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ID: 697157

Title: Only in America: Al Jolson and The Jazz Singer

Author: Richard Bernstein

Narrator: Suzanne Toren

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9:16:39

Language: English

Release date: 10-08-24

Publisher: Random House (Audio)

Genres: History, Biography & Memoir, World, Arts & Entertainment

Summary:

A probing biography of world-renowned Jewish singer and actor Al Jolson and the history of his performance in and the making of The Jazz Singer

Al Jolson, born Asa Yoelson, immigrated from a shtetl in Lithuania to the United States in 1894 after his father secured a job as a rabbi in Washington, D.C. A poor, Yiddish-speaking newcomer navigating a racially segregated and antisemitic America, young Jolson dreamed of becoming a star, and he did. Thanks to his immense talent and his knack for assimilating into new environments, by the time he reached his twenties he was the most famous and highly paid entertainer in America, making almost $5,000 a week at a time when the average American made $800 a year. Jolson’s public adoration and widespread acceptance as a star marked the beginning of an enriching cultural transformation, a moment when the American mind opened up to ethnic and racial differences, widening the gap of acceptability. And yet Jolson himself, despite being ferociously ambitious and gigantically talented, was crippled by insecurity, often nervous to the point of collapse, prisoner to his many vices.

Through Jolson, Bernstein simultaneously breaks open the history and legacy of the cultural sensation The Jazz Singer. Not only was The Jazz Singer the first feature length film with synchronized music and dialogue, but it was also taboo smashing in its content: The Jazz Singer is all about Jews, Orthodox and otherwise. Bernstein expounds on the making of The Jazz Singer, what the film meant then and now, introducing the many individuals involved in its production, including Samson Raphaelson, a young Jewish writer whose short story was the basis for the movie; the four Warner brothers, who made a fortune off it; and George Jessel, Jolson’s rival and the star of Raphaelson's stage adaptation of his short story. In the background emerges a picture of old Hollywood in the Roaring Twenties: cutthroat and greedy yet visionary and progressive. And while The Jazz Singer represented the future in many ways, it also dredged up the worst of the past, including Jolson’s use of blackface, common at the time.

At once a tale of the Judaizing of American culture and an acknowledgment of the challenges to come, Only in America is a glistening examination of a man at the center of a watershed moment in the arts.

Contact: [email protected]

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ID: 770386

Title: Diet Soda Club

Author: Chaz Hayden

Narrator: Michael Crouch

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7:47:54

Language: English

Release date: 10-08-24

Publisher: Listening Library (Audio)

Genres: Teen, Tough Topics

Summary:

When their mom leaves, Reed must care for his sister who has a life-threatening condition—even if that means breaking the law. A tender and sparkling story about family, trust, and the lengths we will go to for the ones we love.

Have you ever made all the wrong choices for all the right reasons?

Reed Beckett’s little sister, Beatrice, has never been awakened by the smell of breakfast or a school-day alarm clock. Instead, she wakes to hospital beeps and poking doctors. Seventeen-year-old Reed has been there for Bea all along, especially since their dad died. But when their burned-out mom goes on an extended vacation with her new boyfriend, the siblings are left with only an empty pantry and each other. With no job prospects on the horizon, Reed begins making and selling fake IDs so he and Bea can survive. But the problems keep piling up, from an angry landlord demanding rent to looming medical bills. As Reed expands his business, taking increasingly bigger risks, the potential consequences for Reed’s future, Bea’s health, and Reed’s budding friendship with his classmate Helena become graver. But what choice does he have? The joy and complexity of both caregiving and sibling relationships are at the heart of this authentic and moving novel.

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ID: 741776

Title: Hotel Balzaar

Author: Kate DiCamillo

Narrator: Allan Corduner

Format: Unabridged

Length: 2:12:46

Language: English

Release date: 10-01-24

Publisher: Listening Library (Audio)

Genres: Kids, Health & Family

Summary:

In a wise and magical follow-up to The Puppets of Spelhorst, Kate DiCamillo revisits the land of Norendy, where tales swirl within tales—and every moment is a story in the making.

At the Hotel Balzaar, Marta’s mother rises before the sun, puts on her uniform, and instructs Marta to roam as she will but quietly, invisibly—like a little mouse. While her mother cleans rooms, Marta slips down the back staircase to the grand lobby to chat with the bellman, study the painting of an angel’s wing over the fireplace, and watch a cat chase a mouse around the face of the grandfather clock, all the while dreaming of the return of her soldier father, who has gone missing. One day, a mysterious countess with a parrot checks in, promising a story—in fact, seven stories in all, each to be told in its proper order. As the stories unfold, Marta begins to wonder: could the secret to her father’s disappearance lie in the countess’s tales?

