Robin Bloodworth has narrated 29 audiobooks on Listento.it by 25 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 374 ratings. The most-rated is Understanding Power.
Understanding Power
Summary
A major new collection from "arguably the most important intellectual alive" (The New York Times). Noam Chomsky is universally accepted as one of the preeminent public intellectuals of the modern era. Over the past thirty years, broadly diverse audiences have gathered to attend his sold-out lectures. Now, in Understanding Power, Peter Mitchell and John Schoeffel have assembled the best of Chomsky's recent talks on the past, present, and future of the politics of power. In a series of enlightening and wide-ranging discussions, all published here for the first time, Chomsky radically reinterprets the events of the past three decades, covering topics from foreign policy during Vietnam to the decline of welfare under the Clinton administration. And as he elucidates the connection between America's imperialistic foreign policy and the decline of domestic social services, Chomsky also discerns the necessary steps to take toward social change. With an eye to political activism and the media's role in popular struggle, as well as U.S. foreign and domestic policy, Understanding Power offers a sweeping critique of the world around us and is definitive Chomsky. Characterized by Chomsky's accessible and informative style, this is the ideal book for those new to his work as well as for those who have been listening for years.
©2002 Noam Chomsky, Peter Rounds Mitchell, and John Schoeffel (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Surrender to Love
Summary
A Personal Growth Finalist in the 2004 Word Guild Canadian Writing Awards! "Only God deserves absolute surrender because only God can offer absolutely dependable love." In our self-reliant era, most of us recoil from the concept of surrendering to a power or authority outside ourselves. But surrender need not be seen as threatening, especially when the One to whom we surrender is the epitome of goodness and love. God doesn't want his people to respond to him out of fear or obligation. Rather, he invites us to enter into an authentic relationship of intimacy and devotion. And so God calls us to move beyond mere obedience - by surrendering to love. In this profound audiobook, David Benner explores the twin themes of love and surrender as the heart of Christian spirituality. Through careful examination of Scripture and reflection on the Christian tradition, Benner shows how God bids us to trust fully in his perfect love. Writing with mature wisdom gleaned from many years of integrating psychological and spiritual insight, Benner demonstrates keen perception and sensitivity to the realities of spiritual formation. In each chapter he includes meditative exercises to guide you into a greater experience of trust and spiritual transformation. God is love, and he intends for you to live in his love. Surrender to Love will lead you to an unexpected place, where yieldedness to God frees you to become who he created you to be.
©2003 David G. Benner (P)2014 Audible Inc.
John Wayne Gacy: Defending a Monster
Summary
For the first time Gacy’s lawyer and confidant tells his chilling tale of how he defended an American serial killer. “Sam, could you do me a favor?” Thus begins a story that has now become part of America's true-crime hall of fame. It is a gory, grotesque tale befitting a Stephen King novel. It is also a David and Goliath saga - the story of a young lawyer fresh from the public defender's office whose first client in private practice turns out to be the worst serial killer in our nation's history. This is a gripping true crime narrative that reenacts the gruesome killings and the famous trial that shocked a nation.
©2012 Sam L. Amirante and Danny Broderick (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Elite: Mostly Harmless
Summary
Written by Kate Russell under official license from the creators of, and based in the vast universe of, the seminal space trading computer game Elite: Dangerous. Commander Angel Rose, forced into a life of crime due to circumstances beyond her control, is determined to survive in the unforgiving void as a professional assassin. Will she be forced into the ignominy of moving back in with her parents when her efforts fail to leave her with credit-earning blood on her hands? After years of galactic travel, could Angel's destiny be to end up drinking cheap liquor in a bar in Slough? Follow Kate on her website: katerussell.co.uk. Music by Allen Stroud. Cover design by Heather Murphy. A Radio Theatre Workshop production for Fantastic Books Audio. All rights reserved.
