Francine Levitov was a high school
English teacher and had a second career in law as a New York public
defense attorney before discovering audiobooks. Now in her third professional reincarnation, she is a former KLIATT audiobook reviewer and, along with Jean Palmer, a founding co-editor of SoundCommentary.com.
Tue, Dec 01, 2009
Uwem Akpan was born in southern Nigeria. He was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 2003 and received his MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan in 2006. In 2007, he began a teaching assignment at a seminary in Harare, Zimbabwe.
Wed, Oct 15, 2008
Novelist Kidd draws upon his background as a graphic artist in this follow up to "The Cheese Monkeys," his first and very successful novel. He is well-known as the cover art designer of several superhero DC Comic collections. He lives in New York City.
Sat, Oct 25, 2008
Novelist Philip Roth has been an important American literary voice since his first book, "Goodbye, Columbus," was published to acclaim and controversy in 1959. Along with fine wine and cheese, nothing seems to improve with age as consistently as the artistic vision of Philip Roth. Multiple award-winning narrator Dick Hill enhances this novel with a flawless, fully-articulated, and sensitive performance.
Steve Dublanica waited his first table at age thirty-one. In 2004 the author started his wildly popular blog, www.WaiterRant.net, winning the 2006 “Best Writing in a Weblog” Bloggie Award. He is interviewed regularly by major media as the voice for many of the two million waiters in the United States. The Waiter lives in the New York metropolitan area.
Sat, Nov 29, 2008
Tobias Wolff is the author of seven previous books and the editor of The Vintage Book of American Short Stories. Among his honors are the PEN/Malamud Award and the Rea Award, both for excellence in the short story, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the PEN/Faulkner Award. He lives in Northern California and teaches at Stanford University.
Mon, Dec 15, 2008
Dick Francis is the author of more than 30 mysteries set against a horse racing background. A three-time Edgar Award winner, he was named Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America in 1996. Felix Francis, a graduate of London University, is an accomplished outdoorsman, marksman, and pilot who has assisted with the research of many of his father’s novels
Wed, Dec 17, 2008
Cheryl Jarvis is a journalist and essayist and the author of The Marriage Sabbatical: The Journey That Brings You Home. She has written for The Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, and Reader’s Digest. A former television producer and magazine and newspaper editor, she has taught writing at the University of Southern California and at Washington University and Webster University in St. Louis
Wed, Dec 24, 2008
Joyce Carol Oates’ many awards include the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in short fiction. Her most recent novel is Blonde, about Marilyn Monroe.
Wed, Dec 24, 2008
MARC ACITO’s debut novel, How I Paid for College, won the Ken Kesey Award for the Novel and was also selected as an Editors’ Choice by the New York Times. Acito is a popular contributor to the New York Times and National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
Dame Muriel Spark, born and educated in Edinburgh, published her spectacularly original first novel, The Comforters, in 1957. Among her twenty novels, it was The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (and its stage and screen adaptations) which made her internationally famous. She has also published several volumes of poetry, criticism, and stories, as well as a play, an autobiography, and three books for children. New Directions also publishes the following titles by Muriel Spark: The Abbess of Crewe, The Comforters, The Driver's Seat, Open to the Public: New & Collected Stories, and The Public Image.
Thu, Dec 25, 2008
Jessica Dorfman Jones is an editor and journalist. This is her first full length book.
Tue, Dec 30, 2008
LA Theatre Works has been producing classic and contemporary works as audio theatre since 1974. They first published McTeague in 1989 in a cassette edition that has long been out-of-print. LATW updated and re-released this classic in 2008.
Philippa Gregory is the New York Times bestselling author of several books, including The Other Boleyn Girl and The Boleyn Inheritance. A writer and broadcaster for radio and television, she lives in England.
