Stephen Mendel has narrated 31 audiobooks on Listento.it by 21 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 333 ratings. The most-rated is The Clay Girl.
The Clay Girl
Summary
Vincent Appleton smiles at his daughters, raises a gun, and blows off his head. For the Appleton sisters, life had unraveled many times before. This time it explodes. Eight-year-old Hariet, known to all as Ari, is dispatched to Cape Breton and her Aunt Mary, who is purported to eat little girls. With Ari on the journey is her steadfast companion, Jasper, an imaginary seahorse. But when they arrive in Pleasant Cove, they instead find refuge with Mary and her partner Nia. As the tumultuous '60s ramp up in Toronto, Ari is torn from her aunts and forced back to her twisted mother and fractured sisters. Her new stepfather Len and his family offer hope, but as Ari grows to adore them, she's severed violently from them too, when her mother moves in with the brutal Dick Irwin. Through the sexual revolution and drug culture of the 1960s, Ari struggles with her father's legacy and her mother's addictions - testing limits with substances that numb and men who show her kindness. She spins through a chaotic decade of loss and love, the devilish and divine, with wit, tenacity, and the astonishing balance unique to seahorses. The Clay Girl is a beautiful tour de force that traces the story of a child, sculpted by kindness, cruelty, and the extraordinary power of imagination, and her families - the one she's born in to, and the one she creates.
©2016 Heather Tucker (P)2016 Recorded Books
The Master Algorithm
Summary
Under the aegis of machine learning in our data-driven machine age, computers are programming themselves and learning about - and solving - an extraordinary range of problems, from the mundane to the most daunting. Today it is machine learning programs that enable Amazon and Netflix to predict what users will like, Apple to power Siri's ability to understand voices, and Google to pilot cars. These programs are already helping us fight the war on cancer and predict the movements of the stock market, and they are making great headway with instant language translation and discovering new laws of nature. But machine learning is incomplete, and its practitioners across the globe are seeking the most powerful algorithm of all. The Master Algorithm will not be limited to solving particular problems but will be able to learn anything and solve any problem, however difficult, and Pedro Domingos, a trailblazing computer scientist, is at the very forefront of the search for it. With the Master Algorithm in hand and data as its fuel, machine learning - essentially the automation of discovery, a kind of scientific method on steroids - will become the most powerful technology humanity has ever devised. And The Master Algorithm will be its bible.
©2015 Pedro Domingos (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Building a Life Worth Living
Summary
Marsha Linehan tells the story of her journey from suicidal teenager to world-renowned developer of the life-saving behavioral therapy DBT, using her own struggle to develop life skills for others. "This book is a victory on both sides of the page." (Gloria Steinem) "Are you one of us?" a patient once asked Marsha Linehan, the world-renowned psychologist who developed dialectical behavior therapy. "Because if you were, it would give all of us so much hope." Over the years, DBT had saved the lives of countless people fighting depression and suicidal thoughts, but Linehan had never revealed that her pioneering work was inspired by her own desperate struggles as a young woman. Only when she received this question did she finally decide to tell her story. In this remarkable and inspiring memoir, Linehan describes how, when she was 18 years old, she began an abrupt downward spiral from popular teenager to suicidal young woman. After several miserable years in a psychiatric institute, Linehan made a vow that if she could get out of emotional hell, she would try to find a way to help others get out of hell, too, and to build a life worth living. She went on to put herself through night school and college, living at a YWCA and often scraping together spare change to buy food. She went on to get her PhD in psychology, specializing in behavior therapy. In the 1980s, she achieved a breakthrough when she developed dialectical behavioral therapy, a therapeutic approach that combines acceptance of the self and ways to change. Linehan included mindfulness as a key component in therapy treatment, along with original and specific life-skill techniques. She says, "You can't think yourself into new ways of acting; you can only act yourself into new ways of thinking." Throughout her extraordinary scientific career, Marsha Linehan remained a woman of deep spirituality. Her powerful and moving story is one of faith and perseverance. Linehan shows, in Building a Life Worth Living, how the principles of DBT really work - and how, using her life skills and techniques, people can build lives worth living.
