P.J. Ochlan has narrated 105 audiobooks on Listento.it by 136 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 1,170 ratings. The most-rated is A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor.
Winter Tithe
Summary
On the eve of the winter solstice, Tokara rushes out into the snowy woods to find her sister's lost puppy. Her daring path takes her far beyond the protection of her mother's castle and brings her face-to-face with a mystery older than the stars. But our girl has a brave heart and an irrepressible spirit, and the longest night of the year still holds many secrets. Travel to another corner of the world OF CATS AND DRAGONS.
©2016 Camilla Ochlan and Carol E. Leever (P)2019 Lepton Films LLC
Grantville Gazette, Volume VIII
Summary
Extra! Extra! Read all about the town that traveled through time! The most popular alternate-history series of all continues. When a cosmic disturbance hurls your town from 20th-century West Virginia back to 17th-century Europe - and into the middle of the Thirty Years' War - you have to adapt to survive. And the natives of that time period, faced with American technology and politics, need to be equally adaptable. Here's a generous helping of more stories of Grantville, the American town lost in time, and its impact on the people and societies of a tumultuous age. With stories by: Eric Flint, Griffin Barber, Robert Waters, Kerryn Offord, Alistair Kimble, and more!
©2018 Eric Flint (P)2021 Tantor
The Marauders
Summary
When the BP oil spill devastates the Gulf Coast, those who made a living by shrimping find themselves in dire straits. For the oddballs and lowlifes who inhabit the sleepy, working-class bayou town of Jeannette, these desperate circumstances serve as the catalyst that pushes them to enact whatever risky schemes they can dream up to reverse their fortunes. At the center of it all is Gus Lindquist, a pill-addicted, one-armed treasure hunter obsessed with finding the lost treasure of pirate Jean Lafitte. His quest brings him into contact with a wide array of memorable characters, ranging from a couple of small-time criminal potheads prone to hysterical banter to the smooth-talking oil-company middleman out to bamboozle his own mother to some drug-smuggling psychopath twins to a young man estranged from his father since his mother died in Hurricane Katrina. As the story progresses, these characters find themselves on a collision course with each other, and as the tension and action ramp up, it becomes clear that not all of them will survive these events.
©2015 Tom Cooper (P)2015 Random House Audio
Dolce Vita Confidential
Summary
From the ashes of World War II, Rome was reborn as the epicenter of film, fashion, creative energy, tabloid media, and bold-faced libertinism that made "Italian" a global synonym for taste, style, and flair. A confluence of cultural contributions created a bright, burning moment in history: it was the heyday of fashion icons such as Pucci and Brioni. Rome's huge movie studio, Cinecitta, attracted a dizzying array of stars, from Charlton Heston, Gregory Peck, Audrey Hepburn, Ava Gardner, and Frank Sinatra to that stunning and combustible couple, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Fashionistas, exiles, moguls, and martyrs flocked to Rome hoping for a chance to experience and indulge in the glow of old money, new stars, fast cars, wanton libidos, and brazen news photographers. The scene was captured nowhere better than in Federico Fellini's masterpiece, La Dolce Vita, starring Marcello Mastroianni and the Swedish bombshell Anita Ekberg. Gossipy, colorful, and richly informed, Dolce Vita Confidential re-creates Rome's stunning ascent with vivid and compelling tales of its glitterati and artists, down to every last outrageous detail of the city's magnificent transformation.
©2016 Shawn Levy (P)2016 Tantor
Ven'tarian Silence
Summary
Guided by troubling visions and chased by death-dealing horrors, Omen Daenoth and the feisty talking cats find themselves center stage in the city of Ven'taria, a place of uncanny magic and jaw-dropping revelry. But when Omen and his companions -- an eminent Sundragon scholar, the notorious prince of Terizkand, a child prophet, and a paranoid Machelli spy -- unravel the dark source of the Ven'tarian Socerium's incredible powers, a desperate countdown begins. Can our young heroes and their chatty felines break the dreaded Ven'tarian Silence or will they bring on the forbidding reign of endless night? Of Cats and Dragons, where the epic meets the adorable.