John Updike was born in 1932, in Shillington, Pennsylvania and died of cancer on January 27, 2009. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker, and since 1957 has lived in Massachusetts. He was the father of four children and the author of more than fifty books, including collections of short stories, poems, essays, and criticism. His novels have won the Pulitzer Prize (twice), the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Award, and the Howells Medal. A previous collection of essays, Hugging the Shore, received the 1983 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. Highlights of his life, including photographs, a slideshow and a videotaped interview can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/books/28updike.html?ref=opinion
Fri, Jan 23, 2009
American novelist and playwright Booth Tarkington, (July 29, 1869 – May 19, 1946) won a Pulitzer Prize for Alice Adams in 1922.
Fri, Jan 23, 2009
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was one of the most prolific writers of the modern theater. He invented the modern comedy of ideas, expounding on social and political problems with a razor-sharp tongue. He won the 1925 Nobel Prize for literature.
Fri, Jan 23, 2009
Sir John Clifford Mortimer, who died on January 16, 2009, was a British playwright, novelist, bon vivant, and former practicing barrister. His works include twelve collections of Rumpole stories, the Rumpole plays, for which he received the British Academy Writer of the Year Award, and the adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. He also wrote three acclaimed volumes of autobiography. He is pictured here with bewigged actor Leo McKern, who immortalized the role on television.
Sat, Feb 21, 2009
Both Blackstone Audiobook and BBC Audiobooks America have released unabridged editions of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Blackstone's is performed by Martin Jarvis and a full cast and was translated by J.U. Nicholson. BBC Audiobooks America's features Bill Wallis and a full cast and was translated by Burton Raffel. Both have been reviewed together for purposes of comparison.
Sat, Feb 21, 2009
Raffi Yessayan spent eleven years as an assistant district attorney in Boston. Within two years of becoming a prosecutor he was named to the Gang Unit, ultimately becoming its chief. He recently left the DA’s office to go into private practice. He and his wife live in Massachusetts. This is his first novel.
Sat, Feb 21, 2009
JUSTIN PEACOCK received an MFA from Columbia University and a law degree from Yale. Prior to attending law school, he worked as an online producer at the New York Times. His legal experience ranges from death-penalty defense to First Amendment cases. He lives in Brooklyn.
Sat, Feb 21, 2009
MERYL GORDON is a full-time magazine journalist who for the past fifteen years has been a contract writer for New York magazine. She has profiled such influential figures as Kofi Annan, Mike Bloomberg, and John Kerry, and such stars as Nicole Kidman, Susan Sarandon, and Maggie Gyllenhaal. She has written major features for the New York Times Magazine, Gourmet, Elle,Marie Claire, and More. Earlier in her career she covered the police and court beats in Cincinnati and Rochester, and then became an economics writer in Washington, D.C. A graduate of the University of Michigan, she lives in New York City with her husband, Walter Shapiro, who is the Washington bureau chief for Salon.com.
Mon, Mar 02, 2009
Ray Bradbury is America's foremost writer of science fiction and fantasy. Among his most popular adult books are Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Death is a Lonely Business. In addition, he has written several books for children, including Switch on the Night.
Thu, Mar 05, 2009
ELLA MARCH CHASE lives in Moline, Illinois.
Sun, Mar 08, 2009
Stephanie Hemphill took her cue from Plath in composing Your Own, Sylvia, writing a poem every day, journaling, and writing frequent letters to her mother (a common practice of Plath’s). She lives in Los Angeles, California.
Thu, Apr 30, 2009
Richard North Patterson is the author of thirteen bestselling and critically acclaimed novels. Formerly a trial lawyer, Patterson was the SEC's liaison to the Watergate special prosecutor and has served on the boards of several Washington advocacy groups. He lives in San Francisco and on Martha's Vineyard
Tue, Apr 28, 2009
ROBERT BLOCH (1917–1994) began writing short fiction in the 1930s and published his first short novel, The Scarf, in 1947. In 1959, the year Psycho was published, Bloch won the Hugo Award and began to write for television and film as well. His autobiography, Once around the Bloch, was his last major work.