©2020 Marsha M. Linehan (P)2020 Random House Audio
The Drifter
Summary
Thriller Award winner, Best First Novel, 2017. An explosive thriller debut introducing Peter Ash, a veteran who finds that the demons of war aren't easily left behind.... Peter Ash came home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with only one souvenir: what he calls his "white static", the buzzing claustrophobia due to post-traumatic stress that has driven him to spend a year roaming in nature, sleeping under the stars. But when a friend from the marines commits suicide, Ash returns to civilization to help the man's widow with some home repairs. Under her dilapidated porch, he finds more than he bargained for: the largest, ugliest, meanest dog he's ever encountered...and a Samsonite suitcase stuffed with cash and explosives. As Ash begins to investigate this unexpected discovery, he finds himself at the center of a plot that is far larger than he could have imagined...and it may lead straight back to the world he thought he'd left for good. Suspenseful and thrilling, and featuring a compelling new hero, The Drifter is an exciting debut from a fresh voice in crime fiction.
©2016 Nicholas Petrie (P)2016 Penguin Audio
Monogamy
Summary
“A sensual and perceptive novel.... With humor and humanity, Miller resists the simple scorned-wife story and instead crafts a revelatory tale of the complexities - and the absurdities - of love, infidelity, and grief.” (O, the Oprah Magazine) A brilliantly insightful novel, engrossing and haunting, about marriage, love, family, happiness, and sorrow, from New York Times best-selling author Sue Miller. Graham and Annie have been married for nearly 30 years. Their seemingly effortless devotion has long been the envy of their circle of friends and acquaintances. By all appearances, they are a golden couple. Graham is a bookseller and a big, gregarious man with large appetites - curious, eager to please, a lover of life, and the convivial host of frequent, lively parties at his and Annie’s comfortable house in Cambridge. Annie, more reserved and introspective, is a photographer. She is about to have her first gallery show after a six-year lull and is worried that the best years of her career may be behind her. They have two adult children; Lucas, Graham’s son with his first wife, Frieda, works in New York. Annie and Graham’s daughter, Sarah, lives in San Francisco. Though Frieda is an integral part of this far-flung, loving family, Annie feels confident in the knowledge that she is Graham’s last and greatest love. When Graham suddenly dies - this man whose enormous presence has seemed to dominate their lives together - Annie is lost. What is the point of going on, she wonders, without him? Then, while she is still mourning Graham intensely, she discovers a ruinous secret, one that will spiral her into darkness and force her to question whether she ever truly knew the man who loved her.
©2020 Sue Miller (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
Light It Up
Summary
"Lots of characters get compared to my own Jack Reacher, but Petrie's Peter Ash is the real deal." (Lee Child) In the newest action-packed thriller starring war veteran Peter Ash, a well-planned and flawlessly executed hijacking reveals the hidden dangers of Colorado's mellowest business, but Ash may find there's more to this crime than meets the eye. Combat veteran Peter Ash leaves a simple life rebuilding hiking trails in Oregon to help his good friend Henry Nygaard, whose daughter runs a Denver security company that protects cash-rich cannabis entrepreneurs from modern-day highwaymen. Henry's son-in-law and the company's operations manager were carrying a large sum of client money when their vehicle vanished without a trace, leaving Henry's daughter and her company vulnerable. Then, when Peter is riding shotgun on another cash run, the cargo he's guarding comes under attack from hijackers and he narrowly escapes with his life. As the incidents mount, he has to wonder: for criminals as sophisticated as these, is this money really worth the risk? And if not, what about his cargo is worth more?
