Laurence Bouvard has narrated 58 audiobooks on Listento.it by 59 authors, with an average listener rating of 4★ across 923 ratings. The most-rated is Us Conductors.
Us Conductors
Summary
Us Conductors is the story of the man who created the most magical musical instrument in the world, the theremin. It's a tale of electricity and espionage, jazz and kung-fu, Harlem and Siberia, and the way even doomed love can keep you alive. Locked in a cabin aboard a ship bearing him back to Russia and away from the love of his life, Lev Sergeyvich Termen begins to type his story: a tale of electricity, romance, and the invention of the world's strangest instrument, the theremin. He recollects his early years as a scientist forging breakthroughs during the Bolshevik Revolution and his decade as a Manhattan celebrity and reluctant Soviet spy. Against the backdrop of Prohibition and the 1929 crash, Termen spends his days in his workshop, devising inventions, and his nights in Harlem clubs, jostling with famous bandleaders and falling in love with the young violinist Clara Reisenberg. When the boat reaches his homeland, Termen finds it is not the Russia he remembers. He is imprisoned in the Gulag system, sent first to a Siberian work camp and then to a secret laboratory. In the face of all this, his love for Clara remains constant, passing through the ether like the theremin's song. Steeped in beauty, wonder, and looping heartbreak, Sean Michaels' debut novel explores the lies we tell, the truths we imagine, and the lengths we go to survive.
©2014 Sean Michaels (P)2015 Audible, Inc.
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.
Summary
From best-selling author Neal Stephenson and critically acclaimed historical and contemporary commercial novelist Nicole Galland comes a captivating and complex near-future thriller combining history, science, magic, mystery, intrigue, and adventure that questions the very foundations of the modern world. When Melisande Stokes, an expert in linguistics and languages, accidently meets military intelligence operator Tristan Lyons in a hallway at Harvard University, it is the beginning of a chain of events that will alter their lives and human history itself. The young man from a shadowy government entity approaches Mel, a low-level faculty member, with an incredible offer. The only condition: She must sign a nondisclosure agreement in return for the rather large sum of money. Tristan needs Mel to translate some very old documents, which, if authentic, are earth-shattering. They prove that magic actually existed and was practiced for centuries. But the arrival of the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment weakened its power and endangered its practitioners. Magic stopped working altogether in 1851, at the time of the Great Exhibition at London's Crystal Palace - the world's fair celebrating the rise of industrial technology and commerce. Something about the modern world "jams" the "frequencies" used by magic, and it's up to Tristan to find out why. And so the Department of Diachronic Operations - D.O.D.O. - gets cracking on its real mission: to develop a device that can bring magic back and send Diachronic Operatives back in time to keep it alive...and meddle with a little history at the same time. But while Tristan and his expanding operation master the science and build the technology, they overlook the mercurial - and treacherous - nature of the human heart. Written with the genius, complexity, and innovation that characterize all of Neal Stephenson's work and steeped with the down-to-earth warmth and humor of Nicole Galland's storytelling style, this exciting and vividly realized work of science fiction will make you believe in the impossible and take you to places - and times - beyond imagining. Full cast of narrators includes Robert Fass, James Foster, Tavia Gilbert, Arthur Morey, David Stifel, Charlie Thurston, and Kate Udall.
©2017 Neal Stephenson (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
Only Human
Summary
Pacific Rim meets The Martian in the explosive follow-up to Sleeping Giants ("One of the most promising series kickoffs in recent memory" —NPR) and Waking Gods ("Pure, unadulterated literary escapism" —Kirkus Reviews). Brilliant scientist Rose Franklin has devoted her adult life to solving the mystery she accidentally stumbled upon as a child: a huge metal hand buried beneath the ground outside Deadwood, South Dakota. The discovery set in motion a cataclysmic chain of events with geopolitical ramifications. Rose and the Earth Defense Corps raced to master the enigmatic technology, as giant robots suddenly descended on Earth’s most populous cities, killing one hundred million people in the process. Though Rose and her team were able to fend off the attack, their victory was short-lived. The mysterious invaders retreated, disappearing from the shattered planet...but they took the scientist and her crew with them. Now, after nearly 10 years on another world, Rose returns to find a devastating new war - this time between humans. America and Russia are locked in combat, fighting to fill the power vacuum left behind after the invasion. Families are torn apart, friends become bitter enemies, and countries collapse in the wake of the battling superpowers. It appears the aliens left behind their titanic death machines so humankind will obliterate itself. Rose is determined to find a solution, whatever it takes. But will she become a pawn in a doomsday game no one can win? Read by William Hope, Charlie Anson, Laurence Bouvard, Adna Sablylich, Laura Kirman, Aaron Vodovoz, Julie Rogers, Christopher Ragland, Patricia Rodrigues, Jennifer Woodward, Karina Fernandez, Eric Meyers, Madeleine Rose, Lance C. Fuller, and the author, Sylvain Neuvel. "Packing a surprisingly powerful thematic punch, this novel is an addictive blend of science fiction, apocalyptic thriller, and chillingly timely cautionary tale. Two (giant, robotic) thumbs up!" (Kirkus Reviews) "Boasting a winning combination of briskly paced action and futuristic dystopia tempered by cautious optimism, Only Human brings a fitting, satisfying end to the Themis Files series." (RT Book Reviews)
©2018 Sylvain Neuvel (P)2018 Random House Audio
French Exit
Summary
A Recommended Book of the Season for Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly, Vulture, The Millions, Publishers Weekly, and Esquire.