Mon, May 25, 2009
Paul Zindel (1936-2003) was discovered in the mid-1960’s by Charlotte Zolotow, who had seen a television production of his Pulitzer Prize–winning play, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man–in–the–Moon Marigolds and decided that Zindel must try his hand at young adult fiction. Mr. Zindel went on to become a pioneer in the genre as we know it today. His books for Harper Collins include The Doom Stone and Loch, both Recommended books for the Reluctant YA Reader (ALA), and the tragicomic memoir The Pigman & Me, which School Library Journal said in a starred review "allows readers a glimpse of Zindel's youth, gives them insight into some of his fictional characters, and provides many examples of universal experiences that will make them laugh and cry." The Pigman & Me was both a 1993 ALA Best Book for Young Adults and a 1993 ALA Notable Children's Book.
Tue, May 26, 2009
Karen Levine has won many awards for her work in radio, including two presigious Peabody Awards (Canada) - one for the documentary Children of the Holocaust. This book is based on Karen's CBC radio documentary, also called Hana's Suitcase, which appeared on The Sunday Edition (Canada)and which won the gold medal at the New York International Radio Festival.
Tue, May 26, 2009
Francine Levitov would like to thank Tim Ditlow of Brilliance Audiobooks for arranging her visit, as well as Lisa Cahn and Stephanie Wolfe for their patient and gracious responses to her questions.
Wed, Jul 01, 2009
William McGonnagall is one of the most frequently quoted poets in English. Imitation, however, is not always the sincerest form of flattery.
Sat, Aug 01, 2009
From his emergence as a 26-year old protagonist burdened with a disappointing marriage and career from which he learns he cannot run, to his unnecessarily early death 30 years later, Harry Angstrom is a small-town Everyman, through whose utterly normative eyes and reactions to the social and physical forces that shape him, we are able to inspect not only his life, but our own.
Thu, Oct 01, 2009
Kathy Reichs, like her character Temperance Brennan, is a forensic anthropologist, formerly for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in North Carolina and currently for the Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de m - decine l - gale for the province of Quebec. A professor in the department of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, she is one of only seventy-nine forensic anthropologists ever certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology, is past Vice President of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, and serves on the National Police Services Advisory Board in Canada. Reichs's first book, D - ja Dead, catapulted her to fame when it became a New York Times bestseller and won the 1997 Ellis Award for Best First Novel. Her novel, Devil Bones, was a #1 New York Times bestseller.
Mon, Aug 31, 2009
The work of award-winning American dramatist David Hirson includes La Bete and Wrong Mountain.
Mon, Aug 31, 2009
Tom Stoppard's other work includes Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Tony Award), Jumpers, Travesties (Tony Award), Night and Day, After Margritte, The Real Thing (Tony Award), Enter a Free Man, Hapgood, Arcadia (Evening Standard Award, The Oliver Award and the Critics Award), Dalliance and Undiscovered Country, Indian Ink (a stage adaptation of his own play, In the Native State) and The Invention of Love.
Mon, Aug 31, 2009
William Burroughs was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1914. Immensely influential among the Beat writers of the 1950s -- notably Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg -- he already had an underground reputation before the appearance of his first important book, Naked Lunch. Originally published by the daring and influential Olympia Press (the original publishers of Henry Miller) in France in 1959, it aroused great controversy on publication and was not available in the US until 1962 and in the UK until 1964. The book was adapted for film by David Cronenberg in 1991.
Tue, Sep 01, 2009
Francine Levitov admits to being just a little biased in favor of this book. From the day she first read it, in her rookie year in the Bronx criminal justice system, she has described it as the one book she most wished she could have written herself.
Thu, Oct 01, 2009
Dick Francis has written forty-one international bestsellers and is widely acclaimed as one of the world's finest thriller writers. His awards include the Crime Writer's Association's Cartier Diamond Dagger for his outstanding contribution to the crime genre, and an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Tufts University of Boston. In 1996 Dick Francis was made a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master for a lifetime's achievement and in 2000 he recieved a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours list.
