Tom Stechschulte has narrated 127 audiobooks on Listento.it by 93 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.6★ across 1,807 ratings. The most-rated is The Road.
The Soul of the World
Summary
In The Soul of the World, renowned philosopher Roger Scruton defends the experience of the sacred against today’s fashionable forms of atheism. He argues that our personal relationships, moral intuitions, and aesthetic judgments hint at a transcendent dimension that cannot be understood through the lens of science alone. To be fully alive - and to understand what we are - is to acknowledge the reality of sacred things. Rather than an argument for the existence of God, or a defense of the truth of religion, the book is an extended reflection on why a sense of the sacred is essential to human life - and what the final loss of the sacred would mean. In short, the book addresses the most important question of modernity: What is left of our aspirations after science has delivered its verdict about what we are? Drawing on art, architecture, music, and literature, Scruton suggests that the highest forms of human experience and expression tell the story of our religious need, and of our quest for the being who might answer it, and that this search for the sacred endows the world with a soul. Evolution cannot explain our conception of the sacred; neuroscience is irrelevant to our interpersonal relationships, which provide a model for our posture toward God; and scientific understanding has nothing to say about the experience of beauty, which provides a God’s-eye perspective on reality. Ultimately, a world without the sacred would be a completely different world - one in which we humans are not truly at home. Yet despite the shrinking place for the sacred in today’s world, Scruton says, the paths to transcendence remain open.
©2014 Princeton University Press (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Under the Lake
Summary
Stuart Woods, the best-selling author of L.A. Times and Heat, has created a haunting thriller full of ghostly images, murder and old family secrets. Part detective story, part ghost story, part Southern gothic - this absorbing novel will fascinate listeners as a small town’s present, past and future converge.
©1987 Stuart Woods (P)1996 Recorded Books, LLC
Plainsong
Summary
Kent Haruf has received prestigious awards, including a special citation from the PEN/Hemingway Foundation for his finely-tuned works. Before the opening chapter of this novel, Haruf offers a definition. Plainsong is “any simple and unadorned melody or air.” Direct yet elegant, Haruf’s Plainsong is a hymn to the breadth of the human spirit. A high school history teacher in a small Colorado town, Guthrie is raising his two young sons alone. Thoughtful and honest, he is guiding them through a world that is not always kind. Victoria, one of his students, is pregnant, homeless, and vulnerable to the scorn of the town. When Guthrie helps two elderly ranchers take the young woman into their home, an unlikely extended family is born. As the chapters of these people’s lives alternate throughout Plainsong, loneliness and need are transformed into nourishing bonds. Narrator Tom Stechschulte captures the subtle changes that bring the men, women, and children together. His performance highlights every shading of this superb New York Times best-seller.
©1999 Kent Haruf (P)1999 Recorded Books, LLC
Little Blue Truck Leads the Way
Summary
Zooom! Wooeeee...! "Make way!" The big city sure is a speedy, noisy place for a country truck like Blue. Everywhere Blue looks, he sees buses, police cars, taxis, vans, a street sweeper, and even the mayor's limousine. With everyone pushing to be first, soon there's a giant traffic jam! But even a wrangle-tangle is no match for Little Blue Truck, who comes to the rescue in true Blue style.
©2009 Alice Schertle (P)2016 Recorded Books
The Huckleberry Murders
Summary
Award-winning humorist Patrick F. McManus delivers a funny and folksy whodunit from his popular Sheriff Bo Tully series. Hoping for a pleasant day of picking huckleberries, Sheriff Tully instead finds himself investigating a triple homicide and the disappearance of a local rancher.