©2020 Carol E Leever and Camilla Ochlan (P)2020 Lepton Films LLC
Grantville Gazette, Volume VII
Summary
The seventh rollicking anthology of tales set in Eric Flint's phenomenal New York Times best-selling Ring of Fire universe. A cosmic accident sets the modern West Virginia town of Grantville down in war-torn 17th-century Europe. It will take all the gumption of the resourceful, freedom-loving up-timers to find a way to flourish in the mad and bloody birth of the Renaissance. Are they up for it? You bet they are. Edited by Eric Flint and inspired by his now-legendary 1632, this is the fun stuff that fills in the pieces of the Ring of Fire political, social, and cultural puzzle as supporting characters we meet in the novels get their own lives, loves, and life-changing stories. The future and democracy have arrived with a bang. Contains mature themes.
©2015 Eric Flint (P)2020 Tantor
Autumn King
Summary
The explosive conclusion of the quest for the Autumn King! What magic, what curses, what schemes await.... Through the mountain of shadow and into the gated lands, Omen and his companions travel right into the heart of darkness. Can they save the land? Can they save themselves? Or does the fate of the world ultimately hang on the antics of two chatty felines with a history more tangled than a ball of yarn? Of Cats and Dragons, where the epic meets the adorable. You don't want to miss out on this one!
©2018 Carol E Leever, Camilla Ochlan (P)2019 Lepton Films LLC
Texas Rising
Summary
The official nonfiction companion to the History Channel dramatic series Texas Rising (produced by the same team that made the record-breaking Hatfields and McCoys): a thrilling new narrative history of the Texas Revolution and the rise of the legendary Texas Rangers who patrolled the violent Western frontier. In 1836, if west of the Mississippi was considered the Wild West, then Texas was hell on earth - a hot bed of conflict. Who would win the war over Texas? Crushed from the outside by Mexican armadas and attacked from within by ferocious Comanche tribes, no one was safe. But this was a time of bravery, a time to die for what you believed in and a time to stand tall against the cruel rule of the Mexican General Santa Anna and his forces. The Texas Rangers, a ragtag crew of men fighting on horseback, were often outnumbered by as many as 50 to one. Yet under renowned General Sam Houston, they achieved victory against nearly impossible odds, earning a legendary place in American history. Acclaimed Texas historian Stephen L. Moore's Texas Rising, the official companion to the epic History series of the same name, brings to life the violent Texas frontier and the Rangers' heroic deeds during the Texas Revolution. Published with the full support and backing of history, Texas Rising is an unforgettable history of this iconic band of fighters.
©2015 Stephen L. Moore (P)2015 HarperCollins Publishers
Hollow Season
Summary
It is the season of monsters, and wild magic rules the land. Young warrior bard Omen Daenoth and his intrepid companions - the prince of Terizkand, a Sundragon scholar, a cynical spy, a reckless Corsair, not to mention the talking cats - journey toward the looming Mountain of Shadow. But how will they rescue the kidnapped king and lift the curse of the faerie sorceress when every step along their way is wrought with murderous creatures and lethal magic? And what exactly is the secret of the Cypher Runes? Join the adventure and find out the answers!
©2018 Carol E. Leever and Camilla Ochlan (P)2018 Lepton Films LLC
Breaking Bread with the Dead
Summary
From the author of How to Think and The Pleasures of Reading in An Age of Distraction, a literary guide to engaging with the voices of the past to stay sane in the present W. H. Auden once wrote that "art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead." In his brilliant and compulsively listenable new treatise, Breaking Bread with the Dead, Alan Jacobs shows us that engaging with the strange and wonderful writings of the past might help us live less anxiously in the present - and increase what Thomas Pynchon once called our "personal density." Today we are battling too much information in a society changing at lightning speed, with algorithms aimed at shaping our every thought - plus a sense that history offers no resources, only impediments to overcome or ignore. The modern solution to our problems is to surround ourselves only with what we know and what brings us instant comfort. Jacobs's answer is the opposite: to be in conversation with, and challenged by, those from the past who can tell us what we never thought we needed to know. What can Homer teach us about force? How does Frederick Douglass deal with the massive blind spots of America's Founding Fathers? And what can we learn from modern authors who engage passionately and profoundly with the past? How can Ursula K. Le Guin show us truths about Virgil's female characters that Virgil himself could never have seen? In Breaking Bread with the Dead, a gifted scholar draws us into close and sympathetic engagement with texts from across the ages, including the work of Anita Desai, Henrik Ibsen, Jean Rhys, Simone Weil, Edith Wharton, Amitav Ghosh, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Italo Calvino, and many more. By hearing the voices of the past, we can expand our consciousness, our sympathies, and our wisdom far beyond what our present moment can offer.