©2018 Nick Petrie (P)2018 Penguin Audio
Tear It Down
Summary
In the new edge-of-your-seat adventure from national best-selling author Nick Petrie, Peter Ash pursues one case - and stumbles into another - in the City of the Blues. Iraq war veteran Peter Ash is restless in the home he shares with June Cassidy in Washington State. June knows Peter needs to be on the move, so she sends him to Memphis to help her friend Wanda Wyatt, a photographer and war correspondent who's been receiving peculiar threats. When Peter arrives in Memphis, however, he finds the situation has gone downhill fast - someone has just driven a dump truck into Wanda's living room. But neither Wanda nor Peter can figure out why. At the same time, a young, homeless street musician finds himself roped into a plan to rob a jewelry store. The heist doesn't go as planned, and the young man finds himself holding a sack full of Rolexes and running for his life. When his getaway car breaks down, he steals a new one at gunpoint - Peter's 1968 green Chevrolet pickup truck. Peter likes the skinny kid's smarts and attitude, but he soon discovers the desperate musician is in far worse trouble than he knows. And Wanda's troubles are only beginning. Peter finds himself stuck between Memphis gangsters - looking for Rolexes and revenge - and a Mississippi ex-con and his hog-butcher brother looking for a valuable piece of family history that goes all the way back to the Civil War.
©2019 Nick Petrie (P)2019 Penguin Audio
The Wild One
Summary
War veteran Peter Ash tracks a murderer and his criminal family through the most forbidding and stark landscape he has ever encountered, in the latest thriller from the best-selling author of The Drifter. Losing ground in his fight against post-traumatic claustrophobia, war veteran Peter Ash has no intention of getting on an airplane - until a grieving woman asks Peter to find her eight-year-old grandson. The woman's daughter has been murdered. Erik, the dead daughter's husband, is the sole suspect, and he has taken his young son and fled to Iceland for the protection of Erik's lawless family. Finding the boy becomes more complicated when Peter is met at the airport by a man from the United States embassy. For reasons both unknown and unofficial, it seems that Peter's own government doesn't want him in Iceland. The police give Peter two days of sightseeing in Reykjavik before he must report back for the first available seat home...and when they realize Peter isn't going home until he accomplishes his mission, they start hunting him, too. From the northernmost European capital to a rustbound fishing vessel to a remote farm a stone's throw from the arctic, Peter must confront his growing PTSD and the most powerful Icelandic snowstorm in a generation to find a killer, save an eight-year-old boy, and keep himself out of an Icelandic prison - or a cold Icelandic grave.
©2020 Nick Petrie (P)2020 Penguin Audio
The Breaker
Summary
"Nonstop action at a machine gun pace. If you aren't reading Nick Petrie, now is the time to start." (C.J. Box) Peter Ash tangles with dangerous enemies and terrifying technology in the newest thriller from best-selling author Nick Petrie. A man wanted by two governments, Peter Ash has found a simple, low-profile life in Milwaukee, living with his girlfriend, June, and renovating old buildings with his friend Lewis. Staying out of trouble is the key to preserving this fragile peace...but when Peter spots a suspicious armed man walking into a crowded market, he knows he can't stand by and do nothing. Peter does interrupt a crime, but it wasn't at all what he'd expected. The young gunman appeared to have one target and one mission - but when he escapes, and his victim vanishes before police arrive, it seems there is more to the encounter than meets the eye. Peter's hunch is proven correct when a powerful associate from his past appears with an interest in the crime and an irresistible offer: If he and June solve this mystery, Peter's record will be scrubbed clean. While Peter and Lewis trace the gunman, reporter June digs into the victim of the incident, a man whose face rings a bell in her memory. As their parallel investigations draw together, they're thrust into the path of a ruthless tech thief, an eerily cheerful assassin, a brilliant and troubled inventor, and a revolutionary technology that could wreak devastation in the wrong hands. But for Peter, even more is at stake: This investigation is his only path to a life free from the threat of prosecution or prison. Before the end, he'll have to fight harder than ever before to ensure that freedom doesn't come at too high a cost....
