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ID: 620399

Title: Murder on Mustang Beach

Author: Alicia Bessette

Narrator: Karissa Vacker

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9:26:05

Language: English

Release date: 05-16-23

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Genres: Thriller & Horror, Detective Stories, Cozy Mystery

Summary:

When a killer stirs up trouble in the Outer Banks, amateur sleuth and bookseller Callie Padget is on the case, in a new beachside mystery from author Alicia Bessette.

Cattail Island in the Outer Banks is a popular destination for honeymooners and nature lovers alike. So it is a huge blow when the murder of a newlywed grinds the pre-summer season to a screeching halt. Bookseller Callie Padget launches her own investigation, after mysterious customer Geri-Lynn Humfeld, caretaker of the island’s protected wild horses, brings in an irresistible piece of information.

Determined to restore order and safety to her beloved hometown, Callie searches for answers—even as those answers cast suspicion on her soon-to-be boyfriend, Toby Dodge, whose martial arts studio was the scene of the crime. As she digs deeper, Toby becomes the police’s prime suspect. The truth raises troubling questions and sends her scouring the bookshop’s shelves for guidance.

Meanwhile, a well-loved member of the mustang herd—a pregnant mare whose anticipated foal is a symbol of summery hope for locals and visitors alike—may be facing dire circumstances. With help from Geri-Lynn, Callie unearths startling secrets surrounding not only the compromised mare, but the murdered newlywed, too. And when another body shows up, this time on isolated Mustang Beach, she must race against time to stop a killer from claiming any more innocent lives.

Contact: [email protected]

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ID: 620417

Title: Lincoln's God: How Faith Transformed a President and a Nation

Author: Joshua Zeitz

Narrator: Dan Woren

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10:05:02

Language: English

Release date: 05-16-23

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Genres: History, Biography & Memoir, Law & Politics, North America, Religious & Inspirational

Summary:

Lincoln’s spiritual journey from spiritual skeptic to America's first evangelical Christian presidentbeliever—a conversion that changed both the Civil War and the practice of religion itself.

Abraham Lincoln, unlike most of his political brethren, kept organized Christianity at arm’s length. He never joined a church and only sometimes attended Sunday services with his wife. But as he came to appreciate the growing political and military importance of the Christian community, and when death touched the Lincoln household in an awful, intimate way, the erstwhile skeptic effectively evolved into a believer and harnessed the power of evangelical Protestantism to rally the nation to arms. The war, he told Americans, was divine retribution for the sin of slavery.  

This is the story of that transformation and the ways in which religion helped millions of Northerners interpret the carnage and political upheaval of the 1850s and 1860s. Rather than focus on battles and personalities, Joshua Zeitz probes ways in which war and spiritual convictions became intertwined. Characters include the famous—Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Henry Ward Beecher—as well as ordinary soldiers and their families whose evolving understanding of mortality, heaven, and mission motivated them to fight. Long underestimated in accounts of the Civil War, religion—specifically evangelical Christianity—played an instrumental role on the battlefield and home front, and in the corridors of government.  

More than any president before him—or any president after, until George W. Bush—Lincoln harnessed popular religious enthusiasm to build broad-based support for a political party and a cause. A master politician who was sincere about his religion, Lincoln held beliefs that were  unconventional—and widely misunderstood then, as now. After his death and the end of an unforgiving war, Americans needed to memorialize Lincoln as a Christian martyr. The truth was, of course, considerably more complicated, as this original book explores.

Contact: [email protected]

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ID: 619045

Title: Penny Draws a Best Friend

Author: Sara Shepard

Narrator: Cassandra Morris

Format: Unabridged

Length: 3:11:47

Language: English

Release date: 05-16-23

Publisher: Listening Library (Audio)

Genres: Kids, Health & Family

Summary:

A humorous, heartfelt, highly illustrated new middle grade series about friendship, feelings, and finding your people, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Sara Shepard.

Why does the cubby room always smell like farts? Who etched the words 'I Am Bug Man' inside my desk? Why is Mom suddenly acting like she has a secret?