From best-selling author Patrick deWitt, a brilliant and darkly comic novel about a wealthy widow and her adult son who flee New York for Paris in the wake of scandal and financial disintegration.
Frances Price - tart widow, possessive mother, and Upper East Side force of nature - is in dire straits, beset by scandal and impending bankruptcy. Her adult son Malcolm is no help, mired in a permanent state of arrested development. And then there’s the Price’s aging cat, Small Frank, who Frances believes houses the spirit of her late husband, an infamously immoral litigator and world-class cad whose gruesome tabloid death rendered Frances and Malcolm social outcasts.
Putting penury and pariahdom behind them, the family decides to cut their losses and head for the exit. One ocean voyage later, the curious trio land in their beloved Paris, the City of Light serving as a backdrop not for love or romance, but self destruction and economical ruin - to riotous effect. A number of singular characters serve to round out the cast: a bashful private investigator, an aimless psychic proposing a seance, and a doctor who makes house calls with his wine merchant in tow, to name a few.
Brimming with pathos, French Exit is a one-of-a-kind "tragedy of manners", a send-up of high society as well as a moving mother/son caper that only Patrick deWitt could conceive and execute.
©2018 Patrick deWitt (P)2018 Audible, Inc.
The Witches of New York
Summary
The year is 1880. Two hundred years after the trials in Salem, witches Adelaide Thom and Eleanor St Clair finally feel safe and have opened a tea shop in Manhattan, specialising in cures, palmistry and potions. When an enchanting young woman called Beatrice joins the witches as an apprentice, she soon proves indispensable, but her new life is marred by strange occurrences. She sees things no one else can see. She hears voices no one else can hear. Objects appear out of thin air, as if gifts from the dead. Has she been touched by magic, or is she simply losing her mind? Amidst the witches' tug-of-war over how best to nurture her gifts, Beatrice disappears - but was it by choice or by force? In the desperate search, the witches are confronted by spectres from their own pasts. In a time when women were corseted, confined and committed for merely speaking their minds, were any of them really safe?
©2016 Ami McKay (P)2017 Audible, Ltd
Breaking the Chains of Gravity
Summary
NASA's history is a familiar story, culminating with the agency successfully landing men on the moon in 1969. But NASA's prehistory is a rarely told tale, one that is largely absent from the popular space-age literature but that gives the context behind the incredible lunar program. America's space agency wasn't created in a vacuum; it was assembled from preexisting parts, drawing together some of the best minds the non-Soviet world had to offer. With a central narrative woven from the stories of key historical figures, Breaking the Chains of Gravity tells the story of NASA's roots in an engaging and accessible way. The book begins with Wernher von Braun, the engineer behind the V-2 rocket, who dreamt of sending rockets into space. He orchestrated a daring escape from the ruins of Nazi Germany and was taken to America, where he began developing missiles for the United States Army. Ten years later his Redstone rocket was the only one capable of launching a payload into orbit. Just what payload von Braun's rockets would launch was under consideration at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. While working out how to get a nuclear warhead through the atmosphere, NACA pioneered a round-bottomed capsule that could also keep men safe when returning from space. Meanwhile, US Air Force pilots rode to the fringes of space in balloons to see how humans handled radiation at high altitude, while NACA test pilots like Neil Armstrong flew cutting-edge aircraft in the thin upper atmosphere. Breaking the Chains of Gravity looks at the evolution of America's nascent space program, its scientific advances, its personalities, and the rivalries it caused between the various arms of the United States military, right up to the launch of Sputnik in 1957. At this point getting a man in space became a national imperative, leading to the creation by Dwight D. Eisenhower of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
©2016 Amy Shira Teitel (P)2015 Audible, Inc.
