they created a revolution that arced from the end of the 19th century, through the course of World War II and the Cold War of superpower brinksmanship, to our own 21st-century confrontation with the dangers of nuclear power and proliferation - a history of paradox, miracle, and nightmare. While nuclear science improves our everyday lives - from medicine to microwave technology - radiation’s invisible powers can trigger cancer and cellular mayhem. Writing with a biographer’s passion, Craig Nelson unlocks one of the great mysteries of the universe in a work that is tragic, triumphant, and above all, fascinating. From the discovery of X-rays in the 1890s, through the birth of nuclear power in an abandoned Chicago football stadium, to the bomb builders of Los Alamos and the apocalyptic Dr. Strangelove era, Nelson illuminates a pageant of fascinating historical figures: Marie and Pierre Curie, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Franklin Roosevelt, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Harry Truman, Curtis LeMay, John F. Kennedy, Robert McNamara, Ronald Reagan, and Mikhail Gorbachev, among others. He reveals how brilliant Jewish scientists fleeing Hitler transformed America from a nation that created lightbulbs and telephones into one that split atoms; how the most grotesque weapon ever invented could realize Alfred Nobel’s lifelong dream of global peace; and how, in our time, emergency workers and low-level utility employees fought to contain run-amok nuclear reactors while wondering if they would live or die. Radiance defies our common-sense views of nature, with its staggering amounts of energy flowing from seemingly inert rock and matter pulsing in half-lives that transforms into other states over the course of decades or in the blink of an eye. Radiation is as scary a word as cancer, but it’s the power that keeps our planet warm, as well as the force behind earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions, and so organic to all life that even our own human bodies are radioactive. By tracing mankind’s complicated relationship with the dangerous energy it discovered and unleashed, Nelson reveals how atomic power and radiation are indivisible from our everyday lives. Brilliantly told and masterfully crafted, The Age of Radiance provides a new understanding of a misunderstood epoch in history and restores to prominence the forgotten heroes and heroines who have changed all of our lives for better and for worse. It confirms Craig Nelson’s position as one of the most lively and skillful popular historians writing today.
©2014 Craig Nelson (P)2014 Simon & Schuster
Wonderland
Summary
From the New York Times best-selling author of How We Got to Now and Where Good Ideas Come From, a look at the world-changing innovations we made while keeping ourselves entertained. This history of popular entertainment takes a long-zoom approach, contending that the pursuit of novelty and wonder is a powerful driver of world-shaping technological change. Steven Johnson argues that throughout history, the cutting edge of innovation has lain wherever people have been working the hardest to keep themselves and others amused. Johnson's storytelling is just as delightful as the inventions he describes, full of surprising stops along the journey, from simple concepts to complex modern systems. He introduces us to the colorful innovators of leisure: the explorers, proprietors, showmen, and artists who changed the trajectory of history with their luxurious wares, exotic meals, taverns, gambling tables, and magic shows. Johnson compellingly argues that observers of technological and social trends should be looking for clues in novel amusements. You'll find the future wherever people are having the most fun.
©2016 Steven Johnson (P)2016 Penguin Audio
Grimm's Fairy Tales
Summary
From Children's and Household Tales (German: Kinder und Hausmarchen), Grimm's Fairy Tales was first published in 1812 by the Grimm brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm. Though earlier editions included material deemed unpalatable to modern audiences, subsequent editions softened some of the violence and raciness of the original. Containing 62 stories, including "Briar Rose" ("Sleeping Beauty"), "Hansel and Grete", "Snow White", and "Rose Red", and "Ashputtel" ("Cinderella"), this collection was praised by W.H. Auden as among the founding works of Western culture.
Public Domain (P)2017 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Sleeping Late On Judgement Day
Summary
Where does an angel go when he’s been to Hell and back? Renegade angel Bobby Dollar does not have an easy afterlife. After surviving the myriad gruesome dangers Hell oh-so-kindly offered him, Bobby has returned empty-handed – his demon girlfriend Casmira, the Countess of Cold Hands, is still in the clutches of Eligor, Grand Duke of Hell. Some hell of a rescue. Forced to admit his failure, Bobby ends up back at his job as an angel advocate. That is, until Walter, an old angel friend whom Bobby never thought he’d see again, shows up at the local bar. The last time he saw Walter was in Hell, when Walter had tried to warn him about one of Bobby’s angel superiors. But now Walter can’t remember anything, and Bobby doesn’t know whom to trust. Turns out that there’s corruption hidden within the higher ranks of Heaven and Hell, but the only proof Bobby has is a single feather. Before he knows it, he’s in the High Hall of Heavenly Judgement – no longer a bastion for the moral high ground, if it ever was, but instead just another rigged system – on trial for his immortal soul… Sleeping Late on Judgement Day is the third installment of Tad Williams’ urban fantasy Bobby Dollar series!
©2014 Tad Williams (P)2014 Penguin Group US
How to Think Like a Cat
Summary
The Cat is calm, observant, charismatic, independent, proud, and joyful; he knows how to strut and is impervious to judgement; he accepts himself as he is and adapts quickly; he knows to say nothing and to avoid conflicts, and yet he knows exactly what he wants and dares to ask for it. The Cat is free.
After observing his cat, Ziggy, for years, Stephane Garnier became convinced that cats have life down to an art form, so he set out to share Ziggy's je ne sais quoi with the world. Highlighting 40 trademark cat qualities that are (almost) entirely applicable to human daily living, Garnier provides insights that are delightfully useful as well as tips for living a day in the life of a cat - and a Q&A to test your cat quotient to see how much work you have to do learn the subtle art of living like a feline.
Whether at work, at home, or in your social life, you can learn from cats how to resist stress, remain independent, never lose your charisma, and quietly influence the world around you.
©2018 Stephane Garnier (P)2018 Dreamscape Media, LLC