Will Collyer has narrated 28 audiobooks on Listento.it by 31 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.3★ across 183 ratings. The most-rated is The Space Barons.
The Space Barons
Summary
The historic quest to rekindle the human exploration and colonization of space led by two rivals and their vast fortunes, egos, and visions of space as the next entrepreneurial frontier The Space Barons is the story of a group of billionaire entrepreneurs who are pouring their fortunes into the epic resurrection of the American space program. Nearly a half century after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, these Space Barons - most notably Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, along with Richard Branson and Paul Allen - are using Silicon Valley-style innovation to dramatically lower the cost of space travel and send humans even further than NASA has gone. These entrepreneurs have founded some of the biggest brands in the world - Amazon, Microsoft, Virgin, Tesla, PayPal - and upended industry after industry. Now they are pursuing the biggest disruption of all: space. Based on years of reporting and exclusive interviews with all four billionaires, this authoritative account is a dramatic tale of risk and high adventure, the birth of a new Space Age, fueled by some of the world's richest men as they struggle to end governments' monopoly on the cosmos. The Space Barons is also a story of rivalry - hard-charging startups warring with established contractors, and the personal clashes of the leaders of this new space movement, particularly Musk and Bezos, as they aim for the moon and Mars and beyond. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2018 Christian Davenport (P)2018 Hachette Audio
Billion Dollar Loser
Summary
With incredible access and piercing insight, New York magazine contributing editor Reeves Wiedeman tells the full inside story of WeWork and its CEO, Adam Neumann, who together came to represent one of the most audacious, and improbable, rise and falls in American business. In its earliest days, WeWork promised the impossible: to make the American work place cool. Adam Neumann, an Israeli immigrant determined to make his fortune in the United States, landed on the idea of repurposing surplus Brooklyn office spaces for the burgeoning freelance class. Over the course of 10 years, WeWork attracted billions of some of the most sought-after investment capital in the world, while spending it to build a global real estate empire. Moving between the worlds of New York real estate, Silicon Valley venture capital, and the very specific spiritual and intellectual force field erected by Adam Neumann himself, Billion Dollar Loser lays bare the internal drama inside WeWork, beginning with the breakneck speed at which its CEO built and grew his company. Culminating in a day-by-day account of the five weeks leading up to WeWork’s botched IPO, Wiedeman exposes - thanks to more than 200 interviews - the story of the company’s Hail Mary pass to finally secure the funding that would make its business model work. Billion Dollar Loser is the first book to indelibly capture the highly leveraged, all-blue-sky world of American business in President Trump’s first term, and also offers a sober reckoning with its fallout.
©2020 Reeves Wiedeman (P)2020 Little, Brown & Company
Slugfest
Summary
The first in-depth, behind-the-scenes book treatment of the rivalry between the two comic book giants. They are the two titans of the comic book industry - the Coke and Pepsi of superheroes - and for more than 50 years, Marvel and DC have been locked in an epic battle for spandex supremacy. At stake is not just sales, but cultural relevancy and the hearts of millions of fans. To many partisans, Marvel is now on top. But for much of the early 20th century, it was DC that was the undisputed leader, having launched the American superhero genre with the 1938 publication of Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel's Superman strip. DC's titles sold millions of copies every year, and its iconic characters were familiar to nearly everyone in America. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman - DC had them all. And then in 1961, an upstart company came out of nowhere to smack mighty DC in the chops. With the publication of Fantastic Four #1, Marvel changed the way superheroes stories were done. Writer-editor Stan Lee, artists Jack Kirby, and the talented Marvel bullpen subsequently unleashed a string of dazzling new creations, including the Avengers, Hulk, Spider-Man, the X-Men, and Iron Man. Marvel's rise forever split fandom into two opposing tribes. Suddenly the most telling question you could ask a superhero lover became "Marvel or DC?" Slugfest, the first book to chronicle the history of this epic rivalry into a single, in-depth narrative, is the story of the greatest corporate rivalry never told. Complete with interviews with the major names in the industry, Slugfest reveals the arsenal of schemes the two companies have employed in their attempts to outmaneuver the competition, whether it be stealing ideas, poaching employees, planting spies, or launching price wars. The feud has never completely disappeared, and it simmers on a low boil to this day. With DC and Marvel characters becoming global icons worth billions, if anything, the stakes are higher now than ever before.
