[MULTI] My Fiction Audiobooks Collection

gavrooka · 08-09-11 at 02:05 PM

Craig Thomas - Slipping into Shadow

Slipping into Shadow by Craig Thomas, Stephen Thorne (Reader)
Publisher: Ch.iv.ers Audio Books; Unabridged 1999 | MP3 64Kbps | 395 MB

Marian Pyott is just trying to be a good constituency MP when the fiancée of a constituent is found OD'd and the police announce he was probably a heroin dealer; Patrick Hyde is an investigator, tracing money and drugs in the most patient of manners.

It was really he himself who had got Henderson knifed to death. He'd become greedy for what he imagined Henderson could lead him to--new faces like that of the white man, connections with the hotel chain whose casinos must be laundering operations for the heroin profits ... Hyde shook his head.

Both find themselves up against an international conspiracy, betrayed by those whose idea of realistic politics involves giving a free hand to evil, whether to hired assassins like Jessop, crooked businessmen like David Winterborne (the childhood friend Marian came up against in A Different War) or the military regimes of Burma and China. Thomas is writing Buchan for the 90s and is genuinely exciting whether his characters are running for their lives through derelict London housing estates, the jungles of South East Asia or the slums of Rangoon or whether those chasing them are flying helicopter gun ships or just planting car bombs.

.Slipping into Shadow is an intelligent thriller because it is fascinated with how things work; its hairbreadth escapes and smart stratagems convince even the most blasé of readers. --Roz Kaveney --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

`A thoroughly professional thriller with bags of action to keep the reader on the edge of his seat'.

Daniel Silva - Moscow Rules

The extraordinary new Gabriel Allon novel from the 'gold standard' (The Dallas Morning News) of thriller writers.

Over the course of ten previous novels, Daniel Silva has established himself as one of the world's finest writers of international intrigue and espionage - 'a worthy successor to such legends as Frederick Forsyth and John le Carré' (Chicago Sun-Times) - and Gabriel Allon as 'one of the most intriguing heroes of any thriller series' (The Philadelphia Inquirer).

Now the death of a journalist leads Allon to Russia, where he finds that, in terms of spycraft, even he has something to learn. He's playing by Moscow rules now.

This is not the grim, gray Moscow of Soviet times but a new Moscow, awash in oil wealth and choked with bulletproof Bentleys. A Moscow where power resides once more behind the walls of the Kremlin and where critics of the ruling class are ruthlessly silenced. A Moscow where a new generation of Stalinists is plotting to reclaim an empire lost and to challenge the global dominance of its old enemy, the United States.

One such man is Ivan Kharkov, a former KGB colonel who built a global investment empire on the rubble of the Soviet Union. Hidden within that empire, however, is a more lucrative and deadly business: Kharkov is an arms dealer - and he is about to deliver Russia's most sophisticated weapons to al- Qaeda. Unless Allon can learn the time and place of the delivery, the world will see the deadliest terror attacks since 9/11 - and the clock is ticking fast.

Filled with rich prose and breathtaking turns of plot, Moscow Rules is at once superior entertainment and a searing cautionary tale about the new threats rising to the East - and Silva's finest novel yet.

Size: 183 MB
Quality: 64 kbps

The Best American Short Stories Of the Century

THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES OF THE CENTURY (2000)
Editor: John Updike
(22 unabridged short stories)

Read by . . : John Updike, Tim O'Brien, Rosellen Brown, Lorrie Moore, George Plimpton, others
Publisher . : Houghton Mifflin (2000) #6-98125 (also Mariner Books)
ISBN . . . .: ISBN-10 0618093206 ISBN-13: 9780618093205
Format . . .: MP3. 29 tracks, 509,5 MB
Bitrate . . : ~85 kbps (iTunes 9, VBR, Mono, 44.1 kHz)
Source . . .: 10 CDs (12.7 hours)
Genre . . . : Fiction, Short stories, Literary Collections
Unabridged .: Unabridged

John Updike has selected enduring stories from the eighty-four annual volumes of THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES, and the result is "a spectacular tapestry of fictional achievement". This extraordinary collection features a wide variety of contemporary writers reading classics of the genre, along with authors reading from their own work. Containing twenty-two unabridged stories in all, the expanded CD audio edition includes a new story from THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 1999 to round out the century.

Author Title Reader

Sherwood Anderson "The Other Woman" John Updike
Catherine Ann Porter "Theft" Jill McCorkle
F. Scott Fitzgerald "Crazy Sunday" George Plimpton
James Alan McPherson "Gold Coast" -the author
Jean Stafford "The Interior Castle" Mary Gordon
Bernard Malamud "The German Refugee" Alan Cheuse
Cynthia Ozick "The Shawl" -the author
Roseleen Brown "How to Win" -the author
Thom Jones "I Want to Live!" -the author
Gish Jen "Birthmates" -the author
Grace Stone Coates "Wild Plumbs" Ashley Warlick
Dorothy Parker "Here We Are" Meg Wolitzer
Robert Penn Warren "Christmas Gift" Christopher Tilghman
Eudora Welty "The Hitch-Hikers" Jill McCorkle
E. B. White "The Second Tree from the Corner" Donald Hall
John Updike "Gesturing" -the author
Donald Barthelme "A City of Churches" Rick Moody
Tim O'Brian "The Things They Carried" -the author
Raymond Carver "Where I'm Calling From" Charles Baxter
Lorrie Moore "You're Ugly Too" -the author
Carolyn Ferrell "Proper Library" -the author
Pam Houston "The Best Girlfriend You Never Had" -the author

Each year a guest editor carefully selects the best stories from the nation's literary magazines to be published together in The Best American Short Stories. One does not envy John Updike the agonizing task of choosing the best of the best--the most enduring stories from the 84 annual volumes published through 1999. Happily, he ably fielded the challenge, selecting the work of authors running the gamut from F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sherwood Anderson to Tim O'Brien and Lorrie Moore. Late authors are read by other writers; living authors read their own works.

Cynthia Ozick's 2,000-word masterpiece of the Holocaust, "The Shawl," combines stark brutality with story elements that border on magical realism. Ozick's flat, unrelenting reading, in a tone that echoes the very experience of physical and spiritual starvation, sears this story into one's soul.

Rosellen Brown, who often writes of love and dysfunction in family life, reads "How to Win," a mother's perspective on her clinically hyperactive child. (Anyone thinking of becoming a new parent should either avoid this story--or listen to it right away.) Brown reads with the intensity of one trying to bridge the unfathomable distance among us all--even mother and child.

Bryan Gilmer - Felonious Jazz

Felonious Jazz - Bryan Gilmer
Publisher: Bi.g Hap.py Fam.ily, LLC 2011| 6 hours 37 mins | 86 MB | MP3 32 Kbps

Jeff Davis Swaine digs up evidence for a Raleigh, North Carolina, trial law firm. Like Raleigh, Swaine is Southern with blue-collar roots but now finds himself more at home in an Audi convertible than a rusty pickup. When one of the firm's clients comes home to find his McMansion burglarized -- and his new wife's dog dead in the kitchen -- the man suspects his ex-wife. But Swaine senses this is someone far more dangerous.

Realizing Sarah is onto his plans, he plunges her - and her eight-year-old son - into a terrifying cat-and-mouse game in which their lives become intertwined, forcing Sarah to race to uncover a diabolically clever terrorist conspiracy . . .before the zero hour.

Joseph Finder - Buried Secrets

Buried Secrets (Nick Heller) - Joseph Finder (Audiobook)
Publisher: Ma.cMi.lan Audio 2001; Unabridged | 9 hours 23 mins | 231 MB | Narrator: Holter Graham | MP3 VBR~64 Kbps

Nick Heller returns in an explosive new thriller.
When PI Nick Heller moves back to Boston to set up his own agency, he soon gets an urgent case even closer to home than expected.
Alexandra Marcus - teenage daughter of hedge fund titan Marshall Marcus - has been kidnapped. But it's no ordinary kidnapping - and it's not even clear what they want. She's been abducted by professionals and buried alive in an underground casket. A video camera is streaming her desperate pleas live over the internet. With only a limited supply of food and water, her time is quickly running out.

