Paul Michael has narrated 137 audiobooks on Listento.it by 114 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 4,977 ratings. The most-rated is Origin.
The Orientalist
Summary
Part history, part cultural biography, and part literary mystery, The Orientalist traces the life of Lev Nussimbaum, a Jew who transformed himself into a Muslim prince and became a best-selling author in Nazi Germany. Born in 1905 to a wealthy family in the oil-boom city of Baku at the edge of the czarist empire, Lev escaped the Russian Revolution in a camel caravan. He found refuge in Germany, where, writing under the names Essad Bey and Kurban Said, his remarkable books about Islam, desert adventures, and global revolution became celebrated across fascist Europe. His enduring masterpiece, Ali and Nino - a story of love across ethnic and religious boundaries, published on the eve of the Holocaust - is still in print today. But Lev's life grew wilder than his wildest stories. He married an international heiress who had no idea of his true identity - until she divorced him in a tabloid scandal. His closest friend in New York, George Sylvester Viereck - also a friend of both Freud's and Einstein's - was arrested as the leading Nazi agent in the United States. Lev was invited to be Mussolini's official biographer - until the Fascists discovered his true identity. Under house arrest in the Amalfi cliff town of Positano, Lev wrote his last book - discovered in a half a dozen notebooks never before read by anyone - helped by a mysterious half-German salon hostess, an Algerian weapons smuggler, and the poet Ezra Pound. Tom Reiss spent five years tracking down secret police records, love letters, diaries, and the deathbed notebooks. Beginning with a yearlong investigation for The New Yorker, he pursued Lev's story across 10 countries and found himself caught up in encounters as dramatic and surreal, and sometimes as heartbreaking, as his subject's life. Reiss' quest for the truth buffets him from one weird character to the next: from the last heir of the Ottoman throne to a rock opera-composing baroness in an Austrian castle to an aging starlet in a Hollywood bungalow full of cats and turtles. As he tracks down the pieces of Lev Nussimbaum's deliberately obscured life, Reiss discovers a series of shadowy worlds - of European pan-Islamists, nihilist assassins, anti-Nazi book smugglers, Baku oil barons, Jewish Orientalists - that have also been forgotten. The result is a thoroughly unexpected depiction of the 20th century - of the origins of our ideas about race and religious self-definition, and of the roots of modern fanaticism and terrorism. Written with grace and infused with wonder, The Orientalist is an astonishing book.
©2005 Tom Reiss (P)2017 Random House Audio
A Blaze of Glory
Summary
In the first novel of a spellbinding new trilogy, New York Times best-selling author Jeff Shaara returns to the Civil War terrain he knows best. A Blaze of Glory takes us to the action-packed Western Theater for a vivid re-creation of one of the war's bloodiest and most iconic engagements: the Battle of Shiloh. It's the spring of 1862. The Confederate Army in the West teeters on the brink of collapse following the catastrophic loss of Fort Donelson. Commanding general Albert Sidney Johnston is forced to pull up stakes, abandon the critical city of Nashville, and rally his troops in defense of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. Hot on Johnston's trail are two of the Union's best generals: the relentless Ulysses Grant, fresh off his career-making victory at Fort Donelson, and Don Carlos Buell. If their combined forces can crush Johnston's army and capture the railroad, the war in the West likely will be over. There's just one problem: Johnston knows of the Union plans, and is poised to launch an audacious surprise attack on Grant's encampment - a small settlement in southwestern Tennessee anchored by a humble church named Shiloh. With stunning you-are-there immediacy, Shaara takes us inside the maelstrom of Shiloh as no novelist has before. Drawing on meticulous research, he dramatizes the key actions and decisions of the commanders on both sides: Johnston, Grant, Sherman, Beauregard, and the illustrious Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest. Here too are the thoughts and voices of the junior officers, conscripts, and enlisted men who gave their all for the cause, among them Confederate cavalry lieutenant James Seeley and Private Fritz "Dutchie" Bauer of the 16th Wisconsin Regiment - brave participants in a pitched back-and-forth battle whose casualty count would far surpass anything the American public had yet seen in this war. By the end of the first day of fighting, as Grant's bedraggled forces regroup for could be their last stand, two major events - both totally unexpected - will turn the tide of the battle and perhaps the war itself.