©2010 Patrick F. McManus (P)2011 Recorded Books, LLC
That Old Ace in the Hole
Summary
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winner Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole is told through the eyes of Bob Dollar, a young Denver man trying to make good in a bad world. Dollar is out of college but aimless, when he takes a job with Global Pork Rind - his task to locate big spreads of land in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles that can be purchased by the corporation and converted to hog farms. Dollar finds himself in a Texas town called Woolybucket, whose idiosyncratic inhabitants have ridden out all manner of seismic shifts in panhandle country. These are tough men and women who witnessed first-hand tornadoes, dust storms, and the demise of the great cattle ranches. Now it's feed lots, hog farms, and ever-expanding drylands. Dollar settles into LaVon Fronk's old bunkhouse for $50 a month, helps out at Cy Frease's Old Dog Cafe, targets Ace and Tater Crouch's ranch for Global Pork, and learns the hard way how vigorously the old owners will hold on to their land, even though their children want no part of it. Robust, often bawdy, strikingly original and intimate, That Old Ace in the Hole tracks the vast waves of change that have shaped the American landscape and character over the past century. In Bob Dollar, Proulx has created one of the most irresistible characters in contemporary fiction.
©1993 Annie Proulx (P)2011 Simon & Schuster
Little Blue Truck
Summary
"Beep! Beep! Beep!" Meet Blue. A muddy country road is no match for this little pick up - that is, until he gets stuck while pushing a dump truck out of the muck. Luckily, Blue has made a pack of farm animal friends along his route. And they're willing to whatever it takes to get their pal back on the road. Filled with truck sounds and animals noises, here is a rollicking homage to the power of friendship and the rewards of helping others.
©2008 Alice Schertle (P)2012 Recorded Books
Across Five Aprils
Summary
Southern Illinois is a place of mixed emotions as the American Civil War erupts. For the Creightons, the war lures two sons to the Union army and one to the Confederacy, leaving 10-year-old Jethro to care for the family farm. As the war rages, Jethro does whatever he can to learn about the fates of his brothers, while the Creighton family faces its own danger. Some townspeople can’t forgive the Creightons for having a rebel son-and they’re willing to use violence to make their feelings known. In a state torn by conflicting loyalties, Jethro is forced to grow up quickly to preserve his family and their home. Across Five Aprils is a powerful classic from Newbery Medal-winning author Irene Hunt. Tom Stechschulte’s homespun narration brings out the spirit and courage of a boy who shoulders a tremendous load - and becomes a young man in the process.
©1964 Irene Hunt (P)2001 Recorded Books
Sometimes a Great Notion
Summary
A literary icon sometimes seen as a bridge between the Beat Generation and the hippies, Ken Kesey scored an unexpected hit with his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. His successful follow-up, Sometimes a Great Notion, was also transformed into a major motion picture, directed by and starring Paul Newman. Oregon’s Stamper family does what it can to survive a bitter strike dividing their tiny logging community. And as tensions rise, delicate family bonds begin to fray and unravel.
©1963, 1964 Ken Kesey (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC
L'Ombre du tyran
Summary
L'angoisse pèse sur Ta'Kayla. Si les souverains du nord du continent sont persuadés que Vaten Mer'rock, l'empereur de Der'Killia, va les envahir et ainsi achever son rêve de régner en maître absolu sur les contrées, ils n'ont en revanche aucune idée des détails de son plan. Ils ignorent qu'une grande partie de celui-ci repose sur les épaules d'une orpheline de vingt-deux ans, recueillie enfant par Vaten Mer'rock dans le but déclaré d'en faire la dame de compagnie de sa fille, Soyeline, et dans le but secret d'en faire un assassin d'élite voué aux ténèbres et dévoué à son maître. Devenue l'ombre du Tyran, Aylin Or'riel se voit confier la mission de tuer l'héritier du royaume sekari, dont l'existence avait été soigneusement dissimulée à l'avidité impériale que le feu roi soupçonnait d'être à l'origine des morts mystérieuses de ses autres fils. Elevé dans le temple de Shank Al'Rin par des moines depuis vingt-trois ans, Lando Sekarin ne se doute pas du piège qui l'attend sur le chemin vers cette couronne éclaboussée du sang des siens. Et il ne se doute pas que sa rencontre avec l'ombre fera tout basculer.