A close friend of the family, Nick is more determined than ever to catch the perpetrators. But when Marshall is arrested for fraud, Nick uncovers some powerful enemies and a conspiracy that reaches up to the very highest levels of government. Faced with opponents well-protected by wealth and position, Nick must play a dangerous game if he hopes to flush out those responsible before Alexa is buried for good...

gavrooka · 08-10-11 at 02:37 AM

Peter Straub - American Fantastic Tales Boxed Set

American Fantastic Tales Boxed Set - Peter Straub (2 Audiobooks)
Read By: Jim Zeiger
Li,bra..ry of A,..me.rica 2011 | Duration: 35:01:51 hours + 32:58:35 hours | Size: 2.7 GB | Genre: Short Stories | Quality: MP3 96 Kbps

The Library of America presents American Fantastic Tales, an unrivaled two-volume boxed collection of the American Gothic tradition, from Edgar Allan Poe to today's masters of terror and the uncanny*-86 stories in all.

I. Terror and the Uncanny: From Poe to the Pulps.
II. Terror and the Uncanny: From the 1940s to Now.

Featuring:

Charles Brockden Brown, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Robert W. Chambers, Kate Chopin, Lafcadio Hearn, F. Marion Crawford, Ambrose Bierce, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch, John Collier, Tennessee Williams, John Cheever, Jack Finney, Shirley Jackson, Paul Bowles, Ray Bradbury, Charles Beaumont, Vladimir Nabokov, Harlan Ellison, Richard Matheson, Isaac Bashevis Singer, John Crowley, Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, Michael Chabon, Steven Millhauser, Brian Evenson, Kelly Link, and dozens more.

"An encompassing and essential voyage to the dark side of the moon of American literature and a stupendous, spellbinding reading experience waiting to be had." - Jonathan Lethem

About the Author

Peter Straub, editor, is the author of 18 novels, which have been translated into more than 20 languages. He has won the British Fantasy Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, and two World Fantasy Awards. He edited H. P. Lovecraft: Tales, volume #155 of The Library of America series.

Best SF of the Year 15 edited by Terry Carr

Edited by Terry Carr
Read by Bruce Montague, James Tillitt, Peter Wickham, Steve Hodson, Simon Vance, Pauline Munro, Arthur Blake, Nina Holloway, Rosemary Davis, Garard Green & David Banks
Quality: mp3 - 56 kbps
Duration: 16 hours 2 mins
Size: 308 MB

Stories in this collection:

01) Sailing to Byzantium by Robert Silverberg
02) Flying Saucer Rock & Roll by Howard Waldrop
03) Bluff by Harry Turtledove
04) A Spanish Lesson by Lucius Shepard
05) Snow by John Crowley
06) Shanidar by David Zindell
07) All My Darling Daughters by Connie Willis
08) Of Space-Time and the River by Gregory Benford
09) A Gift from the GrayLanders by Michael Bishop
10) Praxis by Karen Joy Fowler
11) The People on the Precipice by Ian Watson
12) The Only Neat Thing to Do by James Tiptree, Jr.

David Drake - Paying the Piper: Hammer's Slammers Series

David Drake (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator) "Paying the Piper: Hammer's Slammers Series"
Аu.dib.lе Frо.nti.еrs 2011 | MP3 64Kbps | 12 hours 49 mins | 353 MB

Colonel Alois Hammer: to the galaxy, a legendary commander of mercenaries. To his troops, a leader who can be trusted to always back them to the hilt - and meet a payroll. When the situation on a planet has gone beyond desperate, it's time to call for Hammer's Slammers.

Martin O'Brien - Jacquot and the Master

Jacquot and the Master by Martin O'Brien Unabridged and read by Stephen Thorne
Publisher: Oa.khill Pub.lishing Limited 2007 | MP3 48 kbps | 12 hours 57 mins | 227 MB

In a sensual region of France, a crime detective like no other...Chief Inspector Daniel Jacquot of the Cavaillon Regional Crime Squad is called to an artist's retreat in Provence, a luxury hill-top hotel where a young woman, it seems, has been murdered. There are bloodstains, but no body. The mystery deepens as Jacquot begins his investigation. Among the guests are those who have both means and motive, with personal secrets, hidden agendas and their own dangerous liaisons to conceal. Some of these people are very powerful indeed, and none of them take kindly to Jacquot's probing questions. Looming over them all is a celebrated and reclusive artist whose masterworks are priceless, a monster who torments all those who seek to bask in his glory. When a summer storm isolates the hotel, and not one but two bodies are found, passions start to run high!

Tobias Wolff - Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories

Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories By Tobias Wolff, read by Anthony Heald
Publisher: Bla.ck.to.ne Audiobooks 2008; Unabridged | 13 hours 9 mins | MP3 | 360 MB

Wolff's first story collection, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs (1981), was a major salvo in the short story renaissance that included Raymond Carver. The 10 spare, elegant new stories here, collected with 21 stories from Wolff's three previous collections, are as good as anything Wolff has done. In most, there is a moment of realization, less a startling epiphany than a distant, gradual ache of understanding, that changes how the character looks at the world. The retired, 41-year-old female Marine of A Mature Student, compares her female professor's experiences in Communist-era Prague and her own son's service in Iraq. Deep Kiss movingly chronicles the fractious results when a teenaged boy, infatuated with a promiscuous classmate, neglects to bond with his dying father. A hilarious description of a brash, ignorant thug in Her Dog shows Wolff's gift for demotic speech. In an author's note, Wolff says that since he has never considered any of his stories sacred texts, he has edited some clumsy or superfluous passages in earlier works. In all the stories, Wolff expertly uses irony and empathy to explore facets of contemporary life.

gavrooka · 08-11-11 at 01:41 AM

Paul Griner - The German Woman

The German Woman
Author: Paul Griner
Read By: Anne Flosnik & Michael Page
Quality: MP3 96kbps
Size: 473 MB

This riveting war story introduces us to beautiful Kate Zweig, the English
widow of a German surgeon, and Claus Murphy, an exiled American with
German roots—two lovers with complicated loyalties.

In 1918, Kate and her husband, Horst, are taken for spies by Russian
soldiers and forced to flee their field hospital on the eastern front,
barely escaping with their lives. Years later, in London during the
Nazis’ V-1 reign of terror, Claus spends his days making propaganda
films and his nights as a British spy, worn down by the war and his
own many secrets. When Claus meets the intriguing Kate, he finds himself
powerfully drawn to her—even after evidence surfaces that she might
not be exactly who she seems.

As the war hurtles to a violent end, Claus
must decide where his own loyalties lie, whether he can make a difference
in the war—and what might be gained by taking a leap of faith with Kate.-
Echoing Pat Barker’s spare power and the sweep of Sebastian Faulks’s
historical sagas, The German Woman takes us inside the world wars that
defined the twentieth century and the hidden histories of two unforgettable
characters whose love story will haunt listeners’ hearts and minds.

Mike Resnick - Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge

Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge (Audiobook) By Mike Resnick, read by Jonathan Davis
Publisher: Aud,ible Front,iers 2008 | 2 hours 18 mins | MP3 | 262 MB

Thousands of years after mankind has become extinct, a party of alien archaeologists try to learn the mysteries of mankind as they excavate in a gorge on Earth. This Hugo and Nebula Award winning novella by Mike Resnick is a gripping exploration of human origins and motivations.

"Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge" posits a distant future in which Man is long extinct. Having arisen as a deceptively small and to all appearances harmless bidpedal ancestor of the earliest pro-simian species, Man evolved into a violent and powerful predator who was master of his planet. Technological advancements allowed Man to travel to the stars colonizing a million planets and enslaving or eliminating all those he met who posed any threat, real or imagined. Notwithstanding his powerful position astride the top of the galactic food chain, as it were, mankind has slipped into extinction. Five millennia after the last known representative of our species died, an alien planet has sent a scientific archeological team to earth to study man's rise and fall by a careful examination of the artifacts they find in the location now known as the birthplace of our species - Olduvai Gorge.

"Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge" is a series of seven short stories commenting on man's violent and aggressive nature ranging in time from our earliest pre-history as a species that could hardly be graced even with the term "caveman" to a hypothesized galactic superpower with technological skills that included interstellar travel and domination of a million other planets. The stories are all told by "He Who Sees", a member of the alien archeological team who has the uncanny ability to see, hear, feel and completely experience the history of an artifact by subsuming it into his own body and absorbing its history into his mentality.