©2012 Jeff Shaara (P)2012 Random House Audio
Death in the City of Light
Summary
Death in the City of Light is the gripping, true story of a brutal serial killer who unleashed his own reign of terror in Nazi-Occupied Paris. As decapitated heads and dismembered body parts surfaced in the Seine, Commissaire Georges-Victor Massu, head of the Brigade Criminelle, was tasked with tracking down the elusive murderer in a twilight world of Gestapo, gangsters, resistance fighters, pimps, prostitutes, spies, and other shadowy figures of the Parisian underworld. The main suspect was Dr. Marcel Petiot, a handsome, charming physician with remarkable charisma. He was the “People’s Doctor,” known for his many acts of kindness and generosity, not least in providing free medical care for the poor. Petiot, however, would soon be charged with twenty-seven murders, though authorities suspected the total was considerably higher, perhaps even as many as 150. Who was being slaughtered, and why? Was Petiot a sexual sadist, as the press suggested, killing for thrills? Was he allied with the Gestapo, or, on the contrary, the French Resistance? Or did he work for no one other than himself? Trying to solve the many mysteries of the case, Massu would unravel a plot of unspeakable deviousness. When Petiot was finally arrested, the French police hoped for answers. But the trial soon became a circus. Attempting to try all twenty-seven cases at once, the prosecution stumbled in its marathon cross-examinations, and Petiot, enjoying the spotlight, responded with astonishing ease. His attorney, René Floriot, a rising star in the world of criminal defense, also effectively, if aggressively, countered the charges. Soon, despite a team of prosecuting attorneys, dozens of witnesses, and over one ton of evidence, Petiot’s brilliance and wit threatened to win the day. Drawing extensively on many new sources, including the massive, classified French police file on Dr. Petiot, Death in the City of Light is a brilliant evocation of Nazi-Occupied Paris and a harrowing exploration of murder, betrayal, and evil of staggering proportions.
©2011 Paul Michael (P)2011 Random House Audio
Collected Stories of William Faulkner
Summary
This magisterial collection of short works by Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner reminds listeners of his ability to compress his epic vision into narratives as hard and wounding as bullets. Among the 42 selections in this audiobook are such classics as "A Bear Hunt", "A Rose for Emily", "Two Soldiers", and "The Brooch".
©1976 Jill Faulkner Summers (P)2005 Random House, Inc.
A Brief Lunacy
Summary
With her acclaimed novel A Certain Slant of Light, Cynthia Thayer dazzled critics with her subtle grace and lyrical prose. Now this masterful storyteller brings her prodigious literary gifts to a very different kind of novel - a haunting edge-of-the-seat thriller that begins with a simple act of kindness and ends in a scene of escalating violence in a secluded Maine cabin. The stranger arrived on a cool October evening. Jessie and Carl invited the stranded young man into their cabin, fed him supper, and let him spend the night. The next morning he repays their kindness by taking them prisoner in their own home. Who is this man who calls himself Jonah? Why does he seem to know everything about them? What is his connection to their troubled, missing daughter, Sylvie? As Jonah's behavior grows increasingly erratic and frightening, Jessie and Carl are trapped in a single day of brutality and shattering revelations that will test the limits of their sanity and their will to survive.
©2005 Cynthia Thayer (P)2005 Books On Tape
Who Was Ben Franklin?
Summary
Ben Franklin was the scientist who, with the help of a kite, discovered that lightning is electricity. He was also a statesman, an inventor, a printer, and an author - a man of such amazingly varied talents that some people claimed he had magical powers! Full of all the details kids will want to know, the true story of Benjamin Franklin is by turns sad and funny but always honest and awe inspiring.
©2002 Dennis Brindell Fradin (P)2016 Listening Library
The God Impulse
Summary
For Jesus, truth and mercy went hand in hand. Where he preached he also healed. He didn't outsource one or the other to biblical scholars or nonprofit ministries. He presented the truth of the gospel through his words and his actions, and he did it all in a hands-on, relational way. And the reaction was the same wherever he went - people were amazed. Today we seem to have lost this powerful pattern of self-giving love, focusing on truth at the expense of mercy or on mercy at the expense of truth, and often failing to build genuine, lasting relationships with the people around us. In The God Impulse, Jack Alexander helps us recover Jesus's model, showing through biblical and modern real-life stories that God's first impulse toward us is mercy. He then sets forth a pattern for us to follow - to see, go, do, and endure - that not only spreads truth and love to those around us who are suffering but also causes them to gasp in amazement and consider the claims of the gospel for themselves.