Thu, Oct 01, 2009
Dan Brown is the author of numerous #1 bestselling novels, including the recent record-breaking The Lost Symbol, which had the biggest one-week sale in Random House history for a single title. His previous title, The Da Vinci Code, has sold more than 80 million copies worldwide, making it one of the bestselling novels of all time. In addition to numerous appearances on The Today Show, Mr. Brown was named one of the World's 100 Most Influential People by Time Magazine. He has appeared in the pages of Newsweek, Forbes, People, GQ, The New Yorker, and others. His novels are published in over 50 languages around the world.
Sun, Nov 01, 2009
Seth Grahame-Smith once took a class in English literature. He lives in Los Angeles. Jane Austen is the author of Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, and other masterpieces of English literature.
Sun, Nov 01, 2009
RAY BRADBURY, one of the world's most popular science-fiction writers, has written more than five hundred short stories, novels, plays, and poems. He has won many awards, including the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
Sun, Nov 01, 2009
"Eight hundred and fifty-three horrifying things had happened to me by the time I was a teenager. That was when I met my Pigman, whose real name was Nonno Frankie." Winner of the Margaret A. Edwards Award; School LIbrary Journal Best Book of the Year; Horn Book Fanfare Honor List; New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age; and, A YALSA Best Book for Young Adults
Mon, Nov 30, 2009
M.C. Beaton lives in the Cotswolds with her husband. In addition to the Agatha Raisin series, she writes the Hamish Macbeth mystery series.
Tue, Dec 01, 2009
A Grand Master of horror and suspense, Richard Matheson has won the Hugo, the Edgar, the Spur, and the Writers Guild Awards, among others. He lives in Calabasas, California.
Tue, Dec 01, 2009
AUGUSTEN BURROUGHS is the New York Times bestselling author of A Wolf At The Table, Possible Side Effects, Magical Thinking, Dry, Running with Scissors, and Sellevision. He lives in New York City and Amherst, Massachusetts.
Tue, Dec 01, 2009
Nam Le was born in Vietnam, and raised in Australia. His work has appeared in Zoetrope, A Public Space, One Story, Conjunctions, and the Pushcart Prize and Best American Nonrequired Reading anthologies. Currently the fiction editor of the Harvard Review, he divides his time between Australia and the United States.
Fri, Jan 01, 2010
Multi-award-winning satirist Terry Pratchett is best known throughout the world for his immensely popular Discworld novels. Neil Gaiman is the author of many highly acclaimed and award-winning books for children and adults, including the New York Times bestseller Coraline. He is also the author of the picture books The Wolves in the Walls and The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, both illustrated by Dave McKean, Blueberry Girl, illustrated by Charles Vess, and The Dangerous Alphabet, illustrated by Gris Grimly. Among his many awards are the World Fantasy Award, the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the Bram Stoker Award. Originally from England, Gaiman now lives in the United States.
Fri, Jan 01, 2010
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-1673, writing and acting under his stage name of Moliere, was a master of comic theatre whose influence remains strong even today.
Thu, Dec 31, 2009
Margaret Atwood has won many awards for her literary achievements. The Canadian author's works include poetry, children's books, drama non-fiction and many novels.
Thu, Dec 31, 2009
Best-selling author Pat Conroy was born in Atlanta, Georgia. This was the novel that gained him national attention.
Fri, Jan 01, 2010
Philippa Gregory is the New York Times bestselling author of several books, including The Other Boleyn Girl and The Boleyn Inheritance. A writer and broadcaster for radio and television, she lives in England. She welcomes visitors and messages at her website, www.philippagregory.com. Amazon.
Mon, Feb 01, 2010
Philip Roth entered the literary scene with his 1959 story collection, Goodbye, Columbus. When She Was Good is his second full-length novel, published in 1967.
