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ID: 293833

Title: Seeds of Terror: How Heroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and Al Qaeda

Author: Gretchen Peters

Narrator: Laural Merlington

Format: Unabridged

Length: 07:52:08

Language: English

Release date: 07-16-09

Publisher: Tantor Media

Genres: History, World, Military

Summary:

Most Americans think of the Taliban and al-Qaeda as a bunch of bearded fanatics fighting an Islamic crusade from caves in Afghanistan. But that doesn't explain their astonishing comeback along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Why is it that eight years after we invaded Afghanistan, the CIA says that these groups are better armed and better funded than ever?

Seeds of Terror will reshape the way you think about America's enemies, revealing them less as ideologues and more as criminals who earn half a billion dollars every year off the opium trade. With the breakneck pace of a thriller, author Gretchen Peters traces their illicit activities from vast poppy fields in southern Afghanistan to heroin labs run by Taliban commanders, from drug convoys armed with Stinger missiles to the money launderers of Karachi and Dubai.

This isn't a fanciful conspiracy theory. Seeds of Terror is based on hundreds of interviews with Taliban fighters, smugglers, and law enforcement and intelligence agents. Their information is matched by intelligence reports shown to the author by frustrated U.S. officials who fear the next 9/11 will be far deadlier than the first-and paid for with drug profits.

Seeds of Terror makes the case that we must cut terrorists off from their drug earnings if we ever hope to beat them. This war isn't about ideology or religion. It's about creating a new economy for Afghanistan-and breaking the cycle of violence and extremism that has gripped the region for decades.

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ID: 293803

Title: I'm Down: A Memoir

Author: Mishna Wolff

Narrator: Mishna Wolff

Format: Unabridged

Length: 08:07:21

Language: English

Release date: 07-16-09

Publisher: Tantor Media

Genres: Biography & Memoir, Arts & Entertainment, History & Culture, Women

Summary:

Mishna Wolff grew up in a poor black neighborhood with her single father, a white man who truly believed he was black. 'He strutted around with a short perm, a Cosby-esque sweater, gold chains and a Kangol-telling jokes like Redd Fox, and giving advice like Jesse Jackson. You couldn't tell my father he was white. Believe me, I tried,' writes Wolff. And so from early childhood on, her father began his crusade to make his white daughter down.

Unfortunately, Mishna didn't quite fit in with the neighborhood kids: she couldn't dance, she couldn't sing, she couldn't double dutch, and she was the worst player on her all-black basketball team. She was shy, uncool, and painfully white. And yet when she was suddenly sent to a rich white school, she found she was too 'black' to fit in with her white classmates.

I'm Down is a hip, hysterical, and at the same time beautiful memoir that will have you howling with laughter, recommending it to friends and questioning what it means to be black and white in America.

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ID: 119204

Title: Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture

Author: Ellen Ruppel Shell

Narrator: Lorna Raver

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11:30:00

Language: English

Release date: 07-16-09

Publisher: Tantor Media

Genres: Business & Economics, Marketing & Advertising, Sales & Retail

Summary:

From the shuttered factories of the rust belt to the look-alike strip malls of the sun belt-and almost everywhere in between-America has been transformed by its relentless fixation on low price. This pervasive yet little examined obsession is arguably the most powerful and devastating market force of our time-the engine of globalization, outsourcing, planned obsolescence, and economic instability in an increasingly unsettled world.

Low price is so alluring that we may have forgotten how thoroughly we once distrusted it. Ellen Ruppel Shell traces the birth of the bargain as we know it from the Industrial Revolution to the assembly line and beyond, homing in on a number of colorful characters, such as Gene Verkauf (his name is Yiddish for 'to sell'), founder of E. J. Korvette, the discount chain that helped wean customers off traditional notions of value. The rise of the chain store in post-Depression America led to the extolling of convenience over quality, and big-box retailers completed the reeducation of the American consumer by making them prize low price in the way they once prized durability and craftsmanship.

The effects of this insidious perceptual shift are vast: a blighted landscape, escalating debt (both personal and national), stagnating incomes, fraying communities, and a host of other socioeconomic ills. That's a long list of charges, and it runs counter to orthodox economics, which argues that low price powers productivity by stimulating a brisk free market. But Shell marshals evidence from a wide range of fields-history, sociology, marketing, psychology, even economics itself-to upend the conventional wisdom. Cheap also unveils the fascinating and unsettling illogic that underpins our bargain-hunting reflex and explains how our deep-rooted need for bargains colors every aspect of our psyches and social lives. In this myth-shattering, closely reasoned, and exhaustively reported investigation, Shell exposes the astronomically high cost of cheap.

Contact: [email protected]

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ID: 293807

Title: Privilege

Author: Kate Brian

Narrator: Justine Eyre

Format: Unabridged

Length: 07:45:43

Language: English

Release date: 07-16-09

Publisher: Tantor Media

Genres: Fiction, Teen, Tough Topics

Summary:

Most girls would die for a life of privilege; some would even kill for it.