©2017 Reed Tucker (P)2017 Hachette Audio
The Good Nurse
Summary
An intimate - and frightening - glimpse inside the mind of America's most prolific serial killer, Charles Cullen, whose 16-year long "nursing" career left as many as 400 dead. After his December 2003 arrest, registered nurse Charlie Cullen was quickly dubbed "The Angel of Death" by the media. But Cullen was no mercy killer, nor was he a simple monster. He was a favorite son, husband, beloved father, best friend, and celebrated caregiver. Implicated in the deaths of as many as 300 patients, he was also perhaps the most prolific serial killer in American history. Cullen's murderous career in the world's most trusted profession spanned sixteen years and nine hospitals across New Jersey and Pennsylvania. When, in March of 2006, Charles Cullen was marched from his final sentencing in an Allentown, Pennsylvania, courthouse into a waiting police van, it seemed certain that the chilling secrets of his life, career, and capture would disappear with him. Now, in a riveting piece of investigative journalism nearly 10 years in the making, journalist Charles Graeber presents the whole story for the first time. Based on hundreds of pages of previously unseen police records, interviews, wire-tap recordings and videotapes, as well as exclusive jailhouse conversations with Cullen himself and the confidential informant who helped bring him down, The Good Nurse weaves an urgent, terrifying tale of murder, friendship, and betrayal. Graeber's portrait of Cullen depicts a surprisingly intelligent and complicated young man whose promising career was overwhelmed by his compulsion to kill, and whose shy demeanor masked a twisted interior life hidden even to his family and friends. Were it not for the hardboiled, unrelenting work of two former Newark homicide detectives racing to put together the pieces of Cullen's professional past, and a fellow nurse willing to put everything at risk, including her job and the safety of her children, there's no telling how many more lives could have been lost. In the tradition of In Cold Blood, The Good Nurse does more than chronicle Cullen's deadly career and the breathless efforts to stop him; it paints an incredibly vivid portrait of madness and offers a penetrating look inside America's medical system. Harrowing and irresistibly paced, this book will make you look at medicine, hospitals, and the people who work in them, in an entirely different way.
©2013 Charles Graeber (P)2013 Hachette Audio
Kids These Days
Summary
Named one of Fall 2017's most anticipated books by New York magazine, Publishers Weekly, Nylon, and LitHub Everyone knows "what's wrong with millennials". Glenn Beck says we've been ruined by "participation trophies". Simon Sinek says we have low self-esteem. An Australian millionaire says millennials could all afford homes if we'd just give up avocado toast. Thanks, millionaire. This millennial is here to prove them all wrong. "The best, most comprehensive work of social and economic analysis about our benighted generation." (Tony Tulathimutte, author of Private Citizens) "The kind of brilliantly simple idea that instantly clarifies an entire area of culture."(William Deresiewicz, author of Excellent Sheep) Millennials have been stereotyped as lazy, entitled, narcissistic, and immature. We've gotten so used to sloppy generational analysis filled with dumb clichés about young people that we've lost sight of what really unites millennials. Namely: We are the most educated and hardworking generation in American history. We poured historic and insane amounts of time and money into preparing ourselves for the 21st century labor market. We have been taught to consider working for free (homework, internships) a privilege for our own benefit. We are poorer, more medicated, and more precariously employed than our parents, grandparents, even our great-grandparents, with less of a social safety net to boot. Kids These Days is about why. In brilliant, crackling prose, early Wall Street occupier Malcolm Harris gets mercilessly real about our maligned birth cohort. Examining trends like runaway student debt, the rise of the intern, mass incarceration, social media, and more, Harris gives us a portrait of what it means to be young in America today that will wake you up and piss you off. Millennials were the first generation raised explicitly as investments, Harris argues, and in Kids These Days, he dares us to confront and take charge of the consequences now that we are grown up.
