Authors From BOOKS ON TAPE

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Known for his larger-than-life accomplishments, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar--sports legend, cultural ambassador, and author--wants to address another important audience: young readers. His memoir, BECOMING KAREEM: GROWING UP ON AND OFF THE COURT, chronicles important lessons that he absorbed from a variety of teachers who guided his path, ultimately allowing him, as he writes, to “walk that path on my own, confident in my own choices.”

Noah Adams

One might expect an experienced radio journalist to make an easy transition to audiobook reader.

Mitch Albom

“I think that when you’re dealing with big, broad topics--the meaning of life, or what happens after we die, or faith--it’s easier to tell a really big story in a really small way.”

Bestselling author Mitch Albom knows how to tell big, entertaining, and inspiring stories such as TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE and THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN. In his new novel, THE TIME KEEPER, he tackles the way people spend their most precious gift: time. “I look at fairy tales and fables, stories that people remember,” he says, “yet they’re the things that teach us the biggest lessons.

Alan Alda

Alan Alda’s performances have made audiences sit up and take notice for many years. Whether he’s portraying Hawkeye Pierce in the iconic “M*A*S*H” TV series or the guy-you’d-love-to-hate in a Woody Allen movie or narrating one of his own audiobooks, Alda commands our attention, our admiration, and our respect. He was thrilled to be nominated for a Spoken Word Grammy Award in 2008 for narrating his audiobook THINGS I OVERHEARD WHILE TALKING TO MYSELF. That was a year of some pretty stiff competition. Among the other nominees were Maya Angelou, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. Alda tells us, “I loved Obama’s audiobook THE AUDACITY OF HOPE the year he got the Grammy for it. And you can see that I really loved it because we were both nominated for the Grammy, and he won!”

Writing letters provides the source material for many of Isabel Allende’s books. Her first internationally acclaimed bestseller, THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS, began as a letter to her 99-year-old grandfather. Her memoir, PAULA, recounting her family’s history, was written as Allende sat at her dying daughter’s bedside. Now, 13 years later, THE SUM OF OUR DAYS is a letter to Paula, updating her on what’s been happening in the family since she’s been gone.

Stephen E. Ambrose

Stephen E. Ambrose is a patriot, arguably the most brilliant, compelling and least abashed patriot publishing history in this country today. He’s also a partisan of the spoken word.

“I’m a great fan of audiobooks,” said Ambrose, who had most recently listened to a Shelby Foote Civil War history. “I do a lot of driving across the country, and I always listen to a book. Reading a book on a computer is going to ruin your eyes. I think audiobooks are a leap forward.”

Kevin J. Anderson

With over 90 books to his name, Colorado-based sci-fi scribe Kevin Anderson is a self-described write-a-holic. “I’m a storyteller. They keep coming and coming, and I keep writing. I once did 14 books in a single calendar year. I love telling stories.”

Maya Angelou

In every sense of the words, Maya Angelou is one of the great voices of contemporary literature. A remarkable Renaissance woman, she’s a poet, educator, historian, bestselling author of more than a dozen books, actress, playwright, civil rights activist, producer, director, and audiobook narrator. Angelou’s most recent book, HALLELUJAH, is an intimate and extraordinary journey through the author’s extraordinary life, using food as the featured player in her stories.

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood—internationally acclaimed novelist, poet, winner of numerous literary awards, champion of women's rights, and passionate environmentalist—tells AudioFile, "Print is a score for voice, the way a piece of paper with music on it is a score for music. Until somebody is reading the page or playing the music, those marks just lie there. Reading the book out loud is the bridge between the oral storytelling tradition and the book in print."

David Bach

It would be hard to imagine a more engaging audio teacher than author and CNN financial commentator David Bach. His books and audios, including THE AUTOMATIC MILLIONAIRE, are among the best financial guides available in any medium. In contrast to losing weight, which he says requires daily discipline, money management can be automatic. “Becoming wealthy is incredibly simple. It’s just not easy. But if I can get you in one hour to do a handful of things that set up automatically, you’re done unless you shut it off. It doesn’t take ongoing motivation.”

David Baldacci

In speaking with author David Baldacci about audiobooks, you soon realize he’s a “stone cold” optimist. “Some authors think that audiobooks detract from book readership,” he says. “I believe that audios add whole blocks of fans. I think the industry has to adapt, and however we can get new readers introduced to the joy of reading, we should do it.” Baldacci says that audios in all forms (cassettes, CDs, MP3-CDs, and downloads) account for about one-eighth of his total sales. “So if one of my books sells 700,000 copies in hardcover, nearly a hundred thousand more will be audiobooks.”

Catherine Banner

Once upon a time in a village in northern England, a literacy teacher named Catherine Banner discovered that her students learned to read more easily if they listened to the audio of a book in the classroom while following along in their written copies. She had tried reading aloud to them herself, but as she says, “I couldn’t do the voices, and with a good audiobook, the students really learned the words.”

Dave Barry

Dave Barry & Ridley Pearson

Dave Barry says he was ecstatic when he heard that Jim Dale had agreed to narrate the audio of PETER AND THE STARCATCHERS, the prequel to Peter Pan, which Barry co-authored.

Steve Berry

Bestselling novelist Steve Berry is trying something new with the audiobook release of his new history-based thriller, THE PATRIOT THREAT. “I don’t think anyone’s ever done anything like this before. It’s called the Writer’s Cut.” He’s moving the author’s notes that he usually has at the end of the book to the end of each chapter, and the listener can chose to hear him explain a particular historical fact or story point on the disc or download. Berry says he recently took a car trip with some friends, and they wanted listen to one of his books. “That’s one of the last things I would want to do because I’ve pretty much learned every line by heart. But to keep my attention, I would stop the disc and tell them something about that chapter that no one knew but me.”