This collection of stories, which won the 1994 Nebula Award for best novella, portray a bleak, dismal and disappointed view of an aggressive, violent and self-centered humanity. Perhaps the most disappointing thing of all about this fine book is that, as a reader of the book and a member of the race under discussion, I can find no reason to dispute Michael Resnick's hard-hearted view of our history.

It would be most unfair to disclose the point of the final story to a potential reader. But, suffice it to say, although Michael Resnick's cynicism remains obvious at the close of his novel, it is just possible - barely - that we could make something of ourselves if we had another chance.

"Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge" is short, sweet and compellingly powerful.

**madmusic36** · 08-11-11 at 06:10 AM

awesome thanks!

gavrooka · 08-11-11 at 03:36 PM

The Awakened Mage
Listening Length: 20 hour(s) and 42 min.
Program Type: Audiobook
Version: Unabridged
Publisher: Tantor Media (November 11, 2010)
Narrator: Kirby Heyborne
Format: MP3
Size: 856 MB

"The Awakened Mage is come, and we stand at the beginning of the end of everything."

Being a fisherman like his father isn't a bad life, but it's not the one that Asher wants. Despite his humble roots, Asher has grand dreams. And they call him to Dorana, home of princes, beggars, and the warrior mages who have protected the kingdom for generations. Little does Asher know, however, that his arrival in the city is being closely watched by members of the Circle, people dedicated to preserving an ancient magic. Asher might have come to the city to make his fortune, but he will find his destiny.

The Awakened Mage
Listening Length: 23 hour(s) and 30 min.
Program Type: Audiobook
Version: Unabridged
Publisher: Tantor Media (December 7, 2010)
Narrator: Kirby Heyborne
Format: MP3
Size: 1.25 GB

"The evil foretold has risen...and we are all that stands between it and the end." Asher has come a long way for a fisherman's son. Together with his friend Prince Gar, he has defended their kingdom against its bitterest enemy, but at great cost.

Now, the evil mage Morg is preparing for his most deadly assault. Desperate, trapped in a broken body, Morg has little time and fewer scruples. And he has a plan. As Gar and Asher unwittingly fall into a dangerous deception, Morg gets ever closer to his goal. And this victory would be particularly sweet... for who better to destroy the kingdom than the two who would give anything to save it?

gavrooka · 08-12-11 at 02:40 AM

Giles Foden - The Last King of Scotland

Shortly after his arrival in Uganda, Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan is called to the scene of a bizarre accident: Idi Amin, careening down a dirt road in his red Maserati, has run over a cow. When Garrigan tends to Amin, the dictator, in his obsession for all things Scottish, appoints him as his personal physician. And so begins a fateful dalliance with the central African leader whose Emperor Jones-style autocracy would transform into a reign of terror.

In The Last King of Scotland Foden's Amin is as ridiculous as he is abhorrent: a grown man who must be burped like an infant, a self-proclaimed cannibalist who, at the end of his 8 years in power, would be responsible for 300,000 deaths. And as Garrigan awakens to his patient's baroque barbarism--and his own complicity in it--we enter a venturesome meditation on conscience, charisma, and the slow corruption of the human heart. Brilliantly written, comic and profound, The Last King of Scotland announces a major new talent.

Quality: 64 kbps
Size: 358 MB

Jon Stock - Games Traitors Play

Jon Stock (Author), Paul Panting (Narrator) "Games Traitors Play"
Wh.оlе St.оry Аudiо Books 2011 | MP3 64 kbps | 10 hours 55 mins | 300 MB

Re-inventing the spy story for the 21st Century.

John Le Carre meets Jason Bourne!

Salim Dhar is the world's most wanted terrorist. The CIA is under pressure to hunt him down, after he narrowly failed to kill the US president. The borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan are the target of relentless drone strikes. Echelon, the West's intelligence analysis network, is in meltdown, monitoring all channels for the faintest trace of Dhar. But no one can find him. Only Daniel Marchant, renegade MI6 officer, knows where he is.

Marchant has been living in Marrakech, listening to the traditional Berber storytellers as they enthral tourists with tales from The Arabian Nights. Marchant believes that Dhar has shunned technology, retreating to old customs:coded messages for Dhar are being embedded in ancient narratives.

When a man flees from the square, Marchant pursues him up into the Atlas Mountains, where he sees an unmarked military helicopter take off and head east. Is someone shielding Dhar to perpetrate an act of proxy terrorism on the West? Or is the CIA right when it claims to have killed him?

To discover the truth, Marchant must be recruited by Moscow. But Marcus Fielding, erudite Chief of MI6, doubts that his young intelligence officer has the mental strength to be a double agent. It's a role that will require him to believe his late father was a traitor, an allegation that Marchant fought long and hard to dispel. Now he must rekindle those rumours and confront dark truths about his own loyalties. He must also work with Lakshmi Meena, the CIA's beautiful new liaison officer in London. Can he ever trust a woman-or an American-again after being betrayed by her predecessor?

As Britain braces itself for an airborne terrorist attack, Marchant survives torture in Morocco and India in his bid to find and stop Dhar. Will family ties ultimately prove more binding than ideology? In an absorbing thriller that combines the nuances of Cold War Le Carre with the ejector-seat excitement of Top Gun, Marchant discovers that treachery is the greatest game of all.

Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Spring

Aldiss, Brian - Helliconia Trilogy 01 - Helliconia Spring

Quality: 64 kbps
Size: 226 MB

This is the first volume of the Helliconia Trilogy - a monumental sage which goes beyond anything yet created by this master among today's imaginative writers. An entire solar system is revealed, and with it a world disturbingly reflecting our own, Helliconia: an Earth-like planet where dynasties change with the seasons . . . . . . Events and characters and animals stream across the pages of this gigantic novel. Cosmic in scope, it keeps an eye lovingly on the humans involved. So the 5,000 inhabitants of the Earth's observation station above Helliconia keep their eyes trained on the events of Oldorando and may long to intervene though the dangers are too great. So we on Earth have them all in our vision in one of the most consuming and magnificent novels of scientific romance.

Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Summer

Aldiss, Brian - Helliconia Trilogy 02 - Helliconia Summer

Quality: 64 kbps
Size: 247 MB

It is the summer of the Great Year on Helliconia. The humans are involved with their own affairs. Their old enemies, the phagors, are comparitively docile at this time of year; yet they can afford to wait, to take advantage of human weakness - and of the king's weakness. How they do so brings to a climax this powerfully compelling novel, in which the tortuous unwindings of circumstance enmesh royalty and commoners alike, and involve the three Helliconia continents.

Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Winter

Aldiss, Brian - Helliconia Trilogy 03 - Helliconia Winter

Quality: 48 kbps
Size: 177 MB

The centuries-long winter of the Great Year on Helliconia is upon us, and the Oligarch is taking harsh measures to ensure the survival of the people of the bleak Northern continent of Sibornal. Behind the battle with which the novel opens lies an act of unparalleled treachery. But the plague is coming on the wings of winter and the Oligarch's will is set against it - and against the phagors, humanity's ancient enemies, who carry the plague with them.

gavrooka · 08-13-11 at 02:55 AM

John Irving - The World According to Garp

The World According to Garp: A Novel by John Irving & Michael Prichard (Reader)
Publisher: Ran.dom Ho.use Audio; Unabridged 2005 | MP3 64 kbps | 555 MB

"Garp was a natural storyteller," says the narrator of John Irving's incandescent novel, referring to the book's hero, the novelist Garp, who has much in common with Irving himself. "He could make things up one right after the other, and they seemed to fit."

Irving packs wild characters and weird events into his classic--officially recognized as such in a Modern Library edition with a new introduction by the author--while amazingly maintaining the rough feel of realism in every scene and the pulse of life in every heart. Many novelists of his time might have populated a novel with a novelist protagonist whose life and books comment on each other and the novel we're reading. Transsexual football players, ball turret gunners lobotomized in battle, multiple adultery, unicycling bears, mad feminists who amputate their tongues in sympathy with the celebrated victim of a horrifying rape--Irving made them all people. Even the bear is a fitting character.