Exo-Hunter
Summary
The year is 1989. Callsign: Dark Horse and his Marine Rapid Reaction Force team have been sent to recover a strange artifact near Antarctica’s Soviet-controlled Vostok Station. Confronted by a team of Ruskie Spetsnaz, a battle for control of the strange device, frozen in the ice, breaks out. But before anyone can claim victory, or the prize, an explosion of white light knocks the combatants unconscious and whisks them away to... 2989. One thousand years later. Dark Horse, along with his teammate, Chuy, and one of the Soviets, Drago, finds himself in a future that is both impressive and horrifying. Humanity has left Earth behind and is rapidly expanding throughout the galaxy under the banner of The Union, a white supremacist government who racially ‘purified’ the human race hundreds of years in the past. Living on the fringe of this twisted Fourth Reich society, Dark Horse - the only Black man in the Union - commandeers a vessel and scours the galaxy for his missing teammates under the guise of an Exo-Hunter, seeking out exo-planets to satiate the Union’s need for colonization. His search takes him beyond the edge of the known universe and into an interplanetary war, guided by a vast intelligence that’s been waiting for Dark Horse’s arrival - for a thousand years. New York Times and number-one Audible.com best-selling author Jeremy Robinson takes readers on a journey to a dark and twisted future…and makes them laugh. Exo-Hunter is a lighthearted homage to 1980s science fiction movies that also looks at the dangers of white supremacy and the core values that makes it dangerous and the butt of the joke. In the audiobook edition, he is joined by number-one Audible best-selling narrator, R.C. Bray, giving listeners the most compelling - and most fun - thing to come out of 2020.
©2020 Jeremy Robinson (P)2021 Jeremy Robinson
![Cover art for Adrift [Movie Tie-in]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51AmBarlE0L._SL500_.jpg)
Adrift [Movie Tie-in]
Summary
The heart-stopping memoir, soon to be a major motion picture starring Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin, and directed by Baltasar Kormákur (Everest). Young and in love, their lives ahead of them, Tami Oldham and her fiancé, Richard Sharp, set sail from Tahiti under brilliant blue skies, with Tami’s hometown of San Diego as their ultimate destination. But the two free spirits and avid sailors couldn’t anticipate that less than two weeks into their voyage, they would sail directly into one of the most catastrophic hurricanes in recorded history. They found themselves battling pounding rain, waves the size of skyscrapers, and 140 knot winds. Richard tethered himself to the boat and sent Tami below to safety, and then all went eerily quiet. Hours later, Tami awakened to find the boat in ruins and Richard nowhere in sight. Adrift is the story of Tami’s miraculous 41 day journey to safety on a ravaged boat with no motor and no masts, and with little hope for rescue. It’s a tale of love and survival on the high seas - an unforgettable story about resilience of the human spirit and the transcendent power of love.
©2018 Tami Oldham Ashcraft (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers
Rejoice, a Knife to the Heart
Summary
A provocative, beautiful and visionary novel of first contact by New York Times bestselling author Steven Erikson. Imagine a First Contact without contact, and an alien arrival where no aliens show up. Imagine the sudden appearance of exclusion zones all over the planet, into which no humans are allowed. Imagine an end to all violence, from the schoolyard bully to nations at war. Imagine an end to borders, an end to all crime. Imagine a world where hate has no outlet and the only harm one can do is to oneself. Imagine a world transformed, but with no guidance and no hint of what’s coming next. What would you do? How would you feel? What questions can you ask - what questions dare you ask - when the only possible answers come from the all-too-human face in your mirror? On the day of First Contact, it won’t be about them. It will be about us.
©2018 Steven Erikson (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
The Motion of the Body Through Space
Summary
In Lionel Shriver's entertaining send-up of today's cult of exercise - which not only encourages better health, but now like all religions also seems to promise meaning, social superiority, and eternal life - an aging husband’s sudden obsession with extreme sport makes him unbearable. After an ignominious early retirement, Remington announces to his wife Serenata that he's decided to run a marathon. This from a sedentary man in his 60s who's never done a lick of exercise in his life. His wife can't help but observe that his ambition is "hopelessly trite". A loner, Serenata disdains mass group activities of any sort. Besides, his timing is cruel. Serenata has long been the couple's exercise freak, but by age 60, her private fitness regimes have destroyed her knees, and she'll soon face debilitating surgery. Yes, becoming more active would be good for Remington's heart, but then why not just go for a walk? Without several thousand of your closest friends? As Remington joins the cult of fitness that increasingly consumes the Western world, her once-modest husband burgeons into an unbearable narcissist. Ignoring all his other obligations, he engages a saucy, sexy personal trainer named Bambi, who treats Serenata with contempt. When Remington sets his sights on the legendarily grueling triathlon, MettleMan, Serenata is sure he'll end up injured or dead. And even if he does survive, their marriage may not. The Motion of the Body Through Space is vintage Lionel Shriver written with psychological insight, a rich cast of characters, lots of verve and petulance, an astute reading of contemporary culture, and an emotionally resonant ending.
