Showing results by narrator "George Newbern" in All Categories

Troy Falconer returns home, after years of working as a solitary car thief, to help his younger brother, Harlan, search for his wife, who has run away with the little money he had. When they steal a station wagon for the journey, the brothers accidentally kidnap Martha Zacharias, a Mennonite girl asleep in the back of the car. Martha turns out to be a stubborn survivor who refuses to be sent home.

The funeral of Charles Henry Topping on Manhattan’s Upper East Side would have been a minor affair (his two-hundred-word obit in The New York Times notwithstanding) but for the presence of one particular mourner: the notoriously reclusive author A. N. Dyer, whose novel Ampersand stands as a classic of American teenage angst. But as Andrew Newbold Dyer delivers the eulogy for his oldest friend, he suffers a breakdown over the life he’s led and the people he’s hurt and the novel that will forever endure as his legacy.

When did “parenting” become a verb? Why is it so hard to parent, and so rife with the possibility of failure? Sitcom families of the past—the Cleavers, the Bradys, the Conners—didn’t seem to lose any sleep about their parenting methods. Today, parents are likely to be up late, doomscrolling on parenting websites. In Long Days, Short Years, Andrew Bomback—physician, writer, and father of three young children—looks at why it can be so much fun to be a parent but, at the same time, so frustrating and difficult to parent.

In the latest, freshly updated edition of Make the Right Choice: Lead with Passion, Elevate Your Team, and Unleash the Fun at Work, renowned keynote speaker, improv actor, and comedian Joel Zeff delivers a unique, interactive, humorous, and highly entertaining blueprint to create a new approach to work that is inspiring, fun, and infinitely more effective.

In this tale, twelve princesses, each of astounding beauty, are locked in their shared bedroom by their father each night. Vexed to discover that their dancing shoes show signs of wear every morning, the king demands an explanation, which they refuse to give. The king offers his kingdom and marriage to any of his daughters as a reward to the man who solves the mystery. However, if the mystery remains unsolved after three nights, the erstwhile suitor will be put to death. After many entrants fail, a wise old soldier finally cracks the case.

Brooding expat and journalist Paul Leibovitz is beginning to imagine a new life for himself in Hong Kong, one in which the grief over a recent family tragedy doesn't consume him and his love for Christine Wu brings him great joy. When Christine gets an unexpected and emotionally-charged letter from her estranged brother, Paul journeys with her to a remote village outside Shanghai, where a mysterious illness is affecting the locals.

A boy is murdered and made into a stew by his evil stepmother, who buries his bones beneath a juniper tree outside their house. The boy is reincarnated as a bird who flies forth from the tree and enlists the townspeople to help him exact revenge.

American Isis is the first Plath biography benefiting from the new Ted Hughes archive at the British Library, which includes 41 letters between Plath and Hughes as well as a host of unpublished papers. The Sylvia Plath that Carl Rollyson brings to us in American Isis is no shrinking violet overshadowed by Ted Hughes; she is a modern-day Isis, a powerful force that embraced high and low culture to establish herself in the literary firmament.

In Bookends, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon offers a compilation of pieces about literature - age-old classics as well as his own - that presents a unique look into his literary origins and influences, the books that shaped his taste and formed his ideas about writing and reading.

For fans of Michael Lewis, the astounding untold story of how professional sports transformed, in the span of a single generation, from a cottage industry into a massive global business. In the cash-soaked world of contemporary sports, where every season brings news of higher salaries, endorsement deals, and television contracts, it is mind-boggling to remember that as recently as the 1970s elite athletes earned so little money that many were forced to work second jobs in the off-season to make ends meet.

It’s been a year since Cameron Kane’s wife Alison died in a fiery car crash. Aside from the grief that has shattered his life, Cameron struggles to reconcile the memory of his wife with the reality of how she died. The police couldn’t explain what she was doing in a Lamborghini with Maxwell Harding, a wealthy white-collar criminal, but they were certain of one thing: both Alison and Maxwell died in the horrific accident. Cameron is trying to start a new life with his daughter when he walks past a man who resembles Maxwell—the man who was pronounced dead beyond all doubt more than a year ago.

Jake Stiles has no idea what he's signing up for when he dashes into the rain to help a stranger and her dog who have been in a car accident, but fate has stepped in. Jenna Dunning was on her way to return her sister's high-energy border collie to a shelter after another failed attempt at a forever home for him when a distracted driver ran into them. Jenna is being taken to the hospital and must rely on a caring stranger to take charge of the terrified canine.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of How We Got to Now by Steven Johnson, read by George Newbern. From Steven Johnson, the best-selling author of Where Good Ideas Come From, comes How We Got to Now, which tracks the surprising inspirations and unexpected consequences of the most influential innovations.

Jonathan Cott met John Lennon in 1968 and remained friends with him and Yoko Ono until John's death in 1980. He has kept in touch with Yoko since that time, and is one of the few writers who understands her profoundly positive influence on Lennon. This deeply personal book recounts the course of these friendships over the decades and provides an intimate look at two of the most astonishing cultural figures of our time. And what Jonathan Cott has to say will be found nowhere else.

Time is the most commonly used noun in the English language; it's always on our minds, and it advances through every living moment. But what is time exactly? Do children experience it the same way adults do? Why does it seem to slow down when we're bored and speed by as we get older? How and why does time fly? In this witty and meditative exploration, award-winning author and New Yorker staff writer Alan Burdick takes listeners on a personal quest to understand how time gets in us and why we perceive it the way we do.

From the Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of The Theory of Everything, Darkest Hour, and The Two Popes comes the fascinating account of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s friendship—one of the most impactful relationships in history, and the basis of an upcoming play and film.

Another bucolic fall in Northern New Hampshire, and the semester is under way at Bishop's Hill Academy. But the school year starts off less than tranquil. The new headmaster, Jim Hawthorne, has liberal ideas that the staff finds far from welcome. Serene on the surface, the ivy-clad, tree-lined campus gives few clues to the school's history of special privileges, petty corruptions, and hidden allegiances. But as autumn advances, the affable smiles and pretenses of virtue wear thin. And as winter closes in, students, teachers, and staff get an education in savagery and murder.

In this book, Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman offer listeners insight into the risks and benefits of driverless cars, and a lucid and engaging explanation of the enabling technology. Recent advances in software and robotics are toppling long-standing technological barriers that for decades have confined self-driving cars to the realm of fantasy. A new kind of artificial intelligence software called deep learning gives cars rapid and accurate visual perception. Human drivers can relax and take their eyes off the road.

The biographer - so often in the shadows, kibitzing, casting doubt, proving facts - comes to the stage in this funny, poignant, endearing tale of how writers' lives get documented. James Atlas, the celebrated chronicler of Saul Bellow and Delmore Schwartz, takes us back to his own childhood in suburban Chicago, where he fell in love with literature and, early on, found in himself the impulse to study writers' lives.

Ed Beltran, the CEO of a powerhouse leadership communication company, believes the antidote to stressed-out workplaces starts with conversation. Beltran has developed a science-based model to reduce stress and help people build what he calls fierce resilience. By leveraging the power of conversations, individuals discover their unique stressors, master skills to neutralize stressors, and build unwavering resilience that elevates their emotional well-being.