Showing results by narrator "Aaron Baker" in All Categories

After several years living abroad, the fictional protagonist of Galatea 2.2 - Richard Powers - returns to the US as Humanist-in-Residence at the enormous Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences. There he runs afoul of Philip Lentz, a cognitive neurologist intent upon modeling the human brain. Lentz involves Powers in an outlandish and irresistible project: to train a neural net on a canonical list of Great Books. Through repeated tutorials, the device grows gradually more worldly, until it demands to know its own name, sex, race, and reason for existing.

Erebus Resort, occupying a magnificent hundred-thousand acre valley deep in the Colorado Rockies, offers guests the experience of viewing woolly mammoths, Irish Elk, and giant ground sloths in their native habitat, brought back from extinction through the magic of genetic manipulation. When a billionaire's son and his new wife are kidnapped and murdered in the Erebus back country by what is assumed to be a gang of eco-terrorists, Colorado Bureau of Investigation Agent Frances Cash partners with county sheriff James Colcord to track down the perpetrators.

This is the story of two boys, Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude. They are friends and neighbors, but because Dylan is white and Mingus is black, their friendship is not simple. This is the story of their Brooklyn neighborhood, which is almost exclusively black despite the first whispers of something that will become known as "gentrification."

Edsel Bronfman works as a junior executive shipping clerk for an importer of Korean flatware. He lives in a seedy neighborhood and spends his free time with his spirited mother. Things happen to other people, and Bronfman knows it. Until, that is, he gets a call from operator 61217 telling him that he's won a free weekend at a beachfront condo in Destin, Florida. But there's a catch: The offer is intended for a couple, and Bronfman has only 79 days to find someone to take with him.

At the age of 13, Pella Marsh emigrates with her family to the Planet of the Archbuilders. These enigmatic aborigines have names like Lonely Dumptruck and Hiding Kneel, and a civilization that baffles and frightens their human visitors. As the spikily independent Pella becomes an uneasy envoy between two species, Girl in Landscape deftly interweaves themes of exploration and otherness, loss, and sexual awakening.

Children of the New World introduces listeners to a near-future world of social media implants, memory manufacturers, dangerously immersive virtual reality games, and alarmingly intuitive robots. Many of these characters live in a utopian future of instant connection and technological gratification that belies an unbridgeable human distance, while others inhabit a post-collapse landscape made primitive by disaster, which they must work to rebuild as we once did millennia ago.

Philip is in love with Alice. As the novel opens, he is beginning to lose her. Not to another man, as he fears, but to, literally, nothing. Alice is a physicist, and a team at the University where both she and Philip work has created a hole, a vacuum, a doorway of nothingness inside the laboratory. They call it "Lack". Alice becomes obsessed with Lack, as Philip is obsessed by Alice.

In the weird and wonderful tradition of Kelly Link and Karen Russell, Amber Sparks' dazzling new collection bursts forth with stories that render the apocalyptic and otherworldly hauntingly familiar. In "The Cemetery for Lost Faces", two orphans translate their grief into taxidermy, artfully arresting the passage of time. The anchoring novella, The Unfinished World, unfurls a surprising love story between a free and adventurous young woman and a dashing filmmaker burdened by a mysterious family.

Ragle Gumm has a unique job: every day he wins a newspaper contest. And when he isn't consulting his charts and tables, he enjoys his life in a small town, in 1959. At least, that's what he thinks. But then strange things start happening. He finds a phone book where all the numbers have been disconnected, and a magazine article about a famous starlet named Marilyn Monroe, whom he's never heard of. Plus, everyday objects are beginning to disappear and are replaced by strips of paper with words written on them, like "bowl of flowers" and "soft-drink stand".

In his “finely crafted first novel” ( Booklist), Peter Geye evokes the savage beauty of Lake Superior’s north shore and the bittersweet reunion of a dying father and his hurting son after decades of estrangement. When Noah Torr returns to his family’s Minnesota cabin to reconnect with his father, he learns for the first time what really happened 35 years ago—and how it changed his father forever.

Erstwhile hot-dog-restaurant manager Adam Newman has a lot on his plate - and usually more than a bit in his drinking glass. With an ex-wife to win back, a fiancée to lose, a son to mentor, and a load of missing diamonds to locate, Adam may have finally bitten off more than he can chew.

Discretion, secrecy, and subtle strategy were the weapons of choice at Wall Street investment bank Lazard Frères & Co. For more than a century, the mystique and reputation of the "Great Men" who worked there allowed the firm to garner unimaginable profits, social cachet, and outsized influence in the halls of power. But in the mid-1980s, their titanic egos started getting in the way, and the Great Men of Lazard jeopardized all they had built.

Ethan Allen Hawley has lost the acquisitive spirit of his wealthy and enterprising forebears, a long line of proud New England sea captains and Pilgrims. Scarred by failure, Ethan works as a grocery clerk in a store his family once owned. But his wife is restless and his teenage children troubled and hungry for the material comforts he cannot provide. Then a series of unusual events reignites Ethan's ambition, and he is pitched on to a bold course, where all scruples are put aside.

Jonathan Lethem's new collection of stories is a feast for his fans and the perfect introduction for new listeners: a smorgasbord of fantastic, amusing, poignant tales written in a dizzying variety of styles. Lethem is a trailblazer of a new kind of literary fiction, sampling high and low culture to create fictional worlds that are utterly original.

Return to Oakpine spins a story of growing up and growing old as four high school friends and former bandmates reconnect 30 years after graduating. When they learn that one of them is dying, it feels like getting the band back together might be the most important thing they can do.

Lucas Paige, a floundering middle-aged historian, reluctantly sits down with the woman he suspects was responsible for his father’s murder decades before. As they drink, they open up about this seminal event and he discovers much of what he thought to be true is anything but.

Prolific short story author Adam Haslett was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His much-anticipated first novel, Union Atlantic brilliantly captures the me-first consumerism mentality of the early 21st century. Banker Doug Fanning begins building a massive mansion on land formerly owned by retired teacher Charlotte Graves' grandfather. The land was once donated to the local town, and now Charlotte is trying to stop Doug's construction efforts by any means necessary.

Award-winning author Mark Spragg writes about the American West with unmatched skill and vision. In Bone Fire Spragg weaves the tale of Ishawooa, Wyoming, a city marred by the realities of modern life. Sheriff Crane Carlson is having enough trouble with his pot-addled and alcoholic wife when he finds a teen murdered in a meth lab. Violence seems to be exploding all over the small town, but even as the situation spirals out of control, Carlson finds moments of compassion and beauty.

In The Tragedy of Arthur, Phillips tells the (mostly) true story of being asked to write the introduction to a lost Shakespeare play entitled The Most Excellent and Tragical Historie of Arthur, King of Britain. But Phillips knows the play - supposedly found in a safety deposit box in America - is a fake.

Anesthesiologist Adrian Mandrick is filled with contradictory impulses. He wants to be a good husband and a good father; he wants to forgive his once-beloved mother for the crime she committed and the long-lost father who accused her. But when he receives a call from his mother after years of silence, he takes solace in the very pain medication he prescribes, spiraling downward into addiction. His sole source of true comfort is his "life list" - the all-encompassing record of the 863 bird species he's spotted and identified. His is the third longest list in all of North America.