Showing results by narrator "Edoardo Ballerini" in All Categories

Alone and desperate, Eve sits in the control center of an alien structure. She has lost the other members of the team sent to explore exoplanet Proxima Centauri b. By mistake she has triggered a disastrous process that threatens to obliterate the planet. Just as Eve fears her best option may be a quick death, a nearby alien life form awakens from a very long sleep. It has only one task: to find and neutralize the destructive intruder from a faraway place.

In the shadows of a seismic shift in American politics comes Tom Rachman's timely and hilarious new work. Basket of Deplorables takes an incisive and satirical look at the United States in the era of Trump data breaches, liberal self-righteousness, red-hat rancor, Starbucks macchiatos, Ultimate Fighting factories, and Internet sinkholes.

In 1855, Walt Whitman published, at his own expense, the first edition of Leaves of Grass, a visionary volume of 12 poems. Showing the influence of a uniquely American form of mysticism known as Transcendentalism, the writing is distinguished by an explosively innovative free-verse style and previously unmentionable subject matter. Exalting nature, celebrating the human body, and praising the senses and sexual love, this monumental work, now a classic of American poetry, was condemned as immoral upon publication.

When amiable Italian immigrant Pigeon Tony discovers that local drug dealers are pressuring his young neighbor into joining their ranks, he resolves to put an end to the crime wave before it can take over the community. Pigeon Tony knows the law isn’t always on the right side, but it takes only one person to rally a revolution.

Ignazio was destined to rule Casa Florio since birth, a fearless drive that pulses through his veins, pushing him to look beyond Sicily towards Rome, Europe and its courts, the naval domination of the Mediterranean, and eventually the purchase of the entire Archipelago of the Egadi to build his dazzling empire. But his heart is black as ice. To seize Casa Florio, he abandoned the love of his life—an act of treachery which still casts a dark shadow.

Lambent Light Publishing presents nine stories of the strange, the gross, and the just plain f--ked up from Robert Devereaux, one of the most original voices in fantastic fiction. Edoardo Ballerini, two-time Audie award winner as best male narrator, lends his considerable talents to these twisted tales of horror and dark fantasy.

When Luca Spaghetti (yes, that's really his name) was asked to show a writer named Elizabeth Gilbert around Rome, he had no idea how his life was about to change. She embraced his Roman ebullience, and Luca in turn became her guardian angel, determined that his city would help Liz out of her funk. Filled with colorful anecdotes about food, language, soccer, daily life in Rome, and Luca's own fish-out-of-water moments as a visitor to the United States, Un Amico Italiano is an audiobook that no fan of Eat, Pray, Love will want to miss.

Jean Zimmerman's new novel tells of the dramatic events that transpire when an alluring, blazingly smart eighteen-year-old girl named Bronwyn, reputedly raised by wolves in the wilds of Nevada, is adopted in 1875 by the Delegates, an outlandishly wealthy Manhattan couple, and taken back East to be civilized and introduced into high society. Bronwyn hits the highly mannered world of Edith Wharton - era Manhattan like a bomb. A series of suitors, both young and old, find her irresistible, but the willful girl's illicit lovers begin to turn up murdered.

Someone is murdering the retired ladies of the lunch club. Jack McCall, ably assisted by Nora Burke and Max Logan, is hired by the governor - the brother of one of the victims. At the start, it seems a cushy job: nice weather, good pay, and an attractive Florida State cop is assigned to assist Jack. But in typical Jack McCall fashion, this murder case quickly turns screwy.

In False Flag, Israeli-born Dalia Artzi, a tactical genius and specialist at Princeton in the study of maneuver warfare, uncovers a fiendish plot by a small group of Israeli fanatics to commit a horrific crime against the United States government and pin the blame on Iran. At first Dalia, a pacifist, is hesitant to get involved. But, strong in her Jewish faith, she believes that the goal of her religion is not to crush one's enemies but to practice tikkun olam, to repair the world.