Mon, Mar 01, 2010
Zadie Smith was born in northwest London in 1975. White Teeth, was the winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, and the Commonweatlh Writers First Book Prize. She is currently living in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Mon, Mar 01, 2010
Malcolm Gladwell has been a staff writer with The New Yorker magazine sine 1996, and all of the essays in What the Dog Saw first appeared in the pages of that magazine. He is the author of three other books, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference; Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking; and Outliers: The Story of Success, all of which were number one New York Times bestsellers.
Mon, Mar 01, 2010
Alan Ayckbourn is an Olivier, Tony, and Moliere Award-winning playwright, who has written over 74 plays. This one is his best known.
Thu, Apr 01, 2010
Bret Easton Ellis is a New York writer of novels and short stories. This highly controversial novel was his third, published in 1986. Once condemned for its graphic violence, it has achieved cult status.
Wed, Mar 31, 2010
Anita Brookner has written more than 20 novels. Her fourth, Hotel du Lac, published in 1984, won the Booker Prize. She lives in England.
Wed, Mar 31, 2010
ROBERT J. SAWYER has written eighteen novels, and his short fiction has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies. He has won forty-one national and international awards, most prominently the 1995 Nebula Award, the 2003 Hugo Award, and the 2006 John W. Campbell Memorial Award.
Thu, Apr 01, 2010
G. J. Meyer is a former Woodrow Wilson Fellow with an M.A. in English literature from the University of Minnesota, a onetime journalist, and holder of Harvard University’s Neiman Fellowship in Journalism. He has taught at colleges and universities in Des Moines, St. Louis, and New York. His books include A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, Executive Blues, and The Memphis Murders, winner of an Edgar Award for nonfiction from the Mystery Writers of America. He lives in Goring-on-Thames, England.
Thu, Apr 01, 2010
Portnoy's Complaint is one of the The Modern Library's "100 Best Novels" of the twentieth century.
Sat, May 01, 2010
LOUANN BRIZENDINE, M.D., a neuropsychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, is the founder of the Women’s and Teen Girls’ Mood and Hormone Clinic. She was previously on faculty at the Harvard Medical School and is a graduate of the Yale University School of Medicine and the University of California, Berkeley, in neurobiology. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her husband and son.
Sat, May 01, 2010
Joan of Arc was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church in 1920. George Bernard Shaw's play, written shortly thereafter, premiered on Broadway in 1923.
Sat, May 01, 2010
Colleen Mccullough was born in Australia. A neurophysiologist, she established the department of neurophysiology at the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, then worked as a researcher and teacher at Yale Medical School for ten years. Her writing career began with Tim, followed by The Thorn Birds, a record-breaking international bestseller. McCullough lives on Norfolk Island in the South Pacific with her husband, Ric Robinson.
Sat, May 01, 2010
Though primarily known for her novel and short stories, Elizabeth Gaskell has a non-fiction work of both literary and historical importance: she wrote the first biography of Charlotte Bronte.
Tue, Aug 31, 2010
James Shapiro, a professor at Columbia University in New York, is the author of Rival Playwrights, Shakespeare and the Jews, Oberammergau and A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare.
Tue, Jun 01, 2010
Steve Helling is a U.S. journalist who has written over a thousand articles for People magazine, including fifty-five cover stories. He lives in Orlando, Florida.
Tue, Jun 01, 2010
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was a Russian novelist, social reformer and pacifist, whose classic novels include War and Peace and Anna Karenina, widely regarded as masterpieces for the scope, breadth and realism of their depiction of Russian life.
Tue, Jun 01, 2010
Harlan Coben is the bestselling author of sixteen previous novels, including the #1 New York Times bestsellers Long Lost and Hold Tight. Winner of the Edgar Award, the Shamus Award, and the Anthony Award, Coben lives in New Jersey with his family.