©2018 eChristian (P)2018 eChristian
Robert Ludlum's The Paris Option
Summary
For 30 years, Robert Ludlum's novels have set the standard for the finest in international intrigue and suspense. With an unbroken string of best sellers in almost every country in the world, Ludlum's books have been read by hundreds of millions of readers, and are acknowledged as classics in the field. Now, after the best-selling The Hades Factor and The Cassandra Compact comes the third thrilling novel in the Covert-One series - Robert Ludlum's The Paris Option. An explosion in the middle of the night reduces part of Paris' esteemed Pasteur Institute to rubble. Among the missing is the world's top computer scientist, Emile Chambord. Even though a terrorist group claims responsibility for the bombing, many in the intelligence community suspect the scientist was actually kidnapped and the bomb set to divert attention. Chambord may have been close to devising a working molecular computer which, in the wrong hands, could be the most deadly weapon in the world. If he were now in the hands of hostile forces, the consequences would be unspeakably dire. Paris to London, Brussels, and Algiers, Covert-One agent Jon Smith searches for traces of the scientist and the ambitious forces behind the bombing and theft. With the help of MI5 agent Peter Howell, CIA agent Randi Russell, and cyber-wizard Marty Zellerbach, Smith uncovers a web of deception that threatens to reshape Europe and is one step away from destroying the United States.
©2002 Myn Pyn, LLC (P)2002 Macmillan Audio
Leonardo and Gabriel
Summary
Leonardo Da Vinci has a problem. A serious problem. The soul-wrenching kind. The career-killing kind. He needs to finish a piece for the Pope - but doesn’t know how. Alas, figuring it out is no trivial task. In fact, nobody ever has. Of all the great and grand quests that humans have undertaken, none has been more attempted or elusive than gaining a comprehensive grasp of God. When seeking to know him with the head rather than the heart, to rely on reason rather than faith, the obstacles appear insurmountable. If he is all powerful, and we are his children, why do so many suffer so horribly? Why would he punish people who don’t believe in him? Why haven’t we seen or heard from him for thousands of years? Join Leonardo and the Archangel Gabriel as they survey and surmount these stumbling blocks. Listen in as Gabriel reveals why obvious answers remain obscured. Follow along as he leads Leonardo all the way to an intuitive understanding of the Almighty. Set during Da Vinci’s struggle to give God a face in his masterpiece, The Last Supper, Leonardo and Gabriel is no less entertaining than it is educational. Although the framework is historically accurate, the conclusions of this original work are as unpredictable as they are compelling. Engage with an open mind - as Gabriel councils Leonardo to do - and it may even change your life.
©2019 Tim Tigner (P)2019 Tim Tigner
The Secret on Ararat
Summary
In Babylon Rising, Tim LaHaye began an adventure series that he calls even more exciting than his 50-million-plus-copy best-selling Left Behind series. Readers agreed, as the novel debuted as a Top 10 New York Times best seller. Now, in the second Babylon Rising novel, Biblical scholar, archaeologist, professor, and hero for our times Michael Murphy is in pursuit of one of the most mysterious and sought-after of all Biblical artifacts, Noah's Ark. As Murphy undertakes his death-defying quest to ascend Mount Ararat, he will discover dramatic revelations of Biblical prophecies and be drawn even closer to the most terrifying evil about to be unleashed on all mankind. With The Secret on Ararat following close on the heels of Glorious Appearing, the fastest-selling Left Behind novel ever, Tim LaHaye will further prove to be one of the most fascinating and popular storytellers of our time.
©2004 Tim LaHaye (P)2004 Books on Tape, Inc.
The Last Dickens
Summary
In his most enthralling novel yet, the critically acclaimed author Matthew Pearl reopens one of literary history's greatest mysteries. The Last Dickens is a tale filled with the dazzling twists and turns, the unerring period details, and the meticulous research that thrilled readers of the best sellers The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow. Boston, 1870. When news of Charles Dickens's untimely death reaches the office of his struggling American publisher, Fields & Osgood, partner James Osgood sends his trusted clerk Daniel Sand to await the arrival of Dickens's unfinished novel. But when Daniel's body is discovered by the docks and the manuscript is nowhere to be found, Osgood must embark on a transatlantic quest to unearth the novel that he hopes will save his venerable business and reveal Daniel's killer. Danger and intrigue abound on the journey to England, for which Osgood has chosen Rebecca Sand, Daniel's older sister, to assist him. As they attempt to uncover Dickens's final mystery, Osgood and Rebecca find themselves racing the clock through a dangerous web of literary lions and drug dealers, sadistic thugs and blue bloods, and competing members of Dickens's inner circle. They soon realize that understanding Dickens's lost ending is a matter of life and death, and the hidden key to stopping a murderous mastermind.
©2009 Matthew Pearl (P)2009 Random House, Inc
The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor
Summary
Christianity Today Book Award Winner (2011) Seeing rightly, says Mark Labberton, is the beginning of how our hearts are changed. Through careful self-examination in the Spirit, we begin to bear the fruit of love toward others. Here is a chance to reflect on why our ordinary hearts can be complacent about the evils in the world, and how we can begin to see the world like Jesus.