Nobody said starting fifth grade would be easy, and Penny Lowry's anxiety means a million questions are always spinning through her thoughts. Luckily she's got a lot to look forward to, like her favorite after-school activity, Art Club, and seeing her best friend Violet again after spending the whole summer apart.

The thing is, Violet has been acting weird ever since she got back. She never wants to hang out anymore, says Art Club is for babies, and spends all her time with Riley, the meanest girl in school. Did Penny do something wrong? And if she did, can she undo it?

In this hilariously sweet introduction to a lovable kid still figuring out how to manage her anxiety, the author of the #1 bestselling Pretty Little Liars series gets to the heart of how to let go of the friends who aren’t right for you . . . and how to make room for the ones who are.

* This audiobook edition includes a downloadable PDF that contains a selection of Penny’s drawings from the book.

Contact: [email protected]

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ID: 620373

Title: Lost at Sea: Eddie Rickenbacker's Twenty-Four Days Adrift on the Pacific--A World War II Tale of Courage and Faith

Author: John Wukovits

Narrator: Nathan Agin

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8:55:45

Language: English

Release date: 05-16-23

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Genres: History, Biography & Memoir, North America, Military

Summary:

The forgotten story of American war hero Eddie Rickenbacker's crash landing in the Pacific during World War II, and his incredible twenty-three-day crusade to keep his crew alive

In the darkest days of World War II, an unlikely civilian was sent to deliver a letter from Washington to General MacArthur in New Guinea. Eddie Rickenbacker was a genuine icon, a pioneer of aviation, the greatest fighter pilot of the First World War, recipient of the Medal of Honor, who’d retired to become a renowned race car driver. Now in his fifties, one of the most admired men in America, Rickenbacker was again serving his nation, riding high above the Pacific as a passenger aboard a B-17.

 

But soon the plane was forced to crash-land on the ocean surface, leaving its eight occupants adrift in tiny rubber life rafts, hundreds of miles from the nearest speck of land. Lacking fresh water and with precious little food, the men faced days of unrelenting sun, followed by nights shivering in the cold, fighting pangs of hunger, exhaustion, and thirst, all the while circled by sharks. Each prayed to see a friendly vessel on the horizon, and dreaded the arrival of a Japanese warship. Meanwhile, as the US Navy scoured the South Pacific, American radio and newspapers back home parsed every detail of Rickenbacker's disappearance, and an adoring public awaited news of his fate.

Using survivors’ accounts and contemporary records, award-winning author John Wukovits brings to life a gripping story of survival, leadership, and faith in a time of crisis.

Contact: [email protected]

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ID: 626728

Title: Fake Dates and Mooncakes

Author: Sher Lee

Narrator: Joshua Chang

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8:03:22

Language: English

Release date: 05-16-23

Publisher: Listening Library (Audio)

Genres: Teen, Romance

Summary:

Heartstopper meets Crazy Rich Asians in this heartfelt, joyful audiobook rom-com that follows an aspiring chef who discovers the recipe for love is more complicated than it seems when he starts fake-dating a handsome new customer.

Dylan Tang wants to win a Mid-Autumn Festival mooncake-making competition for teen chefs—in memory of his mom, and to bring much-needed publicity to his aunt’s struggling Chinese takeout in Brooklyn.

Enter Theo Somers: charming, wealthy, with a smile that makes Dylan’s stomach do backflips. AKA a distraction. Their worlds are sun-and-moon apart, but Theo keeps showing up. He even convinces Dylan to be his fake date at a family wedding in the Hamptons.

In Theo’s glittering world of pomp, privilege, and crazy rich drama, their romance is supposed to be just pretend . . . but Dylan finds himself falling for Theo. For real. Then Theo’s relatives reveal their true colors—but with the mooncake contest looming, Dylan can’t risk being sidetracked by rich-people problems.

Can Dylan save his family’s business and follow his heart—or will he fail to do both?