Tue, Jun 01, 2010
In the 1990s Philip Roth won America's four major literary awards in succession: the National Book Critics Circle Award for Patrimony (1991), the PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock (1993), the National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater (1995), and the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for American Pastoral (1997). He won the Ambassador Book Award of the English-Speaking Union for I Married a Communist (1998); in the same year he received the National Medal of Arts at the White House. Previously he won the National Book Critics Circle Award for The Counterlife (1986) and the National Book Award for his first book, Goodbye, Columbus (1959). In 2000 he published The Human Stain, concluding a trilogy that depicts the ideological ethos of postwar America. For The Human Stain Roth received his second PEN/Faulkner Award as well as Britain's W. H. Smith Award for the Best Book of the Year. In 2001 he received the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in fiction, given every six years "for the entire work of the recipient."
Tue, Jun 01, 2010
Sue Townsend is a British author and playwright whose Adrian Mole series has had a large following in the UK for more than 20 years.
Thu, Jul 01, 2010
Barbara Vine, which is a pseudonym for Ruth Rendell, is the author of Blood Doctor, Asta's Book, The Brimstone Wedding, A Dark-Adapted Eye, A Fatal Inversion, The House of Stairs, King Solomon's Carpet and many more. She is the winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award. She is also the recipient of three Edgars from the Mystery Writers of America and four Gold Daggers from Great Britain's Crime Writers Association. In 1997, she was named a life peer in the House of Lords. A Dark Adapted Eye is the most famous book. She lives in England.
Thu, Jul 01, 2010
RAY BRADBURY, one of the most popular science-fiction writers in the world, is the author of more than five hundred short stories, novels, plays, and poems. He has won many awards, including the National Book Award and the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
Thu, Jul 01, 2010
AYN RAND (1905–1982) was born in Russia, graduated from the University of Leningrad, and came to the United States in 1926. She published her first novel in 1936. With the publication of The Fountainhead in 1943, she achieved a spectacular and enduring success and her unique philosophy, objectivism, gained a worldwide following.
Sun, Aug 01, 2010
Elizabeth Gaskell, like her friend Charles Dickens, wrote socially relevant novels during the Victorian Era. North and South is one of her best known. Her final work, Wives and Daughters, was reviewed in the May edition of SoundCommentary
Sun, Aug 01, 2010
MARC SCOTT ZICREE has created classic episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Babylon Five, Sliders, and others and is the author of the best-selling Twilight Zone Companion. He lives with his wife in West Hollywood.
Sun, Aug 01, 2010
SHIRLEY JACKSON (1919–1965), a celebrated writer of horror, wrote such classic novels as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as well as one of the most famous short stories in the English language, “The Lottery.” Her work has been adapted to film, television, and theater.
Sun, Aug 01, 2010
Joyce Carol Oates has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde (a finalist for the National Book Award), and the New York Times bestsellers The Falls (winner of the 2005 Prix Femina) and The Gravedigger's Daughter.
Sun, Aug 01, 2010
EMMA CAMPION did her graduate work in medieval and Anglo-Saxon literature and is the world's foremost scholar on Alice Perrers. She lives in Seattle.
Wed, Sep 01, 2010
Jane Austen (1775-1817) began her writing career composing stories and novels for her family as entertainment. Although she began to write Pride and Prejudice at the age of twenty-one, her first book to appear in print was Sense an Sensibility. All of her novels, including Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion, were published anonymously. Austen's identity as an author was announced after her death by her brother, Henry.
Wed, Sep 01, 2010
In the 1990s Philip Roth won America's four major literary awards in succession: the National Book Critics Circle Award for Patrimony (1991), the PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock (1993), the National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater (1995), and the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for American Pastoral (1997). He won the Ambassador Book Award of the English-Speaking Union for I Married a Communist (1998); in the same year he received the National Medal of Arts at the White House. Previously he won the National Book Critics Circle Award for The Counterlife (1986) and the National Book Award for his first book, Goodbye, Columbus (1959). In 2000 he published The Human Stain, concluding a trilogy that depicts the ideological ethos of postwar America. For The Human Stain Roth received his second PEN/Faulkner Award as well as Britain's W. H. Smith Award for the Best Book of the Year. In 2001 he received the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in fiction, given every six years "for the entire work of the recipient."
