books

"My book, READING WITH PATRICK, is about a student of mine named Patrick, and this remarkable literary and intellectual awakening we experienced together in a county jail in Arkansas. He was a student in my class who was incredibly bright, really quiet, and just had trouble coming to school. I really encouraged him to come to school to write and to read and we had this incredible year together where he improved incredibly. Three years after this, I’ve left Arkansas—it’s a place where a lot of people leave—I agonize about it, I decide to go to law school. My parents are like, “what the heck are you doing in Arkansas?” Three years later, I’m in law school and I find out from a friend that Patrick had gotten into a fight and killed someone. I was totally devastated. I was shocked. I went back to Arkansas to visit him in county jail and I discovered that his reading skills had regressed. They were worse when I first met him in the eighth grade, and it’s because he had dropped out of school the year after I left the Delta. The heart of the book is really about us reading together in jail for seven months while we’re waiting for his trial, and about the incredible agility and the power of reading together and writing together. And it’s also about me grappling with my own failures and trying to think about the legacy of racism and poverty in the Mississippi Delta."

S2 E62: Michelle Kuo, Author of Reading with Patrick

The much-anticipated new work from the author of The Golden Compass is coming at last! Renowned storyteller Philip Pullman returns to the parallel world of Lyra Belacqua and His Dark Materials for a thrilling and epic adventure in which daemons, alethiometers, and the Magisterium all play a part. &#160; The Book of Dust will be a work in three parts, like His Dark Materials (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass). The book is set ten years before The Golden Compass and centers on the much-loved character Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon. &#160; Philip Pullman offers these tantalizing details: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve always wanted to tell the story of how Lyra came to be living at Jordan College, and in thinking about it, I discovered a long story that began when she was a baby and will end when she&rsquo;s grown up. This volume and the next will cover two parts of Lyra&rsquo;s life: starting at the beginning of her story and returning to her twenty years later. As for the third and final part, my lips are sealed. &#160; &ldquo;So, second: is it a prequel? Is it a sequel? It&rsquo;s neither. In fact, The Book of Dust is . . . an &lsquo;equel.' It doesn&rsquo;t stand before or after His Dark Materials, but beside it. It&rsquo;s a different story, but there are settings that readers of His Dark Materials will recognize, and characters they&rsquo;ve met before. Also, of course, there are some characters who are new to us, including an ordinary boy (a boy we have glimpsed in an earlier part of Lyra&rsquo;s story, if we were paying attention) who, with Lyra, is caught up in a terrifying adventure that takes him into a new world. &#160; &ldquo;Third: why return to Lyra&rsquo;s world? Dust. Questions about that mysterious and troubling substance were already causing strife ten years before His Dark Materials, and at the center of The Book of Dust is the struggle between a despotic and totalitarian organization, which wants to stifle speculation and inquiry, and those who believe thought and speech should be free. The idea of Dust suffused His Dark Materials. Little by little through that story the idea of what Dust was became clearer and clearer, but I always wanted to return to it and discover more.&rdquo; &#160; The books of the His Dark Materials trilogy were showered with praise, and the Cincinnati Enquirer proclaimed, &ldquo;Pullman has created the last great fantasy masterpiece of the twentieth century.&rdquo; With The Book of Dust, Philip Pullman embarks on an equally grand adventure, sure to be hailed as the first great fantasy masterpiece of the twenty-first century.

The Book of Dust:  La Belle Sauvage (Book of Dust, Vol. 1) by Philip Pullman, read by Michael Sheen

"The word 'masterpiece' has been cheapened by too many blurbs, but My Absolute Darling absolutely is one." —Stephen King

"Our generation’s next beloved literary heroine.” –Harper’s Bazaar

“One of EW's favorite books of the year so far…an unputdownable coming-of-age novel.” —Entertainment Weekly

A brilliant and immersive, all-consuming read about one fourteen-year-old girl's heart-stopping fight for her own soul.

