Kristen Sieh has narrated 29 audiobooks on Listento.it by 29 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 1,091 ratings. The most-rated is An Absolutely Remarkable Thing.
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing
Summary
The instant number-one New York Times best seller In his much-anticipated debut novel, Hank Green - co-creator of Crash Course, Vlogbrothers, and SciShow - spins a sweeping, cinematic tale about a young woman who becomes an overnight celebrity before realizing she's part of something bigger, and stranger, than anyone could have possibly imagined. The Carls just appeared. Coming home from work at three a.m., 23-year-old April May stumbles across a giant sculpture. Delighted by its appearance and craftsmanship - like a 10-foot-tall Transformer wearing a suit of samurai armor - April and her friend Andy make a video with it, which Andy uploads to YouTube. The next day April wakes up to a viral video and a new life. News quickly spreads that there are Carls in dozens of cities around the world - everywhere from Beijing to Buenos Aires - and April, as their first documentarian, finds herself at the center of an intense international media spotlight. Now April has to deal with the pressure on her relationships, her identity, and her safety that this new position brings, all while being on the front lines of the quest to find out not just what the Carls are, but what they want from us. Compulsively entertaining and powerfully relevant, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing grapples with big themes, including how the social Internet is changing fame, rhetoric, and radicalization; how our culture deals with fear and uncertainty; and how vilification and adoration spring from the same dehumanization that follows a life in the public eye. The beginning of an exciting fiction career, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is a bold and insightful novel of now.
©2018 Hank Green (P)2018 Penguin Audio
A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor
Summary
The Instant New York Times Best Seller Who has the right to change the world forever? How will we live online? How do we find comfort in an increasingly isolated world? The Carls disappeared the same way they appeared, in an instant. While the robots were on Earth, they caused confusion and destruction with only their presence. Part of their maelstrom was the sudden viral fame and untimely death of April May: a young woman who stumbled into the Carls' path, giving them their name, becoming their advocate, and putting herself in the middle of an avalanche of conspiracy theories. Months later, April’s friends are trying to find their footing in a post-Carl world. Andy has picked up April’s mantle of fame, speaking at conferences and online; Maya, ravaged by grief, begins to follow a string of mysteries that she is convinced will lead her to April; and Miranda is contemplating defying her friends’ advice and pursuing a new scientific operation...one that might have repercussions beyond anyone’s comprehension. Just as it is starting to seem like the gang may never learn the real story behind the events that changed their lives forever, a series of clues arrive - mysterious books that seem to predict the future and control the actions of their readers - all of which seems to suggest that April could be very much alive. In the midst of the search for the truth and the search for April is a growing force, something that wants to capture our consciousness and even control our reality. A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor is the bold and brilliant follow-up to An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. It is a fast-paced adventure that is also a biting social commentary, asking hard, urgent questions about the way we live, our freedoms, our future, and how we handle the unknown.
©2020 Hank Green (P)2020 Penguin Audio
One to Watch
Summary
National best seller Real love...as seen on TV. A plus-size bachelorette brings a fresh look to a reality show in this razor-sharp, “thoroughly charming” (Hillary Clinton) debut. “Relatable, incredibly smart...an extraordinary debut.” (Jasmine Guillory, New York Times best-selling author of The Wedding Date and The Proposal) Named One of the Best Books of the Year by Time, NPR, Marie Claire, Mashable “Divinely witty and engrossing.... Grade: A.” (Entertainment Weekly) Bea Schumacher is a devastatingly stylish plus-size fashion blogger who has amazing friends, a devoted family, legions of Insta followers - and a massively broken heart. Like the rest of America, Bea indulges in her weekly obsession: the hit reality show Main Squeeze. The fantasy dates! The kiss-off rejections! The surprising amount of guys named Chad! But Bea is sick and tired of the lack of body diversity on the show. Since when is being a size zero a prerequisite for getting engaged on television? Just when Bea has sworn off dating altogether, she gets an intriguing call: Main Squeeze wants her to be its next star, surrounded by men vying for her affections. Bea agrees, on one condition - under no circumstances will she actually fall in love. She’s in this to supercharge her career, subvert harmful beauty standards, inspire women across America, and get a free hot air balloon ride. That’s it. But when the cameras start rolling, Bea realizes things are more complicated than she anticipated. She’s in a whirlwind of sumptuous couture, internet culture wars, sexy suitors, and an opportunity (or two, or five) to find messy, real-life love in the midst of a made-for-TV fairy tale. In this joyful, wickedly observant debut, Bea has to decide whether it might just be worth trusting these men - and herself - for a chance to live happily ever after.