©2020 Alan Jacobs (P)2020 Penguin Audio
Offspring
Summary
The lush and beautiful forest planet of Bellerophon is home to a cacophony of noises, but its resident psychics are known as the Silent. Previously they could travel to the Dream, a telepathic plane of existence where they could twist the laws of reality. But that time is over... One madman's lust for power tore the Dream asunder. Now only a handful of the Silent can enter it. Kendi Weaver is one of them. As an election for the governorship of Bellerophon begins, Kendi is caught in the crossfire. Attempts on his life - and a rash of Silent kidnappings - point to a political enemy...or a personal one. Either way, the future of the Dream is at stake. And Kendi fears it may become a nightmare.
©2004 Steven Harper (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The Quest for the Autumn King: Summer's Fall, Hollow Season, Autumn King
Summary
In the world Of Cats and Dragons, a young bard and his giant talking cat must defend both family and country from foul magic and wicked monsters. Get the complete Quest for the Autumn King in this three audiobook collection - from the series that fans call, "charming", "addictive", and a "brilliant fantasy adventure". The Quest for the Autumn King: Summer's Fall, Hollow Season, Autumn King It is the season of monsters, and wild magic rules the land. In Summer's Fall: Tormy and Omen accept quest to rescue a missing king. Before Omen knows it, he's crossing the Luminal Sea on a miraculous ship called the Golden Voyage. But the voyage is anything but golden. In the shadow of a devastating hex, pursued by a stealer of souls, with both interference and help from Tormy and the potty-mouthed kitten Tyrin, Omen faces monsters, ghosts, and grave troubles unshackled by the volatile seasons themselves. Accompanied by the prince of Terizkand, a Sundragon scholar, a cynical spy, and a reckless Corsair, our young firebrand has to employ all of his strengths as the autumn winds carry them into the center of a cataclysm that threatens to swallow the world. In Hollow Season: Omen and his intrepid companions journey toward the looming Mountain of Shadow. But how will they rescue the kidnapped king and lift the curse of the faerie sorceress when every step along their way is wrought with murderous creatures and lethal magic? And what exactly is the secret of the Cypher Runes? In Autumn King: Through the Mountain of Shadow and into the Gated Lands, Omen and his companions travel right into the heart of darkness. Can they save the land? Can they save themselves? Or does the fate of the world ultimately hang on the antics of two chatty felines with a history more tangled than a ball of yarn? Of Cats and Dragons, where the epic meets the adorable.
©2018 Camilla Ochlan and Carol E. Leever (P)2019 Lepton Films LLC
MacCallister: The Eagles Legacy - The Killing
Summary
From best-selling authors William W. Johnstone and J. A. Johnstone comes the blazing saga of Duff MacCallister, heir to a legacy of courage. Duff MacCallister fled the Scottish Highlands for a new world in Wyoming Territory. Betrothed to a good woman, Duff has the bad luck to be standing in the Chugwater Bank when a violent robbery explodes around him. With one man dead by Duff's gun, and another under arrest, a team of bandits swarms outside of town. As witnesses, Duff, a banker, and a beautiful barmaid are whisked into the town's hotel for safe-keeping as the outlaws threaten the defenseless town with a bloodbath if their fellow bandit isn't set free. Except no MacCallister has ever run from trouble. With a scoped Creedmoor rifle he goes after the Taylor gang, one bad guy at a time... But Duff doesn't know that fate - and a little twist of frontier justice - will give the Taylor Gang one last chance for a shocking, treacherous act of revenge....