©2021 Nick Petrie (P)2021 Penguin Audio
Burning Bright
Summary
In the new novel featuring war veteran Peter Ash, "an action hero of the likes of Jack Reacher or Jason Bourne" (Lincoln Journal-Star), Ash has a woman's life in his hands - and her mystery is stranger than he could ever imagine. War veteran Peter Ash sought peace and quiet among the towering redwoods of Northern California, but the trip isn't quite the balm he'd hoped for. The dense forest and close fog cause his claustrophobia to buzz and spark, and then he stumbles upon a grizzly long thought to have vanished from this part of the country. In a fight of man against bear, Peter doesn't favor his odds, so he makes a strategic retreat up a nearby sapling. There he finds something strange: a climbing rope affixed to a distant branch above. It leads to another and another, up through the giant tree canopy, ending at a hanging platform. On the platform is a woman on the run. From below them come the sounds of men and gunshots. Just days ago investigative journalist June Cassidy escaped a kidnapping by the men who are still on her trail. She suspects they're after something belonging to her mother, a prominent software designer who recently died in an accident. June needs time to figure out what's going on and help from someone with Peter's particular set of skills. Only one step ahead of their pursuers, Peter and June must race to unravel this peculiar mystery. What they find leads them to an eccentric recluse, a shadowy pseudomilitary organization, and an extraordinary tool that may change the modern world forever.
©2017 Nick Petrie (P)2017 Penguin Audio
The Sea Glass Sisters
Summary
Elizabeth Gallagher has been balancing on the ragged edge for a while now. Then, a rough case on the boards of her 911-operator job collides with a family conflict at home, and Elizabeth finds herself finally coming apart at the seams. A four-state road trip - trapped in a car with her mother - is the last thing she needs. Their destination may be beautiful Hatteras Island, but the reason for going is anything by pleasant. After one disastrous hurricane, and with a second one working its way up the coast, it’s time to convince Aunt Sandy to abandon her little seaside store on North Carolina’s Outer Banks and return to the family fold in Michigan. But when the storm sweeps through, the three women will discover that sisterhood and the sea can change hearts, lives, and futures...often in the most unpredictable of ways.
©2013 Lisa Wingate (P)2018 Two Words Publishing
Kin
Summary
On a scorching hot summer day in Elkwood, Alabama, Claire Lambert staggers naked, wounded, and half-blind away from the scene of an atrocity. She is the sole survivor of a nightmare that claimed her friends, and even as she prays for rescue, the killers - a family of cannibalistic lunatics - are closing in. A soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder returns from Iraq to the news that his brother is among the murdered in Elkwood. In snowbound Detroit, a waitress trapped in an abusive relationship gets an unexpected visit that will lead to bloodshed and send her back on the road to a past she has spent years trying to outrun. And Claire, the only survivor of the Elkwood Massacre, haunted by her dead friends, dreams of vengeance... a dream which will be realized as grief and rage turn good people into cold-blooded murderers and force alliances among strangers. It's time to return to Elkwood. In the spirit of such iconic horror classics as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Deliverance, Kin begins at the end and studies the possible aftermath for the survivors of such traumas upon their return to the real world - the guilt, the grief, the thirst for revenge - and sets them on an unthinkable journey... back into the heart of darkness.
©2012 Kealan Patrick Burke (P)2013 David N. Wilson
One True Patriot
Summary
Special operative Eric Steele must stop a foreign assassin targeting top-tier US military personnel and derail a strike aimed at the heart of America in this third electrifying military thriller from the New York Times best-selling author of All Out War, perfect for fans of Brad Thor, Vince Flynn, and Tom Clancy Two months after taking down terrorist Aleksandr Zakayev, Eric Steele is back in action. Though he is completing his Alpha assignments with the same deadly efficiency as always, he has lingering questions about his missing father - and his own future in the Program. When Steele gets the alert that a fellow Alpha is in serious trouble, he rushes to Paris - only to arrive too late. Jonathan Raines, Stalker Six, is dead, the victim of a brutal attack. While on leave in the City of Light, Raines had met an attractive art historian who lured him into a trap. Before she vanished, the mysterious woman left a warning for anyone from the Alpha program who might follow her. One of the best and most effective warriors in the top-secret Program, Steele has been trained to take on enemies, and no threat will deter him from avenging a fallen brother. But the killer won’t be easy to find. The search takes Steele around the world, from France, to the Adriatic coast of Italy, to the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria, and to a top-secret prison in Russia - where, unexpectedly, he finds more clues about his father - before finally taking him back to the streets of Washington, DC. No one is safe while the killer is on the loose, and the danger is heightened when Steele discovers intel that killing Alphas is just the beginning of a larger, more nefarious plot. The real target is much, much bigger - and it’s up to Steele to prevent catastrophe before he becomes the next elite warrior to fall.