©2020 Kate Stayman-London (P)2020 Random House Audio
The Better Liar
Summary
“Jones’s sensational debut has the bones of a thriller but reads like literary fiction: lean, shrewd, and gratifyingly real.” (Entertainment Weekly) When a woman conceals her sister’s death to claim their joint inheritance, her deception exposes a web of dangerous secrets in this addictive new thriller for fans of Megan Abbott, Gillian Flynn, and Paula Hawkins. An ID Book Club Selection Leslie Flores has the perfect life - a loving husband, a happy newborn, and a New Mexico home straight out of a magazine. She’s been the perfect daughter, too, taking care of her ailing father in his final days. But Leslie has a dark secret - and it’s an expensive secret to keep. When she discovers she won’t receive a penny of her inheritance unless she finds her estranged sister, Robin, she sets out to track her down. Instead, upon arriving at Robin’s apartment, Leslie discovers her body. Just as Leslie begins to panic, she meets a charismatic aspiring actress named Mary who bears a striking resemblance to Robin - and has every reason to leave her past behind. The two women make a bargain: Mary will impersonate Robin for a week in exchange for Robin’s half of the cash. Neither realizes how high the stakes will become when Mary takes a dead woman’s name. Even as Mary begins to suspect Leslie is hiding something, and Leslie realizes the stranger living in her house has secrets of her own, Robin’s wild, troubled legacy threatens to eclipse them both. Fans of Megan Abbott, Gillian Flynn, and Paula Hawkins will relish this darkly addictive portrait of the ties that bind and the secrets we all keep from one another.
©2020 Tanen Jones (P)2020 Random House Audio
They Wish They Were Us
Summary
TV Adaptation The Players' Table Starring Halsey and Euphoria's Sydney Sweeney Coming to HBO Max “A pristine infusion of Gossip Girl and Netflix's Elite, this prep-school thriller has it all: plaid skirts, secret societies, and a gripping murder mystery, but paired with an adept critique of the powers and privileges that goeth before the fall.” (Elle) In Gold Coast, Long Island, everything from the expensive downtown shops to the manicured beaches, to the pressed uniforms of Jill Newman and her friends, looks perfect. But as Jill found out three years ago, nothing is as it seems. Freshman year Jill's best friend, the brilliant, dazzling Shaila Arnold, was killed by her boyfriend. After that dark night on the beach, Graham confessed, the case was closed, and Jill tried to move on. Now, it's Jill's senior year and she's determined to make it her best yet. After all, she's a senior and a Player - a member of Gold Coast Prep's exclusive, not-so-secret secret society. Senior Players have the best parties, highest grades and the admiration of the entire school. This is going to be Jill's year. She's sure of it. But when Jill starts getting texts proclaiming Graham's innocence, her dreams of the perfect senior year start to crumble. If Graham didn't kill Shaila, who did? Jill vows to find out, but digging deeper could mean putting her friendships, and her future, in jeopardy.