Judy Blume

Judy Blume has written numerous books in which she expresses the certainties and uncertainties of childhood and adolescence with wit, understanding and sympathy. . . . Every bit of the warmth, humor and insightfulness of her writing comes across in her reading.”

Barbara Taylor Bradford

When she had the idea for her first novel, the rags-to-riches story of the indomitable Emma Harte, Barbara Taylor Bradford sat down and wrote a 12-page outline, which she showed to a friend. By chance, he happened to be seeing an American editor who "was looking for a big, old-fashioned family saga." Bradford met with the editors, who said they wanted 200 pages. When she appeared with two shopping bags and 1,592 pages of manuscript, they were overwhelmed. However, she had to wait only two days before they bought the book. After some editing, A Woman of Substance exploded onto the publishing scene in 1979.

Douglas Brinkley

Author Douglas Brinkley believes a work of history should be long enough to tell the complete story. Ironically, it was his experience with the audio abridgment of one of his books that helped shape his writing style from that point on.

Dan Brown

The son of a mathematics professor and a sacred music professional, Dan Brown has always been fascinated by codes and by the sometimes divergent concepts of religion and science. Several years ago, he decided to explore his interests in a series of thrillers featuring Robert Langdon, a fictional Harvard professor of iconography.

Bill Bryson

The hardest part of recording audiobooks, author Bill Bryson told AudioFile, was learning to keep very still when he speaks. “I tend to gesticulate.” The noise of his clothes rustling as he moved was captured on tape. “Each time I did it, I had to go back and repeat,” said Bryson, who has now recorded five of his books, including the new IN A SUNBURNED COUNTRY, about his Australian travels.

Christopher Buckley

Christopher Buckley is a humorist with a gentle side. In fact, he's almost nostalgic when it comes to Washington, DC, a city he encountered one score years ago. (That's Lincolnese for 20.)

Veronica Chambers

“As a writer, you’re always pitching--trying to convince others to get on board with your ideas,” says author Veronica Chambers. So when friend and editor Elisabeth Dyssegaard suggested Chambers create an anthology of essays on Michelle Obama, she was delighted. “It was really wonderful to have someone say, ‘I know you’re interested in this, and I know you’d do a great job with it.’” Although it was late in 2015 and Chambers knew the “crazy” math of publishing a book in about a year, she still felt a sense of excitement.

Gary Chapman

Gary Chapman is known around the world for his books and audios on the “5 Love Languages,” his wildly successful teaching that says we can give and receive love most powerfully when we know what our preferred love communication channels are. The initial volume in the series appeared in 1992 and grew out of his work as pastor and relationship counselor at a Baptist church in North Carolina. “As I got involved in counseling, hearing similar problems and giving advice,” he says, “I thought that if I could put some of these principles in a book, I’d be able to help far more people than I would ever be able to see in my office.”

Deepak Chopra, M.D.

One of the world’s best-known teachers of mind-body medicine and the author of more than one hundred audio, video, and CD-ROM titles, Deepak Chopra, M.D., has an approach to life that spans many realms. His audio programs encourage that we be guided by the accumulated intelligence in our bodies and a loving connection with the entire fabric of human consciousness. Starting out as an endocrinologist, he saw how consciousness-based living influences illness and so began a transition from being a physician to being primarily a spiritual teacher and humanitarian. “In many ways it was an integration of what I was already doing.”

Harlan Coben

Harlan Coben is as funny in person as his sleuth is on the printed page. The winner of Anthony, Edgar, and Shamus awards, Coben was honored this past March at the Florida Mystery Writers of America "Sleuthfest."

Michael Connelly

These days, Michael Connelly, creator of Harry Bosch, listens to more books than he reads—but they’re "never, never" his own.

Bernard Cornwell

“In the end,” says Bernard Cornwell, “we all write what we like to read.”

John Dean

Author and political analyst John W. Dean—yes, that John Dean, of Watergate fame—has listened to audiobooks for decades. “I listen all the time,” he says. “I listen when I shave in the morning. I listen when I brush my teeth at night. I listen in the car and when I’m exercising.” With a gentle laugh, Dean adds, “I guess that makes me an audio bibliophile, or it is biblio audiophile? Or whatever.”

Frank Delaney

2010 Best Voice in Author-Readers: VENETIA KELLY'S TRAVELING SHOW

Nelson DeMille

Nelson DeMille is an audiobook fan. He participated in the APA’s Audie Awards ceremony in Los Angeles last year and enjoys listening to unabridged fiction when he drives. People don’t have time to do everything they want or read all the books that interest them. “Audiobooks make you feel more productive,” says DeMille. Whether it’s self-help or fiction, he says, “Audio sinks in while you’re doing other tasks.”

Karen Deyoung

For author Karen DeYoung, writing a biography of Colin Powell was a learning experience, as it was the first book for the veteran Washington Post reporter and editor. Being involved in the audio version of the book proved even more eye-opening.

E.L. Doctorow

THE MARCH opens with the advance of Sherman’s army on a Georgia plantation. It is “a creature of a hundred thousand feet,” a “rhythmic tromp,” a “symphonious clamor,” but to the band of slaves waiting outside the plantation house it is the sound of freedom. Like all E.L. Doctorow’s novels, THE MARCH is rich in language, characters, and story lines, and is a feast for the eyes, ears, and imagination. On the eve of the publication of his tenth novel and the unabridged audiobook, narrated by Joe Morton, Doctorow talks about the ways his new work evokes the voices of the Civil War and nineteenth-century literature.

Joseph J. Ellis

Joseph Ellis writes by hand, which is only one way he remains, as an author and a historian, a traditionalist in an age of specialization and constant technological change. Speaking from his study in Amherst, Massachusetts, the Pulitzer-winning historian (FOUNDING BROTHERS: The Revolutionary Generation) talks about his new book, REVOLUTIONARY SUMMER, which re-creates with striking immediacy and dramatic impact the political and military events of the summer of 1776.