In a crucial episode, Garp's wife's seduction of a young man coincidentally occurs at the moment when Garp is delighting their young sons with a reckless car trick (one of the few scenes beautifully, eerily, heartbreakingly captured in the film version as well). Many authors would have been content with the harsh comedy of the scene, but Irving respects its integrity, and he builds the rest of the book on the consequences of the event. How does he get away with his killer cocktail of slapstick and horror? Because it's simply what we all face daily, rearranged into soul-satisfying art. "Life is an X-rated soap opera," according to Garp, and who can contradict him?

Rereading Garp 20 years later, one is struck by how elegantly Irving structures his bizarre and complex story. Take the two most celebrated bits in the book, the Under Toad and Garp's story "The Pension Grillparzer," which shimmers like an exquisite Kafkaesque insect in the amber of the novel. When Garp warns his son about the "undertow" at the beach, the boy imagines a monster out of Beowulf who lurks beneath the waves to suck you under: the "Under Toad." It's funny at first, but we soon find that the Under Toad is a metaphor with teeth--he connects with a prophetic dream of death in "The Pension Grillparzer," set in Vienna. Garp's son's last words are, "It's like a dream!" And as Irving--who studied at the University of Vienna--can certainly tell you, the German word for "death" sounds precisely like the English word "toad."

All that death, and yet Garp is mainly exuberant. This story is, as Garp's stuttering writing teacher puts it, "rich with lu-lu-lunacy and sorrow." It enriches literature, and our lives.
"In the world according to Garp, we're all terminal cases." This sentence ends both Irving's comic and tragic novel and its wonderful audio adaptation, read disarmingly by Michael Prichard. We hear the familiar story of T.S. Garp; his mother, Jenny Fields; and Garp's wife, family, friends, and lovers. We also see Garp's efforts to establish himself as a serious author and his involvement in sexual politics. In contrast, Jenny's memoirs establish her as a feminist leader. This work is funny, sexual, serious, and sad. Prichard's narration adds a wonderful dimension to the story. Plus, Irving opens with a terrific introduction to mark the novel's 20th anniversary. This wise and unique tale is as fresh today as it was when first published in 1978. Obviously, a required purchase for all audio collections and required listening for all Irving fans. Irving's (A Son of the Circus, Audio Reviews, LJ 12/94) new novel echoes Garp through tracing the complicated life of novelist Ruth Cole. Divided into three parts, the book views Ruth's life and relationships at age four in 1958, age 36 in 1990, and age 41 in 1995. In the first part, Ruth's mother, devastated by the loss of two sons, leaves her daughter and womanizing husband after a brief love affair with a teenage boy. Part 2 focuses on Ruth's book tour in Europe while coming to grips with a poor love life and considering marriage to an older man. Part 3 traces Ruth's short widowhood and her marriage to the Dutch policeman who solves the murder to which she was a witness. Like Garp, this is a complex, sad, and quite compelling tale. Narrator George Guidall's reading adds to the texture of the story. And like the audio adaptation of Garp, this wonderful novel is a required purchase for all audio collections.

Stanislaw Lem - Memoirs Found in a Bathtub

Stanislaw Lem - Memoirs Found in a Bathtub
Publisher: Au.dib.le Fro.ntiers 2009 | MP3 64 kbps | Duration: 6 hours 38 mins | 182 MB

The year is 3149, and a vast paper destroying blight-papyralysis-has obliterated much of the planet's written history. However, these rare memoirs, preserved for centuries in a volcanic rock, record the strange life of a man trapped in a hermetically sealed underground community.

William Dietrich - Napoleon's Pyramid

Size: 307 MB
Quality: MP3 64Kbps
Genre: Mystery, Thriller

Since this book seems to be the only one in the Ethan Gage series that has not been published as an Audio Book, I did a Text to Speech conversion on it. It is not the best, but at least now I can listen to it. Hopefully others can as well.

An unabridged book converted with Microsoft Anna voice, chapter by chapter.

From the Cover:

"A magnificent adventure, shot through with mystery... A marvelous tale!" --Bernard Cornwell, New York Times bestselling author of the The Last Kingdom.

George R. R. Martin - SO&IF 04 - A Feast for Crows

It seems too good to be true. After centuries of bitter strife and fatal treachery, the seven powers dividing the land have decimated one another into an uneasy truce. Or so it appears....With the death of the monstrous King Joffrey, Cersei is ruling as regent in King's Landing. Robb Stark's demise has broken the back of the Northern rebels, and his siblings are scattered throughout the kingdom like seeds on barren soil. Few legitimate claims to the once desperately sought Iron Throne still exist--or they are held in hands too weak or too distant to wield them effectively. The war, which raged out of control for so long, has burned itself out.

But as in the aftermath of any climactic struggle, it is not long before the survivors, outlaws, renegades, and carrion eaters start to gather, picking over the bones of the dead and fighting for the spoils of the soon-to-be dead. Now in the Seven Kingdoms, as the human crows assemble over a banquet of ashes, daring new plots and dangerous new alliances are formed, while surprising faces--some familiar, others only just appearing--are seen emerging from an ominous twilight of past struggles and chaos to take up the challenges ahead.

It is a time when the wise and the ambitious, the deceitful and the strong will acquire the skills, the power, and the magic to survive the stark and terrible times that lie before them. It is a time for nobles and commoners, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and sages to come together and stake their fortunes...and their lives. For at a feast for crows, many are the guests--but only a few are the survivors.

Quality: m4b 64 kbps
Size: 836 MB

Vladimir Bartol - Alamut

Vladimir Bartol - Alamut
Quality: MP3 48 kbps
Duration: 19 hours 32 mins
Size: 802 MB

Alamut takes place in 11th Century Persia, in the fortress of Alamut, where self-proclaimed prophet Hasan ibn Sabbah is setting up his mad but brilliant plan to rule the region with a handful elite fighters who are to become his "living daggers." By creating a virtual paradise at Alamut, filled with beautiful women, lush gardens, wine and hashish, Sabbah is able to convince his young fighters that they can reach paradise if they follow his commands. With parallels to Osama bin Laden, Alamut tells the story of how Sabbah was able to instill fear into the ruling class by creating a small army of devotees who were willing to kill, and be killed, in order to achieve paradise. Believing in the supreme Ismaili motto 'Nothing is true, everything is permitted,' Sabbah wanted to 'experiment' with how far he could manipulate religious devotion for his own political gain through appealing to what he called the stupidity and gullibility of people and their passion for pleasure and selfish desires.

The novel focuses on Sabbah as he unveils his plan to his inner circle, and on two of his young followers - the beautiful slave girl Halima, who has come to Alamut to join Sabbah's paradise on earth, and young ibn Tahir, Sabbah's most gifted fighter. As both Halima and ibn Tahir become disillusioned with Sabbah's vision, their lives take unexpected turns.

Alamut was originally written in 1938 as an allegory to Mussolini's fascist state. In the 1960's it became a cult favorite throughout Tito's Yugoslavia, and in the 1990s, during the Balkan's War, it was read as an allegory of the region's strife and became a bestseller in Germany, France and Spain. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, the book once again took on a new life, selling more than 20,000 copies in a new Slovenian edition, and being translated around the world in more than 19 languages.

gavrooka · 08-27-11 at 06:34 AM

Henning Mankell - Daniel

Henning Mankell (Author), Sean Barrett (Narrator) "Daniel"
IS.IS Audio Books 2011 | MP3 48Kbps | 200 MB

Set in the 1870s, this earnest and heartbreaking story opens with the unsolved murder of a mentally retarded Swedish girl, but this isn't a mystery in the mode of Mankell's international bestselling Kurt Wallander novels (Firewall, etc.). Hans Bengler, a Swedish entomologist, travels across southern Africa in search of undiscovered insects. In the desert, he finds an orphaned native boy, whom he adopts on impulse and calls Daniel. Bengler brings Daniel back to Sweden to exhibit him for money. A link eventually emerges between the girl's murder and Daniel's story, which dramatically illuminates the evils of colonialism (Bengler notes that he "had to make the important decisions for these black people") and the cultural chasm between Europeans and Africans. Mankell fully understands Daniel's radically different cultural perspective and indelibly captures the boy's longing to return to his homeland and the tragic consequences of his forced exile.