©2020 Lionel Shriver (P)2020 HarperAudio
Twisted
Summary
Who is JT LeBeau?
A best-selling crime writer whose words have gripped the world.
The only mystery greater than his stories is his true identity.
One woman thinks she's found him - her husband has millions in the bank and a letter for the enigmatic author.
But the truth is far more twisted....
©2019 Steve Cavanagh (P)2019 Orion Publishing Group
The Yellow Envelope
Summary
After Kim and her husband, Brian, decide to quit their jobs to travel around the world, they're given a yellow envelope containing a check and instructions to give the money away. There are only three rules for the envelope: don't overthink it, share your experiences, and don't feel pressured to give it all away. Through Ecuador, Peru, Nepal, and beyond, Kim and Brian face obstacles, including major challenges to their relationship. As they distribute the money to people they encounter along the way, they learn that money does not have anything to do with the capacity to give but that it is the giving of ourselves that is transformational.
©2017 Kim Dinan (P)2017 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Gather the Daughters
Summary
Never Let Me Go meets The Giver in this haunting debut about a cult on an isolated island where nothing is as it seems. Years ago, just before the country was incinerated to wasteland, 10 men and their families colonized an island off the coast. They built a radical society of ancestor worship, controlled breeding, and the strict rationing of knowledge and history. Only the Wanderers - chosen male descendants of the original 10 - are allowed to cross to the wastelands, where they scavenge for detritus among the still-smoldering fires. The daughters of these men are wives-in-training. At the first sign of puberty, they face their Summer of Fruition, a ritualistic season that drags them from adolescence to matrimony. They have children, who have children, and when they are no longer useful, they take their final draught and die. But in the summer, the younger children reign supreme. With the adults indoors and the pubescent in Fruition, the children live wildly - they fight over food and shelter, free of their fathers' hands and their mothers' despair. And it is at the end of one summer that little Caitlin Jacob sees something so horrifying, so contradictory to the laws of the island, that she must share it with the others. Born leader Janey Solomon steps up to seek the truth. At 17-years-old, Janey is so unwilling to become a woman, she is slowly starving herself to death. Trying urgently now to unravel the mysteries of the island and what lies beyond before her own demise, she attempts to lead an uprising of the girls that may be their undoing. Gather the Daughters is a smoldering debut; dark and energetic, compulsively listenable, Melamed's novel announces her as an unforgettable new voice in fiction.
©2017 Jennie Melamed (P)2017 Hachette Audio
Good Bones, Simple Murders & the Tent
Summary
In Good Bones and Simple Murders, Margaret Atwood displays, in condensed and crystallized form, the trademark wit and virtuosity of her best-selling novels. Among the jewels gathered here are Gertrude offering Hamlet a piece of her mind, the real truth about the Little Red Hen, a reincarnated bat explaining how Bram Stoker got Dracula all wrong, and the five methods of making a man. There are parables, monologues, prose poems, condensed science fiction, reconfigured fairy tales, and other miniature masterpieces. In The Tent, Margaret Atwood has penned a collection of smart and entertaining fictional essays. Chilling and witty, prescient and personal, delectable and tart, these highly imaginative, vintage Atwoodian essays speak on a broad range of subjects, reflecting the times we live in with deadly accuracy and knife-edge precision.
©1994 Margaret Atwood (P)2014 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
If We're Together, Why Do I Feel So Alone?
Summary
Living with an emotionally absent partner can be overwhelming. Constantly overcoming the silent distance can leave you with the sense that the give and take in your relationship has disappeared. But even the most broken relationship can be reinvigorated. In helping real-world couples achieve fulfilling futures, Harvard University clinical psychologist Dr. Holly Parker has developed a program filled with practical exercises and powerful advice for individuals on both sides of an emotionally damaged relationship. With patience, empathy, and willpower, Dr. Parker's program can help you restore balance and peace of mind and turn your damaged partnership back into a rewarding and joyful bond.
©2017 Holly Parker, PhD (P)2017 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Death Knell
Summary
Luce is back in the third book of The Foundling, the best-selling fantasy series perfect for fans of Shannon Mayer, Jenn Stark and the Sookie Stackhouse novels.