©2017 Malcolm Harris (P)2017 Hachette Audio
The Breakthrough
Summary
Follow along as this New York Times best-selling author details the astonishing scientific discovery of the code to unleashing the human immune system to fight in this "captivating and heartbreaking" book (The Wall Street Journal). For decades, scientists have puzzled over one of medicine's most confounding mysteries: Why doesn't our immune system recognize and fight cancer the way it does other diseases, like the common cold? As it turns out, the answer to that question can be traced to a series of tricks that cancer has developed to turn off normal immune responses - tricks that scientists have only recently discovered and learned to defeat. The result is what many are calling cancer's "penicillin moment", a revolutionary discovery in our understanding of cancer and how to beat it. In The Breakthrough, New York Times best-selling author of The Good Nurse Charles Graeber guides listeners through the revolutionary scientific research bringing immunotherapy out of the realm of the miraculous and into the forefront of 21st-century medical science. As advances in the fields of cancer research and the human immune system continue to fuel a therapeutic arms race among biotech and pharmaceutical research centers around the world, the next step - harnessing the wealth of new information to create modern and more effective patient therapies - is unfolding at an unprecedented pace, rapidly redefining our relationship with this all-too-human disease. Groundbreaking, riveting, and expertly told, The Breakthrough is the story of the game-changing scientific discoveries that unleash our natural ability to recognize and defeat cancer, as told through the experiences of the patients, physicians, and cancer immunotherapy researchers who are on the front lines. This is the incredible true story of the race to find a cure, a dispatch from the life-changing world of modern oncological science, and a brave new chapter in medical history. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2018 Charles Graeber (P)2018 Hachette Audio
Dragonfly
Summary
At the height of WWII, five idealistic young Americans receive a mysterious letter from the OSS, asking them if they are willing to fight for their country. The men and women from very different backgrounds - a Texan athlete with German roots, an upper-crust son of a French mother and a wealthy businessman, a dirt-poor Midwestern fly fisherman, an orphaned fashion designer, and a ravishingly beautiful female fencer - all answer the call of duty, but each for a secret reason of his or her own. They bond immediately, in a group code-named Dragonfly. Soon after their training, they are dropped behind enemy lines and take up their false identities, isolated from one another except for a secret drop-box, but in close contact with the powerful Nazi elite who have Paris under siege. Thus begins a dramatic and riveting cat-and-mouse game, as the young Americans seek to stay under the radar until a fatal misstep leads to the capture and the firing-squad execution of one of their team. But...is everything as it seems, or is this one more elaborate act of spycraft?
©2019 Leila Meacham (P)2019 Hachette Audio
The Warning
Summary
Two roads lead to Mount Hope. None leads out. There's no place to run in a community that's been taken - and is being intentionally kept - off the grid. A small southern town was evacuated after a freak power-plant accident. As the first anniversary of the mishap approaches, some residents are allowed to return past the national guard roadblocks. Mount Hope natives Maggie and Jordan quickly discover that their hometown is not as it was before. Downed cellular networks fail to resume service. Animals savagely attack humans. And the damaged power plant, where Jordan's father is an engineer, is under military lockdown. As friends and family morph into terrifying strangers, the Maggie and Jordan increasingly turn to each other. Their determination to discover who - or what - has taken control of Mount Hope soon has them in the cross-hairs of a presence more sinister than any they could have imagined.