Joseph Finder

After listening to author Joseph Finder a while, you realize he has the thriller instinct. When he describes his love for writing mainstream mysteries, his voice becomes animated. “I wanted to write ever since I was about 9,” he says.

Fannie Flagg

Her many years of acting haven’t masked Fannie Flagg’s accent as much as they have polished it. Flagg left Alabama after college “for dramatic school. Can you believe it?” She now calls Montecito, California, home for much of the year, along with neighbors like mystery master Sue Grafton. That works on her accent, too.

Jane Fonda

Donald Katz of Audible.com interviewed Jane Fonda earlier this spring. A recording of the full interview is available at www.audible.com. Some highlights follow.

Richard Ford

Alan Furst

“I write out loud,” explains Alan Furst, the master of historical espionage. “I find myself dry-mouthed after a couple of hours of writing. I am writing by the sound of the prose. No other way.”

Lisa Gardner

When one imagines the type of person who writes dark thrillers about FBI agents and serial killers, abduction, abuse, and violence, Lisa Gardner is not the kind of person who comes to mind. She’s the kind of person you’d expect to meet at toddler time.

Elizabeth George

Elizabeth George never listens to her own works on audio. “I imagine very distinct voices for each of my characters,” she says, “especially that of Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley. Except for a brief excerpt by Derek Jacobi, I don’t listen to my audios because I’m concerned that I would lose the voices I carry in my head.”

Julia Glass

Recounted from two sisters’ viewpoints, in alternating chapters, Julia Glass’s novel I SEE YOU EVERYWHERE is ideal for presentation by two narrators. That’s not an uncommon thing, but in this instance those readers are the author herself and a well-known actress/director/producer. That’s not a pairing one sees every day.

Daniel Goleman

2009 Best Voice in AUTHOR-READERS: Ecological Intelligence

Getting into journalism was a “complete accident,” says the author of SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE, an exhaustive and important study on the neuroscience of human interactions, released last year. After finishing his Ph.D. at Harvard in the 1970s, Daniel Goleman didn’t find a psychology teaching job he really wanted, so he abandoned academia when offered an editor position at Psychology Today. Writing advice from his managing editor led to 12 years as a science writer for The New York Times and seven books, most of which are available on audio.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Doris Kearns Goodwin spoke with us by phone from Simon & Schuster Audio's offices in the midst of a crowded book tour. In the past three days she had appeared in Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Pasadena, and Portland, Maine. That evening she would appear in New York with Jeff Greenfield, and the next day she was scheduled at noon at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and again at 7:00 that night at George Washington University.

Sue Grafton

Instant friendship bloomed in September when, for the first time, author Sue Grafton met actress Judy Kaye, who narrates Grafton’s books for Random House Audio.

Tim Green

2011 Best Voice in AUTHOR-READERS: Best of the Best

Brian Greene

Finding time to answer questions is always a problem if you’re one of the most popular scientists in the world, with a new book out. This busy physicist and professor’s motivation comes from young people. “It’s absolutely vital that we inspire the next generation of scientists. So writing and teaching are both important to me--although I couldn’t write on these subjects were I not in the thick of undertaking scientific research on them.”

W.E.B. Griffin

“Audiobooks are very important and growing more important all the time—and you may quote me!” says W.E.B. Griffin, speaking dynamically with the same judicious word usage that shows up in his words in print.

“Oh, I was inundated with mail after that book,” the author says with a throaty chuckle from her home in Washington, DC, where she is stopping between book tours for her newest Richard Jury mystery, THE GRAVE MAURICE. “I got letters from women readers saying ‘For God’s sake, surely you haven’t killed Richard Jury.’ Women told me that they had woken up crying about it.” She pauses before adding in a self-deprecating tone, “The power that I have!”

Sara Gruen

The animal that Sara Gruen is most associated with is a pachyderm. Next to that might come bonobos. In her most recent book, however, the author of the bestsellers WATER FOR ELEPHANTS and APE HOUSE has placed a mythological creature at the center of her plot. That would be the Loch Ness Monster.

In AT THE WATER’S EDGE, published earlier this year, a Philadelphia socialite named Maddie Hyde accompanies her husband, Ellis, and his best friend to Scotland to search for Nessie (as the monster is often affectionately called) in 1944, as WWII rages around them. The men have been excused from military service for medical reasons, and the trip is intended to vindicate Ellis’s father, who several years earlier was accused of passing off fraudulent photographs of the monster as real ones. The horrors of war, class differences, friendship, and romance are among the issues Maddie faces.

Pete Hamill

Pete Hamill closed the computer on his new novel, FOREVER, just before midnight on September 10, 2001. Less than 10 hours later, his fresh manuscript, “covering more than 350 years of Western civilization, as recounted through the eyes of its central character, writer Cormac O’Connor,” was already outdated, overtaken by events. But as the veteran New York City newspaperman and his wife watched clouds of smoke billow from the World Trade Center, all his reporter’s instincts were riveted on getting that story out as thoroughly and vividly as he could.

Robert Harris

When one thinks of ancient Rome, one tends to think of gladiators facing off against wild beasts. But as Robert Harris reminds us in his new historical novel, IMPERIUM, Rome in 1st century B.C. was a hotbed of devious politicians facing off against each other. They may have had names such as Pompey, Caesar, and Marcus Cicero, but their intrigues are familiar to anyone who reads today’s headlines. In IMPERIUM, Harris brings to life the rise of famed orator Cicero and his battle against corrupt politicians, including Julius Caesar.

Mary Higgins Clark

It takes a lot of moxie to model your main character’s mother after your own, especially when your real-life mother has earned critical acclaim in your chosen field. Carol Higgins Clark, however, sees more fun than competition, more affection than comparison in her relationship with bestselling mystery author Mary Higgins Clark. So when Carol’s editor suggested she make private detective Regan Reilly’s mother a famous mystery writer, the daughter laughed and said, “Why not?”