Contact: [email protected]

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ID: 651469

Title: Foster Dade Explores the Cosmos

Author: Nash Jenkins

Narrator: Will Damron

Format: Unabridged

Length: 22:00:08

Language: English

Release date: 05-16-23

Publisher: Random House (Audio)

Genres: Fiction & Literature, Literary Fiction, Coming of Age, Sagas

Summary:

“[A] striking debut. . . funny, heartbreaking, and real.”––SAM LANSKY, author of Broken People

        

Prep meets The Secret History in this searing debut novel about a tragic scandal at an American prep school, told in the form of a literary investigation through a distinctly millennial lens

        

When Foster Dade arrives at Kennedy, an elite boarding school in New Jersey, the year is 2008. Barack Obama begins his first term as president; Vampire Weekend and Passion Pit bump from the newly debuted iPhone; teenagers share confidences and rumors over BlackBerry Messenger and iChat; and the internet as we know it is slowly emerging from its cocoon. So, too, is Foster emerging—a transfer student and anxious young man, Foster is stumbling through adolescence in the wake of his parents’ scandalous divorce. But Foster soon finds himself in the company of Annabeth Whittaker and Jack Albright, the twin centers of Kennedy’s social gravity, who take him under their wing to navigate the cliques and politics of the carelessly entitled.

        

Eighteen months later, Foster will be expelled, following a tragic scandal that leaves Kennedy and its students irreparably changed. When our nameless narrator inherits Foster’s old dorm room, he begins an epic yearslong investigation into what exactly happened. Through interviews with former classmates, Foster’s blog posts, playlists, and text archives, and the narrator’s own obsessive imagination, a story unfurls—Foster’s, yes, but also one that asks us who owns our personal narratives, and how we shape ourselves to be the heroes or villains of our own stories.

       

Foster Dade Explores the Cosmos is about privilege and power, the pitfalls of masculinity and its expectations, and, most distinctly, how we create the mythologies that give meaning to our lives. With his debut novel, Nash Jenkins brilliantly captures the emotional intensities of adolescence in the dizzying early years of the twenty-first century.

*Includes a downloadable PDF of Foster Dade's iTunes Playlists

Contact: [email protected]

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ID: 681359

Title: Hotel 21

Author: Senta Rich

Narrator: Jessie Cave

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8:33:18

Language: English

Release date: 05-16-23

Publisher: Random House (Audio)

Genres: Fiction & Literature, Contemporary Women, Feminist Fiction

Summary:

A sharp and warm-hearted debut novel with an unforgettable protagonist you can’t help but root for.

Noelle is an efficient, friendly hotel cleaner—a model employee. Or so she’d have you think . . . trouble is, she can’t help but take little “souvenirs” from the rooms she cleans. Nothing of value—a lipstick, a hair clip, some tweezers. By the time the guest has noticed, she’s long gone. As Noelle begins work at her twenty-first hotel, she’s determined to last longer than her record of one month in the job. But then she meets her new colleagues. These women are real: they live lives full of happiness and worry, pain and joy. They make her wonder what it might be like to have true friends, people to stick round for—and someone to love. . . . Will they give her the courage to claim the life she deserves, or will her old habits come back to haunt her?

Contact: [email protected]

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ID: 618775

Title: Uncle of the Year: & Other Debatable Triumphs

Author: Andrew Rannells

Narrator: Andrew Rannells

Format: Unabridged

Length: 5:50:19

Language: English

Release date: 05-16-23

Publisher: Random House (Audio)

Genres: Biography & Memoir, Arts & Entertainment, General Comedy

Summary:

From the star of Broadway’s The Book of Mormon and Tony–nominated Gutenberg! The Musical!, candid, hilarious essays on anxiety, ambition, and the uncertain path to adulthood that ask: How will we know when we get there?

“This is the funny, honest, cozy hang with Andrew Rannells that you’ve been creepily dreaming of. . . . A delight.”—Tina Fey

In Uncle of the Year, Andrew Rannells wonders: If he, now in his forties, has everything he’s supposed to need to be an adult—a career, property, a well-tailored suit—why does he still feel like an anxious twenty-year-old climbing his way toward solid ground? Is it because he hasn’t won a Tony, or found a husband, or had a child? And what if he doesn’t want those things? (A husband and a child, that is. He wants a Tony.)