©2010 Mark Labberton (P)2014 Mark Labberton
Andy Catlett
Summary
Berry opens this latest installment of the Port William series with young Andy Catlett preparing to visit a place he'd been to many times before, though this would be an adventure he will take very seriously. Nine years old, Andy embarks on the trip by bus, alone for the first time. He decides it will be a rite of passage and his first step into manhood. Sometimes a handful at home, Andy was a good boy when visiting his Grandparents' houses, and he looked forward to the little spoiling certain to come his way. A beautiful short novel, this book is a perfect introduction into the whole world of Port William and will be as well a new chapter for those already familiar with this rich unfolding story.
©2007 Wendell Berry (P)2009 christianaudio.com
The Touch
Summary
Andrew Jones was once one of the few surgeons in the world to have that rare, God-given ability called The Touch. But after failing to save his young fiance, Faith, at the scene of a car accident, Jones abandons his gift and shuns the operating room. Lara Blair owns a Chicago-based biomedical engineering company developing a surgical tool that will duplicate precisely the movement of a surgeon's hands, reducing or eliminating failed surgical procedures. Lara has pursued the best surgeons in the world to test this surgical tool, and all of them have failed. As Lara pursues Jones' skill for her project, Jones' stubborn resistance cracks, and he begins to open up to her about the wounds that still haunt him. But when Jones discovers the urgency behind Lara's work, he must choose to move beyond his past. As each is forced to surrender secret fears, they are bonded together through the lives of the people Jones serves and by the healing secret that Faith left behind.
©2011 Randall Wallace (P)2011 Mission Audio
A Truck Full of Money
Summary
“A perfectly executed, exquisitely reported parable of the Internet age and the wild, mad adventure that is start-up culture.” (Charles Duhigg) Fortune, mania, genius, philanthropy - the best-selling author of Mountains Beyond Mountains gives us the inspiring story of Paul English, the founder of Kayak.com and Lola. Tracy Kidder, the "master of the nonfiction narrative" (The Baltimore Sun) and author of the best-selling classic The Soul of a New Machine, now tells the story of Paul English, a kinetic and unconventional inventor and entrepreneur who as a boy rebelled against authority. Growing up in working-class Boston, English discovered a medium for his talents the first time he saw a computer. As a young man, despite suffering from what would eventually be diagnosed as bipolar disorder, he began his pilgrim's journey through the ups and downs in the brave new world of computers. Relating to the Internet as if it were an extension of his own mind, he discovered that he had a talent for conceiving innovative enterprises and building teams that can develop them, becoming "a Pied Piper" of geeks. His innovative management style, success, and innate sense of fair play inspire intense loyalty. Early on, one colleague observed, "Someday this boy's going to get hit by a truck full of money, and I'm going to be standing beside him". Yet when English did indeed make a fortune - when the travel website Kayak was sold for almost $2 billion - the first thing he thought about was how to give the money away: "What else would you do with it?" The second thing he thought was, "What's next?" With the power of a consummate storyteller, Tracy Kidder casts a fresh, critical, and often humorous eye on the way new ideas and new money are reshaping our culture and the world. A Truck Full of Money is a mesmerizing portrait of an irresistibly endearing man who is indefatigable, original, and as unpredictable as America itself. Praise for A Truck Full of Money “Kidder’s prose glides with a figure skater’s ease, but without the glam. His is a seemingly artless art, like John McPhee’s, that conceals itself in sentences that are necessary, economical, and unpretentious.” (The Boston Globe) “Kidder’s portrayal of living with manic depression is as nuanced and intimate as a reader might ever expect to get.... You can’t help admiring Mr. English and cheering for him.” (The New York Times)
©2016 Tracy Kidder (P)2016 Random House Audio
Called
Summary
Live as Followers of Jesus. This is the most urgent call upon God's people. The most indicting critique against the church is its failure to do so. But here is the promise extended to us by Mark Labberton, president of Fuller Seminary: Living and practicing who and why we are is our Christian vocation whenever and wherever we may be. Will you answer the call?
©2014 Mark Labberton (P)2014 Mark Labberton
The Third Translation
Summary
Walter Rothschild is an American Egyptologist living in London and charged by the British Museum with the task of unlocking the riddle of the Stela of Paser, a centuries-old funerary stone. In the final hours of his quest, with six days left before his contract is up with the British Museum, Walter meets a young woman who expresses an interest in him and his work. That night, he invites her back to the museum; the next morning, she bids him a speedy farewell, and secretly makes off with a precious antiquity. When Walter discovers the theft, it becomes clear that outside forces have designs on his research, and his entire career - and life - is on the line.The Third Translation is a highly charged, engrossing tale that introduces Matt Bondurant as an important new voice in modern American fiction.