©2014 Kate Russell (P)2015 Daniel Grubb
The Dracula Tape
Summary
The never-before-told story behind the legend of Count Dracula! The story of the Count’s greatest love, Mina Harker, and the bloodthirsty vampire hunters whose cruel pursuit drove the master of the night to actions ever more ruthless. The Count Dracula sets the record straight.…
©1975 Fred Saberhagen (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Desperation Road
Summary
In the vein of Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone and the works of Ron Rash, a novel set in a tough-and-tumble Mississippi town where drugs, whiskey, guns, and the desire for revenge violently intersect. For 11 years the clock has been ticking for Russell Gaines as he sits in Parchman Penitentiary in the Mississippi Delta. His sentence is now up, and he believes his debt has been paid. But when he returns home, he soon discovers that revenge lives and breathes all around him. On the same day that Russell is released from prison, a woman named Maben and her young daughter trudge along the side of the interstate under the punishing summer sun. Desperate and exhausted, the pair spend their last dollar on a room for the night, a night that ends with Maben running through the darkness holding a pistol, and a dead deputy sprawled in the middle of the road in the glow of his own headlights. With the dawn, destinies collide, and Russell is forced to decide whose life he will save - his own or the lives of the woman and child. Delivered in powerful and lyrical prose, Desperation Road is a story of troubled souls twisted with regret and bound by secrets that stretch over the years and across the land.
©2017 Michael Farris Smith (P)2017 Hachette Audio
The Soul Weaver
Summary
The evil Lords of Zhev'Na kept Gerick captive for months. Although his parents rescued him, he remains tormented by his experience-and mistrusted even by those who love him. Accused of treason, Gerick flees and takes refuge in a magical realm full of outcasts, where he will discover how to use his own magical talent-soul weaving-to save his people from Zhev'Na.
©2005 Carol Berg (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Afghanistan
Summary
Afghanistan traces the historic struggles and the changing nature of political authority in this volatile region of the world, from the Mughal Empire in the 16th century to the Taliban resurgence today. Thomas Barfield introduces listeners to the bewildering diversity of tribal and ethnic groups in Afghanistan, explaining what unites them as Afghans despite the regional, cultural, and political differences that divide them. He shows how governing these peoples was relatively easy when power was concentrated in a small dynastic elite, but how this delicate political order broke down in the 19th and 20th centuries when Afghanistan's rulers mobilized rural militias to expel first the British and later the Soviets. Armed insurgency proved remarkably successful against the foreign occupiers, but it also undermined the Afghan government's authority and rendered the country ever more difficult to govern as time passed. Barfield vividly describes how Afghanistan's armed factions plunged the country into a civil war, giving rise to clerical rule by the Taliban and Afghanistan's isolation from the world. He examines why the American invasion in the wake of September 11 toppled the Taliban so quickly, and how this easy victory lulled the United States into falsely believing that a viable state could be built just as easily. Afghanistan is essential listening for anyone who wants to understand how a land conquered and ruled by foreign dynasties for more than a thousand years became the "graveyard of empires" for the British and Soviets, and what the United States must do to avoid a similar fate.
©2010 Princeton University Press (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
The Holmes-Dracula File
Summary
World-famous “consulting detective” Sherlock Holmes faces a terrible crisis: a ring of criminal masterminds has threatened to loose thousands of plague-infected rats into the streets of London. But the Black Death isn’t Holmes’ only problem. A lone killer haunts the city. His calling card is a trail of corpses, drained of blood to the last drop.The key to solving both crimes rests in the hands of a mysterious nobleman recently returned to London on a personal matter. His name is Dracula. The Count is quickly entangled in a web of evil that even his immortal powers may not be enough to breach. Holmes and Dracula soon come to the peculiar realization that they may be each other’s only hope.
©1978 Fred Saberhagen (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Dragonwall
Summary
The barbarian horde has breached the ancient Dragonwall and now threatens the oriental land of Shou Lung. Powerful as they are, the Shou Lung army's only hope lies with Batu Min Ho, a young general who is himself a third-generation descendant of Tuigan barbarians. But Batu's wife must fight her own battle in the treacherous political terrain of the imperial court, as a spy attempts to undermine the emperor's confidence in her husband. And if Batu is to retain his command and save Shou Lung, it is a battle she must not lose.
©1990 TSR, Inc. (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
An Old Friend of the Family
Summary
The Southerland family left the old world to start anew in America, but little did they know that a blood-feud, older than history itself, would follow them through the generations to come. Kate Southerland, the first born of the latest generation of Southerlands, has been murdered, but she is not dead. Her little brother, Johnny, has also vanished, a severed, bloody finger the only clue. But the Southerlands have no clue what they've fallen into. Their enemy is no mortal madman, but the undying mistress of evil enchantment, Morgan Le Fay, and the Southerlands are not her true target. She seeks to do battle with their protector, their defender, the only man who is capable of saving this mortal family from a war they've never realized was waged.