 

In deeply personal essays drawn from his life as well as his career on Broadway and in Hollywood, Rannells argues that we all pretend—for friends, partners, parents, and others—that we are constantly succeeding in the process known as “adulting.” But if this acting is leaving us unfulfilled, then we need new markers of time, new milestones, new expectations of what adulthood is and can be.

 

Along the way, Rannells navigates dating, aging, mental health, bad jobs, and much more. In his essay “Uncle of the Year,” he explores the role that children play in his life, as a man who never thought having kids was necessary or even possible—until his siblings have kids and he falls in love with a man with two of his own. In “Always Sit Next to Mark Ruffalo,” he reveals the thrills and absurdities of the awards circuit, and the desire to be recognized for one’s work. And in “Horses, Not Zebras,” he shares the piece of wisdom that helped him finally come to terms with his anxiety and perfectionism.

 

Filled with honest insights and a sharp wit, Uncle of the Year challenges us to take a long look at who we’re pretending to be, who we know we are, and who we want to become.

Contact: [email protected]

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ID: 620413

Title: Killing Me

Author: Michelle Gagnon

Narrator: Jaime Lamchick

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9:12:26

Language: English

Release date: 05-16-23

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Genres: Mystery, Thriller & Horror, Suspense

Summary:

Finalist for the CALIBA 2023 Golden Poppy Award

A LibraryReads Pick

Utterly original and wildly entertaining, Killing Me is a laugh-loud-loud thriller with a protagonist whose life is a total mess.

She escaped a serial killer. Then things got weird.

Amber Jamison can’t believe she’s about to become the latest victim of a serial killer. She’s savvy and street smart, so when she gets pushed into, of all things, a white windowless van, she is more angry than afraid. Things get even weirder when she’s miraculously saved by a mysterious woman . . . who promptly disappears. Who was she? And why is she hunting serial killers?

You’d think escaping one psychopath would be enough, but Amber’s problems are just beginning. Her close call has law enforcement circling a past she’s tried to outrun. She’s forced to flee across the country, ending up at a seedy motel in Las Vegas with a noir-obsessed manager and a sex worker as her unlikely companions . . . and danger right behind. She’s landed in the cross hairs of the world’s most prolific killer, caught up in a deadly game that’s been going on for years. To survive, she is forced to dust off her old playbook and partner with someone she can’t trust. The odds are against her, but sometimes you just have to roll the dice.

Contact: [email protected]

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ID: 639068

Title: Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music

Author: Brent Hayes Edwards, Henry Threadgill

Narrator: Ron Butler

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12:09:54

Language: English

Release date: 05-16-23

Publisher: Random House (Audio)

Genres: Biography & Memoir, Arts & Entertainment

Summary:

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • An autobiography of one of the towering figures of contemporary American music and a powerful meditation on history, race, capitalism, and art.

A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times, NPR, The New Yorker

Henry Threadgill has had a singular life in music. At 79, the saxophonist, flautist, and celebrated composer is one of three jazz artists (along with Ornette Coleman and Wynton Marsalis) to have won a Pulitzer Prize. In Easily Slip into Another World, Threadgill recalls his childhood and upbringing in Chicago, his family life and education, and his brilliant career in music.

Here are riveting recollections of the music scene in Chicago in the early 1960s, when Threadgill developed his craft among friends and schoolmates who would go on to form the core of the highly influential Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM); the year and a half he spent touring with an evangelical preacher in the mid-1960s; his military service in Vietnam—a riveting tale in itself, but also representative of an under-recognized aspect of jazz history, given the number of musicians in Threadgill’s generation who served in the armed forces.

We appreciate his genius as he travels to the Netherlands, Venezuela, Trinidad, Sicily, and Goa enriching his art; immerses himself in the volatile downtown scene in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s; collaborates with choreographers, writers, and theater directors as well as an astonishing range of musicians, from AACM stalwarts (Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, and Leroy Jenkins), to Chicago bluesmen, downtown luminaries, and world music innovators; shares his impressions of the recording industry his perspectives on music education and the history of Black music in the United States; and, of course, accounts for his work with the various ensembles he has directed over the past five decades.

Contact: [email protected]