Ariana Osgood ruled exclusive Easton Academy-until she was arrested for murdering Thomas Pearson. She's spent the past two years at the Brenda T. Trumbull Correctional Facility for Women plotting her escape and is determined to get a second chance at the glamorous life she left behind. And Ariana will do anything to get her way.

From the author of the bestselling Private novels comes a new series about the dark world of wealth, secrets, and Privilege.

Contact: [email protected]

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ID: 119230

Title: Shadow Woman

Author: Thomas Perry

Narrator: Joyce Bean

Format: Unabridged

Length: 14:30:00

Language: English

Release date: 07-16-09

Publisher: Tantor Media

Genres: Fiction & Literature, Mystery, Thriller & Horror, Suspense, Detective Stories, General

Summary:

Jane Whitefield is a name to be whispered like a prayer-a shadow woman who rescues the helpless and the hunted when their enemies leave them no place to hide. Now, with the bone-deep cunning of her Native American forebears, she arranges a vanishing act for Pete Hatcher, a Las Vegas gambling executive. It should be a piece of cake, but she doesn't yet know about Earl and Linda-professional destroyers who will cash in if Hatcher dies, killers who love to kill...slowly. From Las Vegas to upstate New York to the Rockies, the race between predator and prey slowly narrows until at last they share an intimacy broken only by death.

Contact: [email protected]

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ID: 118508

Title: Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang

Author: Adi Ignatius, Bao Pu, Renee Chiang

Narrator: Norman Dietz

Format: Unabridged

Length: 13:00:00

Language: English

Release date: 07-13-09

Publisher: Tantor Media

Genres: History, Biography & Memoir, Law & Politics, Asia

Summary:

How often can you peek behind the curtains of one of the most secretive governments in the world? Prisoner of the State is the first book to give listeners a front row seat to the secret inner workings of China's government. It is the story of Premier Zhao Ziyang, the man who brought liberal change to that nation and who, at the height of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, tried to stop the massacre and was dethroned for his efforts.

When China's army moved in, killing hundreds of students and other demonstrators, Zhao was placed under house arrest at his home on a quiet alley in Beijing. China's most promising change agent had been disgraced, along with the policies he stood for. The premier spent the last sixteen years of his life, up until his death in 2005, in seclusion. An occasional detail about his life would slip out: reports of a golf excursion, a photo of his aging visage, a leaked letter to China's leaders. But China scholars often lamented that Zhao never had his final say.

As it turns out, Zhao did produce a memoir in complete secrecy. He methodically recorded his thoughts and recollections on what had happened behind the scenes during many of modern China's most critical moments. The tapes he produced were smuggled out of the country and form the basis for Prisoner of the State. In this audio journal, Zhao provides intimate details about the Tiananmen crackdown, describes the ploys and double-crosses China's top leaders use to gain advantage over one another, and talks about the necessity for China to adopt democracy in order to achieve long-term stability.

The China that Zhao portrays is not some long-lost dynasty. It is today's China, where the nation's leaders accept economic freedom but continue to resist political change. If Zhao had survived-that is, if the hard-line hadn't prevailed during Tiananmen-he might have been able to steer China's political system toward more openness and tolerance. Zhao's call to begin lifting the party's control over China's life-to let a little freedom into the public square-is remarkable coming from a man who had once dominated that square. Although Zhao now speaks from the grave in this moving and riveting memoir, his voice has the moral power to make China sit up and listen.

Contact: [email protected]

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ID: 119188

Title: Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict

Author: Laurie Viera Rigler

Narrator: Kate Reading

Format: Unabridged

Length: 09:30:00

Language: English

Release date: 07-09-09

Publisher: Tantor Media

Genres: Fiction & Literature, Contemporary Women

Summary:

Laurie Viera Rigler's nationally bestselling debut novel, Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, took twenty-first-century free spirit Courtney Stone into the social confines of Jane Austen's era. Now, Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict tells the parallel story of Jane Mansfield, a gentleman's daughter from Regency England who inexplicably awakens in Courtney's overly wired and morally confused modern L.A. life.

For Jane, the modern world is not wholly disagreeable. She relishes the privacy, independence, even the power to earn her own money. But how is she to fathom her employer's incomprehensible dictates about 'syncing a BlackBerry'? How can she navigate a world in which flirting and kissing and even the sexual act itself raise no matrimonial expectations? Even more bewildering is the friend named Wes, who is as attractive and confusing to Jane as the man who broke her heart back home. It's enough to make her wonder if she would be better off in her own time, where at least the rules are clear-that is, if returning is even an option.

Contact: [email protected]

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ID: 119189

Title: Rosa: A Novel

Author: Jonathan Rabb

Narrator: Simon Prebble

Format: Unabridged

Length: 22:35:00

Language: English

Release date: 07-09-09

Publisher: Tantor Media

Genres: Fiction & Literature, Historical Fiction

Summary:

In the last days of the First World War, socialist revolution swept across Germany, sending Kaiser Wilhelm into exile and transforming Berlin into a battleground. But for Detective Inspector Nikolai Hoffner and his young assistant, Hans Fichte, the revolution is a mere inconvenience. Four women from the slums of Berlin have turned up dead, all with identical markings etched into their backs, and Hoffner and Fichte have spent the better part of six weeks trying to crack the bizarre case.