©2020 Jessica Goodman (P)2020 Listening Library
The Lost Night
Summary
“Tightly paced and skillfully plotted, The Lost Night is a remarkable debut.” (Jessica Knoll, New York Times best-selling author of Luckiest Girl Alive) What really happened the night Edie died? Years later, her best friend, Lindsay, will learn how unprepared she is for the truth. Named one of the best books of the year by BuzzFeed • Glamour • Real Simple • Marie Claire • Library Journal • Booklist • CrimeReads In 2009, Edie had New York’s social world in her thrall. Mercurial and beguiling, she was the shining star of a group of recent graduates living in a Brooklyn loft and treating New York like their playground. When Edie’s body was found near a suicide note at the end of a long, drunken night, no one could believe it. Grief, shock, and resentment scattered the group and brought the era to an abrupt end. A decade later, Lindsay has come a long way from the drug-addled world of Calhoun Lofts. She has devoted best friends, a cozy apartment, and a thriving career as a magazine’s head fact-checker. But when a chance reunion leads Lindsay to discover an unsettling video from that hazy night, she starts to wonder if Edie was actually murdered - and, worse, if she herself was involved. As she rifles through those months in 2009 - combing through case files, old technology, and her fractured memories - Lindsay is forced to confront the demons of her own violent history to bring the truth to light. Praise for The Lost Night “[An] impressive debut with a nerve-wracking finish.” (People) “A compulsively readable journey into the dark corners of memory. Bartz has crafted a terrifying and delicious narrative in the vein of Gillian Flynn and Paula Hawkins.” (Jo Piazza, best-selling coauthor of The Knockoff) “Andrea Bartz casts a nostalgic, misty haze over this story about a meticulous-minded woman playing detective with her own life. If you’ve ever woken up unsure of what happened the night before and then proceeded to do it again...oh my, this is your book.” (Caroline Kepnes, author of You and Providence)
©2019 Andrea Bartz (P)2019 Random House Audio
The Glittering Court: The Glittering Court, Book 1
Summary
A dazzling, romantic new fantasy series set in a mix of Elizabethan and frontier worlds from Richelle Mead, number-one internationally best-selling author of Vampire Academy. Big and sweeping, spanning the refined palaces of Osfrid to the gold dust and untamed forests of Adoria, The Glittering Court tells the story of Adelaide, an Osfridian countess who poses as her servant to escape an arranged marriage and start a new life in Adoria, the New World. But to do that, she must join the Glittering Court. Both a school and a business venture, the Glittering Court is designed to transform impoverished girls into upper-class ladies who appear destined for powerful and wealthy marriages in the New World. Adelaide naturally excels in her training and even makes a few friends: the fiery former laundress Tamsin and the beautiful Sirminican refugee Mira. She manages to keep her true identity hidden from all but one: the intriguing Cedric Thorn, son of the wealthy proprietor of the Glittering Court. When Adelaide discovers that Cedric is hiding a dangerous secret of his own, together they hatch a scheme to make the best of Adelaide's deception. Complications soon arise - first as they cross the treacherous seas from Osfrid to Adoria, and later when Adelaide catches the attention of a powerful governor. But no complication will prove quite as daunting as the potent attraction simmering between Adelaide and Cedric. An attraction that, if acted on, would scandalize the Glittering Court and make them both outcasts in wild, vastly uncharted lands....
©2016 Richelle Mead (P)2016 Listening Library
Touch
Summary
From the author of the acclaimed I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You, a satirical and moving novel in the spirit of Maria Semple and Jess Walter about a New York City trend forecaster who finds herself wanting to overturn her own predictions, move away from technology, and reclaim her heart. Sloane Jacobsen is the most powerful trend forecaster in the world (she was the foreseer of "the swipe"), and global fashion, lifestyle, and tech companies pay to hear her opinions about the future. Her recent forecasts on the family are unwavering: the world is overpopulated, and with unemployment, college costs, and food prices all on the rise, having children is an extravagant indulgence. So it's no surprise when the tech giant Mammoth hires Sloane to lead their groundbreaking annual conference, celebrating the voluntarily childless. But not far into her contract, Sloane begins to sense the undeniable signs of a movement against electronics that will see people embracing compassion, empathy, and "in-personism" again. She's struggling with the fact that her predictions are hopelessly out of sync with her employer's mission and that her closest personal relationship is with her self-driving car when her partner, the French "neo-sensualist" Roman Bellard, reveals that he is about to publish an op-ed on the death of penetrative sex - a postsexual treatise that instantly goes viral. Despite the risks to her professional reputation, Sloane is nevertheless convinced that her instincts are the right ones and goes on a quest to defend real-life human interaction while finally allowing in the love and connectedness she's long been denying herself. A poignant and amusing call to arms that showcases her signature biting wit and keen eye, celebrated novelist Courtney Maum's new book is a moving investigation into what it means to be an individual in a globalized world.
