James Yaegashi has narrated 16 audiobooks on Listento.it by 15 authors, with an average listener rating of 4★ across 48 ratings. The most-rated is Ultramarathon Man.
Ultramarathon Man
Summary
Karnazes reveals the mind-boggling adventures of his nonstop treks through the hell of Death Valley, the incomprehensible frigidity of the South Pole, and the breathtaking beauty of the mountains and canyons of the Sierra Nevada.
©2005 Dean Karnazes (P)2006 Recorded Books, LLC
Schooled
Summary
Popular author Gordon Korman pens a funny fish-out-of-water tale that even the most reluctant reader will find impossible to resist. Capricorn Anderson has spent his entire life on a farm with his hippie grandmother. After an accident puts Grandma in the hospital, Cap is forced to attend Claverage Middle School and live with his guidance counselor. The tradition at Claverage is for students to nominate the biggest nerd for class president, and Cap is the obvious choice. But with his odd ways and positive outlook, Cap just might turn the joke upside down by becoming the best class president ever.
©2007 Gordon Korman (P)2007 Recorded Books, LLC
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
Summary
Minor Universe 31 is a vast story-space on the outskirts of fiction, where paradox fluctuates like the stock market, lonely sexbots beckon failed protagonists, and time travel is serious business. Every day, people get into time machines and try to do the one thing they should never do: change the past. That’s where Charles Yu, time travel technician—part counselor, part gadget repair man—steps in. He helps save people from themselves. Literally. When he’s not taking client calls or consoling his boss, Phil, who could really use an upgrade, Yu visits his mother (stuck in a one-hour cycle of time, she makes dinner over and over and over) and searches for his father, who invented time travel and then vanished. Accompanied by TAMMY, an operating system with low self-esteem, and Ed, a nonexistent but ontologically valid dog, Yu sets out, and back, and beyond, in order to find the one day where he and his father can meet in memory. He learns that the key may be found in a book he got from his future self. It’s called How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and he’s the author. And somewhere inside it is the information that could help him—in fact it may even save his life.
©2010 Charles Yu (P)2011 Recorded Books, LLC
Hachiko Waits
Summary
Every morning in the Japanese town of Shibuya, Professor Ueno awakens and is greeted by his loyal Akita dog, Hachiko. They enjoy a breakfast together before the professor leaves to catch the train to the school where he teaches. And Hachiko sits at the station eagerly awaiting his master’s return. Then one afternoon Professor Ueno does not return. And Hachiko waits. Days and weeks pass and still no one - not even the young boy Yasuo who comes to care for him - can persuade the faithful dog to leave his post. Years go by and yet still he waits. In time, Hachiko will come to be remembered and honored throughout Japan for his singular devotion. Poet, author, and animal advocate Lesleá Newman earned an ASPCA Henry Bergh Children’s Book Honor and scores of other accolades for this touching tale based on a true story. Sprinkled throughout with Japanese vocabulary words, this audio production serves as an excellent introduction to a different culture while simultaneously illustrating the universality of human emotions.
©2004 Lesléa Newman (P)2008 Recorded Books
Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire
Summary
Best-selling author Rafe Esquith, the only teacher to receive the National Medal of Arts, has garnered the American Teacher Award and numerous other honors. Still teaching fifth graders in a small, leaky classroom in downtown Los Angeles, Esquith fosters a wholesome climate where character, humility, and diligence matter and support is unconditional. For his mostly poor and Hispanic students, Esquith models two maxims: Be nice and work hard, and There are no shortcuts. And his students thrive!
©2007 Rafe Esquith (P)2007 Recorded Books
The Surrendered
Summary
At the end of the Korean War, the lives of orphan June Han and American soldier Hector Brennan collide. Thirty years later, they meet again and are forced to come to terms with the secrets of their devastating past.
©2010 Chang-Rae Lee (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC
The Witch of Babylon
Summary
D.J. McIntosh’s The Witch of Babylon won an Arthur Ellis Award prior to its publication. Here Turkish-American art dealer John Madison gets caught up in a deadly conspiracy, involving a stolen artifact, stretching from ancient Mesopotamia to modern-day Iraq. Aided by an archaeologist and a photojournalist, John navigates a tricky landscape filled with thieves, killers, and men with dark secrets, all while unearthing the startling history of alchemy.
©2011 D.J. McIntosh (P)2012 Recorded Books
Gold Boy, Emerald Girl
Summary
Author Yiyun Li, honored as one of Granta’s 21 Best Young American Novelists under age 35, continues her illustrious career with this insightful collection of short stories. With compelling visions of the scrapes and unpleasant situations in which people find themselves, Li’s works trigger emotional responses of all types - whether through a tale of unrequited love, an unburdening of guilt, or something else entirely. These heartrending stories are certain to strike a chord with listeners as they recognize aspects of their own lives.
©2010 Yiyun Li (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC
The Book of Stolen Tales
Summary
In this highly anticipated sequel, John Madison travels to London to purchase, at auction, a rare 17th-century Italian book of fairy tales for an anonymous client. Madison is warned about the book's malevolent history, but before he can deliver it to the buyer, he is robbed by a mysterious man claiming to be the book's author. When his client disappears and the book's provenance is questioned, Madison must immerse himself in the world of European aristocracy and rare book collectors. As the dark origins of certain fairy tales appear to come to life around him, Madison discovers that a well-loved children's story contains a necromancer's spell and points to the source of a deadly Mesopotamian plague.