Things take a troubling turn when the political police begin to show an interest in Hoffner's investigation. Hoffner has no idea why the Polpo would want to get their hands dirty with a serial murderer, until he is shown the lifeless body of Rosa Luxemburg, the same eerie markings on her back. Rumors abound that Rosa, one of the leaders of the suppressed socialist uprising, was assassinated by an angry mob, but the pattern carved into her back tells a different story.

In his remarkable thriller, Jonathan Rabb paints a vivid, unforgettable picture of a city and a people poised between the chaos of the First World War and the darkness to come, a time when political thugs, petty thieves, and charismatic leaders rushed to fill the void left behind. Into this gap steps Hoffner, who, while battling his own personal demons, is still determined to find out who is preying on the women of Berlin, even as he gets drawn deeper into the mystery surrounding Rosa's death. Hoffner's search for the killer leads him on a dark and twisted journey through the battle-scarred streets of the city, where he soon discovers that nothing is as it appears. And while he finds allies in unexpected places, he is met at every turn by men who will stop at nothing to keep him from finding out the truth about Rosa.

A genuine mystery at the time, Rosa's fate has continued to prompt speculation to this day. Rabb's taut political thriller imagines one strikingly real possibility. With his first two novels, The Overseer and The Book of Q, Rabb proved that he had a talent not only for writing suspenseful narratives but for illuminating the darkest corners of history as well. With Rosa, his finest work, he brings to life a world capital on the brink of chaos, a tragic revolutionary who both inspired and enraged, and a compellingly complex, world-weary, deeply flawed but brilliant inspector named Nikolai Hoffner.

Contact: [email protected]

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ID: 118498

Title: Edible History of Humanity

Author: Tom Standage

Narrator: George K. Wilson

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10:30:00

Language: English

Release date: 07-09-09

Publisher: Tantor Media

Genres: History, Cooking, Non-Fiction, World

Summary:

Throughout history, food has acted as a catalyst of social change, political organization, geopolitical competition, industrial development, military conflict, and economic expansion. An Edible History of Humanity is a pithy, entertaining account of how a series of changes-caused, enabled, or influenced by food-has helped to shape and transform societies around the world.

The first civilizations were built on barley and wheat in the Near East, millet and rice in Asia, and corn and potatoes in the Americas. Why farming created a strictly ordered social hierarchy in contrast to the loose egalitarianism of hunter-gatherers is, as Tom Standage reveals, as interesting as the details of the complex cultures that emerged, eventually interconnected by commerce. Trade in exotic spices in particular spawned the age of exploration and the colonization of the New World.

Food's influence over the course of history has been just as prevalent in modern times. In the late eighteenth century, Britain's solution to food shortages was to industrialize and import food rather than grow it. Food helped to determine the outcome of wars: Napoleon's rise and fall was intimately connected with his ability to feed his vast armies. In the twentieth century, Communist leaders employed food as an ideological weapon, resulting in the death by starvation of millions in the Soviet Union and China. And today the foods we choose in the supermarket connect us to global debates about trade, development, the environment, and the adoption of new technologies.

Encompassing many fields, from genetics and archaeology to anthropology and economics-and invoking food as a special form of technology-An Edible History of Humanity is a fully satisfying discourse on the sweep of human history.

Contact: [email protected]

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ID: 119190

Title: Naamah's Kiss

Author: Jacqueline Carey

Narrator: Anne Flosnik

Format: Unabridged

Length: 27:30:00

Language: English

Release date: 07-09-09

Publisher: Tantor Media

Genres: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Fiction & Literature, Sagas, Epic Fantasy

Summary:

Once there were great magicians born to the Maghuin Dhonn, the folk of the Brown Bear, the oldest tribe in Alba. But generations ago, the greatest of them all broke a sacred oath sworn in the name of all his people. Now, only small gifts remain to them. Through her lineage, Moirin possesses such gifts-the ability to summon the twilight and conceal herself, and the skill to coax plants to grow.

Moirin has a secret, too. From childhood onward, she senses the presence of unfamiliar gods in her life: the bright lady and the man with a seedling cupped in his palm. Raised in the wilderness by her reclusive mother, it isn't until she comes of age that Moirin learns how illustrious, if mixed, her heritage is. The great-granddaughter of Alais the Wise, child of the Maghuin Donn, and a cousin of the Cruarch of Alba, Moirin learns her father was a D'Angeline priest dedicated to serving Naamah, goddess of desire.

After Moirin undergoes the rites of adulthood, she finds divine acceptance...on the condition that she fulfill an unknown destiny that lies somewhere beyond the ocean. Or perhaps oceans. Beyond Terre d'Ange where she finds her father, in the far reaches of distant Ch'in, Moirin's skills are a true gift when facing the vengeful plans of an ambitious mage, a noble warrior princess desperate to save her father's throne, and the spirit of a celestial dragon.

Contact: [email protected]