War burned her. Famine nearly killed her. Now Death is at her heels.
After her two worlds clashed apocalyptically, Luce Boudreau needed some time out. But Destiny had other ideas. When bodies begin washing ashore down the Mississippi River, Luce discovers they are part of a gruesome, lethal message. Her final sister, Death, is trying to break through.
Every sign is clear: the end is coming, but earth will be destroyed - quite literally - over Luce's dead body, even if that means she'll be battling her own nature. And her coterie will stand with her, though Cole keeps standing one step too goddamn far away. Her mysterious new partner, Adam Wu, on the other hand, seems determined to keep her close at all times. And the more Luce learns about the new world she's part of, the deeper the secrets go. Who - if anyone - can she really trust?
As the final pieces of an ancient war come together, Luce's chance to fight back comes sooner than she expected. Death can come at her...she's eager to return the favour.
©2018 Hailey Edwards (P)2018 Hachette Audio UK
Bone Driven
Summary
The bayou is burning, the battle is just beginning - and Luce Boudreau is smack in the middle of no-man's-land....
Life as a cop in Canton Town, Mississippi, is never dull - particularly when hiding deep within you is a demon bent on the apocalypse. Luce is doing her best to pretend her two worlds aren't crashing into each other, but what should be a routine arson investigation takes a shocking turn when Luce discovers a link between the suspects and her own dark secrets. There's no turning back, even though her search for the truth threatens to burn her old life down around her.
Lines are being drawn in a war Luce barely understands, and she just might be on the wrong side of them. Now she must embrace her powerful destiny, or the ones she loves most will pay the ultimate price.
Book two in the powerfully addictive fantasy series The Foundling, perfect for fans of Ilona Andrews, Jenn Stark and Helen Harper.
©2018 Hailey Edwards (P)2018 Little, Brown Book Group
Bayou Born
Summary
Her beginning may be our end.... Deep in the humid Mississippi bayou, a half-wild child is dragged from the murky waters. She has no memories and no family and is covered in mysterious markings. Adopted by the policeman who rescued her, Luce Boudreau follows him onto the force, determined to prove herself in the eyes of those who are still suspicious. However, there's more of a battle ahead than Luce could possibly imagine. She may be an orphan without a past, but no one - including Luce herself - could ever be prepared for the truth of her dark, powerful destiny....
©2018 Hailey Edwards (P)2018 Hachette Audio UK
Daughters of War
Summary
A gripping wartime drama of love and loss, perfect for fans of Soraya M. Lane, Daughters of the Night Sky and Kathryn Hughes. As a teenager in Chicago, May always dreamed of travelling the world. So when she falls in love with George Turner, she can’t wait to return to London as his wife. Two beautiful daughters follow, but George isn’t the husband he promised to be. Ten years on, May is wondering if she’s made a terrible mistake. The Great War has been declared in Europe, and all around, brave young men are being called up to serve. George, banned from conscription himself, has taken to the bottle, and May suspects he’s seeing other women, too. He even sends her beloved daughters away to school. She misses them terribly every day. Then May meets veteran nurse Elsie, who persuades May to join the war effort. May knows nothing of nursing - it will be difficult, dangerous work, but her heart is telling her it’s the right thing to do and the only way to carve out a life for herself and her daughters away from George. But when George does the unthinkable, May’s children are put at risk. Miles away on the front line and unable to reach them, will May be reunited with her little girls before it’s too late?
©2018 Lizzie Page (P)2019 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
A Killer's Daughter
Summary
The girl’s long black hair clings to her face like seaweed. Her beautiful eyes are open, unseeing. And a thin line of flesh circling the base of her ring finger has been removed. It’s just like the others.... When Agent Nadine Finch gets the call about the broken body of a young woman found drifting in Sarasota Bay, Florida, she pretends it’s just another case: but deep down, she’s lying to herself. Even though she changed her name, Nadine has always known her family’s dark past would catch up with her eventually. Examining the wound around the victim’s finger, a cruel imitation of a wedding ring, she knows for sure: someone has started killing young women in exactly the same way Nadine’s serial-killer mother did 20 years ago. There’s only one place she’ll find answers. And until she does, every woman in this close-knit community is in danger. At the prison, Nadine flinches as she hears her mother’s soft voice - such a contrast to those cold, cruel eyes - for the first time in decades. "Hi baby. I’ve been expecting you...." A gripping thriller that will have you racing through it until the final, jaw-dropping twist. Perfect for fans of Rachel Caine, Lisa Gardner and Mary Burton.
©2021 Jenna Kernan (P)2021 Bookouture, an imprint of Storyfire Ltd.