Showing titles in Art & Literature

When Peta Mathias dug through the clothes she had stored away for 20 years in her shed, she realised it was full of valuable, beautiful items that were crying out to be worn again: ‘Fashion is mysterious, irresistible and alluring...they are not just frocks—they are beauty, art, history, emotion, memory, identity and, above all, joy.’ From this arose a new appreciation of buying well but cannily, so your clothes will not bankrupt you nor go out of fashion. 

Joining us in the Audible Studios to talk about his latest novel, Early Riser, is British author Jasper Fforde. Known for his Thursday Next series of novels and independent series Nursery Crime and The Dragonslayer, Jasper Fforde is back with a brand-new novel and universe, Early Riser, set in a world where humanity must hibernate during the brutally cold months of winter. Jasper Fforde talks to us about his latest novel, the inspiration behind it and his wild and vivid imagination. 

Brennan Manning has been dazzingly faithful in preaching and writing variations on the ragamuffin theme, Yes, Abba is very fond of you! But today the crowds are gone and the lights are dim, the patches on his knees have faded. If he ever was a ragamuffin, truly it is now. In this his final book, Brennan roves back his past, honoring the lives of the people closest to him, family and friends who've known the saint and the sinner, the boy and the man. Far from some chronological timeline, these memories are witness to the truth of life by one who has lived it.

In mid-2016, Monica left Sydney, unsure of her place in Australia. As a Chinese Australian city slicker, she couldn't have felt more distant from powerful mythologies like the Digger, the Drover's Wife and Clancy of the Overflow. And more importantly, Monica wondered, how could she ever feel she truly belonged to a land that has been the spiritual domain of Indigenous Australians for over 60,000 years?   

Bob Roth, meditation teacher and CEO of the David Lynch Foundation, joins us to discuss his latest audiobook, Strength in Stillness: The Power of Transcendental Meditation. Roth’s audiobook examines what we might do to combat the growing stress epidemic which has gripped the world and why he believes that transcendental meditation is a key tool. In this interview we discuss what transcendental meditation is, how he first came across the technique and how the view of meditation has changed over the years. 

A former US naval intelligence worker, Milton William Cooper published his manifesto Behold a Pale Horse in 1991. Since then it has gone on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies, becoming the number-one best seller in the American prison system. According to Behold a Pale Horse, JFK was assassinated - because he was about to reveal that extraterrestrials were about to take over the earth - by his driver, an alien himself; AIDS is a government conspiracy; and much more.

Joining us at Audible Studios is Alex Michaelides, a Hollywood screenwriter, who has released his debut thriller The Silent Patient. We spoke about his novel in which a devoted and loving wife suddenly shoots her husband five times, and never speaks another word. We also spoke about his university studies, how they have influenced his writing, his amazing career so far, and his upcoming plans.

Keith Haring is synonymous with the downtown New York art scene of the 1980s. His artwork - with its simple, bold lines and dynamic figures in motion - filtered in to the world's consciousness and is still instantly recognizable, 20 years after his death. 

When Augusten Burroughs was small, his father was a shadowy presence in his life: a form on the stairs, a cough from the basement, a silent figure smoking a cigarette in the dark. As Augusten grew older, something sinister within his father began to unfurl. Something dark and secretive that could not be named. Betrayal after shocking betrayal ensued, and Augusten's childhood was over. The kind of father he wanted didn't exist for him. This father was distant, aloof, uninterested.

Antwone Quenton Fisher was raised in institutions from the moment his single mother gave birth to him in prison. As a foster child, he suffered more than a dozen years of emotional abandonment and physical abuse, until he escaped and forged a life on the streets. And just as his life was about to hit rock bottom, Antwone enlisted in the U.S. Navy, a decision that would ultimately save him. There, he became a man and discovered a loving family he never had.

"Was, um Himmels willen, hat mich bloß ins gleißende Scheinwerferlicht getrieben, mitten unter die Showwölfe? Eigentlich bin ich doch mehr der gemütliche, tapsige Typ und überhaupt keine Rampensau. Warum wollte ich also bereits im zarten Kindesalter mit aller Macht "berühmt werden"? Und wieso hat das dann tatsächlich geklappt? Nun, vielleicht einfach deshalb, weil ich es meiner Oma als sechsjähriger Knirps genau so versprechen musste.

Will Self is the author of many novels and books of non-fiction, including Great Apes, The Book of Dave, How the Dead Live, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year 2002, The Butt, winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction 2008, Umbrella, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2012, and Shark. His most recent novel, Phone, was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. He lives in south London.

Need to swot up on your Shakespeare? If you’ve always felt a bit embarrassed at your precarious grasp on the plot of Othello, or you haven’t a clue what a petard - as in ‘hoist with his own petard’ - actually is, then fear not, because this, at last, is the perfect guide to bring you up to speed. From the authors of the number-one bestselling Homework for Grown-ups, Shakespeare for Grown-ups is the essential book for anyone keen to deepen their knowledge of the Bard’s key plays and sonnets.

Julia and her adopted brother, David, are 16 years old. Julia is White. David is Black. It is the mid-1980s and their family has just moved to rural Indiana, a landscape of cottonwood trees, trailer parks, and an all-encompassing racism. At home are a distant mother more involved with her church’s missionaries than her own children and a violent father.

Following the release of the fifth instalment in the Robert Langdon series, Dan Brown talks to Audible about his long-standing passion for music and modern art and how it contributed towards the creation of Origin. In Origin, listeners will be reunited with the amiable and courageous Robert Langdon as he travels around Spain in search of answers to the most important existential questions of our time.

In Lessico famigliare, il riaffiorare alla memoria di parole, espressioni, frasi e modi di dire sentiti tante volte in casa da Natalia Ginzburg, scandisce, con ironia e tenerezza, la storia della sua famiglia - i Levi - ebrei e antifascisti, nell'Italia tra gli anni Venti e gli anni Cinquanta del Novecento.

Anyone who's read or listened to the classic I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings knows Maya Angelou was raised by her paternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. In Mom and Me and Mom, Angelou details what brought her mother to send her away and unearths the well of emotions Angelou experienced long afterward as a result. While Angelou's first six autobiographies reveal about her out in the world, influencing and learning from statesmen and cultural icons, her final autobiography and conclusion to the series, Mom and Me and Mom, shares the intimate, emotional story about her own family.

At a time when Vancouver Island was still an extremely remote and sparsely populated backwater, a young widow packed her five children into a 25-foot boat dubbed The Caprice and set off on an adventure. Summer after summer the brave young mother, who became known as "Capi," would set sail and explore the rugged coastline for months with her young crew. Although the hazards the family faced were numerous-tides, fog, storms, rapids, cougars, and even grizzlies-Capi brought them through it all.

Following in the footsteps of his literary hero, researcher and historian Oliver Lewis set out to visit all the places to have inspired and been lived in by George Orwell. Over three years he traveled from Wigan to Catalonia, Paris to Motihari, Marrakesh to Eton, and in each location explored both how Orwell experienced the place, and how the place now remembers him as a literary icon. 

Peter Beard lived an astonishing life. The artist, wildlife photographer, and bon vivant enthralled and inspired both because of his work and his legendary lifestyle. In Twentieth-Century Man, Wallace has rendered this towering figure in all of his contradictions and complexities—a deeply romantic and idiosyncratic personality, beloved by so many, whose sensibilities nonetheless remained firmly rooted in an era characterized by racist and colonialist attitudes. Stirring and visceral, Twentieth-Century Man is the definitive portrait of Peter Beard.