2024 Releases

GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES, BUT GENTLEMEN MARRY BRUNETTES
Written by Anita Loos
Read by Gabrielle de Cuir
Published by Blackstone Publishing

“Kissing your hand may make you feel very, very good, but a diamond and sapphire bracelet lasts forever.”

Paired together for the first time on audio, Blackstone and Skyboat Media present Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes.

The Jazz-Age classic Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Intimate Diary of a Professional Lady was an instant hit when it was first released serially in 1925, and it became the second-best-selling book of 1926 when it was published in its entirety. In her diary, Lorelei Lee, a not-so-dumb blonde from Arkansas, documents her wild adventures to Hollywood, Manhattan, Europe, and back again with her best friend, Dorothy. Along the way, Lorelei and Dorothy are flanked by suitors from all walks of high society, but it might just be the American millionaire who draws her eye.

But just because Lorelei might have found “the one” doesn’t mean the adventures are over! In the sequel, But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes, Lorelei takes up her diary once again to tell Dorothy’s tale. Dorothy’s journey takes her from her carnival upbringing all the way to the Ziegfeld Follies. Her talent, gumption, and unique personality bring her fame and eventually love as well, but marriage, she learns, is not everything she dreamt it would be …

Lorelei Lee’s punchy, distinctive way with words and her droll yet frank outlook on life are the reason Edith Wharton called Gentleman Prefer Blondes “the great American novel (at last!),” and the novel’s legacy has only grown since. Played by Marilyn Monroe and Carol Channing, this archetypal gold-digger’s story has solidified Anita Loos as one of the great American novelists and screenwriters.

This compilation also features the forgotten short story “Why Girls Go South.” Originally published in Harper’s Bazaar in 1926, “Why Girls Go South” is the outrageously droll tale of Judy Revell, a promiscuous, modern, and surprisingly resilient New York debutante who travels to Florida to pursue a career in the Arts, much to her family’s amusement and, in some cases, chagrin. 

Full Contents:

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes
“Why Girls Go South”

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Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes by Anita Loos, read by Gabrielle de Cuir

ORLAND: A BIOGRAPHY
Written by Virginia Woolf
Read by Gabrielle de Cuir and Stefan Rudnicki
Published by Blackstone Publishing

“I’m sick to death of this particular self. I want another.”

Virginia Woolf’s Orlando is the extraordinary biography of a young nobleman in the court of Elizabeth I who transforms into a woman and lives for over three centuries. In his youth, Orlando is a passionate lover and poet. He dotes on the Queen, serves King James faithfully, falls deeply in love with a Russian princess, and becomes an ambassador to Constantinople, but at his heart all Orlando ever wants to be is a great writer (and living at the same time as Marlowe, Donne, and Shakespeare, this is no easy thing). But while living in Constantinople, one evening Orlando is transformed into woman, though she retains all her memories and personality; the only thing that changes about Orlando is her body. Now as a woman, she must navigate complex and exclusionary legal systems throughout the ages, her own previous views on gender, society’s expectations of marriage, and her own ambitions as a poet—not to mention having to grapple with a seemingly immortal lifespan.

An unusual and profound examination of gender roles, expression, and identity, Orlando is one of Woolf’s best known and best loved works, and it remains just as relevant and revolutionary today as when it was first published.

Orlando by Virginia Woolf, read by Stefan Rudnicki and Gabrielle de Cuir

DECLINE AND FALL
Written by Evelyn Waugh
Read by Stefan Rudnicki
Published by Blackstone Publishing

“What an immature, self-destructive, antiquated mischief is man! How obscure and gross his prancing and chattering on his little stage of evolution! How loathsome and beyond words boring all the thoughts and self-approval of his biological by-product! this half-formed, ill-conditioned body! this erratic, maladjusted mechanism of his soul: on one side the harmonious instincts and balanced responses of the animal, on the other the inflexible purpose of the engine, and between them man, equally alien from the being of Nature and the doing of the machine, the vile becoming!”

Evelyn Waugh’s first novel, Decline and Fall, is the daring and hilarious tale of Paul Pennyfeather, a theology student expelled from Oxford and sent to teach at a private boys’ school in Wales. Previously a modest young man, Paul finds himself a bit out of place amongst the teachers of Llanabba, who are all misfits, fools, and derelicts themselves: Prendy (the anxious) and Captain Grimes (the drunk), just to name two. There are not only failed men and rowdy boys in this Welsh town to occupy his time, however; Margot Beste-Chetwynde, the mother of one of his students, quickly becomes the object of Paul’s affections. But Margot may not be all she appears to, and Paul’s world is turned upside down all over again.

With a title inspired both by Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West, Waugh’s Decline and Fall is a brilliant farce and a biting satire of English morals and school life of the 1920s and, by extension, of the experience of generations of so many students and educators since.

Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh, read by Stefan Rudnicki

POINT COUNTER POINT
Written by Aldous Huxley
Read by Stefan Rudnicki
Published by Blackstone Publishing

“Everybody strains after happiness, and the result is that nobody’s happy.”

In music, counterpoint is the art of writing melodies that play in conjunction with one another, according to a strict set of rules, in order to emphasize the melody by contrast. In debate, point/counterpoint is a means of persuasion in which the speaker begins by conceding to their opponent’s argument before refuting it wholeheartedly. Aldous Huxley follows these traditions in his masterpiece Point Counter Point. The polarity between passion and reason in the intellectual life of the 1920s is demonstrated both in form and in theme in Huxley’s ambitious satire: This complex novel darts around points of view to portray the convoluted nature of perception versus reality, and it boasts a large cast of characters that come together, almost as an orchestra, performing separate melodies that come together in one great symphony. Not only do these characters serve such a musical purpose in the plot, they also represent real life writers who were popular at the time, such as D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, John Middleton Murry, and even Huxley himself (in the form of Phillip Quarles, the “novelist” within the novel).

Point Counter Point was named one of “100 Best Works of the 20th Century” by Modern Library.

Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley, read by Stefan Rudnicki

THE MYSTERY OF THE BLUE TRAIN
Written by Agatha Christie
Read by Gabrielle de Cuir with John Rubinstein and Stefan Rudnicki
Published by Blackstone Publishing

“Trust the train, Mademoiselle, for it is le bon Dieu who drives it. […] And trust Hercule Poirot. He knows.”

Unhappy with her marriage, Ruth Kettering, a pampered American heiress, is on her way to meet her lover in the French Riviera, but she will never reach her destination. When the train stops in Nice, the heiress is found dead and without her precious jewels aboard Le Train Bleu. But in the midst of robbery, murder, and tragedy, famed detective Hercule Poirot is there to solve the mystery.

The gruesome murder is believed to have been performed by Ruth’s estranged husband, but Poirot believes there is more to the story. On top of the motive of murder, Poirot must consider the theft of the famous ruby, “Heart of Fire,” that was given to Ruth by her father, the American millionaire Rufus Van Aldin. And it is her father’s secretary, Major Knighton, who convinces Poirot to unmask the perpetrator of the crime. Poirot receives conflicting stories from the key players, witnesses, and suspects aboard the train, and so to find the murderer, the Belgian detective must stage a reenactment of the fatal journey.

The Mystery Of The Blue Train by Agatha Christie, read by Gabrielle de Cuir

Grammy, Hugo and Audie winning audiobook publishers and production company since the turn of this century. Company owned by Stefan Rudnicki and Gabrielle de Cuir.

Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh, read by Stefan Rudnicki

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