Joe Hill

It’s easy to understand why writing comes easily for thriller and horror author Joe Hill--it is, after all, the family business. (Hill is the second child of Stephen and Tabitha King.) Writing was a normal part of life for him, as were audiobooks. Back when the audiobook industry was just gathering steam, before the great availability and variety we enjoy today, the King family would simply make their own. “My whole family loved them,” Hill recalls. “We’d play big, elaborate card games--hearts or poker or whatever--and whoever was the ultimate loser in those games would have to read a book on tape for the winner.”

Tony Hillerman

The voice over the phone has a lilt and twinkle to it. “Can you take my Okie accent?” novelist Tony Hillerman asks, chuckling across the miles from his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he and his wife Marie were reveling in what he describes as “the most dazzling, colorful autumn” along the Rio Grande. Hillerman is, of course, the creator of the popular series of contemporary police procedurals rooted in Navajo society, legend, and customs, which features Officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. Now he is both author of a new memoir, SELDOM DISAPPOINTED and narrator of the 12-hour audiobook version. “The reading experience is just a chore,” he reflects, pulling no punches, which, as the memoir reveals, is clearly his approach to life. “The audio guys make you stop, make you pronounce words the way they’re supposed to be pronounced. They want you to sound like an East Coast Yankee.” Actually, he adds, “It’s easy enough to do. You just sit there and read aloud. But the writing process is a brand new experience each time. Sometimes it’s like pulling teeth and practically impossible. But then you have your real good moments, when you think you’ve done a good job.”

John Irving

Bestselling, critically acclaimed novelist and Oscar-winning screenwriter John Irving wants his readers to know he values their time and makes sure his novels end with a payoff worth their effort.

John Jakes

Bestselling historical novelist John Jakes’s career began with the spoken word, which, he says, is why he’s so pleased to have his works performed as audiobooks. “As a teenager, I worked as an actor in what amounted to public radio in Chicago,” he explained in a recent interview. “And in my early days as a science fiction writer in the 1950s and ’60s, I contributed radio plays to shows that are long defunct but that remain vivid in memory. All this adds up to a special understanding of performance mediums, a thing not every writer can claim.” Jakes learned many important lessons about the spoken word during his years in radio and theater, including the fact that “there are at least a half dozen actors, maybe more, who are right for any part. Audiobooks, of course, fit right into this. I like them.”

P.D. James

P.D. James says that the detective novel is the modern equivalent of a medieval morality play. A fearful act, namely murder, is committed, which tears the social fabric and damages individual lives. Through the actions of a judicious investigator, the killer is identified and peace is restored.

Iris Johansen

In the early 1980s, with her children leaving home for college, Georgia homemaker Iris Johansen began filling her empty nest with the array of fictional characters who populate the romance novels she wrote for the Bantam Loveswept series. Today, more than 60 books later, Johansen is well known as the author of contemporary romance, historical romance, and forensic thrillers. This spring marked the publication of her twelfth thriller featuring forensic sculptor Eve Duncan. Hot off the presses this summer will be SILENT THUNDER, a stand-alone thriller and her first collaboration with her son, Roy.

Robert Jordan

Decorated Vietnam War veteran Robert Jordan began putting quill to parchment in 1977, and hasn't stopped since. Storytelling is in Jordan's blood. The South Carolina native, who taught himself to read at age 4 and began reading Jules Verne and Mark Twain at age 5, has written novels set during the American Revolution, a dozen adventures featuring Robert E. Howard's Conan, and, most notably, 12 epic novels (11 primary novels and one prequel) in his Wheel of Time fantasy series. "The spoken word is the basis for all storytelling," he told us from his 1797 home in the historic district of Charleston, South Carolina. "My father and my uncles were storytellers. When we went fishing or hunting, there was always storytelling at night. I grew up with that oral tradition. I've always thought that my writing lends itself to being read aloud for that very reason."

Stuart M. Kaminsky

“What makes me an effective storyteller? That’s a good question,” says Stuart Kaminsky. “I don’t know. I’ve loved stories since I was 12 years old. I loved movies. I loved radio. I loved reading. I always read, and telling stories was what I wanted to do. My mind was always overflowing with stories.”

Mary Karr

With her Texas twang, easy manner, and earthy language, Mary Karr sounds like someone you might meet on the next barstool, rather than the literary circuit. But don’t let that fool you. Karr is a poet, as well as an award-winning author (PEN/Margaret Albrand Award). Her acute sense for language—for the exact right but still surprising word—is evident throughout both her memoirs about growing up in the ’50s and ’60s—THE LIAR’S CLUB, about surviving her dysfunctional family, and her latest work, CHERRY, about her turbulent adolescence.

William Kennedy

Albany, New York, native William Kennedy has received numerous literary awards, among them a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for his novel IRONWEED.

Tracy Kidder

Tracy Kidder has been reading aloud for the better part of a day and a half when he stumbles over the words “lymph nodes.”

Ross King

Ross King’s THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS is not only a well-structured narrative that encompasses a dozen dramatic years of French art history and controversy. It is also a richly detailed tour of France’s colorful Second Empire, a period of high taste and high tragedy, dramatic on the page and even more dramatic to the ear.

Jonathon Kirsch

Writer and attorney Jonathan Kirsch has taken the time that most of us haven’t to explore the context of the Old Testament, to discover its meanings, its precedents, its history—and, most of all, to untangle it from censorship and centuries of fallacious accretions. As the Jewish Bible, or Tanakh, forms the superstructure of three major world religions and the core belief systems for most of us on this continent, Kirsch’s subject is of importance to us all.