©2017 Courtney Maum (P)2017 Penguin Audio
Blitzed
Summary
One of Buzzfeed's 16 Romantic Books to Read This Fall One of Popsugar's Best Books for Winter One of Refinery29's Best Books of December "Definitely a must-read!” (La La Anthony, New York Times best-selling author) Maxwell Lewis has to make the play of his life in order to breach the woman of his dream’s defenses in this new football romance from the author of Fumbled. Brynn Larson owes a lot to reality television and professional athletes. Her bar hit new heights of success after becoming a local haunt for the Denver Mustangs players and their WAGs. But although she’s grateful, that doesn’t mean she’s crazy. And that’s exactly what she would be to ever consider dating a professional athlete. Even if it’s Maxwell Lewis, whose shy smile makes her wonder what going on behind those beautiful brown eyes. Maxwell knew from the moment he met Brynn that she was going to change his life. It was only a matter of time. But when he finally makes a move, fate conspires against him and everything goes wrong. Now he has to show her that their potential is real. Too bad for him, Brynn isn’t fooled by his glamorous NFL life, and when ghosts from both their pasts make a sudden reappearance, she must decide who she can trust. But when the person she’s most afraid of is herself, navigating life’s tackles is harder than anticipated.
©2019 Alexa Martin (P)2019 Penguin Audio
If I Disappear
Summary
“This new novel has more twists and fakeouts than an episode of Serial.” (Rolling Stone) “Fans of true crime will devour this mystery.” (E! Online) A Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by Rolling Stone • CNN • E! Online • Buzzfeed • New York Post • Popsugar • Woman's Day • CrimeReads • HelloGiggles When her favorite true-crime podcast host goes missing, an adrift young woman sets out to investigate and plunges headfirst into the wild backcountry of Northern California and her own dangerous obsession. Sera loves true-crime podcasts. They give her a sense of control in a world where women just like her disappear daily. She's sure they are preparing her for something. So, when Rachel, her favorite podcast host, goes missing, Sera knows it's time to act. Rachel has always taught her to trust her instincts. Sera follows the clues hidden in the episodes to an isolated ranch outside Rachel's small hometown to begin her search. She's convinced her investigation will make Rachel so proud. But the more Sera digs into this unfamiliar world, the more off things start to feel. Because, Rachel is not the first woman to vanish from the ranch, and she won't be the last.... Rachel did try to warn her.
©2021 Eliza Jane Brazier (P)2021 Penguin Audio
Under the Rainbow
Summary
Longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize "Delivered with such conviction and grace...fresh...essential.” (The New York Times Book Review) When outsiders on a mission arrive to change a small town’s attitudes, residents and newcomers alike end up transformed. Big Burr, Kansas is the kind of place where everyone seems to know everyone - or so they think. But when a national nonprofit labels Big Burr “the most homophobic town in the US” and sends in a queer task force to live and work there for two years, no one is prepared for what will ensue. Still grieving the death of her son, Linda welcomes the newcomers, who know mercifully little about her past. Teenage Avery, furious at being uprooted from her life in L.A. and desperate to fit in at her new high school, fears it’s only a matter of time before her classmates discover her mom is the head of the task force. And Gabe, an avid hunter who has lived in Big Burr his whole life, suddenly feels as if he’s in the crosshairs. As tensions roil the town, cratering relationships and bringing difficult truths to light, both long time residents and new arrivals must reconsider what it means to belong. Told with warmth and wit, Under the Rainbow is a poignant, hopeful articulation of our complicated humanity and the ways we can learn to live with each other and ourselves.