©2013 D.J. McIntosh (P)2015 Recorded Books
I Hotel
Summary
Karen Tei Yamashita has been honored with the American Book Award and Janet Heidinger Kafka Award. A stunning portrait of Asian Americans in 1960s and ’70s San Francisco, I Hotel is a remarkable collection of 10 related novellas. Touching on such topics as Japanese internment camps and the Marcos dictatorship, the book presents readers with characters of rich design.
©2010 Karen Tei Yamashita (P)2011 Recorded Books, LLC
The Boat
Summary
A stunningly inventive, deeply moving fiction debut: stories that take us from the slums of Colombia to the streets of Tehran; from New York City to Iowa City; from a tiny fishing village in Australia to a foundering vessel in the South China Sea, in a masterly display of literary virtuosity and feeling. In the magnificent opening story, "Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice", a young writer is urged by his friends to mine his father's experiences in Vietnam - and what seems at first a satire of turning one's life into literary commerce becomes a transcendent exploration of homeland and the ties between father and son. "Cartagena" provides a visceral glimpse of life in Colombia as it enters the mind of a 14-year-old hit man facing the ultimate test. In "Meeting Elise", an aging New York painter mourns his body's decline as he prepares to meet his daughter on the eve of her Carnegie Hall debut. And with graceful symmetry, the final, title story returns to Vietnam, to a fishing trawler crowded with refugees, where a young woman's bond with a mother and her small son forces both women to a shattering decision. Brilliant, daring, and demonstrating a jaw-dropping versatility of voice and point of view, The Boat is an extraordinary work of fiction that takes us to the heart of what it means to be human, and announces a writer of astonishing gifts.
©2008 Nam Le (P)2009 Recorded Books, LLC
Infamy
Summary
Best-selling author Richard Reeves provides an authoritative account of the internment of more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans and Japanese aliens during World War II. Less than three months after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and inflamed the nation, President Roosevelt signed an executive order declaring parts of four western states to be a war zone operating under military rule. The US Army immediately began rounding up thousands of Japanese-Americans, sometimes giving them less than 24 hours to vacate their houses and farms. For the rest of the war, these victims of war hysteria were imprisoned in primitive camps. In Infamy, the story of this appalling chapter in American history is told more powerfully than ever before. Acclaimed historian Richard Reeves has interviewed survivors, read numerous private letters and memoirs, and combed through archives to deliver a sweeping narrative of this atrocity. Men we usually consider heroes - FDR, Earl Warren, Edward R. Murrow - were in this case villains, but we also learn of many Americans who took great risks to defend the rights of the internees. Most especially, we hear the poignant stories of those who spent years in "war relocation camps", many of whom suffered this terrible injustice with remarkable grace. Racism, greed, xenophobia, and a thirst for revenge: a dark strand in the American character underlies this story of one of the most shameful episodes in our history. But by recovering the past, Infamy has given voice to those who ultimately helped the nation better understand the true meaning of patriotism.
©2015 Reeves-O'Neill, Inc. (P)2015 Recorded Books
The Snow Empress
Summary
Chosen by Publishers Weekly as a Best Book of 2007, The Snow Empress showcases author Laura Joh Rowland's deep understanding of 17th-century Japan and her impeccable gift of storytelling. This thrilling novel finds samurai detective Sano Ichirõ working to gain freedom for his son by investigating the murder of a lord's beloved mistress.
©2007 Laura Joh Rowland (P)2008 Recorded Books,LLC
Heart of a Samurai
Summary
Praised as “a timeless tale” by Booklist in a starred review, this Newbery Honor book by Margi Preus explores the cultural divide between the East and West circa 1841. When Manjiro, a Japanese teenager, is thrown from his fishing boat during a storm, he’s rescued by an American whaling ship. Befriending the ship’s captain, Manjiro decides to travel with the crew to Massachusetts. But years later, when Manjiro attempts to return to his homeland, he’s imprisoned as an outsider.
©2010 Margi Preus (P)2011 Recorded Books, LLC
Sorry Please Thank You: Stories
Summary
New York Times Notable Book author Charles Yu wrote the best-selling novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. In his stunning, often humorous, collection Sorry Please Thank You, Yu draws on pop culture and science to make incisive observations about society - and to offer touching insight into the human condition. In two of Yu’s remarkable stories, he focuses on a big-box-store night-shift employee with girl trouble and a company that outsources grief for profit.
©2012 Charles Yu (P)2012 Recorded Books
A Death in China
Summary
An American investigating his mentor's murder finds himself ensnared in a web of lies and treachery in China, where even tomorrow's weather is a state secret. From a nightmarish interrogation to assassination by cobra, A Death in China takes readers on a trip with no rest stops through a world of claustrophobic mistrust and terrifying danger.
©1984 Carl Hiaasen / Bill Montalbano (P)2012 Recorded Books. LLC