Wed, Sep 01, 2010
Michael Shelden is the author of three previous biographies, including Orwell, which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He was a correspondent for The Daily Telegraph (London) and a critic for the Baltimore Sun. He is currently a professor of English at Indiana State University.
Wed, Sep 01, 2010
Scott Turow is the author of eight best-selling works of fiction including Presumed Innocent and The Burden of Proof, and two non-fiction books including One L, about his experience as a law student. His books have been translated into more than 25 languages, sold more than 25 million copies worldwide, and have been adapted into film and television projects. He frequently contributes essays and op-ed pieces to publications such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Playboy, and The Atlantic.
Wed, Sep 01, 2010
Ford Madox Ford wrote The Good Soldier, the book on which his reputation most surely rests, in deliberate emulation of the nineteenth-century French novels he so admired. In this way he was able to explore the theme of sexual betrayal and its poisonous after-effects with a psychological intimacy as yet unknown in the English novel.
Fri, Oct 01, 2010
Thomas Hardy,who was born in 1840 in Dorsetshire, England and is critically esteemed for both his poetry and his novels, died in 1928.
Wed, Dec 01, 2010
Harriet Elinor Smith is an editor at the Mark Twain Project, which is housed within the Mark Twain Papers, the world's largest archive of primary materials by this major American writer. Under the direction of General Editor Robert H. Hirst, the Project's editors are producing the first comprehensive edition of all of Mark Twain's writings.
Fri, Jan 01, 2010
Philippa Gregory is the author of several New York Times bestselling novels, including The Other Boleyn Girl, The Queen’s Fool, The Virgin’s Lover, The Constant Princess, The Boleyn Inheritance, The Other Queen, and now The Cousins’ War books which include The White Queen and The Red Queen. She lives in England.
Fri, Jan 01, 2010
The Enchanter is the last novel that Vladimir Nabokov wrote in his native language. It contains themes found in his more mature and better known fiction.
Fri, Jan 01, 2010
Catherine Coulter is the author of the New York Times-bestselling FBI thrillers The Cove, The Maze, The Target, The Edge, Riptide, Hemlock Bay, Eleventh Hour, Blindside, Blowout, Point Blank, Double Take, TailSpin, KnockOut, and Whiplash. She lives in northern California.
Thu, Jan 01, 2009
Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950) was the author of more than sixty books, including the immensely popular Tarzan adventures.
Fri, Jan 01, 2010
Actor/playwright Lonne Elder III died in 1996. This is his best known work.
Fri, Jan 01, 2010
Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, and has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award; and the New York Times bestseller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978. In 2003 she received the Commonwealth Award for Distinguished Service in Literature, and in 2006 she received the Chicago Tribune Lifetime Achievement Award.
Tue, Feb 01, 2011
ERIC METAXAS is the author of Amazing Grace, Everything You Always Wanted to Know about God (but Were Afraid to Ask), and thirty children's books. He is founder and host of Socrates in the City in New York City, where he lives with his wife and daughter. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Atlantic, Washington Post, and other publications. He has written for VeggieTales and Rabbit Ears Productions, earning three Grammy nominations for Best Children's Recording
Mon, Jan 31, 2011
JOHN GRISHAM is the author of twenty-two novels, one work of nonfiction, a collection of stories, and a novel for young readers. He is on the Board of Directors of the Innocence Project in New York and is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Mississippi Innocence Project at the University of Mississippi School of Law. He lives in Virginia and Mississippi.