Joe Klein

Having made a name for himself as a political pundit and biographer, Joe Klein jettisoned that name in 1998 and wrote a novel about Bill Clinton bylined Anonymous. Nobody but Klein, and his wife and agent, knew that he was writing the book. Not even the book’s editor knew who Anonymous was.

Dean Koontz

In 1988, when the first of his books was produced on audio, Dean Koontz was appalled. “I allowed an abridged version,” he says, “and the story became incoherent. I never realized that ‘abridged’ meant as much as 60 percent of the story would be cut!” The bestselling author bought back the audio rights to WATCHERS, the second book in the contract, and has insisted on unabridged recordings ever since.

Like his father before him, Beau L'Amour is a master of detail. Louis L'Amour's legendary and persistently bestselling body of work created a lasting and convincing sense of authenticity by getting the details just right. And it's in the details that one finds good audio drama.

Erik Larson

Author Erik Larson doesn’t listen to audiobooks because when he reads a book in print, he develops a sense of what the characters sound like, and he’s afraid the narrator won’t interpret the characters the same way.

So when his books are published in audio, does he do the narration himself, to capture that sense of voice?

“No way,” he says firmly. “I leave that to the pros.”

Dennis Lehane

You won’t hear Dennis Lehane, New York Times bestselling author of MYSTIC RIVER; GONE, BABY, GONE; and his new book, THE GIVEN DAY, read any of his novels on audio, but it’s not for the reason you might think. He has a pleasant bass voice and speaks clearly. “It’s too much work,” he explains. “That’s a job. I’ve actually done a little myself, but it was short stories.” He adds, “It’s very much acting. I can read chunks of narrative quite fine, but when I have to do four people talking in a room--you compare my version of that and a professional actor’s version, and you know exactly who’s going to win every time. Why would I want to put an actor out of a job?”

Jonathan Lethem

GUN WITH OCCASIONAL MUSIC (1994), Jonathan Lethem’s first novel, was lauded as a visionary work. His fifth novel, Motherless Brooklyn, a detective story featuring a narrator with Tourette’s syndrome, was his first to be adapted for audio, with an unabridged version read by Frank Muller and an abridgment performed by Steve Buscemi. FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE (2003) is an epic tale of race relations, rock music, and two Brooklyn boys with a magical ring. His newest work is a collection of short stories, MEN AND CARTOONS (see review), and in March, Random House Audio will publish a collection of Lethem’s personal essays, THE DISAPPOINTMENT ARTIST.

John Lithgow

Such is John Lithgow’s belief in the power of the spoken word that when his elderly father was ill and in despair, Lithgow offered to read to him. His father chose a story by P.G. Wodehouse, and as Lithgow read, the miracle happened--his father began to laugh. It sounded, writes Lithgow in his new memoir, Drama: An Actor’s Education, “like the engine of an old car, starting up after years of disuse.” To Lithgow’s grateful ears, “It was the most wonderful sound I’d ever heard. And I’m convinced that it was sometime during the telling of that story that my father came back to life

Phillip Margolin

Phillip Margolin brings things to his legal thrillers that few other authors can claim. During his 25 years as a criminal defense attorney, Margolin represented 30 homicide cases, including 12 death penalty cases. His clients included serial killers and heads of drug cartels, as well as battered wives. “So when I’m writing about something to do with law,” he told AUDIOFILE just hours before heading off on a month-long book tour, “it’s probably something that I’ve actually done in real life. I know how people talk, how they walk, what the procedures are, how the judge talks in chambers.”

Daniel Mason

Author Daniel Mason spent a year doing research on malaria in Thailand and Myanmar before returning to attend medical school. “When I came back to the U.S., I was so affected by the experience I didn’t want to forget it. I was trying to readjust and get ready for going to school.” His original impulse was just to write something down “to preserve memories. The early parts of the book were just descriptions of things I’d seen.” Mason keeps a fictional journal. “I write down something I see and then I try to make stories around it.” He finds the stories always interesting, but he believes they can “be more interesting if fictionalized.” Since his journals are essentially fiction, it was just a matter of which story he would choose to tell. His astonishing first novel, THE PIANO TUNER, is the result.

Peter Mayle

Peter Mayle, bestselling author of A YEAR IN PROVENCE, TOUJOURS PROVENCE, and ENCORE PROVENCE, offers some advice, when asked, to dreamy readers who want to follow in his footsteps by moving to France. “For people who want to live in the country,” he says, “I suggest going over in November and renting something for the winter. If you like it then, you'll love it the rest of the year. So many people go in the summer, when they have a couple of weeks of perfect weather. It's a different place in the winter—I happen to like it very much, but it's not the same at all. So I would say—go there at the least busy, most chilly time of year and see how you like it.”

Ed McBain

Ed McBain is a man who knows no rest. With more than 80 novels to his name—50 that have been adapted to audio-book—he continues to put in a full day’s work despite having recently completed his latest book, Candyland, co-written with another award-winning author, Evan Hunter. What makes this collaboration unique is that Ed McBain and Evan Hunter are the same person.

Todd McCaffrey

Fans of science fiction queen Anne McCaffrey, whose tales of the dragons of Pern have delighted audiences since 1968, were pleased when she took on a new co-author. That collaborator, who debuted with 2003’s DRAGON’S KIN, is her son Todd, whose contributions spark hopes that characters such as Halla, Pellar, and Zist will be around long after the elder McCaffrey retires.

Colum McCann

Award-winning and bestselling novelist Colum McCann’s speaking voice is a soft and lyrical Irish brogue, but his sound didn’t fit for one job he thought he would automatically win. “I’m Irish, and I’m a ham. I absolutely love to read, but something happened to me a few years ago. Maybe I shouldn’t tell this. I wrote [the novel] LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN, and I knew they were going to use a number of different narrators, and the book actually turned out beautifully. But I wanted to read the Irish character.” He called the producer and requested the job but was told, “Normally, we get actors to do this, and they audition. I said, ‘I’ll do an audition,’ so I went downtown, I did my audition, and guess what-- I didn’t get the part for my own book.”

