Showing results by publisher "Audible studios" in Entertainment & Celebrities

Dedicated to the memory of two wrestling coaches and two writer friends, The Imaginary Girlfriend is John Irving's candid memoir of his twin careers in writing and wrestling. The award-winning author of best-selling novels from The World According to Garp to In One Person, Irving began writing when he was 14, the same age at which he began to wrestle at Exeter. He competed as a wrestler for 20 years, was certified as a referee at 24, and coached the sport until he was 47.

In this true crime murder mystery, Mark Shaw tells the story why Pulitzer-Prize-nominated investigative reporter Dorothy Kilgallen was one of the most feared journalists in history. Shaw includes facts that have never before been published, including eyewitness accounts of the underbelly of Kilgallen’s private life, revealing statements by family members, and shocking new information about Jack Ruby’s part in the JFK assassination. Denial of Justice adds the final chapter to the story behind why the famous journalist was killed.

Alice Cooper is an American rock star whose career has spanned more than four decades. With a stage show that features guillotines, electric chairs, boa constrictors and baby dolls, Cooper has pioneered a grandly theatrical and violent brand of hard rock designed to shock.

In November 2000, Chicago journalist and music critic Jim DeRogatis received an anonymous fax that alleged R. Kelly had a problem with “young girls”. Weeks later, DeRogatis broke the shocking story, publishing allegations that the R&B superstar and local hero had groomed girls, sexually abused them, and paid them off. DeRogatis thought his work would have an impact. Instead, Kelly’s career flourished. No one seemed to care: not the music industry, not the culture at large, not the parents of numerous other young girls. But for more than 18 years, DeRogatis stayed on the story.

As a kid growing up in New York in the late '50s, Bill Apter fell in love with professional wrestling, and it wasn't long before he was rubbing shoulders with the greats as a young reporter and photographer. He's since become the world's best-known wrestling magazine personality, and he's had professional and personal relationships with a who's who of the business, like Triple H, Hulk Hogan, The Rock, Sting, and Ric Flair.

In the late 1980s Jon Ronson was the keyboard player in the Frank Sidebottom Oh Blimey Big Band. Frank wore a big fake head. Nobody outside his inner circle knew his true identity. This became the subject of feverish speculation during his zenith years. Together, they rode relatively high. Then it all went wrong. Twenty-five years later and Jon has co-written a movie, Frank, inspired by his time in this great and bizarre band. Frank is set for release in 2014, starring Michael Fassbender, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Domhnall Gleeson and directed by Lenny Abrahamson.

Janis Ian was catapulted into the spotlight in 1966 at the age of 15, when her soul-wrenching song "Society's Child" became a hit. But this was only the beginning of a long and illustrious career. In Society's Child, Janis Ian provides a relentlessly honest account of the successes and failures - and the hopes and dreams - of an extraordinary life.

Ziwe made a name for herself by asking guests like Alyssa Milano, Fran Lebowitz, and Chet Hanks direct questions. In Black Friend, she turns her incisive perspective on both herself and the culture at large. Throughout the book, Ziwe combines pop-culture commentary and personal stories that grapple with her own (mis)understanding of identity. From a hilarious case of mistaken identity via a jumbotron to a terrifying fight-or-flight encounter in the woods, Ziwe raises difficult questions for comedic relief.

Billions of you have watched their videos, and millions of you have followed them on social media. So here we go: it's time to back up, because YouTube superstars The Sidemen are finally here in audiobook form, and they're dishing the dirt on each other as well as the YouTuabe universe. The guys are behind the mic, and it’s about to get messy.

James Rhodes' passion for music has been his absolute lifeline. It has been the thread that has held him together through a life that has encompassed pain, conflict and turmoil. Listening to Rachmaninov on a loop as a traumatised teenager or discovering an adagio by Bach while in a hospital ward - such exquisite miracles of musical genius have helped him survive his demons and, along with a chance encounter with a stranger, inspired him to become the renowned concert pianist he is today.

She seemed to have it all: children, a handsome husband, and a trust fund. But in the early 1950s, Nica Rotschild heard "Round Midnight" by the jazz legend Thelonious Monk; the music overtook her like a magic spell, and she abandoned her marriage to go and find him. She was shunned by society but the musicians gave her friendship. She gave them material and emotional support. Her convertible Bentley was a familiar sight outside the clubs; her notoriety was sealed when Charlie Parker died in her apartment. But her real love was reserved for Monk, whom she cared for until his death in 1982.

A quarter of a century after his death, Jimi Hendrix's popularity is undiminished, his place as the preeminent electric guitarist of the age unrivaled. Back in print, with a new introduction, a new epilogue, and an updated discography, The Jimi Hendrix Experience gives the whole story of his legendary life and career, the virtuosity and madness, the genius and the rush to self-destruction, as well as the fierce ongoing battle for control over his estate that has been waged since Hendrix's death.

Long before drag queens dominated the media, before gender-bending, before punk, even before Stonewall, there was Jayne County. From the 60s to the 90s she was the craziest, the most extreme queen ever to hit a rock 'n' roll stage. She's known and worked with Warhol, Bowie, and Derek Jarman, been an actress, a singer and a prostitute. She's the world's original rock 'n' roll trans star, crossing the genders in the full glare of publicity.

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.

You'd know Fred Stoller if you saw him. He has appeared on practically every great sitcom you've ever seen - Everybody Loves Raymond, Friends, and Murphy Brown just to name a few. But he has never been a regular on a series, always the guest star. He longs to find a showbiz home. Instead, he is a television foster child, shuttling from show to show in the vain hope that one will finally agree to keep him.

Pamela Des Barres, celebrated “queen of the groupies,” chronicled her adventures with rock stars in her bestseller I’m with the Band. This book picks up where that one left off, with Pamela embarking on marriage and motherhood, all the while sharing quarters and making friends with stars. But this is a survivor’s story about the anguish of coping with loved ones’ addictions, about suffering divorce, about the joys and terrors of raising a gifted son.

A street singer discovered by the nightclub owner who gave her the stage name Piaf (Sparrow), she rose to become a national heroine. Friends with Charlie Chaplin, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jean Cocteau, Maurice Chevalier and Marlene Dietrich, she was also at various times chief suspect for the murder of her mentor, an alcoholic and a drug addict. But she always seemed to embody, and still does, the spirit of Paris.

He is the proud torchbearer of the Beatles, the greatest band in the history of popular music, and one of the most closely-studied artists in show business, yet secrets and surprises remain in the life of Sir Paul McCartney. The full story is told in Fab. Howard Sounes, author of the acclaimed Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan, spent more than two years investigating every aspect of Sir Paul’s life and work, including interviewing over 200 people.

This wickedly candid memoir that Ava Gardner dared not publish during her lifetime offers a revealing self-portrait of the film legend's life and loves in Hollywood's golden age. Ava Gardner was one of Hollywood's great stars during the 1940s and '50s, an Oscar-nominated leading lady who co-starred with Clark Gable, Burt Lancaster, and Humphrey Bogart, among others. But this riveting account of her storied life and career had to wait for publication until after her death, so concerned was Gardner with its frankness.

Using hundreds of primary sources, Charles Dickens in Love narrates the story of the most intense romances of Charles Dickens’ life and shows how his novels both testify to his own strongest affections and serve as memorials to the young women he loved all too well, if not always wisely. Charles Dickens has no rival as the most fertile creative imagination since William Shakespeare, and no one influenced his imagination more powerfully than these three women, his muses and teachers in the school of love.