Mon, Jan 31, 2011
Ruth Rendell has won numerous awards, including three Edgars, the highest accolade from Mystery Writers of America, as well as three Gold Daggers, a Silver Dagger, and a Diamond Dagger for outstanding contribution to the genre from England’s prestigious Crime Writer’s Association. A member of the House of Lords, she lives in London.
Tue, Feb 01, 2011
Phillip Margolin has written fifteen New York Times bestsellers, including his latest, Supreme Justice. Each displays a unique, compelling insider's view of criminal behavior, which comes from his long background as a criminal defense attorney who has handled thirty murder cases. He lives in Portland, Oregon
Tue, Mar 01, 2011
In 1997 PHILIP ROTH won the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral. In 1998 he received the National Medal of Arts at the White House and in 2002 the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in fiction, previously awarded to John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, and Saul Bellow, among others. He has twice won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has won the PEN/Faulkner Award three times. He has also won American PEN's two highest awards: the PEN/Nabokov and PEN/Bellow awards. He is the only living American novelist to have his work published in a comprehensive, definitive edition by the Library of America.
Tue, Mar 01, 2011
The first novel of the fantasy classic Gormenghast trilogy (as Titus Groan, Gormenghast, and Titus Alone are slightly inaccurately known) this novel was published in 1946,
Fri, Apr 01, 2011
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was born in Nottinghamshire to a family of miners. This most controversial of his novels was banned in England until the 1960s.
Sun, May 01, 2011
Nathanael West — novelist, screenwriter, playwright — was one of the most gifted and original writers of his generation, a comic artist whose insight into the brutalities of modern life would prove prophetic. He is famous for two masterpieces, Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) and The Day of the Locust (1939). He died in a car crash in 1940, while returning to Los Angeles to attend the funeral of his friend F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Wed, Jun 01, 2011
Lovers of fine literature who also understand the allure of soap operas will gobble up the sweeping sagas of Anthony Trollope. His unerring eye chronicles his times with detail, humor and warmth.
Fri, Jul 01, 2011
Everything I owned back in the mid 50's had Davy Crockett stamped or pictured somewhere on it, and I have never forgiven my parents for failing to buy me a coonskin cap and a horse.
Fri, Jul 01, 2011
Sabatini's classic swashbuckler is as good as the genre gets: a fast-paced action filled plot, an assortment of unusual situations and characters, romance, the French Revolution, and a thoroughly engaging protagonist whose wit is as quick as it is barbed.
Fri, Jul 01, 2011
With the same penetrating discernment, the same luminous prose, and the same understanding of the absurdity of the human condition that grace her novels, Joyce Carol Oates deconstructs the first year of her widowhood following the unexpected death of her husband, editor Raymond Smith, who succumbed to pneumonia in 2008
Fri, Jul 01, 2011
While facts yield too frequently to fiction, those who love historical novels won't mind and can enjoy the intrigue and the author's in-depth portrayals of the principal characters.
Fri, Jul 01, 2011
Exciting, candid and as mean as the streets themselves, Alphaville is sure to please all who enjoy reading about crime.
Fri, Jul 01, 2011
Performer Kim Mai Guest sounds so much like a 12 year old girl that it is not until she speaks the adult dialogue that listeners will realize the extent of her actual talents.
Fri, Jul 01, 2011
As Nabokov lovers will know to expect, the prose is elegant, the humor abundant, and the plot and themes convoluted. Art and reality twist, duplicate, blur, merge, and twist again and again. Hermann is a chronic liar and everything he says in both the novel and the book within the novel is completely unreliable.
Mon, Aug 01, 2011
Gabe can't commit; Martha can, but not to what's good for her; Libby can't conceive; Paul can't leave Libby. All are victims of their times, their class, their faith, their gender, their upbringing and their unique personal limitations.
Sun, Jul 31, 2011
Robin Field gives us a cold and almost prissy protagonist, capable of hero worship in the abstraction while lacking the capacity for human love.
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