Turtle Alveston is a survivor. At fourteen, she roams the woods along the northern California coast. The creeks, tide pools, and rocky islands are her haunts and her hiding grounds, and she is known to wander for miles. But while her physical world is expansive, her personal one is small and treacherous: Turtle has grown up isolated since the death of her mother, in the thrall of her tortured and charismatic father, Martin. Her social existence is confined to the middle school (where she fends off the interest of anyone, student or teacher, who might penetrate her shell) and to her life with her father.

Then Turtle meets Jacob, a high-school boy who tells jokes, lives in a big clean house, and looks at Turtle as if she is the sunrise. And for the first time, the larger world begins to come into focus: her life with Martin is neither safe nor sustainable. Motivated by her first experience with real friendship and a teenage crush, Turtle starts to imagine escape, using the very survival skills her father devoted himself to teaching her. The reader tracks Turtle's escalating acts of physical and emotional courage, and watches, heart in throat, as she struggles to become her own hero--and in the process, becomes ours as well. 

Shot through with striking language in a fierce natural setting, My Absolute Darling is an urgently told, profoundly moving read that marks the debut of an extraordinary new writer.

My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent, read by Alex McKenna

New York Times best-selling author Tanya Anne Crosby returns to the salt marshes and crumbling plantations of Charleston, where a gruesome murder and kidnapping reawaken fears of a serial killer on the loose....

Augusta Aldridge believes in Ian Patterson's innocence, even after he was arrested for killing two young women. She was with him the night one of the crimes occurred, hidden in the shadows beneath a beachside pier, locked in a wild, unthinking embrace with a man whose dangerous fascination may have fatally lured other victims. Now that another body has been discovered, and a 13-year old boy has gone missing, the police suspect a copycat killer, but Augusta is certain they have the wrong man. She's going to risk her reputation - and her life - to prove Ian's innocence and save young Cody. But the clock is ticking....

Tell No Lies by Tanya Anne Crosby on Audible:
http://www.audible.com/pd?asin=B074TQ8ZWB&source_code=AUDORWS0729149AF4

Get this audiobook for free when you try Audible:
http://www.audible.com/offers/30free?asin=B074TQ8ZWB&source_code=AUDORWS0729149AF4

Buy on Audible

Tell No Lies by Tanya Anne Crosby, Narrated by Julie McKay

A Red Peace, first in Spencer Ellsworth's Starfire trilogy, is an action-packed space opera in a universe where the oppressed half-Jorian crosses have risen up to supplant humanity and dominate the galaxy.

Half-breed human star navigator Jaqi, working the edges of human-settled space on contract to whoever will hire her, stumbles into possession of an artifact that the leader of the Rebellion wants desperately enough to send his personal guard after. An interstellar empire and the fate of the remnant of humanity hang in the balance.

Spencer Ellsworth has written a classic space opera, with space battles between giant bugs, sun-size spiders, planets of cyborgs, and a heroine with enough grit to bring down the galaxy's newest warlord.

A Red Peace by Spencer Ellsworth on Audible:
http://www.audible.com/pd?asin=B071FV8XX5&source_code=AUDORWS0823179LBW

Get this audiobook for free when you try Audible:http://www.audible.com/offers/30free?asin=B071FV8XX5&source_code=AUDORWS0823179LBW

A Red Peace by Spencer Ellsworth, Narrated by John Keating & Mary Robinette Kowal

"What inspired me to write MEDITATE WITH ME: A Step-by-Step Mindfulness Journey was I wanted kids to have a way to slow down. I wanted to give kids a beloved book that they could connect to, that they could interact with, practices that were easy for them, a way to feel their breath in their body, a way to slow down when they need it, and a way to really calm themselves…a way to sort of start practicing self-soothing techniques that they’ll really need throughout their entire lives."

S2 E63: Mariam Gates, Author of Meditate With Me

"I was inspired to write this book, UNLEASHING THE INNOVATORS, because I love big companies, I worked in one for 25 years, and in my consulting practice, company after company I meet is struggling with culture change, and revitalization, and growth, and energy, and risk and dealing with fear of failure. And many of them were using startups to try to kind of put new energy into the company. And yet, I didn’t think there was a playbook for that."