©2019 James Patterson (P)2019 Hachette Audio
The Fair Chase
Summary
An award-winning historian tells the story of hunting in America, showing how this sport has shaped our national identity. From Daniel Boone to Teddy Roosevelt, hunting is one of America's most sacred - but also most fraught - traditions. It was promoted in the 19th century as a way to reconnect "soft" urban Americans with nature and to the legacy of the country's pathfinding heroes. Fair chase, a hunting code of ethics emphasizing fairness, rugged independence, and restraint towards wildlife, emerged as a worldview and gave birth to the conservation movement. But the sport's popularity also caused class, ethnic, and racial divisions, and stirred debate about the treatment of Native Americans and the role of hunting in preparing young men for war. This sweeping and balanced book offers a definitive account of hunting in America. It is essential listening for anyone interested in the evolution of our nation's foundational myths. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2018 Philip Dray (P)2018 Hachette Audio
See You Again in Pyongyang
Summary
A "close-up look at the cloistered country" (USA Today), See You Again in Pyongyang is American writer Travis Jeppesen's "probing" and "artful" (New York Times Book Review) chronicle of his travels in North Korea - an eye-opening portrait that goes behind the headlines about Trump and Kim, revealing North Koreans' "entrepreneurial spirit, and hidden love of foreign media, as well as their dreams and fears" (Los Angeles Times). In See You Again in Pyongyang, Travis Jeppesen, the first American to complete a university program in North Korea, culls from his experiences living, traveling, and studying in the country to create a multifaceted portrait of the country and its idiosyncratic capital city in the Kim Jong Un Era. Anchored by the experience of his five trips to North Korea and his interactions with citizens from all walks of life, Jeppesen takes listeners behind the propaganda, showing how the North Korean system actually works in daily life. He challenges the notion that Pyongyang is merely a "showcase capital" where everything is staged for the benefit of foreigners, as well as the idea that Pyongyangites are brainwashed robots. Jeppesen introduces listeners to an array of fascinating North Koreans, from government ministers with a side hustle in black market Western products to young people enamored with American pop culture. With unique personal insight and a rigorous historical grounding, Jeppesen goes beyond the media clichés, showing North Koreans in their full complexity. See You Again in Pyongyang is an essential addition to the literature about one of the world's most fascinating and mysterious places.
©2018 Travis Jeppesen (P)2018 Hachette Audio
Fence: Striking Distance
Summary
The boys of Kings Row bout with drama, rivalry, and romance in this original YA novel by The New York Times best-selling author Sarah Rees Brennan - inspired by the award-nominated comic series by C.S. Pacat and Johanna the Mad. Sixteen-year-old Nicholas Cox is the illegitimate son of a retired fencing champion who dreams of getting the proper training he could never afford. After earning a place on the elite Kings Row fencing team, Nicholas must prove himself to his rival, Seiji Katayma, and navigate the clashes, friendships, and relationships between his teammates on the road to state championships - where Nicholas might finally have the chance to spar with his golden-boy half-brother. Coach Williams decides to take advantage of the boys' morale after a recent victory and assigns them a course of team building exercises to further deepen their bonds. It takes a shoplifting scandal, a couple of moonlit forest strolls, several hilariously bad dates, and a whole lot of introspection for the team to realize they are stronger together than they could ever be apart. The first installment of this enticing original YA novel series by Sarah Rees Brennan, rich with casual diversity and queer self-discovery, explores never-before-seen drama inspired by C.S. Pacat's critically acclaimed Fence comic series and boasts original cover and interior art by Johanna the Mad. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 Sarah Rees Brennan, Johanna the Mad, and C. S. Pacat (P)2020 Little, Brown Young Readers
The Thicket
Summary
Acclaimed author Joe Lansdale's landmark and mythic tale of love and vengeance at the dark dawn of the East Texas oil boom. Jack Parker knows all too well how treacherous turn-of-the-century East Texas can be. His parents did not survive a smallpox epidemic. His grandfather was murdered. Now his sister Lula has been kidnapped by a criminal who may believe wearing a dead man's clothes protects them both from death. With bounty hunter Shorty, a charismatic and cunning dwarf, and Eustace, a gravedigging son of an ex-slave, the heartbroken young Jack sets off on an epic quest to rescue his sister from the corrupt men who control much of the new territory. In the throes of being civilized, East Texas is still a wild, feral place. Oil wells spurt liquid money from the ground. But blood and redemption rule supreme.