Jon Meacham

The next time I go camping, I want author John McPhee to go with me. Not for his knowledge of the natural world, which, admittedly, is immense. Rather, it’s because, around the campfire, I cannot imagine a more engaging storyteller. He weaves hard scientific facts and figures into a tale that is so personal and engaging that one doesn’t realize how much one is learning.

Jacquelyn Mitchard

Jacquelyn Mitchard’s third novel was supposed to be a ghost story. “And it was a real good ghost story, too,” she says. But she ultimately abandoned that project when a dramatic legal case in Wisconsin that raised questions about family and family bonds began to haunt her. The new novel, A THEORY OF RELATIVITY, tells the story of 24-year-old Gordon McKenna, who is devastated when his beloved sister and her husband are killed in a car accident, leaving behind a baby girl. In the aftermath, both he and his parents find solace in his decision to adopt the baby. But when the child’s paternal grandparents begin a fight for custody, the ensuing battle reveals that the young man is not considered by state statutes to be a blood relative of the child because he himself had been adopted.

Edmund Morris

Edmund Morris has spent the past generation—give or take a few years—delving into the life, career, papers, and aura of Theodore Roosevelt, who towered over American society during the final decade of the nineteenth century and the opening of the twentieth. Morris, the premier biographer of TR, believes that this giant of a public figure was as talented a writer (“he had a marvelously acoustic, aural quality”) as he was a politician and global statesman. Working as his own researcher (“a way to avoid the pitfalls of plagiarism”), Morris has painstakingly turned out the first two volumes of a planned trilogy on TR. The second, Theodore Rex, garnered majestic reviews late last year, resurfacing masterfully recently in abridged audio form. (A parallel version of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, his first volume, is due out soon.)

Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison reads her work in a certain way-the way she hears it. The way the sentences were shaped in her mind. "When I read in public, I never vary from the rhythm or the accent or the emphasis. I worked very hard in the writing to make the work have a presence that was quiet on the page, but at the same time to have an oral quality. I leave certain things out and shape the sentences for sound, as well as meaning."

Marcia Muller

“My father was a great storyteller,” Marcia Muller told us from her home in California’s Sonoma County. “Every evening he would tell me a story when I went to bed. He’d make up fantastic stuff. He would act out different roles—it was really funny.” It was this early love of stories, and her experience

Michele Norris

In the new collection of radio news stories NPR AMERICAN CHRONICLES: CIVIL RIGHTS, all the bold-face names are represented--Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, and others--but the most moving moments come from details of what life was like in the segregated South during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ‘60s.

Sherwin B. Nuland

Sherwin B. Nuland, clinical professor of surgery at Yale University and a prolific writer on medical and bioethical matters, has never listened to an audiobook other than the ones he’s narrated—namely his own. Reading those texts, including HOW WE DIE and THE WISDOM OF THE BODY, has come easily to him until now.

Joyce Carol Oates

"Audiobooks are wonderful inventions," says the award-winning author Joyce Carol Oates. "People are often so enthralled by them that they’re disappointed when their trips end. I’ve often sat in our driveway listening to the ending of something—reluctant to break the spell. Obviously, we all love to be told stories, especially by skilled professional storytellers."

Daniel José Older

New York Times bestselling author Daniel José Older always knew he wanted to tell stories--it just took a while to settle on a medium. “For a good period, I was more involved with music, but with a focus on storytelling. Even when I was mostly doing music, I was still always writing. I was all over the map. I did screenplays, poems, articles. But I wasn’t getting any traction; I didn’t know how to publish.”

Judith Orloff, M.D.

Intuitive healer and university psychiatrist Judith Orloff, M.D. talks to us from a Portland, Oregon, hotel about the audio of her latest book, POSITIVE ENERGY. “It’s been amazing. I feel like I’m being lifted by a wave of positive energy everywhere I go.”

Robert B. Parker

Like Spenser, the ex-boxer turned private eye, played on television by Robert Urich and then Joe Mantegna, Robert B. Parker seems tough, mysterious, and hard-edged. But very quickly, appearances give way to the twinkle in his eye and the sincerity behind his tight-lipped smile. "I started being a storyteller when I started writing. I don’t recall being a verbal storyteller prior to that time. When I was a little kid, though," he muses, "I used to write comic books. So in that sense I started early. My father read to me often. Every day. He never told me stories," he adds, referring to made-up bedtime stories. "I don’t know if anyone does that anymore. That may be a lost art. But, yes, I was read to every day as a kid. The two most memorable were Winnie-the-Pooh and Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus stories. I was a kid quite some time ago."

Michael Pollan

“My first reaction was, well, I want to do it myself,” Michael Pollan recalls about the news that his books would be recorded. “But then they told me what was involved. It would mean coming to New York and being in a studio for weeks. And, they wouldn’t sell.”

Terry Pratchett

We are saddened that Terry Pratchett passed away in March 2015.

Nine-year-old witches with first sight and second thoughts, luggage that travels by itself, and six-foot dwarfs--these are are just a few of the delightful characters that inhabit Terry Pratchett's long-running Discworld series--a wondrous universe that combines the trappings of fantasy (wizards, dragons, elves, etc.) with some of the wittiest, silliest, most penetrating satire being written today.

Douglas Preston

Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

"Reading out loud is the purest and most ancient form of storytelling," says Douglas Preston, half of the Preston-Child team that has so far created nine novels. Their books cross the boundaries from thriller to horror to science fiction to mystery, creating a challenge for booksellers to pigeonhole them into a single genre. Co-author Lincoln Child explains, "In difficult times people seem to frequently turn away from real horrors to invented ones--horrors they can switch off when they feel like it. Our books aren't horror; they're techno-thrillers with a frisson of the supernatural."