©2019 Aurélie Venem (P)2021 Audible Studios
Going Home
Summary
From Old Yeller to Marley and Me, pet owners been bombarded over the years by emotionally wrenching stories that border on melodramatic and exploitive. In Going Home, Katz strikes a unique balance, giving readers a sentimental yet remarkably grounded guide to dealing with the passing of our canine friends.
©2011 Jon Katz (P)2011 Recorded Books, LLC
The Justice Game
Summary
In The Justice Game by Christy Award-winning author Randy Singer, a brutal murder triggers a gun-rights debate with wide-ranging consequences. When a man guns down a pregnant reporter on live TV, her husband sues the manufacturer of the killer's firearm. As opposing lawyers ignite the courtroom with their eloquence and theatrics, a shadowy cabal threatens the advocates and the justice they seek.
©2009 Randy Singer (P)2009 Recorded Books, LLC
The Tao of Willie
Summary
National icon Willie Nelson has evolved over the years from country music outlaw swimming against a whiskey river to a Zen-like figure of wisdom and contentment. In this autobiographical collection of life advice, The Tao of Willie, one of America's truest hearts reveals the spiritual and practical lessons learned from decades of hard knocks and good bounces. This inspiring and entertaining collection of "Willie wisdom" takes us from his days as a young boy in Texas where he learns to respect his elders, to his roadhouse days when he united redneck rockers, long-haired hippies, and straight-laced country music fans, to the mega-sized benefit concerts and environmentalism that define his boundless heart. And there are plenty of his favorite jokes along the way. With stories that will both make you laugh out loud and look deep inside yourself, he shows us how the Willie way, and the way of the Tao, can also be your way. Let Willie's common sense approach to life awaken you to the happiness that already exists in your own heart. With Willie as your guide, join the river of life and you'll be carried on an amazing journey.
©2006 Willie Nelson (P)2006 Penguin Audio, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. All rights reserved. Penguin Audio is a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
The Ghost Army of World War II
Summary
In the summer of 1944, a handpicked group of young GIs - including such future luminaries as Bill Blass, Ellsworth Kelly, Arthur Singer, Victor Dowd, Art Kane, and Jack Masey - landed in France to conduct a secret mission. Armed with truckloads of inflatable tanks, a massive collection of sound-effects records, and more than a few tricks up their sleeves, their job was to create a traveling road show of deception on the battlefields of Europe, with the German army as their audience. From Normandy to the Rhine, the 1,100 men of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, known as the Ghost Army, conjured up phony convoys, phantom divisions, and make-believe headquarters to fool the enemy about the strength and location of American units. Between missions, the artists filled their duffel bags with drawings and paintings and dragged them across Europe. Every move they made was top secret, and their story was hushed up for decades after the war's end. The Ghost Army of World War II is the first publication to tell the full story of how a traveling road show of artists wielding imagination, paint, and bravado saved thousands of American lives.
©2015 Rick Beyer and Elizabeth Sayles (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
American Rust
Summary
Set in a beautiful but economically devastated Pennsylvania steel town, American Rust is a novel of the lost American dream and the desperation-as well as the acts of friendship, loyalty, and love-that arise from its loss. From local bars to train yards to prison, it is the story of two young men, bound to the town by family, responsibility, inertia, and the beauty around them, who dream of a future beyond the factories and abandoned homes. Left alone to care for his aging father after his mother commits suicide and his sister escapes to Yale, Isaac English longs for a life beyond his hometown. But when he finally sets out to leave for good, accompanied by his temperamental best friend, former high school football star Billy Poe, they are caught up in a terrible act of violence that changes their lives forever. Evoking John Steinbeck's novels of restless lives during the Great Depression, American Rust takes us into the contemporary American heartland at a moment of profound unrest and uncertainty about the future. It is a dark but lucid vision, a moving novel about the bleak realities that battle our desire for transcendence and the power of love and friendship to redeem us.