Mal Peet - Tamar

Mal Peet (Author), Anton Lesser and Anna Maxwell Martin (Narrator) "Tamar"
Wa.lker Books Ltd. 2007| MP3 48Kbps | 12 hours 6 mins | 226 Mb

It was her taciturn but beloved grandfather, William Hyde, who gave Tamar her strange name. But in 1995, when she was 15, he committed suicide, leaving her to wonder if she knew him at all. Later, when she opens the box of War II memorabilia that he left her, she's struck by the need to find out what it means, who he really was, and where she fits in. Tension mounts incrementally in an intricate wrapping of wartime drama and secrecy, in which Tamar finds her namesake and herself. Forming the backbone of the novel are intense, sometimes brutal events in a small Dutch town in Nazi-occupied Holland and the relationship between the girl's namesake, a member of the Dutch Resistance; Dart, a code operator assigned to help him; and Marijke, the love of his life. Peet's plot is tightly constructed, and striking, descriptive language, full of metaphor, grounds the story. Most of the characters are adults here, and to some readers, the Dutch history, though deftly woven through the story, will seem remote. But Peet's sturdy, emotionally resonant characterizations and dramatic backdrop will pull readers forward, as will the secret that gradually unravels. Despite foreshadowing, the outcome is still a stunner. Winner of Britain's 2005 Carnegie Medal, this powerful story will grow richer with each reading.

Nick Hornby - Slam

Nick Hornby (Author), Nicholas Hoult (Narrator) "Slam"
Publisher: Pen.guin Audio 2007 | MP3 64Kbps | 7 hours 34 mins | 201 MB

Eighteen-year-old Hoult, an actor who played a role in the film adaptation of Hornby’s About a Boy (1988), is a terrific choice to narrate the author’s first young adult novel. Fifteen-year-old Sam’s girlfriend gets pregnant. What should he do? He doesn’t want to repeat the mistakes of his mother, who got pregnant as a teen. Distressed Sam talks to his poster of skateboarding legend Tony Hawk, which helps his troubled teenage soul. This moving, bittersweet work is packed with Hornby’s trademark insight and incisive wit. Native Brit Hoult’s voice is charming, and his accent is very pronounced. In fact it may take listeners a few chapters to become accustomed to his cadence and lilt, but once they do, they will be rewarded with a memorable listening experience.

Peter Van Greenaway - Manrissa Man

Manrissa Man - Peter Van Greenaway (Audiobook)
Publisher: Da.vid & Ch.arles Publishers 1982 | 7 hours 30 mins | 178 MB | Narrator: Gabriel Woolf | MP3 56 Kbps

The time is the very near future and the US Defence Department is breeding apes as a source of cheap labour (and potential cannon fodder if necessary). Then an obscure lecturer in linguistics teaches them to speak and so taps some formidable intelligences. The results are at first comic butt then stunningly horrific as the apes exact their revenge.

Robert Charles Wilson - Vortex

Narrated by Scott Brick
Duration: 10:21:25
Quality: MP3 32 kbps
Size: 139,5 MB

Description Vortex tells the story of Turk Findley, the protagonist introduced in Axis, who is transported ten thousand years into the future by the mysterious entities called 'the Hypotheticals.' In this future humanity exists on a chain of planets connected by Hypothetical gateways; but Earth itself is a dying world, effectively quarantined.

Turk and his young friend Isaac Dvali are taken up by a community of fanatics who use them to enable a passage to the dying Earth, where they believe a prophecy of human/Hypothetical contact will be fulfilled. The prophecy is only partly true, however, and Turk must unravel the truth about the nature and purpose of the Hypotheticals before they carry him on a journey through warped time to the end of the universe itself.

This book has been merged and transcoded--using Goldwave v5.58--from original with a higher sampling frequency and bit rate. This was done to provide consistency, uniformity and compactness. The end result did not compromise playback quality. It is set to 22,050 Hz, 32 Kbps CBR and single channel; and encoded with the Fraunhofer codec. It was tagged with Mp3tag v2.49 and includes cover art. You should note that I have placed the narrator into the Album Artist field.

08-11-11 at 01:41 AM	#3
gavrooka Novice Join Date: Jul 2011 Posts: 133	Paul Griner - The German Woman The German Woman Author: Paul Griner Read By: Anne Flosnik & Michael Page Quality: MP3 96kbps Size: 473 MB This riveting war story introduces us to beautiful Kate Zweig, the English widow of a German surgeon, and Claus Murphy, an exiled American with German roots—two lovers with complicated loyalties. In 1918, Kate and her husband, Horst, are taken for spies by Russian soldiers and forced to flee their field hospital on the eastern front, barely escaping with their lives. Years later, in London during the Nazis’ V-1 reign of terror, Claus spends his days making propaganda films and his nights as a British spy, worn down by the war and his own many secrets. When Claus meets the intriguing Kate, he finds himself powerfully drawn to her—even after evidence surfaces that she might not be exactly who she seems. As the war hurtles to a violent end, Claus must decide where his own loyalties lie, whether he can make a difference in the war—and what might be gained by taking a leap of faith with Kate.- Echoing Pat Barker’s spare power and the sweep of Sebastian Faulks’s historical sagas, The German Woman takes us inside the world wars that defined the twentieth century and the hidden histories of two unforgettable characters whose love story will haunt listeners’ hearts and minds. Mike Resnick - Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge (Audiobook) By Mike Resnick, read by Jonathan Davis Publisher: Aud,ible Front,iers 2008 \| 2 hours 18 mins \| MP3 \| 262 MB Thousands of years after mankind has become extinct, a party of alien archaeologists try to learn the mysteries of mankind as they excavate in a gorge on Earth. This Hugo and Nebula Award winning novella by Mike Resnick is a gripping exploration of human origins and motivations. "Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge" posits a distant future in which Man is long extinct. Having arisen as a deceptively small and to all appearances harmless bidpedal ancestor of the earliest pro-simian species, Man evolved into a violent and powerful predator who was master of his planet. Technological advancements allowed Man to travel to the stars colonizing a million planets and enslaving or eliminating all those he met who posed any threat, real or imagined. Notwithstanding his powerful position astride the top of the galactic food chain, as it were, mankind has slipped into extinction. Five millennia after the last known representative of our species died, an alien planet has sent a scientific archeological team to earth to study man's rise and fall by a careful examination of the artifacts they find in the location now known as the birthplace of our species - Olduvai Gorge. "Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge" is a series of seven short stories commenting on man's violent and aggressive nature ranging in time from our earliest pre-history as a species that could hardly be graced even with the term "caveman" to a hypothesized galactic superpower with technological skills that included interstellar travel and domination of a million other planets. The stories are all told by "He Who Sees", a member of the alien archeological team who has the uncanny ability to see, hear, feel and completely experience the history of an artifact by subsuming it into his own body and absorbing its history into his mentality. This collection of stories, which won the 1994 Nebula Award for best novella, portray a bleak, dismal and disappointed view of an aggressive, violent and self-centered humanity. Perhaps the most disappointing thing of all about this fine book is that, as a reader of the book and a member of the race under discussion, I can find no reason to dispute Michael Resnick's hard-hearted view of our history. It would be most unfair to disclose the point of the final story to a potential reader. But, suffice it to say, although Michael Resnick's cynicism remains obvious at the close of his novel, it is just possible - barely - that we could make something of ourselves if we had another chance. "Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge" is short, sweet and compellingly powerful. Last edited by rainbowspinner; 08-11-11 at 06:28 PM. Reason: removed erotica