Anna Quindlen

“It was a nightmare,” says Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anna Quindlen, of recording her collection of essays. “It was going on a 100-mile hike in the desert. It was physically exhausting. There are all kinds of ways you make unwanted noise, pop your “P”s. You can lose focus. I have so much respect for the people who do this.”

Ian Rankin

Sound emanates from Ian Rankin’s novels, whether in print or on audio. His books, featuring Detective Inspector John Rebus, are dark and edgy police dramas set in the author’s native Scotland. But instead of bagpipes you’re more likely to hear the Rolling Stones or The Cure.

Ruth Reichl

ruth reichl talks about her audiobook MY KITCHEN YEAR

When Gourmet magazine abruptly closed in October of 2009, editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl was as shocked as the rest of the world. Returning from a book tour, she faced the end of a life she’d loved. “I thought--what am I going to do with the rest of my life?”

Ruth Rendell

There’s no mystery about how celebrated mystery writer Ruth Rendell feels about audiobooks: “I think they’re wonderful.” But there’s a mystery surrounding the future of Rendell’s most famous creations, Kingsmarkham--that’s a small town south of London--and Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford, the main character in her long-running series of police procedurals. One news report recently suggested that after 22 cases for the venerable inspector, including his latest in THE MONSTER IN THE BOX, Rendell planned to put an end to him. But Rendell says that’s not the case.

Richard Rhodes

HEDY’S FOLLY is a bit offbeat and something of a sleeper for Richard Rhodes, one of America’s preeminent nonfiction writers, but one who until now--the pun is shameless but irresistible--has been “under the radar” for most audiobook listeners.

Nora Roberts

According to PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, Nora Roberts has written more bestsellers than anyone in the world. How does she do it? “Reading is the best writer’s tool in the box,” Roberts says. “I did plenty of that as a child. I think sometimes you’re just a born storyteller. You have to learn the nuts and bolts in order to turn that storytelling ability into articulating an entertaining story on the page, but a lot of times it’s instinctive.” Since her first published book in 1981, Roberts has produced about seven books a year. She adds, “It doesn’t matter how fast I write, it’s the quality of the output I care about. My books are about people. They’re character-driven. Relationships are the key to all of my books.”

Andrew Roberts

Andrew Roberts’s biography NAPOLEON: A LIFE, one of last year’s most readable and satisfying biographies, has now produced one of its most memorable audiobooks. Professor Roberts spoke with AudioFile in early December, shortly after his book’s publication, on a day he was conducting--did he say 17?--other phone interviews. He couldn’t have been more gracious, patient, or forthcoming.

Gretchen Rubin

Bestselling author and happiness expert Gretchen Rubin’s work focuses on helping people “get the life they want.” Her new work, THE FOUR TENDENCIES, offers vital insights on helping others reach that goal.

Stacy Schiff

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Stacy Schiff admits she has “a thing” for lost worlds. “I’m nostalgic by nature--but then again, who writing history isn’t?” she asks. And among lost worlds, Schiff says, Cleopatra’s was the “most magnificent, sumptuous beyond even the ancient commentators’ abilities to describe.”

Jeff Shaara

The historical novels by Jeff Shaara adapt well to audio in part because they depict action, dialogue and interior monologues.

Anita Shreve

Author Anita Shreve told AudioFile that when she writes, she hears the language—the dialogue of her characters—in her mind. Whether it’s nineteenth-century voices and language, foreign accents or broken English, her muse communicates aurally, giving the author the rhythm and patterns of speech. The scenes and relationships she creates are vivid and uncontrived. The dialogue flows. This perhaps explains why Shreve’s books, and in particular FORTUNE’S ROCKS, set at the end of the nineteenth century in a New England seaside community, have such a finely tuned sense of time and place. They succeed as audiobooks because of these origins.

Gary Sinise

Imagine you’re a veteran theater actor being cast in a big Hollywood movie, costarring with Tom Hanks and achieving a level of success that garners you an Oscar nomination. You might think that would be the end of your involvement as Lieutenant Dan in the hit movie Forrest Gump, but an invitation to talk with a group of disabled American veterans set Gary Sinise on a path of service that has taken him from the U.S. to Afghanistan and everywhere in between.

Karin Slaughter

Mystery writer Karin Slaughter, whose latest is BEYOND REACH, wanted her Grant County series to have a Southern narrator who didn’t sound like a hillbilly. “Joyce Bean’s narration,” she says, “is close to the voices that I heard in my head. She does well with the subtleties of colloquialisms and accents. And she doesn’t make anyone sound like they’re from a trailer park.”

Martin Cruz Smith

Martin Cruz Smith had no intention of writing about Chernobyl when he began WOLVES EAT DOGS, his latest Arkady Renko epic, a couple of years ago—more than 15 years after the 1986 nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union. But then a light went on in his mind, and he began focusing on the incident and was swept away.

Wilbur Smith

Historical novelist Wilbur Smith is “riding high on the wave” of popular and critical response following the release of THE QUEST, the latest in his bestselling Egyptian series. Smith admits he doesn’t listen to his books in the audio format, but he appreciates the fact that audiobooks are a boon to people who want to keep up with the adventures of his colorful and fantastic characters.

Sonia Sotomayor

On the 50th anniversary of the publication of THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE, it’s quite extraordinary to be able to point to significant advancements for women, especially women of color, in both government and business. The United States still has much work to do to include all voices in our literary and historical canon, but the publication of some recent books shows that we are moving in the right direction. A great example is a memoir that combines a gripping story of remarkable achievement with an audio performance that’s a tour-de-force: MY BELOVED WORLD, by Associate Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, with narration by actor Rita Moreno.