©2005 Matt Bondurant (P)2005 Hyperion
On His Own Terms
Summary
From acclaimed historian Richard Norton Smith comes the definitive life of an American icon: Nelson Rockefeller - one of the most complex and compelling figures of the 20th century. Fourteen years in the making, this magisterial biography of the original Rockefeller Republican draws on thousands of newly available documents and over 200 interviews, including Rockefeller’s own unpublished reminiscences. Grandson of oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, Nelson coveted the White House from childhood. “When you think of what I had,” he once remarked, “what else was there to aspire to?” Before he was 30 he had helped his father develop Rockefeller Center and his mother establish the Museum of Modern Art. At 32 he was Franklin Roosevelt’s wartime coordinator for Latin America. As New York’s four-term governor he set national standards in education, the environment, and urban policy. The charismatic face of liberal Republicanism, Rockefeller championed civil rights and health insurance for all. Three times he sought the presidency - arguably in the wrong party. At the Republican National Convention in San Francisco in 1964, locked in an epic battle with Barry Goldwater, Rockefeller denounced extremist elements in the GOP, a moment that changed the party forever. But he could not wrest the nomination from the Arizona conservative, or from Richard Nixon four years later. In the end, he had to settle for two dispiriting years as vice president under Gerald Ford. In On His Own Terms, Richard Norton Smith re-creates Rockefeller’s improbable rise to the governor’s mansion, his politically disastrous divorce and remarriage, and his often surprising relationships with presidents and political leaders from FDR to Henry Kissinger. A frustrated architect turned master builder, an avid collector of art and an unabashed ladies’ man, “Rocky” promoted fallout shelters and affordable housing with equal enthusiasm. From the deadly 1971 prison uprising at Attica and unceasing battles with New York City mayor John Lindsay to his son’s unsolved disappearance (and the grisly theories it spawned), the punitive drug laws that bear his name, and the much-gossiped-about circumstances of his death, Nelson Rockefeller’s was a life of astonishing color, range, and relevance. On His Own Terms, a masterpiece of the biographer’s art, vividly captures the soaring optimism, polarizing politics, and inner turmoil of this American Original.
©2014 Richard Norton Smith (P)2014 Random House
Hollywood Tough
Summary
The New York Times best-selling author and Emmy Award-winning writer/producer sets his next action-packed thriller in the high-stakes world he knows best: Hollywood. Back on the LAPD and hailed as a hero after taking down a deadly gang of rogue cops in The Viking Funeral, Shane Scully finds himself unwittingly involved in a criminal scheme to take over the movie business. Soon, he will have to go deep undercover to take down a Hollywood conspiracy. At a glamorous party with his new wife, Alexandra, Shane hears a world-famous director make an ominous remark about the strange deaths of his ex-wives. This is more than police business, it’s personal: Alexandra’s closest friend is engaged to the producer. When he looks closer, Scully discovers that the director’s mysterious past may hide deadly secrets. To uncover them, he must work alongside a former down-and-outer-turned-Hollywood impresario to infiltrate the movie business’ violent dark side, a world where deals are settled with handshakes but broken with the spilling of blood, and where the danger to Shane’s loved ones is all too real.
©2003 Stephen J. Cannell (P)2003 Macmillan Audio
Broken Government
Summary
John Dean has become one of the most trenchant and respected commentators on the current state of American politics and one of the most outspoken and perceptive critics of the administration of George W. Bush in his New York Times bestsellers Conservatives Without Conscience and Worse Than Watergate. In his eighth book, Dean takes the broadest and deepest view yet of the dysfunctional chaos and institutional damage that the Republican Party and its core conservatives have inflicted on the federal government. He assesses the state of all three branches of government, tracing their decline through the presidencies of Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II. Unlike most political commentary, which is concerned with policy, Dean looks instead at process: making the case that the 2008 presidential race must confront these fundamental problems as well. Finally, he addresses the question that he is so often asked at his speaking engagements: what, if anything, can and should politically moderate citizens do to combat the extremism, authoritarianism, incompetence, and increasing focus on divisive wedge issues of so many of today's conservative politicians? With the Democrats now in control of both the House and Senate, the stakes for the 2008 presidential election have never been higher. This is a book for anyone who wants to return government to the spirit of the Constitution.
©2007 John W. Dean (P)2007 Penguin Audio, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. and Books on Tape