©1979 Fred Saberhagen (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Planet Taco
Summary
As late as the 1960s, tacos were virtually unknown outside Mexico and the American Southwest. Within fifty years the United States had shipped taco shells everywhere from Alaska to Australia, Morocco to Mongolia. But how did this tasty hand-held food - and Mexican food more broadly - become so ubiquitous? In Planet Taco, Jeffrey Pilcher traces the historical origins and evolution of Mexico's national cuisine, explores its incarnation as a Mexican American fast-food, shows how surfers became global pioneers of Mexican food, and how Corona beer conquered the world. Pilcher is particularly enlightening on what the history of Mexican food reveals about the uneasy relationship between globalization and authenticity.The burritos and taco shells that many people think of as Mexican were actually created in the United States. But Pilcher argues that the contemporary struggle between globalization and national sovereignty to determine the authenticity of Mexican food goes back hundreds of years. During the nineteenth century, Mexicans searching for a national cuisine were torn between nostalgic "Creole" Hispanic dishes of the past and French haute cuisine, the global food of the day. Indigenous foods were scorned as unfit for civilized tables. Only when Mexican American dishes were appropriated by the fast food industry and carried around the world did Mexican elites rediscover the foods of the ancient Maya and Aztecs and embrace the indigenous roots of their national cuisine. From a taco cart in Hermosillo, Mexico to the "Chili Queens" of San Antonio and tamale vendors in L.A., Jeffrey Pilcher follows this highly adaptable cuisine, paying special attention to the people too often overlooked in the battle to define authentic Mexican food: Indigenous Mexicans and Mexican Americans.
©2012 Oxford University Press (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Brief
Summary
Get heard by being clear and concise. The only way to survive in business today is to be a lean communicator. Busy executives expect you to respect and manage their time more effectively than ever. You need to do the groundwork to make your message tight and to the point. The average professional receives 304 emails per week and checks their smartphones 36 times an hour and 38 hours a week. This inattention has spread to every part of life. The average attention span has shrunk from 12 seconds in 2000 to eight in 2012. So, throw them a lifeline and be brief. Author Joe McCormack tackles the challenges of inattention, interruptions, and impatience that every professional faces. His proven B.R.I.E.F. approach, which stands for Background, Relevance, Information, Ending, and Follow up, helps simplify and clarify complex communication. Brief will help you summarize lengthy information, tell a short story, harness the power of infographics and videos, and turn monologue presentations into controlled conversations. Details the B.R.I.E.F. approach to distilling your message into a brief presentation. Written by the founder and CEO of Sheffield Marketing Partners, which specializes in message and narrative development, who is also a recognized expert in Narrative Mapping, a technique that helps clients achieve a clearer and more concise message. Long story short: Brief will help you gain the muscle you need to eliminate wasteful words and stand out from the rest. Be better. Be brief.
©2014 Joseph McCormack (P)2014 Audible Inc.
A Question of Time
Summary
Journey with Drakulya into the Grand Canyon where the Earth reveals her story layer by layer, where she hides her secrets in the Great Unconformity, and where eons of time are carved and scrambled in stone. In the unworldly world of Deep Canyon, Drakulya confronts a rogue nosferatu sculptor who would capture in stone the awesome power of time, life energy, and primal consciousness. A nosferatu who would capture in time, anyone to serve his purpose, even a young runaway searching for her father and her remembered childhood home in Deep Canyon. Drakulya and his team of breathing assistants will need more than human weapons, more than the intellectual insights of Darwin, and more than the magical powers of Merlin, to rescue the captives and confront an alien consciousness within and of the Earth. Drawn to the Grand Canyon where the Earth exposes her life line, Edgar Tyrrell, a nosferatu sculptor builds a home on the South Rim. Edgar would capture the very forces of the Earth in his stone statues. Hidden within a Great Unconformity Tyrrell's workshop offers a base from which he can work and travel through time. He needs helpers. A young woman artist from 1965 is entrapped. She lures a 1935 CCC worker into Tyrrell's camp. Together the captives are plotting Tyrrell's destruction and a way back to normal time. Sixty years later, one of Tyrrell's young breathing relatives goes missing in the Canyon. Private detective Joe Keogh is hired for the search. Sensing the presence of nosferatu Joe calls on Mr. Strangeways aka Drakulya. Accessing the situation, Drakulya returns to England seeking the wisdom of Darwin, Merlin and his beloved Mina. Much more than a dangerous rogue nosferatu awaits in Deep Canyon.