Cheryl Strayed

“It’s been an incredible year--a beautiful, exciting, life-altering, career-altering year,” says Cheryl Strayed. Strayed has plenty to be pleased about: Her novel TORCH, first published in 2006, was reissued in 2012, along with her memoir, WILD (which debuted as a bestseller), and her widely admired collection of pseudonymously written advice columns, TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS. “I’ve been on the world’s longest book tour!”

Elizabeth Strout

Elizabeth Strout won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2009 for OLIVE KITTERIDGE. Robert Redford is planning to turn Strout’s 2013 novel, THE BURGESS BOYS, into a TV miniseries. Her latest novel, MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON, won an AudioFile Earphones Award and would win the award--if there were such an award--for touching the hearts of all who experience it.

Sarah Susanka

Architect Sarah Susanka began the Not So Big House series nine years ago when she introduced her revolutionary book, THE NOT SO BIG HOUSE. Building on the concept that bigger is not necessarily better, Susanka embraced the idea of customizing personal space without getting caught up in building to impress others. At the time she began writing this series, Susanka had been a residential architect for about 20 years. “I was inspired to write the series because I knew that people wanted something different. I always loved writing, and I started to put that message down in printed form.”

Deborah Tannen

Deborah Tannen is probably the most famous linguist of our time; her reputation is on par with Margaret Mead’s stature in the field of anthropology, according to one publication. Though she’s a highly respected professor at Georgetown University and has written many scholarly books, her bestsellers, THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEANT and YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND, put her on the map as someone with keen insights about language and relationships. She followed with Talking from 9 to 5, about conversational styles in the workplace; THE ARGUMENT CULTURE, about combativeness in public discourse; and her most recent book, I ONLY SAY THIS BECAUSE I LOVE YOU.

Donna Tartt

The formal portrait-like photograph on the jacket of Donna Tartt’s books belies the warm, friendly tone that caThe formal portrait-like photograph on the jacket of Donna Tartt’s books belies the warm, friendly tone that came through in her recent telephone interview with AUDIOFILE. Tartt had recently completed the narration of both of her books, THE SECRET HISTORY, an international bestseller when it came out in 1992 and now on audio for the first time, and THE LITTLE FRIEND, her eagerly anticipated second novel. She wanted to narrate her own works, she said, because reading aloud is “very present” in her writing process. “I’m one of those writers who talks to myself constantly while working. Quite often I have to say a passage out loud in order to get the sound just right.”

Adriana Trigiani

Audiobook narration is grueling work. I know. I've done it. You have to get in the booth and figure it out while you're inside."

Adriana Trigiani, one of seven children born to first-generation Italian-Americans, was born in Pennsylvania to a stockbroker and architectural librarian. The family moved when Adriana was young, to Big Stone Gap, Virginia. A big reader from an early age, she began reporting for a rural Virginia radio station when she was 16. She studied theater and founded an all-female comedy troupe while in college in Indiana, going on to TV comedy writing for Lily Tomlin and Bill Cosby, among others.In the late '90s, she began delving into fiction.

From the stories her dad would read to her when she was young to the audiobooks today, Trigiani believes "it's all theater, basically. Just the mode in which it comes to the audience is different."

Calvin Trillin

Audiobook fanatics are often forced to choose between authenticity and excellence. Do they prefer a writer/reader or a talented actor? With Calvin Trillin as narrator, they can have their cake and eat it, too. Or rather, their fish brain soup,
since Trillin is a gourmand. Or their duck tongues. “I hadn’t even realized that ducks had tongues,” admits Trillin, in a voice that finds humor in every straight line.

Scott Turow

Scott Turow remembers being surprised, as a first-time novelist in the late 1980s, when his agent, Gail Hochman, called to see whether he wanted to sell the audio rights to PRESUMED INNOCENT. “What’s a book on tape?” he asked. A couple of prospective publishers sent him samples, which he listened to with swiftly increasing respect.

Neale Donald Walsch

Few modern writers have had more influence on popular thinking about God than Neale Donald Walsch. CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD, Books 1, 2 and 3, published in 26 countries, reveal a God who is loving, knowable, understanding of our weaknesses, and, most important, easy to talk with. Walsch’s dialogue started during a time in his life when accumulated losses and failures made him want to “leave this planet.” In soul-searching anguish at 4:15 one morning, he started writing “How do you make life work? What have I done to deserve such continuing struggle?” To his surprise, his pen started writing answers that he grew to understand were from God and destined to be shared with the world.

Deborah Wiles

Author Deborah Wiles loves audiobooks--she does almost all her reading on audio. “I’ve listened for so long that the medium has grown from productions with a single narrator, which is perfectly acceptable, to this amazing art form that sometimes has multiple narrators, sound effects, and music. It blows me over.”

Marianne Williamson

It would be hard to find a more prominent teacher of the Course in Miracles than Marianne Williamson. She first heard the course—a grassroots nondenominational guide to spiritual psychotherapy—in Los Angeles in the late 1970s. As a student of philosophy, she was looking for something she didn’t find in any of the jobs and careers she’d tried. "I did things in my 20s that a lot of young people did who were looking for themselves. I really didn’t get focused until I heard the Course in Miracles."

Simon Winchester

Simon Winchester [photo by Setsuko Winchester]

Winchester’s book, THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN, concerns one of the great intellectual milestones of recent times, the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. For those of you who have never heard of the OED, it’s a twelve-volume* lexicon composed on historic principles, carefully tracing the origin and evolution of English words and phrases and giving copious examples. It appeared in 1928 after 70 years of work, almost instantly becoming the ultimate reference on the English language. It still enjoys that status today.

Tom Wolfe

It would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall—or on the leaf of a tree—a few years ago when novelist-essayist-social analyst Tom Wolfe strolled through the dorms and along the verdant terrain of a handful of university campuses to research I AM CHARLOTTE SIMMONS, his latest dissection of American society.

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