©2013 Joe R. Lansdale (P)2013 Hachette Audio
Never Ask Me
Summary
Each of us has a question we dread. When the simple community of Lakehaven is shaken by a violent crime, doubts begin to arise among the locals about whom they can trust. In a quiet neighborhood in the wealthy Austin suburb of Lakehaven, the body of Danielle Roberts is discovered on a park bench. Danielle was a beloved member of the community, an adoption consultant who delivered the joy of parenthood to a number of local families. Her murder shocks Lakehaven. Perhaps no other family is as crushed as the Pollitts, who lived two houses down from Danielle and thought of her almost like family. Her death becomes the catalyst for a maelstrom of suspicion and intrigue. You have been told a huge lie, an anonymous email charges the son, Grant. No one can learn the truth now, thinks the father, Kyle. Never ask me what I'd do to protect my family, resolves the wife, Iris. I'll do whatever it takes to save him, vows the daughter, Julia, of Danielle's grieving teenage son. The Pollitts always thought they'd always be there for each other. When each begins to suspect the others of the unimaginable, the strength of their bonds will be tested in extraordinary new ways. The latest from New York Times best-selling author Jeff Abbott is his most suspenseful thriller yet: a riveting tale of the dangerous secrets one family has concealed - and what happens when the question each Pollitt hoped they'd never be asked threatens to expose their darkest truths.
©2020 Jeff Abbott (P)2020 Hachette Audio
A Thousand Hills to Heaven
Summary
One couple's inspiring memoir of healing a Rwandan village, raising a family near the old killing fields, and building a restaurant named Heaven. Newlyweds Josh and Alissa were at a party and received a challenge that shook them to the core: Do you think you can really make a difference? Especially in a place like Rwanda, where the scars of genocide linger and poverty is rampant? While Josh worked hard bringing food and health care to the country's rural villages, Alissa was determined to put their foodie expertise to work. The couple opened Heaven, a gourmet restaurant overlooking Kigali, which became an instant success. Remarkably, they found that between helping youth marry their own local ingredients with gourmet recipes (and mix up "the best guacamole in Africa") and teaching them how to help themselves, they created much-needed jobs while showing that genocide's survivors really could work together. While first a memoir of love, adventure, and family, A Thousand Hills to Heaven also provides a remarkable view of how, through health, jobs, and economic growth, our foreign aid programs can be quickly remodeled and work to end poverty worldwide.
©2013 Josh Ruxin (P)2014 Hachette
Guts & Glory: The American Revolution
Summary
A fierce group of rebels who will never surrender. An empire with an army that has never known defeat. And a war that changed the world forever. From George Washington crossing the icy Delaware to Molly Pitcher fearlessly firing her cannon, the people of the American Revolution were some of the bravest and most inspiring of all time. Jump into a riot in the streets of Boston, join the Culper Spy Ring as they steal secrets in the dead of night, and watch the signing of the Declaration of Independence in this accessible guide to the birth of the United States. History buff and popular blogger Ben Thompson's extensive research and irresistible storytelling make history come alive in this fourth book in the unforgettable Guts & Glory series! PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2017 Ben Thompson (P)2017 Hachette Audio
Schroder
Summary
A lyrical and deeply affecting novel recounting the seven days a father spends on the road with his daughter after kidnapping her during a parental visit. Attending a New England summer camp, young Eric Schroder - a first-generation East German immigrant - adopts the last name Kennedy to more easily fit in, a fateful white lie that will set him on an improbable and ultimately tragic course. Schroder relates the story of Eric's urgent escape years later to Lake Champlain, Vermont, with his 6-year-old daughter, Meadow, in an attempt to outrun the authorities amid a heated custody battle with his wife, who will soon discover that her husband is not who he says he is. From a correctional facility, Eric surveys the course of his life to understand - and maybe even explain - his behavior: the painful separation from his mother in childhood; a harrowing escape to America with his taciturn father; a romance that withered under a shadow of lies; and his proudest moments and greatest regrets as a flawed but loving father. Alternately lovesick and ecstatic, Amity Gaige's deftly imagined novel offers a profound meditation on history and fatherhood, and the many identities we take on in our lives - those we are born with and those we construct for ourselves.