©2020 Sean Parnell (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
The Man Called Noon
Summary
In one swift moment, a fall wiped away his memory. All he knew for certain was that someone wanted him dead - and that he had better learn why. But everywhere he turned there seemed to be more questions - or people too willing to hide the truth behind a smoke screen of lies. He had only the name he had been told was his own, his mysterious skill with a gun, and a link to a half million dollars’ worth of buried gold as evidence of his past life. Was the treasure his? Was he a thief? A killer? He didn’t have the answers, but he needed them soon. Because what he still didn’t know about himself, others did - and if he didn’t unlock the secret of his past, he wasn’t going to have much of a future.
©1982 Louis L'Amour (P)2013 Random House Audio
Sorry for Your Trouble
Summary
A landmark new collection of stories from Richard Ford that showcases his brilliance, sensitivity, and trademark wit and candor! In Sorry for Your Trouble, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times best-selling author Richard Ford enacts a stunning meditation on memory, love, and loss. “Displaced” returns us to a young man’s Mississippi adolescence, and to a shocking encounter with a young Irish immigrant who recklessly tries to solace the narrator’s sorrow after his father’s death. “Driving Up” follows an American woman’s late-in-life journey to Canada to bid good-bye to a lost love now facing the end of this life. “The Run of Yourself”, a novella, sees a New Orleans lawyer navigating the difficulties of living beyond his Irish wife’s death. And “Nothing to Declare” follows a man and a woman’s chance re-meeting in the New Orleans French Quarter, after 20 years, and their discovery of what’s left of love for them. Typically rich with Ford’s emotional lucidity and lyrical precision, Sorry for Your Trouble is a memorable collection from one of our greatest writers.
©2020 Richard Ford (P)2020 HarperAudio
The Blinds
Summary
For fans of Cormac McCarthy, Jim Thompson, the Coen Brothers, and Lost Imagine a place populated by criminals - people plucked from their lives, with their memories altered, who've been granted new identities and a second chance. Welcome to The Blinds, a dusty town in rural Texas populated by misfits who don't know if they've perpetrated a crime or just witnessed one. What's clear to them is that if they leave, they will end up dead. For eight years Sheriff Calvin Cooper has kept an uneasy peace - but after a suicide and a murder in quick succession, the town's residents revolt. Cooper has his own secrets to protect, so when his new deputy starts digging, he needs to keep one step ahead of her - and the mysterious outsiders who threaten to tear the whole place down. The more he learns, the more the hard truth is revealed: The Blinds is no sleepy hideaway. It's simmering with violence and deception, aching heartbreak, and dark betrayals.
©2017 Adam Sternbergh (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour: Unabridged Selections from the Crime Stories: Volume 6
Summary
Traversing a vivid landscape, from sunblasted hills and canyons to the nighttime streets of America's greatest cities, some of Louis L'Amour's most compelling fiction was set in his own time. Here are tales of innocents caught in the schemes of criminals, detectives hunting down truths that hide more lies, gangsters and beauties, private investigators and cops. Here is a world populated by the kinds of people who risk their lives to right a wrong, make a buck, or save a friend. Included here is this collection are "Police Band", "Dead Man's Trail", "The Hills of Homicide", and "The Sucker Switch". Written and performed in the crackling pulp fiction style of the 1940's and 50's, these thrilling, atmospheric stories course with authenticity and bear the mark of a timeless master.