©2012 William W. Johnstone (P)2018 Tantor
Memoirs
Summary
When Memoirs was first published in 1975, it created quite a bit of turbulence in the media - though long self-identified as a gay man, Williams' candor about his love life, sexual encounters, and drug use was found shocking in and of itself, and such revelations by America's greatest living playwright were called "a raw display of private life" by the New York Times Book Review. As it turns out, Williams' look back at his life is not quite so scandalous as it once seemed; he recalls his childhood in Mississippi and St. Louis, his prolonged struggle as a "starving artist", the "overnight" success of The Glass Menagerie in 1945, the death of his long-time companion Frank Merlo in 1962, and his confinement to a psychiatric ward in 1969 and subsequent recovery from alcohol and drug addiction, all with the same directness, compassion, and insight that epitomize his plays. And, of course, Memoirs is filled with Williams' amazing friends from the worlds of stage, screen, and literature as he often hilariously, sometimes fondly - sometimes not - remembers them: Laurette Taylor, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Elia Kazan, Marlon Brando, Vivian Leigh, Carson McCullers, Anna Magnani, Greta Garbo, Elizabeth Taylor, and Tallulah Bankhead, to name a few. Contains mature themes.
©1972, 1975 The University of the South (P)2019 Tantor
Vigil
Summary
What can the massive protests that have roiled Hong Kong and the harsh repressive moves made against activists tell us about where this special metropolis is heading? And about how a resurgent China under strongman rule is challenging and reshaping the international order? Jeffrey Wasserstrom draws on his many visits to the city and his background as a specialist in the history of protests against authoritarianism to make a powerful and sobering case for the near inevitability of China’s imposing its model on Hong Kong. Vigil tells a tale of two interrelated processes. The first involves a stop and go, but never reversing, set of moves by China’s Communist Party to minimize the many things that once made Hong Kong unlike the cities neighboring it just across the border on the mainland. The result of this has been that, since the 1997 Handover from Great Britain to China, more and more of the once clear-cut contrasts between Hong Kong and nearby urban centers such as Canton and Shenzhen - differences that decades ago were as stark as those between East Berlin and West Berlin - are lessening or going away completely. The second process involves bold efforts by residents of Hong Kong to push back against this erosion of differences. The key actors are people who are passionately committed to defending the special qualities of a city they love - a freer press, more judicial independence, a system of rule of law rather than rule by law - against moves to diminish them made by Beijing and its local proxies. The result has been one of the great David versus Goliath stories of our time, pitting creative and determined activists, joined on the streets in recent years by ever larger numbers of Hong Kong residents, against a Chinese Communist Party whose global clout keeps growing and whose current leader, Xi Jinping, has grand ambitions for bringing all parts of the People’s Republic of China under tighter forms of control. The result is a tale of heroism but also tragedy. Even against-all-odds longshot victories - and there have been some - can only slow a process that has led, in essence, to Hong Kong’s people becoming subjects of first the great imperial power of the 19th century and now the most important rising imperial power of the current era.
©2020 Jeffrey Wasserstrom (P)2020 Random House Audio
Black Man, White House
Summary
From legendary comedian D. L. Hughley comes a bitingly funny send-up of the Obama years, as "told" by the key political players on both sides of the aisle. What do the Clintons, Republicans, fellow Democrats, and Obama's own family really think of President Barack Obama? Finally, the truth is revealed in this raucously funny oral history parody. There is no more astute - and hilarious - critic of politics, entertainment, and race in America than D. L. Hughley, famed comedian, radio star, and original member of the Kings of Comedy. In the vein of Jon Stewart's America: The Book, Black Man, White House is an acerbic and witty take on Obama's two terms, looking at the president's accomplishments and foibles through the imagined eyes of those who saw history unfold. Hughley draws upon satirical interviews with the most notorious public figures of our day: Mitt Romney ("What's 'poverty'? Is that some sort of rap jargon?"); Nancy Pelosi ("I play F**k/Marry/Kill, and there's a lot more kills than fu**ks in Congress, believe me."); Rod Blagojevich ("You can't sell political offices on eBay; I discovered that personally."); Joe Biden ("I like wrestling."); and other politicians, media pundits, and buffoons. It is sure to be the most irreverent - and perhaps the most honest - look at American politics today.