©2013 Amity Gaige (P)2013 Hachette Audio
Out There
Summary
We've all asked ourselves the question. It's impossible to look up at the stars and NOT think about it: Are we alone in the universe? Books, movies, and television shows proliferate that attempt to answer this question and explore it. In Out There, Space.com senior writer Dr. Michael Wall treats that question as merely the beginning, touching off a wild ride of exploration into the final frontier. He considers, for instance, the myriad of questions that would arise once we do discover life beyond Earth (an eventuality which, top NASA officials told Wall, is only drawing closer). What would the first aliens we meet look like? Would they be little green men or mere microbes? Would they be found on a planet in our own solar system or orbiting a star far, far away? Would they intend to harm us, and if so, how might they do it? And might they already have visited? Out There is arranged in a simple question-and-answer format. The answers are delivered in Dr. Wall's informal but informative style, which mixes in a healthy dose of humor and pop culture to make big ideas easier to swallow. Dr. Wall covers questions far beyond alien life, venturing into astronomy, physics, and the practical realities of what long-term life might be like for we mere humans in outer space, such as the idea of lunar colonies, and even economic implications. Dr. Wall also shares the insights of some of the leading lights in space exploration today, and shows how the next space age might be brighter than ever.
©2018 Michael Wall (P)2018 Hachette Audio
This Is How You Die
Summary
If a machine could predict how you would die, would you want to know? This is the tantalizing premise of This Is How You Die, the brilliant follow-up anthology to the self-published best seller, Machine of Death. The machines started popping up around the world. The offer was tempting: with a simple blood test, anyone could know how they would die. But the machines didn't give dates or specific circumstances - just a single word or phrase. Drowned, cancer, old age, choked on a handful of popcorn. And though the predictions were always accurate, they were also often frustratingly vague. Old age, it turned out, could mean either dying of natural causes, or being shot by an elderly, bedridden man in a botched home invasion. The machines held onto that old-world sense of irony in death: you can know how it's going to happen, but you'll still be surprised when it does. This addictive anthology - sinister, witty, existential, and fascinating - collects the best of the thousands of story submissions the editors received in the wake of the success of the first volume, and exceeds the first in every way.
©2013 Matthew Bennardo, David Malki, Ryan North (P)2013 Hachette Audio
How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog
Summary
They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. But what about relativity? Physics professor Chad Orzel and his inquisitive canine companion, Emmy, tackle the concepts of general relativity in this irresistible introduction to Einstein's physics. Through armchair- and sometimes passenger-seat-conversations with Emmy about the relative speeds of dog and cat motion or the logistics of squirrel-chasing, Orzel translates complex Einsteinian ideas - the slowing of time for a moving observer, the shrinking of moving objects, the effects of gravity on light and time, black holes, the Big Bang, and of course, E=mc2 - into examples simple enough for a dog to understand. A lively romp through one of the great theories of modern physics, How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog will teach you everything you ever wanted to know about space, time, and anything else you might have slept through in high school physics class. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2012 Chad Orzel (P)2020 Basic Books
One Step to You
Summary
From an international best-selling author, this modern romance story explores whether distance and separation can ever keep true love apart. Published for the first time in English, One Step to You has captured the hearts of millions and garnered a dedicated fan base across the world. The Romeo and Juliet of their time, Babi and Step spend the best days of their lives together, but belonging to opposite worlds may eventually tear them apart forever. Just as in every other place in the world, teenagers in Rome, Italy, forge their own path separate from their parents. Some are hardworking and studious like Babi, a young girl waiting to find the love of her life. Then there are bad boys like Step, who are from the wrong side of the tracks. The Romeo and Juliet of their time, Babi and Step are from different worlds, want different things, but cannot help falling in love. Although their relationship won't be easy, their love may be the best thing to ever happen to them.
©2021 Federico Moccia and Antony Shugaar (P)2021 Grand Central Publishing