08-10-11 at 02:37 AM	#2
gavrooka Novice Join Date: Jul 2011 Posts: 133	Peter Straub - American Fantastic Tales Boxed Set American Fantastic Tales Boxed Set - Peter Straub (2 Audiobooks) Read By: Jim Zeiger Li,bra..ry of A,..me.rica 2011 \| Duration: 35:01:51 hours + 32:58:35 hours \| Size: 2.7 GB \| Genre: Short Stories \| Quality: MP3 96 Kbps The Library of America presents American Fantastic Tales, an unrivaled two-volume boxed collection of the American Gothic tradition, from Edgar Allan Poe to today's masters of terror and the uncanny-86 stories in all. I. Terror and the Uncanny: From Poe to the Pulps. II. Terror and the Uncanny: From the 1940s to Now. Featuring:* Charles Brockden Brown, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Robert W. Chambers, Kate Chopin, Lafcadio Hearn, F. Marion Crawford, Ambrose Bierce, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch, John Collier, Tennessee Williams, John Cheever, Jack Finney, Shirley Jackson, Paul Bowles, Ray Bradbury, Charles Beaumont, Vladimir Nabokov, Harlan Ellison, Richard Matheson, Isaac Bashevis Singer, John Crowley, Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, Michael Chabon, Steven Millhauser, Brian Evenson, Kelly Link, and dozens more. "An encompassing and essential voyage to the dark side of the moon of American literature and a stupendous, spellbinding reading experience waiting to be had." - Jonathan Lethem About the Author Peter Straub, editor, is the author of 18 novels, which have been translated into more than 20 languages. He has won the British Fantasy Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, and two World Fantasy Awards. He edited H. P. Lovecraft: Tales, volume #155 of The Library of America series. Best SF of the Year 15 edited by Terry Carr Edited by Terry Carr Read by Bruce Montague, James Tillitt, Peter Wickham, Steve Hodson, Simon Vance, Pauline Munro, Arthur Blake, Nina Holloway, Rosemary Davis, Garard Green & David Banks Quality: mp3 - 56 kbps Duration: 16 hours 2 mins Size: 308 MB Stories in this collection: 01) Sailing to Byzantium by Robert Silverberg 02) Flying Saucer Rock & Roll by Howard Waldrop 03) Bluff by Harry Turtledove 04) A Spanish Lesson by Lucius Shepard 05) Snow by John Crowley 06) Shanidar by David Zindell 07) All My Darling Daughters by Connie Willis 08) Of Space-Time and the River by Gregory Benford 09) A Gift from the GrayLanders by Michael Bishop 10) Praxis by Karen Joy Fowler 11) The People on the Precipice by Ian Watson 12) The Only Neat Thing to Do by James Tiptree, Jr. David Drake - Paying the Piper: Hammer's Slammers Series David Drake (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator) "Paying the Piper: Hammer's Slammers Series" Аu.dib.lе Frо.nti.еrs 2011 \| MP3 64Kbps \| 12 hours 49 mins \| 353 MB Colonel Alois Hammer: to the galaxy, a legendary commander of mercenaries. To his troops, a leader who can be trusted to always back them to the hilt - and meet a payroll. When the situation on a planet has gone beyond desperate, it's time to call for Hammer's Slammers. Martin O'Brien - Jacquot and the Master Jacquot and the Master by Martin O'Brien Unabridged and read by Stephen Thorne Publisher: Oa.khill Pub.lishing Limited 2007 \| MP3 48 kbps \| 12 hours 57 mins \| 227 MB In a sensual region of France, a crime detective like no other...Chief Inspector Daniel Jacquot of the Cavaillon Regional Crime Squad is called to an artist's retreat in Provence, a luxury hill-top hotel where a young woman, it seems, has been murdered. There are bloodstains, but no body. The mystery deepens as Jacquot begins his investigation. Among the guests are those who have both means and motive, with personal secrets, hidden agendas and their own dangerous liaisons to conceal. Some of these people are very powerful indeed, and none of them take kindly to Jacquot's probing questions. Looming over them all is a celebrated and reclusive artist whose masterworks are priceless, a monster who torments all those who seek to bask in his glory. When a summer storm isolates the hotel, and not one but two bodies are found, passions start to run high! Tobias Wolff - Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories By Tobias Wolff, read by Anthony Heald Publisher: Bla.ck.to.ne Audiobooks 2008; Unabridged \| 13 hours 9 mins \| MP3 \| 360 MB Wolff's first story collection, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs (1981), was a major salvo in the short story renaissance that included Raymond Carver. The 10 spare, elegant new stories here, collected with 21 stories from Wolff's three previous collections, are as good as anything Wolff has done. In most, there is a moment of realization, less a startling epiphany than a distant, gradual ache of understanding, that changes how the character looks at the world. The retired, 41-year-old female Marine of A Mature Student, compares her female professor's experiences in Communist-era Prague and her own son's service in Iraq. Deep Kiss movingly chronicles the fractious results when a teenaged boy, infatuated with a promiscuous classmate, neglects to bond with his dying father. A hilarious description of a brash, ignorant thug in Her Dog shows Wolff's gift for demotic speech. In an author's note, Wolff says that since he has never considered any of his stories sacred texts, he has edited some clumsy or superfluous passages in earlier works. In all the stories, Wolff expertly uses irony and empathy to explore facets of contemporary life.

08-11-11 at 06:10 AM	#4
madmusic36 Expert Join Date: Dec 2008 Posts: 556	awesome thanks!

08-11-11 at 03:36 PM	#5
gavrooka Novice Join Date: Jul 2011 Posts: 133	The Awakened Mage Listening Length: 20 hour(s) and 42 min. Program Type: Audiobook Version: Unabridged Publisher: Tantor Media (November 11, 2010) Narrator: Kirby Heyborne Format: MP3 Size: 856 MB "The Awakened Mage is come, and we stand at the beginning of the end of everything." Being a fisherman like his father isn't a bad life, but it's not the one that Asher wants. Despite his humble roots, Asher has grand dreams. And they call him to Dorana, home of princes, beggars, and the warrior mages who have protected the kingdom for generations. Little does Asher know, however, that his arrival in the city is being closely watched by members of the Circle, people dedicated to preserving an ancient magic. Asher might have come to the city to make his fortune, but he will find his destiny. The Awakened Mage Listening Length: 23 hour(s) and 30 min. Program Type: Audiobook Version: Unabridged Publisher: Tantor Media (December 7, 2010) Narrator: Kirby Heyborne Format: MP3 Size: 1.25 GB "The evil foretold has risen...and we are all that stands between it and the end." Asher has come a long way for a fisherman's son. Together with his friend Prince Gar, he has defended their kingdom against its bitterest enemy, but at great cost. Now, the evil mage Morg is preparing for his most deadly assault. Desperate, trapped in a broken body, Morg has little time and fewer scruples. And he has a plan. As Gar and Asher unwittingly fall into a dangerous deception, Morg gets ever closer to his goal. And this victory would be particularly sweet... for who better to destroy the kingdom than the two who would give anything to save it?

