Showing results by publisher "Audible Studios" in Art & Literature

Trying to Save Piggy Sneed contains a dozen short works by John Irving, beginning with three memoirs, including an account of Mr. Irving’s dinner with President Ronald Reagan at the White House. The longest of the memoirs, The Imaginary Girlfriend,” is the core of this collection.

Laura Kasinof studied Arabic in college and moved to Yemen a few years later - after a friend at a late-night party in Washington, DC, recommended the country as a good place to work as a freelance journalist. When she first moved to Sanaa in 2009, she was the only American reporter based in the country. She quickly fell in love with Yemen’s people and culture, in addition to finding herself the star of a local TV soap opera.

In the late 1970s Ondaatje returned to his native island of Sri Lanka. As he records his journey through the drug-like heat and intoxicating fragrances of that "pendant off the ear of India", Ondaatje simultaneously retraces the baroque mythology of his Dutch-Ceylonese family. An inspired travel narrative and family memoir by an exceptional writer.

Richard Ellmann has revised and expanded his definitive work on Joyce's life to include newly discovered primary material, including details of a failed love affair, a limerick about Samuel Beckett, a dream notebook, previously unknown letters, and much more.

Mark Colvin is a broadcasting legend. He is the voice of ABC Radio’s leading current affairs program PM; he was a founding broadcaster for the groundbreaking youth station Double J; he initiated The World Today program; and he’s one of the most popular and influential journalists in the twittersphere. Mark has been covering local and global events for more than four decades. He has reported on wars, royal weddings and everything in between. In the midst of all this he discovered that his father was an MI6 spy.

Da una routine che la costringe ad alzarsi alle cinque di mattina per affrontare la lunga sessione di trucco necessaria a celare il nevo di Ota, la macchia scura che le copre parte del viso. Uscire allo scoperto, mostrare il proprio viso al naturale affrontando la paura dello sguardo degli altri è una decisione difficile, ma lo è ancora di più perché riporta alla superficie della mente di Carlotta la memoria di un altro trauma, che ha segnato la sua adolescenza.

The American writer Charles Bukowski (1920-94) developed a cult following for his simple and vivid poems, stories and novels based on his experiences as a hard-drinking postal worker in Los Angeles. His classic books include Post Office, Women and Love Is a Dog from Hell. In this engrossing biography, studded with excerpts from Bukowski's writing, Howard Sounes tells the true story of Bukowski's life in the same punchy style as his subject.

A Field Guide to Getting Lost draws on emblematic moments and relationships in Solnit's own life to explore issues of wandering, being lost, and the uses of the unknown. The result is a distinctive, stimulating, and poignant voyage of discovery.

What is the role of the writer? Prophet? High priest of art? Court jester? Or witness to the real world? Looking back on her own childhood and writing career, Margaret Atwood examines the metaphors which writers of fiction and poetry have used to explain - or excuse! - their activities, looking at what costumes they have assumed, what roles they have chosen to play. In her final chapter she takes up the challenge of the title: if a writer is to be seen as "gifted", who is doing the giving and what are the terms of the gift?

Speak, Memory, first published in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence and then assiduously revised in 1966, is an elegant and rich evocation of Nabokov’s life and times, even as it offers incisive insights into his major works, including Lolita, Pnin, Despair, The Gift, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, and The Luhzin Defense.

This is a biography of James Baldwin, author, one-time preacher, and civil rights activist. He chose David Leeming, a close friend and colleague, to write his biography and granted him access to his correspondence. Leeming traces his life from his birth in Harlem in 1924 to his self-imposed exile in Europe, his later years as political activist, and his public funeral in 1987.

When Abigail Thomas’s husband, Rich, was hit by a car, his brain shattered. Subject to rages, terrors, and hallucinations, he must live the rest of his life in an institution. He has no memory of what he did the hour, the day, the year before. This tragedy is the ground on which Abigail had to build a new life. How she built that life is a story of great courage and great change, of moving to a small country town, of a new family composed of three dogs, knitting, and friendship, of facing down guilt and discovering gratitude.

Over fifteen years of dirty secrets, shocking reveals, and all of the celebrity gossip that’s unfit to print . . . but we’re going to anyway. When Jay Z defended himself against unfair charges that he slapped a woman, when Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez got tagged by an escort agency madam, when Bill O’Reilly dissed Muslim women, and when Ruth Madoff discovered her scam artist husband, Bernie, had also been cheating on her, it all came out in the pages of Rush & Molloy.

Best-selling author Lemony Snicket (a.k.a. Daniel Handler) recently spoke with Beth Anderson, Audible's publisher, about A Series of Unfortunate Events. He talked about his experience narrating audiobooks, as well as his participation in the movie. You'll hear about his favorite authors and musicians and learn more about the Baudelaire orphans. Whether you are a die-hard fan or new to this fantastically grim and gripping series, this dire dialogue will make you marvelously miserable.

This is perhaps one of the best-loved of all journals. William Wordsworth's sister, Dorothy, began it in May 1800 and resolved to keep it for a short time. She continued it for nearly three years. In it, she brought the Dove Cottage years to vivid and intimate life. She noted the walks and weather, the friends, country neighbours, and travellers on the roads. She set down accounts of the garden, of Wordsworth's marriage, their concern for Coleridge, and the composition of Wordsworth's poetry.

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.

"I intend to do everything...I shall anticipate pleasure everywhere and find it too, for it is everywhere! I shall involve myself wholly...everything matters!" This first selection from Susan Sontag's diaries (from 1947-1963) takes us from early adolescence through to when Sontag was in her early 30s. It is an astonishingly affecting and honest self-portrait which is also a fascinating, revealing account of an artist and critic being born. We see Sontag honing her skills and fashioning herself, by a supreme act of will, into an intellectual force.

In 11 propulsive and deeply felt chapters, Chai recounts her investigations into SARS quarantine wards, a childhood suicide epidemic, the human cost of industrial pollution, and organized crime, while looking back at her growth as a journalist. Chai Jing shares the philosophical and emotional complexity of the ethical challenges that are always present in such revealing reporting, while she also finds hope and purpose, time and again, in the vital and intimate stories of her interviewees.

Joining us at Audible Studios is Bill Bryson, one of Britain's best-selling nonfiction authors. Bryson has captivated the hearts and minds of Britons with his genial character, general cheerfulness and amazing ability to simplify overwhelming science into something that can be understood by all. Not only has Bryson given us all the ability to inform ourselves on the most complex of topics, but he provides a wry and uplifting perspective on travel in all regards, from the Appalachian trail to small mining villages in England.

When Lucy Mangan was little, stories were everything. They opened up new worlds and cast light on all the complexities she encountered in this one. She was whisked away to Narnia and Kirrin Island and Wonderland. She ventured down rabbit holes and womble burrows into midnight gardens and chocolate factories. She wandered the countryside with Milly-Molly-Mandy and played by the tracks with the Railway Children.