©2020 Celia Laskey (P)2020 Penguin Audio
Last Couple Standing
Summary
A couple determined not to end up like their divorced friends try a radical experiment - and get in way over their heads - in this hilarious, heartfelt novel from the author of We’re All Damaged. New York Post’s Best Books to Read in Our Age of Social Isolation "[Matthew] Norman’s funny and feeling writing makes for an irresistible read." (Esquire Best Books of 2020) The Core Four have been friends since college: four men, four women, four couples. They got married around the same time, had kids around the same time, and now, 15 years later, they’ve started getting divorced around the same time, too. With three of the Core Four unions crumbling to dust around them, Jessica and Mitch Butler take a long, hard look at their own marriage. Can it be saved? Or is divorce, like some 40-something zombie virus, simply inescapable? To maximize their chance at immunity, Jessica and Mitch try something radical. Their friends’ divorces mostly had to do with sex - having it, not having it, wanting to have it with other people - so they decide to relax a few things. Terms are discussed, conditions are made, and together the Butlers embark on the great experiment of taking their otherwise happy, functional marriage and breaking some very serious rules. Jessica and Mitch are convinced they’ve hit upon the next evolution of marriage. But as lines are crossed and hot bartenders pursued, they each start to wonder if they’ve made a huge mistake. What follows is sexy, fun, painful, messy, and completely surprising to them both. Because sometimes doing something bad is the only way to get to the heart of what’s really good.
©2020 Matthew Norman (P)2020 Random House Audio
Orlando People
Summary
Alexander C. Kane, author of the smash-hit Andrea Vernon series, brings his signature humor to the adventures of an unlikely, tenacious new heroine in this fantastic free-for-all. Gretch Wolgast is a bit of a dud. Just ask her. She’s a 21-year-old college dropout who has a loser job at the mall. Sure, she can lift a tennis ball with her telekinetic powers. But only three feet in the air. And she has to be sitting. Gretch is an OP, one of thousands born in Orlando, Florida, in the early 1980s who mysteriously developed the ability to move things with their minds. Unfortunately, she turned out to be the weakest of the bunch. Then Shaq left town to join the Lakers, and it's been downhill ever since. Now, Gretch’s life is being turned upside down. She witnesses a murder and discovers a wide-ranging conspiracy that could destroy her hometown and all the OP. And she might be the only one powerful enough to stop it.
©2019 Alexander C. Kane (P)2019 Audible Originals, LLC.
Everyone Knows How Much I Love You
Summary
In this “deliciously incisive” (Publishers Weekly) debut, a young woman finds herself inexorably drawn to repeating the worst mistakes of her past, for readers of Marlena and Social Creature. “An utterly taut construction, as unsettling as it is propulsive...McCarthy’s debut, with the acumen of the best literary fiction and the suspense of a psychological thriller, is a marvel.” (Kirkus Reviews) “Masterly, mendacious, and a total thrill ride...Not since a certain Mr. Ripley have I been so consumed in another's covetous desires.” (Justin Torres, best-selling author of We the Animals) At age 30, Rose is fierce and smart, both self-aware and singularly blind to her power over others. After moving to New York, she is unexpectedly swallowed up by her past when she reunites with Lacie, the former best friend she betrayed in high school. Captivated once again by her old friend’s strange charisma, Rose convinces Lacie to let her move in, and the two fall into an intense, uneasy friendship. While tutoring the offspring of Manhattan’s wealthy elite, Rose works on a novel she keeps secret - because it stars Lacie and details the betrayal that almost turned deadly. But the difference between fiction and fact, past and present, begins to blur, and Rose soon finds herself increasingly drawn to Lacie’s boyfriend, exerting a sexual power she barely understands she possesses, and playing a risky game that threatens to repeat the worst moments of her and Lacie’s lives. Sharp-witted and wickedly addictive, Everyone Knows How Much I Love You is a uniquely dark entry into the canon of psychologically rich novels of friendship, compulsive behavior, and the dangerous reverberations of our actions, both large and small.