William Faulkner was the greatest American novelist of the 20th century, yet he lived a life marked by a pervasive sense of failure. Throughout his career, he remained haunted by his inability to master a series of personal and professional challenges: his less-than-heroic military career; the loss of his brother in an airplane crash; a disappointing stint as a Hollywood screenwriter; and a destructive bout with alcoholism.

Bridge and Nicole are hired by a woman who's lost her gold coins. They follow the man that took them down to South America, where he intends to sell them to the highest bidder. Things don't quite go according to plan, though, as they run into the con man before he's able to rid himself of the coins. It becomes a cat-and-mouse game between Bridge and the con man, who acts more like a friend than a foe. Can Bridge and Nicole take the coins before the man can get rid of them? Or will they have to alter their plans if they're unable to stop him?

North Korea's deadliest weapon is sleeper agent Song Sun Young. Married with children and living the good life in New York City, she has waited seven years to activate the mission she was trained to do: infiltrate America's financial infrastructure. She prays the call from her handlers will never come, because she loves her husband and kids and affluent New York lifestyle. But the call does come. During volatile negotiations between the White House and Pyongyang, Song is hurled back into a reality she had hoped to leave behind forever.

Insects walk on water, snakes slither, and fish swim. Animals move with astounding grace, speed, and versatility: how do they do it, and what can we learn from them? In How to Walk on Water and Climb up Walls, David Hu takes listeners on an accessible, wondrous journey into the world of animal motion. From basement labs at MIT to the rain forests of Panama, Hu shows how animals have adapted and evolved to traverse their environments, taking advantage of physical laws with results that are startling and ingenious.

In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discover an island where they can make a life together. Over a century later, the Honeys’ descendants and a diverse group of neighbors are desperately poor, isolated, and often hungry, but nevertheless protected from the hostility awaiting them on the mainland.

These 12 stories - published over the last five years in Harper's, The Best American Short Stories, McSweeney's, Playboy, and other publications - veer from comic tales of love to social satire to suspenseful crime fiction, from hip Portland to once-hip Seattle to never-hip Spokane, from a condemned casino in Las Vegas to a bottomless lake in the dark woods of Idaho. This is a world of lost fathers and redemptive conmen, of meth tweakers on desperate odysseys and men committing suicide by fishing.

Central Park is perhaps the most well-trod and familiar green space in the country. It is both a refuge from the city and Manhattan's very heart; a respite from the urban grind and a hive of activity all its own. Eight hundred forty-three carefully planned acres allow some 37 million visitors each year to come and get lost in a sense of nature. Unsurprisingly, the park also inspires a wealth of great writing, and here Andrew Blauner collects some of the finest fiction and nonfiction - 20 pieces in all.

Joseph, a literature student at Berkeley, is the son of a Jewish mother and a Muslim father. One day, a mysterious package arrives on his doorstep, pulling him into a mesmerizing adventure to uncover the tangled history that binds the two sides of his family. For generations, the men of the al-Raqb family have served as watchmen of the storied Ibn Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, built at the site where the infant Moses was taken from the Nile. Joseph learns of his ancestor Ali, a Muslim orphan who became enchanted by the legendary - perhaps magical - Ezra Scroll.

Told in two intertwining narratives, The Thief of Auschwitz takes readers on a dual journey: one into the death camp at Auschwitz with Jacob, Eidel, Max, and Lydia Rosen; the other into the heart of Max himself, now an aged but extremely vital - and outspoken - survivor. Max is a world-renowned painter, and he’s about to be honored with a retrospective at the National Gallery in Washington. The truth, though, is that he’s been keeping a crucial secret from the art world - indeed from the world at large, and perhaps even from himself - all his life long.

Edgar Kellogg has always yearned to be popular. Bored rigid by his pedestrian life as a solicitor, Edgar decides to risk everything on trying to make it as a journalist. When he’s offered the post of foreign correspondent in Barba - a Portuguese backwater that has sprouted a terrorist movement - Edgar leaps at the chance to replace a blowhard called "Barrington Saddler" who’s disappeared. But the more Edgar learns about his posting, and his larger-than-life predecessor, the more he realizes that it’s not Barban terrorism he’s covering; it’s Barrington Saddler.