08-12-11 at 02:40 AM	#6
gavrooka Novice Join Date: Jul 2011 Posts: 133	Giles Foden - The Last King of Scotland Shortly after his arrival in Uganda, Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan is called to the scene of a bizarre accident: Idi Amin, careening down a dirt road in his red Maserati, has run over a cow. When Garrigan tends to Amin, the dictator, in his obsession for all things Scottish, appoints him as his personal physician. And so begins a fateful dalliance with the central African leader whose Emperor Jones-style autocracy would transform into a reign of terror. In The Last King of Scotland Foden's Amin is as ridiculous as he is abhorrent: a grown man who must be burped like an infant, a self-proclaimed cannibalist who, at the end of his 8 years in power, would be responsible for 300,000 deaths. And as Garrigan awakens to his patient's baroque barbarism--and his own complicity in it--we enter a venturesome meditation on conscience, charisma, and the slow corruption of the human heart. Brilliantly written, comic and profound, The Last King of Scotland announces a major new talent. Quality: 64 kbps Size: 358 MB Jon Stock - Games Traitors Play Jon Stock (Author), Paul Panting (Narrator) "Games Traitors Play" Wh.оlе St.оry Аudiо Books 2011 \| MP3 64 kbps \| 10 hours 55 mins \| 300 MB Re-inventing the spy story for the 21st Century. John Le Carre meets Jason Bourne! Salim Dhar is the world's most wanted terrorist. The CIA is under pressure to hunt him down, after he narrowly failed to kill the US president. The borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan are the target of relentless drone strikes. Echelon, the West's intelligence analysis network, is in meltdown, monitoring all channels for the faintest trace of Dhar. But no one can find him. Only Daniel Marchant, renegade MI6 officer, knows where he is. Marchant has been living in Marrakech, listening to the traditional Berber storytellers as they enthral tourists with tales from The Arabian Nights. Marchant believes that Dhar has shunned technology, retreating to old customs:coded messages for Dhar are being embedded in ancient narratives. When a man flees from the square, Marchant pursues him up into the Atlas Mountains, where he sees an unmarked military helicopter take off and head east. Is someone shielding Dhar to perpetrate an act of proxy terrorism on the West? Or is the CIA right when it claims to have killed him? To discover the truth, Marchant must be recruited by Moscow. But Marcus Fielding, erudite Chief of MI6, doubts that his young intelligence officer has the mental strength to be a double agent. It's a role that will require him to believe his late father was a traitor, an allegation that Marchant fought long and hard to dispel. Now he must rekindle those rumours and confront dark truths about his own loyalties. He must also work with Lakshmi Meena, the CIA's beautiful new liaison officer in London. Can he ever trust a woman-or an American-again after being betrayed by her predecessor? As Britain braces itself for an airborne terrorist attack, Marchant survives torture in Morocco and India in his bid to find and stop Dhar. Will family ties ultimately prove more binding than ideology? In an absorbing thriller that combines the nuances of Cold War Le Carre with the ejector-seat excitement of Top Gun, Marchant discovers that treachery is the greatest game of all. Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Spring Aldiss, Brian - Helliconia Trilogy 01 - Helliconia Spring Quality: 64 kbps Size: 226 MB This is the first volume of the Helliconia Trilogy - a monumental sage which goes beyond anything yet created by this master among today's imaginative writers. An entire solar system is revealed, and with it a world disturbingly reflecting our own, Helliconia: an Earth-like planet where dynasties change with the seasons . . . . . . Events and characters and animals stream across the pages of this gigantic novel. Cosmic in scope, it keeps an eye lovingly on the humans involved. So the 5,000 inhabitants of the Earth's observation station above Helliconia keep their eyes trained on the events of Oldorando and may long to intervene though the dangers are too great. So we on Earth have them all in our vision in one of the most consuming and magnificent novels of scientific romance. Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Summer Aldiss, Brian - Helliconia Trilogy 02 - Helliconia Summer Quality: 64 kbps Size: 247 MB It is the summer of the Great Year on Helliconia. The humans are involved with their own affairs. Their old enemies, the phagors, are comparitively docile at this time of year; yet they can afford to wait, to take advantage of human weakness - and of the king's weakness. How they do so brings to a climax this powerfully compelling novel, in which the tortuous unwindings of circumstance enmesh royalty and commoners alike, and involve the three Helliconia continents. Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Winter Aldiss, Brian - Helliconia Trilogy 03 - Helliconia Winter Quality: 48 kbps Size: 177 MB The centuries-long winter of the Great Year on Helliconia is upon us, and the Oligarch is taking harsh measures to ensure the survival of the people of the bleak Northern continent of Sibornal. Behind the battle with which the novel opens lies an act of unparalleled treachery. But the plague is coming on the wings of winter and the Oligarch's will is set against it - and against the phagors, humanity's ancient enemies, who carry the plague with them.

08-13-11 at 02:55 AM	#7
gavrooka Novice Join Date: Jul 2011 Posts: 133	John Irving - The World According to Garp The World According to Garp: A Novel by John Irving & Michael Prichard (Reader) Publisher: Ran.dom Ho.use Audio; Unabridged 2005 \| MP3 64 kbps \| 555 MB "Garp was a natural storyteller," says the narrator of John Irving's incandescent novel, referring to the book's hero, the novelist Garp, who has much in common with Irving himself. "He could make things up one right after the other, and they seemed to fit." Irving packs wild characters and weird events into his classic--officially recognized as such in a Modern Library edition with a new introduction by the author--while amazingly maintaining the rough feel of realism in every scene and the pulse of life in every heart. Many novelists of his time might have populated a novel with a novelist protagonist whose life and books comment on each other and the novel we're reading. Transsexual football players, ball turret gunners lobotomized in battle, multiple adultery, unicycling bears, mad feminists who amputate their tongues in sympathy with the celebrated victim of a horrifying rape--Irving made them all people. Even the bear is a fitting character. In a crucial episode, Garp's wife's seduction of a young man coincidentally occurs at the moment when Garp is delighting their young sons with a reckless car trick (one of the few scenes beautifully, eerily, heartbreakingly captured in the film version as well). Many authors would have been content with the harsh comedy of the scene, but Irving respects its integrity, and he builds the rest of the book on the consequences of the event. How does he get away with his killer cocktail of slapstick and horror? Because it's simply what we all face daily, rearranged into soul-satisfying art. "Life is an X-rated soap opera," according to Garp, and who can contradict him? Rereading Garp 20 years later, one is struck by how elegantly Irving structures his bizarre and complex story. Take the two most celebrated bits in the book, the Under Toad and Garp's story "The Pension Grillparzer," which shimmers like an exquisite Kafkaesque insect in the amber of the novel. When Garp warns his son about the "undertow" at the beach, the boy imagines a monster out of Beowulf who lurks beneath the waves to suck you under: the "Under Toad." It's funny at first, but we soon find that the Under Toad is a metaphor with teeth--he connects with a prophetic dream of death in "The Pension Grillparzer," set in Vienna. Garp's son's last words are, "It's like a dream!" And as Irving--who studied at the University of Vienna--can certainly tell you, the German word for "death" sounds precisely like the English word "toad." All that death, and yet Garp is mainly exuberant. This story is, as Garp's stuttering writing teacher puts it, "rich with lu-lu-lunacy and sorrow." It enriches literature, and our lives. "In the world according to Garp, we're all terminal cases." This sentence ends both Irving's comic and tragic novel and its wonderful audio adaptation, read disarmingly by Michael Prichard. We hear the familiar story of T.S. Garp; his mother, Jenny Fields; and Garp's wife, family, friends, and lovers. We also see Garp's efforts to establish himself as a serious author and his involvement in sexual politics. In contrast, Jenny's memoirs establish her as a feminist leader. This work is funny, sexual, serious, and sad. Prichard's narration adds a wonderful dimension to the story. Plus, Irving opens with a terrific introduction to mark the novel's 20th anniversary. This wise and unique tale is as fresh today as it was when first published in 1978. Obviously, a required purchase for all audio collections and required listening for all Irving fans. Irving's (A Son of the Circus, Audio Reviews, LJ 12/94) new novel echoes Garp through tracing the complicated life of novelist Ruth Cole. Divided into three parts, the book views Ruth's life and relationships at age four in 1958, age 36 in 1990, and age 41 in 1995. In the first part, Ruth's mother, devastated by the loss of two sons, leaves her daughter and womanizing husband after a brief love affair with a teenage boy. Part 2 focuses on Ruth's book tour in Europe while coming to grips with a poor love life and considering marriage to an older man. Part 3 traces Ruth's short widowhood and her marriage to the Dutch policeman who solves the murder to which she was a witness. Like Garp, this is a complex, sad, and quite compelling tale. Narrator George Guidall's reading adds to the texture of the story. And like the audio adaptation of Garp, this wonderful novel is a required purchase for all audio collections. Stanislaw Lem - Memoirs Found in a Bathtub Stanislaw Lem - Memoirs Found in a Bathtub Publisher: Au.dib.le Fro.ntiers 2009 \| MP3 64 kbps \| Duration: 6 hours 38 mins \| 182 MB The year is 3149, and a vast paper destroying blight-papyralysis-has obliterated much of the planet's written history. However, these rare memoirs, preserved for centuries in a volcanic rock, record the strange life of a man trapped in a hermetically sealed underground community. William Dietrich - Napoleon's Pyramid Size: 307 MB Quality: MP3 64Kbps Genre: Mystery, Thriller Since this book seems to be the only one in the Ethan Gage series that has not been published as an Audio Book, I did a Text to Speech conversion on it. It is not the best, but at least now I can listen to it. Hopefully others can as well. An unabridged book converted with Microsoft Anna voice, chapter by chapter. From the Cover: "A magnificent adventure, shot through with mystery... A marvelous tale!" --Bernard Cornwell, New York Times bestselling author of the The Last Kingdom. George R. R. Martin - SO&IF 04 - A Feast for Crows It seems too good to be true. After centuries of bitter strife and fatal treachery, the seven powers dividing the land have decimated one another into an uneasy truce. Or so it appears....With the death of the monstrous King Joffrey, Cersei is ruling as regent in King's Landing. Robb Stark's demise has broken the back of the Northern rebels, and his siblings are scattered throughout the kingdom like seeds on barren soil. Few legitimate claims to the once desperately sought Iron Throne still exist--or they are held in hands too weak or too distant to wield them effectively. The war, which raged out of control for so long, has burned itself out. But as in the aftermath of any climactic struggle, it is not long before the survivors, outlaws, renegades, and carrion eaters start to gather, picking over the bones of the dead and fighting for the spoils of the soon-to-be dead. Now in the Seven Kingdoms, as the human crows assemble over a banquet of ashes, daring new plots and dangerous new alliances are formed, while surprising faces--some familiar, others only just appearing--are seen emerging from an ominous twilight of past struggles and chaos to take up the challenges ahead. It is a time when the wise and the ambitious, the deceitful and the strong will acquire the skills, the power, and the magic to survive the stark and terrible times that lie before them. It is a time for nobles and commoners, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and sages to come together and stake their fortunes...and their lives. For at a feast for crows, many are the guests--but only a few are the survivors. Quality: m4b 64 kbps Size: 836 MB Vladimir Bartol - Alamut Vladimir Bartol - Alamut Quality: MP3 48 kbps Duration: 19 hours 32 mins Size: 802 MB Alamut takes place in 11th Century Persia, in the fortress of Alamut, where self-proclaimed prophet Hasan ibn Sabbah is setting up his mad but brilliant plan to rule the region with a handful elite fighters who are to become his "living daggers." By creating a virtual paradise at Alamut, filled with beautiful women, lush gardens, wine and hashish, Sabbah is able to convince his young fighters that they can reach paradise if they follow his commands. With parallels to Osama bin Laden, Alamut tells the story of how Sabbah was able to instill fear into the ruling class by creating a small army of devotees who were willing to kill, and be killed, in order to achieve paradise. Believing in the supreme Ismaili motto 'Nothing is true, everything is permitted,' Sabbah wanted to 'experiment' with how far he could manipulate religious devotion for his own political gain through appealing to what he called the stupidity and gullibility of people and their passion for pleasure and selfish desires. The novel focuses on Sabbah as he unveils his plan to his inner circle, and on two of his young followers - the beautiful slave girl Halima, who has come to Alamut to join Sabbah's paradise on earth, and young ibn Tahir, Sabbah's most gifted fighter. As both Halima and ibn Tahir become disillusioned with Sabbah's vision, their lives take unexpected turns. Alamut was originally written in 1938 as an allegory to Mussolini's fascist state. In the 1960's it became a cult favorite throughout Tito's Yugoslavia, and in the 1990s, during the Balkan's War, it was read as an allegory of the region's strife and became a bestseller in Germany, France and Spain. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, the book once again took on a new life, selling more than 20,000 copies in a new Slovenian edition, and being translated around the world in more than 19 languages.