©1992 Fred Saberhagen (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Thorn
Summary
The immortal Count Dracula - Vlad Tepes, Prince of Wallachia - hunts the murderous art thieves who have stolen the portrait of his lost love. But the thieves are after more than art. From the Master Vampire they would steal the very secrets of life - and death!
©1980 Fred Saberhagen (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
A Matter of Taste
Summary
He was once called Dracula, but in Chicago in our day he is known as Matthew Maule. John Southerland, like the rest of the Southerland family, calls him Uncle Matthew. After all he's an Old Friend of the Family and he has risked his un-life more than once to protect the Southerlands. But with Matthew rendered comatose by a fiendish plot from beyond time, the Southerlands must rise to his defense - and battle 500 years’ worth of Dracula's enemies.
©1990 Fred Saberhagen (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Horselords
Summary
Between the valiant kingdoms of the western Realms and the exotic eastern lands of Kara-Tur lies a vast, unexplored kingdom. For centuries, the "civilized" peoples of the Forgotten Realms have given little notice to these barbarians. Now, a powerful leader has united the wild horsemen into a mighty force - an army powerful enough to challenge the world.
©1990 TSR, Inc. (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Seance for a Vampire
Summary
Bram Stoker portrayed Dracula as a terrifying creature of the night: heartless, soulless, preying on the pure and innocent. Fred Saberhagen, bestselling coauthor of the official movie tie-in for Bram Stoker's Dracula, shows another side to Dracula as the vampire is summoned by Dr. Watson to rescue Sherlock Holmes.
©1994 Fred Saberhagen (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
A Coldness in the Blood
Summary
The Bram Stoker Award-Winning saga continues… Matthew Maule has seen many horrific things in his 500 years as one of the most powerful vampires in the world. But even his formidable talents cannot predict the unthinkable acts about to occur within his own home. When the vampire Dickon and his human partner appear in the middle of the night frightened for their lives, Matthew offers them protection. They carry with them a small Egyptian statue of great value and many secrets. By morning, Matthew has woken from a mysterious trance to discover that Dickon’s human friend has been brutally murdered, the vampire has gone missing, and their statue has been smashed to pieces. Matthew has also made a dangerous new enemy, one who possesses strength even Matthew may be no match for. For the statue is no ordinary artifact, but one of six replicas. However, only one contains a gem in the center, a stone of unimaginable magical power that could spell the end of humanity if it ever fell in the wrong hands. Matthew sets out on a heart-pounding journey to track down the remaining statues before his ancient foe finds them. Racing across the country, the vampire teams up with both the living and the undead, though not all are the allies they pretend to be. Using his wits, he must unearth the answers to a millennia-old mystery in order to prepare himself for a final showdown against the evil stalking him at every turn. Acclaimed fantasy and science fiction author Fred Saberhagen takes listeners along for a trek of unbelievable suspense, action, and pure pause-resisting entertainment.
©2002 Fred Saberhagen (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Stillness and Shadows
Summary
Gardner’s relentlessly honest and moving portrayal of a broken marriage, and his ambitious unfinished masterpiece - a metafictional mystery centering around one man’s struggle to recover his lost identity - together in one accomplished volume Stillness: Martin and Joan Orrick - distant cousins who have known each other since early childhood - are in the final throes of a failing marriage. Martin is a compulsive drinker who obsesses about his writing, and Joan is struggling with a debilitating physical condition. Together they search for some type of collective identity, and identify where the dissolution of their love began. Inspired by therapy sessions Gardner experienced with his first wife, Stillness is an insightful portrait of one couple’s struggle for fulfillment in a tumultuous world. Private detective Gerald Craine is pursuing an unknown murderer. At the same time, he himself is the target of an unknown person’s pursuit. Stumbling through an alcohol-soaked haze, Craine desperately seeks meaning and understanding in a world fraught with fragmented narratives. Shadows: John Gardner’s friend Nicholas Delbanco has supplemented this unfinished novel with seven sections from Gardner’s original manuscript that provide critical insight into Gardner’s approach to developing the novel and its characters, giving a rare glimpse inside the creative process of one of the 20th century’s most inventive writers.
©1986 The Estate of John Gardner (P)2013 Audible, Inc.