©2009 Philipp Meyer (P)2009 Recorded Books, LLC
Shavetail
Summary
Critically acclaimed author Thomas Cobb’s second novel is a “thoughtful Western” (Publishers Weekly) based on the actual events of the 1871 Camp Grant massacre. With Shavetail, Cobb delivers a masterly tale of a young man’s initiation into the brutality of conflict. When 17-year-old runaway Ned Thorne joins Captain Robert Franklin at the Camp Grant outpost, located at the edge of Arizona’s Chiricahua mountains, he enters into a world of blood and redemption. Franklin, still reeling from a failed campaign, seizes on the chance to make amends when a nearby farmhouse is raided—and a woman kidnapped—by renegade Apaches. Both Franklin and Thorne will find, however, that battle leaves scars for which there is no salve. A rich display of elegiac prose, Shavetail delivers a story both meditative and driven by a violent intensity. Narrator Tom Stechschulte channels the author’s vivid descriptions of landscape and a fully realized cast of characters.
©2008 Thomas Cobb (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC
The Inquisitor's Key
Summary
Miranda Lovelady, Dr. Bill Brockton's protégé, is spending the summer helping excavate a newly discovered chamber beneath the spectacular Palace of the Popes in Avignon, France. There she discovers a stone chest inscribed with a stunning claim: Inside lie the bones of none other than Jesus of Nazareth. Faced with a case of unimaginable proportions, Miranda summons Brockton for help proving or refuting the claim. Both scientists are skeptical - after all, fake relics abounded during the Middle Ages - but evidence for authenticity looks strong initially, and soon grows stronger. Brockton and Miranda link the bones to the haunting image on the Shroud of Turin, revered by millions as the burial cloth of Christ, and then a laboratory test finds the bones to be 2,000 years old. The finding triggers a deadly tug-of-war between the anthropologists, the Vatican, and a deadly zealot who hopes to use the bones to bring about the Second Coming - and trigger the end of time. Set against an international landscape and weaving a rich tapestry of religion, history, art, and science, The Inquisitor's Key takes Jefferson Bass' work to an exciting new level of suspense.
©2012 Jefferson Bass, LLC (P)2012 HarperCollins Publishers
To the Bright and Shining Sun
Summary
In this novel, Burke brings his brilliant feel for time and place to a stunning story of Appalachia in the early 1960s. Here Perry Woodson Hatfield James, a young man torn between family honor and the lure of seedy watering holes, must somehow survive the tempestuous journey from boyhood to manhood and escape the dark and atavistic heritage of the Cumberland Mountains.
©2013 James Lee Burke (P)2013 Simon & Schuster Audio
Palm Sunday
Summary
In this self-portrait by an American genius, Kurt Vonnegut writes with beguiling wit and poignant wisdom about his favorite comedians, country music, a dead friend, a dead marriage, and various cockamamie aspects of his all-too-human journey through life. This is a work that resonates with Vonnegut's singular voice: the magic sound of a born storyteller mesmerizing us with truth.
©1981 The Ramjac Corporation (P)2015 Audible Inc.
Hit List
Summary
Richard Belzer and David Wayne are back to set the record straight after Dead Wrong; this time they're going to uncover the truth about the many witness deaths tied to the JFK assassination. For decades, government pundits have dismissed these "coincidental" deaths, even regarding them as "myths" as "urban legends." Like most people, Richard and David were initially unsure about what to make of these 'coincidences'. After all, events don't "consult the odds" prior to happening; they simply happen. Then someone comes along later and figures out what the odds of it happening were. Some of the deaths seemed purely coincidental; heart attacks, hunting accidents. Others clearly seemed noteworthy; witnesses who did seem to know something and did seem to die mysteriously. Hit List is a fair examination of the evidence of each case, leading to (necessarily) different conclusions. The findings were absolutely staggering; as some cases were clearly linked to a "clean-up operation" after the murder of President Kennedy, while others were the result of 'other forces'. The impeccable research and writing of Richard Belzer and David Wayne show that if the government is trying to hide anything, they're the duo who will uncover it.
©2013 Richard Belzer and David Wayne (P)2013 Audible, Inc.