08-27-11 at 06:34 AM	#8
gavrooka Novice Join Date: Jul 2011 Posts: 133	Henning Mankell - Daniel Henning Mankell (Author), Sean Barrett (Narrator) "Daniel" IS.IS Audio Books 2011 \| MP3 48Kbps \| 200 MB Set in the 1870s, this earnest and heartbreaking story opens with the unsolved murder of a mentally retarded Swedish girl, but this isn't a mystery in the mode of Mankell's international bestselling Kurt Wallander novels (Firewall, etc.). Hans Bengler, a Swedish entomologist, travels across southern Africa in search of undiscovered insects. In the desert, he finds an orphaned native boy, whom he adopts on impulse and calls Daniel. Bengler brings Daniel back to Sweden to exhibit him for money. A link eventually emerges between the girl's murder and Daniel's story, which dramatically illuminates the evils of colonialism (Bengler notes that he "had to make the important decisions for these black people") and the cultural chasm between Europeans and Africans. Mankell fully understands Daniel's radically different cultural perspective and indelibly captures the boy's longing to return to his homeland and the tragic consequences of his forced exile. Mal Peet - Tamar Mal Peet (Author), Anton Lesser and Anna Maxwell Martin (Narrator) "Tamar" Wa.lker Books Ltd. 2007\| MP3 48Kbps \| 12 hours 6 mins \| 226 Mb It was her taciturn but beloved grandfather, William Hyde, who gave Tamar her strange name. But in 1995, when she was 15, he committed suicide, leaving her to wonder if she knew him at all. Later, when she opens the box of War II memorabilia that he left her, she's struck by the need to find out what it means, who he really was, and where she fits in. Tension mounts incrementally in an intricate wrapping of wartime drama and secrecy, in which Tamar finds her namesake and herself. Forming the backbone of the novel are intense, sometimes brutal events in a small Dutch town in Nazi-occupied Holland and the relationship between the girl's namesake, a member of the Dutch Resistance; Dart, a code operator assigned to help him; and Marijke, the love of his life. Peet's plot is tightly constructed, and striking, descriptive language, full of metaphor, grounds the story. Most of the characters are adults here, and to some readers, the Dutch history, though deftly woven through the story, will seem remote. But Peet's sturdy, emotionally resonant characterizations and dramatic backdrop will pull readers forward, as will the secret that gradually unravels. Despite foreshadowing, the outcome is still a stunner. Winner of Britain's 2005 Carnegie Medal, this powerful story will grow richer with each reading. Nick Hornby - Slam Nick Hornby (Author), Nicholas Hoult (Narrator) "Slam" Publisher: Pen.guin Audio 2007 \| MP3 64Kbps \| 7 hours 34 mins \| 201 MB Eighteen-year-old Hoult, an actor who played a role in the film adaptation of Hornby’s About a Boy (1988), is a terrific choice to narrate the author’s first young adult novel. Fifteen-year-old Sam’s girlfriend gets pregnant. What should he do? He doesn’t want to repeat the mistakes of his mother, who got pregnant as a teen. Distressed Sam talks to his poster of skateboarding legend Tony Hawk, which helps his troubled teenage soul. This moving, bittersweet work is packed with Hornby’s trademark insight and incisive wit. Native Brit Hoult’s voice is charming, and his accent is very pronounced. In fact it may take listeners a few chapters to become accustomed to his cadence and lilt, but once they do, they will be rewarded with a memorable listening experience. Peter Van Greenaway - Manrissa Man Manrissa Man - Peter Van Greenaway (Audiobook) Publisher: Da.vid & Ch.arles Publishers 1982 \| 7 hours 30 mins \| 178 MB \| Narrator: Gabriel Woolf \| MP3 56 Kbps The time is the very near future and the US Defence Department is breeding apes as a source of cheap labour (and potential cannon fodder if necessary). Then an obscure lecturer in linguistics teaches them to speak and so taps some formidable intelligences. The results are at first comic butt then stunningly horrific as the apes exact their revenge. Robert Charles Wilson - Vortex Narrated by Scott Brick Duration: 10:21:25 Quality: MP3 32 kbps Size: 139,5 MB Description Vortex tells the story of Turk Findley, the protagonist introduced in Axis, who is transported ten thousand years into the future by the mysterious entities called 'the Hypotheticals.' In this future humanity exists on a chain of planets connected by Hypothetical gateways; but Earth itself is a dying world, effectively quarantined. Turk and his young friend Isaac Dvali are taken up by a community of fanatics who use them to enable a passage to the dying Earth, where they believe a prophecy of human/Hypothetical contact will be fulfilled. The prophecy is only partly true, however, and Turk must unravel the truth about the nature and purpose of the Hypotheticals before they carry him on a journey through warped time to the end of the universe itself. This book has been merged and transcoded--using Goldwave v5.58--from original with a higher sampling frequency and bit rate. This was done to provide consistency, uniformity and compactness. The end result did not compromise playback quality. It is set to 22,050 Hz, 32 Kbps CBR and single channel; and encoded with the Fraunhofer codec. It was tagged with Mp3tag v2.49 and includes cover art. You should note that I have placed the narrator into the Album Artist field.