©2020 Kyle McCarthy (P)2020 Random House Audio
Marilou Is Everywhere
Summary
Finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize for First Fiction One of NPR's "Favorite Books of 2019"! A Skimm Reads Pick A Belletrist Book Club Pick "This novel reads like a miracle." (NPR) Consumed by the longing for a different life, a teenager flees her family and carefully slips into another - replacing a girl whose own sudden disappearance still haunts the town. Fourteen-year-old Cindy and her two older brothers live in rural Pennsylvania, in a house with occasional electricity, two fierce dogs, one book, and a mother who comes and goes for months at a time. Deprived of adult supervision, the siblings rely on one another for nourishment of all kinds. As Cindy's brothers take on new responsibilities for her care, the shadow of danger looms larger and the status quo no longer seems tolerable. So when a glamorous teen from a more affluent, cultured home goes missing, Cindy escapes her own family's poverty and slips into the missing teen's life. As Jude Vanderjohn, Cindy is suddenly surrounded by books and art, by new foods and traditions, and most important, by a startling sense of possibility. In her borrowed life she also finds herself accepting the confused love of a mother who is constitutionally incapable of grasping what has happened to her real daughter. As Cindy experiences overwhelming maternal love for the first time, she must reckon with her own deceits and, in the process, learn what it means to be a daughter, a sister, and a neighbor. Marilou Is Everywhere is a powerful, propulsive portrait of an overlooked girl who finds for the first time that her choices matter.
©2019 Sarah Elaine Smith (P)2019 Listening Library
The Explorers: The Reckless Rescue
Summary
More mystery, more bravery, more danger, and one amazingly reckless rescue await in the second audiobook in the Explorers series! The perfect audiobook for fans of The Name of This Book Is a Secret and The Mysterious Benedict Society! Listener! Your attention is greatly needed. We have left things unresolved! What began as your average story of a boy stumbling upon a pig in a teeny hat and a secret international explorers society has turned into an adventure of epic proportions. The bad news: The boy (Sebastian) has been kidnapped by a trio of troublesome thugs. The good news: His new friend Evie has promised to rescue him! The bad news: Sebastian has been taken halfway around the world. The good news: Evie has famous explorer and former Filipendulous Five member Catherine Lind at her side! The bad news: There's still the whole matter of Evie's grandfather (and the leader of the Filipendulous Five) somewhere out there in grave danger. The good news: Pursuing Sebastian will lead Evie and Catherine to another member of the Filipendulous Five, who might be able to help! This missive is a call to action and an invitation to join in mystery, bravery, and danger. There will be new people to meet, new places to see, and some dancing along the way - and one amazingly reckless rescue.
©2018 Adrienne Kress (P)2018 Listening Library
True Story
Summary
“Spellbinding.” (Megan Abbott, The New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice) “Extraordinary.... Fans of the formal inventiveness and twisty-turny narratives of Trust Exercise and A Visit From the Goon Squad will be immediately engrossed.” (R. Eric Thomas, Elle, “The Best Books of 2020 (So Far)") Named one of the Hottest Books of the Summer by Entertainment Weekly and BuzzFeed. Tracing the 15-year fallout of a toxic high-school rumor, a riveting, astonishingly original debut novel about the power of stories - and who gets to tell them. 2015. A gifted and reclusive ghostwriter, Alice Lovett makes a living helping other people tell their stories. But she is haunted by the one story she can't tell: the story of, as she puts it, "the things that happened while I was asleep." The year 1999. Nick Brothers and his lacrosse teammates return for their senior year at their wealthy Maryland high school as the reigning state champions. They're on top of the world - until two of his friends drive a passed-out girl home from of the team's "legendary" parties, and a rumor about what happened in the backseat spreads through the town like wildfire. The boys deny the allegations, and, eventually, the town moves on. But not everyone can. Nick descends into alcoholism, and Alice builds a life in fits and starts, underestimating herself and placing her trust in the wrong people. When she finally gets the opportunity to confront the past she can't remember - but which has nevertheless shaped her life - will she take it? An inventive and breathtaking exploration of a woman finding her voice in the wake of trauma, True Story is part psychological thriller, part fever dream, and part timely comment on sexual assault, power, and the very nature of truth. Ingeniously constructed and full of twists and turns that will keep you guessing until the final moments, it marks the debut of a singular and daring new voice in fiction.