S2 E65: Jim Stengel, Author of Unleashing the Innovators

"My book THE FOUR TENDENCIES is about a personality framework that I’ve identified called the Four Tendencies that divides all of humanity into four types: Upholder, Questioner, Obliger, and Rebel. I got my first insight into this framework when I had lunch with a friend and she said something that got me obsessed with this question of personality types. She said, 'I know I would be happier if I would go running, and when I was in high school I was on the track team and I never missed track practice, so why can’t I go running now?' And I thought, 'Well, why? It’s the same person, the same behavior, at that time it was effortless but now she can’t do it. What’s going on?' My determination to figure out the answer to that question, in the end, led me to write a whole book, called THE FOUR TENDENCIES."

S2 E66: Gretchen Rubin, Author of The Four Tendencies

"I think that I realized there were a lot of stories and ideas that didn’t really make sense to talk about on stage in a stand-up context because they were just too embarrassing, or not funny enough, or just too personal, and I couldn’t figure out a way to perform them live. And so I started writing them down and they just sat in this document, and I just hoped one day I’d get brave enough to do it or smart enough to figure out how to do them on stage, and I just couldn’t. People kept suggesting I write a book and I always just felt like, 'Oh God, that’s something you do when you have a long life.' I just didn’t feel like I had enough to offer, and then I thought, “Oh, maybe I should do all those stories that I've never figured out how to tell on stage. Maybe they’re a book.' And I started looking at them and I was like, “Wow this stuff’s embarrassing, I’m never gonna be able to say this in front of people.' So I just gave up on that ever happening and I started turning it into a book.  And then to get through it I had to get an intention together, I had to get a mantra together and I was like, 'Okay, I’m gonna write the book that I wish had been available to me when I was 18. I wanna write a bible for people who want to grow and feel better about their awful choices.'"

S2 E70: Whitney Cummings, Author of I'm Fine...and Other Lies

"My book, SO MUCH I WANT TO TELL YOU: Letters to My Little Sister, is a collection of essays and lessons that I’ve learned over the past decade since her suicide in 2007."

S2 E72: Anna Akana, Author of So Much I Want to Tell You

"I had been working in the single-mom space through my blog and podcast, and speaking and media engagements, for more than five years. I was raised by a single mom, I became a single mom, and I had a lot of initial shame around being a single mom. And, you know what? It happens to suit me really well. And I found myself relaxing into this time that I’m in and finding all these women—there’s ten million single moms in our country, millions worldwide, and these women have nothing to be ashamed about. I’m meeting incredible women every day that are doing incredible things—in business, in their communities, with their families—and I wanted to reach out to them. And I wanted to inspire the women that aren’t quite there yet."

S2 E75: Emma Johnson, Author of The Kickass Single Mom

"I wrote this book, AN AMERICAN FAMILY, to tell the story of my family’s immigration to the United States. But behind all this, the American values that inspired me to decide to come to the United States and then make it a home."

S2 E76: Khizr Khan, Author of American Family

"PLAYING WITH FIRE is set in the 1968 presidential campaign, but the book is about nothing less than life and death, because that's what was at stake in the 1968 presidential campaign."

S2 E78: Lawrence O'Donnell, Author of Playing With Fire

"In this New Year, you might want to try meditation. Some of you may have wondered about the benefits, stress reduction, lowering of anxiety, helping you cope more efficiently, be less frustrated, less addicted in your behavior. The most important thing from the beginning is not to turn it into another self-improvement project. Meditation can be useful if you don’t expect too much from it. So let me guide you a little bit into the way I think about it."

S3 E01: Mark Epstein, Author of Advice Not Given

Penguin Random House Audio is the market leader for adult and children's audiobook publishing. Follow us on Twitter @PRHAudio.

The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage (Book of Dust, Vol. 1) by Philip Pullman, read by Michael Sheen

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