©2008 Louis L'Amour (P)2008 Random House Audio
River of Time
Summary
The River of Time brings together 12 of David Brin's stories, including "The Crystal Spheres", which won the Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Short Story in 1985. Here are powerful tales of heroism and humanity, playful excursions into realms of fancy, and profound meditations on time, memory, and our place in the universe. Who guides our fate? And can we ever hope to wrest control for ourselves? "The Crystal Spheres" offers a fantastic explanation for the Great Silence. Instead of being latecomers, might humanity have come upon the scene too early? "The Loom of Thessaly" merges classical mythology with impudent modern spirit in a science-fiction classic that speculates on the nature of reality. "Thor Meets Captain America" offers an alternate history exploring a chilling scenario behind the Holocaust. In this parallel world, the Nazis narrowly avoid defeat in World War II when they are championed by the gods of the Norse Pantheon. Listen to these and other speculations into the future of humanity in The River of Time. Table of Contents: "The Crystal Spheres" "The Loom of Thessaly" "The Fourth Vocation of George Gustaf" "Senses Three and Six" "Toujours Voir" "A Stage of Memory" "Just a Hint" "Tank Farm Dynamo" "Thor Meets Captain America" "Lungfish" "News from 2025" "The River of Time"
©2014 David Brin (P)2015 David Brin
A Dangerous Breed
Summary
"Atmospheric and taut, A Dangerous Breed is a winner." (Allison Brennan, New York Times best-selling author) Van Shaw’s past and present collide when an ingenious blackmailer pushes him to the brink in this electrifying fifth novel in Glen Erik Hamilton’s gritty and emotionally powerful thriller series. An invitation addressed to his long-dead mother sparks Van Shaw’s curiosity about the woman he barely knew. As he digs into young Moira Shaw's past, he uncovers startling details about her life, including her relationship to a boy named Sean Burke - a boy Moira may have been seeing when she became pregnant. Could this Burke be the biological father who abandoned Van before he was born? Although Van knows all too well that some doors shouldn’t be opened, he decides to investigate the man - only to discover that Burke has an even darker family history than Van's own. But Van’s got more immediate problems. His friend Hollis is in a jam, and helping him out accidentally steers Van into the path of a master extortionist named Bilal Nath. Nath demands that the talented thief mastermind a daring heist targeting a Seattle biotechnology firm, or the blackmailer will destroy the lives of people Van loves. Will Van be forced to steal a viral weapon with the potential to kill thousands? With Bilal Nath coercing him into a possible act of domestic terrorism, Van turns to his formidable crew of lawbreaking friends - including Hollis, Big Will Willard, and Willard's sly and seductive niece Elana - for help. Yet even this team may not be enough. To outwit a brilliant sociopath, Van might just need a cold-blooded killer...a criminal whose blood may run through his own veins.
©2020 Glen Erik Hamilton (P)2020 HarperAudio
Insistence of Vision
Summary
What may we become? How will we endure? The future is a daunting realm, filled with real and imagined perils. So enter it prepared! Here are vivid tales about possible tomorrows, from the keen eye and colorful pen of David Brin, a modern master of speculative fiction. Visit a chillingly plausible tomorrow, when prisoners may be sent to asteroidal gulags. Or might prisons vanish and felons roam, seeing only what society allows? Suppose, amid lavish success, we gain the superpower to fly! Will we even appreciate it, or will we find new reasons to complain? In "Mars Opposition", you'll experience an alien invasion like no other, confronting humanity with a stark and terrible choice; followed by several more tales of conquest from beyond, each of them wildly different. On the other hand, might fantastically potent new beings emerge out of ourselves, as revealed in "Chrysalis"? Featuring guest appearances by Gregory Benford, Jules Verne, and Galileo, this adventure takes you beyond the very singularity in "Stones of Significance", pondering what could happen after humans are like gods. And "Reality Check" asks one of you listeners - just one of you - to wake up! Tomorrow awaits. We can face it and prevail. So long as our stance is brave Insistence of Vision.
©2016 David Brin (P)2016 David Brin