©2016 D. L. Hughley (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers
How to Be Content
Summary
What the Roman poet Horace can teach us about how to live a life of contentment. What are the secrets to a contented life? One of Rome's greatest and most influential poets, Horace (65-8 BCE) has been cherished for more than 2,000 years not only for his wit, style, and reflections on Roman society, but also for his wisdom about how to live a good life - above all else, a life of contentment in a world of materialistic excess and personal pressures. In How to Be Content, Stephen Harrison, a leading authority on the poet, provides fresh, contemporary translations of poems from across Horace's works that continue to offer important lessons about the good life, friendship, love, and death. Living during the reign of Rome's first emperor, Horace drew on Greek and Roman philosophy, especially Stoicism and Epicureanism, to write poems that reflect on how to live a thoughtful and moderate life amid mindless overconsumption, how to achieve and maintain true love and friendship, and how to face disaster and death with patience and courage. From memorable counsel on the pointlessness of worrying about the future to valuable advice about living in the moment, these poems, by the man who famously advised us to carpe diem, or "harvest the day", continue to provide brilliant meditations on perennial human problems.
©2020 Princeton University Press (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
The Hidden Hindenburg
Summary
By the author of Ashes Under Water, here is one of the great untold stories of World War II. The Hidden Hindenburg at last reveals the cause of aviation's most famous disaster and the duplicity that kept the truth from coming to light for three generations. It also finally catches up with a German legend who misled the world about the Hindenburg to bury his own Nazi connections. Drawing on previously unpublished documents from the National Archives in Washington, along with archival collections in Germany, this definitive account explores how the Hindenburg was connected to the Dachau concentration camp, a futuristic German rocket that terrified the Allies, and a classified project that imported Nazi scientists to America after the war. It took author Michael McCarthy four years to get to the bottom of this epic disaster, in which the largest object civilization has ever managed to fly burnt up in less than one minute. Along the way, he found a tale of international intrigue, revealing a whistleblower, a cover-up, and corruption on two continents.
©2020 Michael McCarthy (P)2020 Tantor
Time Is a Fine White Lie
Summary
An Australian shamaness traveling in the body of a Chicago bartender leads to a surreal rendezvous with a presumed-dead rock star. An OkCupid encounter turns into blissful madness when souls connect over a national tragedy. A bloody accident at a city bus stop gives way to an absurdly rewarding feast. This collection of seven short stories poses the question: What phenomena are occurring under our nose, right now, that appear completely random but are consistent and solid periodic events we simply lack the scope to see, the comprehension to grasp, or the vocabulary to name? Time Is a Fine White Lie may be the closest thing we have to a traveler’s journal from that latent, ephemeral possibility — at once a tribute, warning, antidote, and gateway — to that which we take for granted.
©2020 William Steffey (P)2020 Aquariphone, LLC.
Return
Summary
Matt Turner's psychic ability has granted him a window into the entirety of Earth's intelligent beings - past and present - but this gift has also been his heaviest burden. A talent like Matt's can only be kept secret for so long, and ruthless individuals desiring lost and rare items viewed him only as a prized tool. Now, there is no more secret. Despite living a reclusive existence - unseen in five years - Matthew Turner is among the most recognized names on the planet, and wealthy collectors aren't alone in seeking the only confirmed, undisputed psychic the world has ever seen. Most people simply want his help tracking down a missing loved one. But it's something else that lures Matt out of hiding, and he knows it will offer more than mere lost treasure or a priceless artifact. For more than five centuries, Egypt's great Library of Alexandria housed all the collected knowledge of the known world. In the Third century AD, its estimated 700,000 scrolls were forever lost to fire - a loss so great, it has since come to symbolize, worldwide, the destruction of cultural knowledge. A small length of stone engraved with seemingly random symbols may reveal an alternative ending to the Library's collection, but only in the able hands of Matt Turner. At only 32, he's seen and experienced more of life and death than any person alive, and with this unique talent and perspective, he's now ready to set right the wrongs of both yesterday and today.
©2015 Michael Siemsen (P)2015 Michael Siemsen/Fantome Publishing