©2020 Kate Reed Petty (P)2020 Penguin Audio
No One Is Talking About This
Summary
A National Best Seller “No One Is Talking About This reaches for the sublime, online and off.... Lockwood is a modern word witch, her writing splendid and sordid by turns.” (New York Times Book Review) “Wow. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much reading a book. What an inventive and startling writer... I’m so glad I read this. I really think this book is remarkable.” (David Sedaris) From "a formidably gifted writer" (The New York Times Book Review), a book that asks: Is there life after the internet? As this urgent, genre-defying book opens, a woman who has recently been elevated to prominence for her social media posts travels around the world to meet her adoring fans. She is overwhelmed by navigating the new language and etiquette of what she terms "the portal", where she grapples with an unshakable conviction that a vast chorus of voices is now dictating her thoughts. When existential threats - from climate change and economic precariousness to the rise of an unnamed dictator and an epidemic of loneliness - begin to loom, she posts her way deeper into the portal's void. An avalanche of images, details, and references accumulate to form a landscape that is post-sense, post-irony, post-everything. "Are we in hell?" the people of the portal ask themselves. "Are we all just going to keep doing this until we die?" Suddenly, two texts from her mother pierce the fray: "Something has gone wrong" and "How soon can you get here?" As real life and its stakes collide with the increasingly absurd antics of the portal, the woman confronts a world that seems to contain both an abundance of proof that there is goodness, empathy, and justice in the universe, and a deluge of evidence to the contrary. Fragmentary and omniscient, incisive and sincere, No One Is Talking About This is at once a love letter to the endless scroll and a profound, modern meditation on love, language, and human connection from a singular voice in American literature.
©2021 Patricia Lockwood (P)2021 Penguin Audio
The Vacationers
Summary
An irresistible, deftly observed novel about the secrets, joys, and jealousies that rise to the surface over the course of an American family's two-week stay in Mallorca. For the Posts, a two-week trip to the Balearic island of Mallorca with their extended family and friends is a celebration: Franny and Jim are observing their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, and their daughter, Sylvia, has graduated from high school. The sunlit island, its mountains and beaches, its tapas and tennis courts, also promise an escape from the tensions simmering at home in Manhattan. But all does not go according to plan: over the course of the vacation, secrets come to light, old and new humiliations are experienced, childhood rivalries resurface, and ancient wounds are exacerbated. This is a story of the sides of ourselves that we choose to show and those we try to conceal, of the ways we tear each other down and build each other up again, and the bonds that ultimately hold us together. With wry humor and tremendous heart, Emma Straub delivers a richly satisfying story of a family in the midst of a maelstrom of change, emerging irrevocably altered yet whole.
©2014 Emma Straub (P)2014 Penguin Audio
Why I Don't Write
Summary
A superb collection of short fiction - her first in 30 years and spanning many geographies - from the critically acclaimed author of Monkeys, Evening, and Thirty Girls. A writer dryly catalogs the myriad reasons she cannot write; an artist bicycles through protests in lower Manhattan and ruminates on an elusive lover; an old woman on her deathbed calls out for a man other than her husband; a hapless 15-year-old boy finds himself in sexual peril; two young people in the 1990s fall helplessly in love, then bicker just as helplessly, tortured by jealousy and mistrust. In each of these stories Minot explores the difficult geometry of human relations, the lure of love and physical desire, and the lifelong quest for meaning and connection. Her characters are all searching for truth, in feeling and in action, as societal norms are upended and justice and coherence flounder. Urgent and immediate, precisely observed, deeply felt, and gorgeously written, the stories in Why I Don't Write showcase an author at the top of her form.
©2020 Susan Minot (P)2020 Random House Audio