Book two in a trio of novellas bound by place and mood, The Hotel Balzaar masterfully juggles yearning and belief, shining light into every dark corner.

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ID: 733804

Title: Death at the Sign of the Rook: A Jackson Brodie Book

Author: Kate Atkinson

Narrator: Jason Isaacs

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9:31:36

Language: English

Release date: 09-24-24

Publisher: Random House (Audio)

Genres: Fiction & Literature, Literary Fiction

Summary:

THE INSTANT #1 BESTSELLER (SUNDAY TIMES, UK) • The highly anticipated return of 'irresistible' (New York Times) private eye Jackson Brodie in the newest installment of the bestselling series hailed as 'unputdownable' by Time

“How delicious to have Jackson Brodie back, this time in a story that starts off in Agatha Christie's world but soon becomes a landscape that could only have been crafted from the pen of the incomparable Kate Atkinson.”–Ian Rankin, author of the Inspector Rebus Novels

Welcome to Rook Hall. The stage is set. The players are ready. By night’s end, a murderer will be revealed.

In his sleepy Yorkshire town, ex-detective Jackson Brodie is staving off boredom and malaise. His only case is the seemingly tedious matter of a stolen painting. But Jackson soon uncovers a string of unsolved art thefts that lead him down a dizzying spiral of disguise and deceit to Burton Makepeace, a formerly magnificent estate now partially converted into a hotel hosting Murder Mystery weekends.

As paying guests, impecunious aristocrats and old friends collide, we are treated to Atkinson’s most charming and fiendishly clever mystery yet, one that pays homage to the masters of the genre—from Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers to the modern era of Knives Out and Only Murders in the Building.

Contact: [email protected]

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ID: 739071

Title: Pick the Lock

Author: A.S. King

Narrator: A.S. King, Jorjeana Marie, Max Meyers

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10:43:53

Language: English

Release date: 09-24-24

Publisher: Listening Library (Audio)

Genres: Teen, Tough Topics

Summary:

From Michael L. Printz Award winner A.S. King, a weird and insightful new novel about a girl intent on picking the lock of her toxic family.

Jane Vandermaker-Cook would like her mother back. As Jane's mother tours the world to support the family, Jane lives and goes to school in a Victorian mansion with her younger brother and their mendacious father who confines Jane’s mother to a system of pneumatic tubes whenever she’s at home. And then there's weirdly ever-present Aunt Finch, Milorad the gardener, and his rat, Brutus. For Jane, this all seems normal until she suddenly gains access to the files for a lifetime of security-camera videos—her lifetime.

A.S. King's latest surrealist masterpiece follows Jane’s bizarre and brilliant journey to reconnect with her mother by breaking out of her shell and composing a punk opera.

* This audiobook edition includes a downloadable PDF that contains the set description illustration and legend from the book.

Contact: [email protected]

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ID: 653506

Title: Payal Mehta's Romance Revenge Plot

Author: Preeti Chhibber

Narrator: Mayuri Bhandari

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8:27:48

Language: English

Release date: 09-24-24

Publisher: Listening Library (Audio)

Genres: Fiction, Teen, Romance, Tough Topics

Summary:

This laugh-out-loud debut romance introduces perfectly imperfect Payal Mehta, whose plan to get her longtime crush to finally notice her is destined for success, but only if she ignores her budding feelings for her archnemesis...

Payal Mehta has had a crush on popular, athletic, all-around perfect Jonathan Slate ever since he smiled at her in freshman–year Spanish class. At a party during spring break of her junior year, Payal finally works up the courage to ask Jon to hang out. However, her romantic plans are derailed when he vomits on her Keds. Twice. But when Jon offers to take her out to lunch as an apology, Payal is convinced this is the start of their love story. 

Over chalupas and burritos at Taco Bell, Payal's best jokes are landing as planned. Jon is basically choking on his Coke—and then it happens. 'Do you have a boyfriend?' Payal is (finally) about to get the guy. And then he tries to set her up with his Indian friend. Payal's best friends, Neil Patel and Divya Bhatt, are just as mad about the microagression as Payal is, but they think she’s a little too hung up on him. 

Determined to teach Jon a lesson by making him fall for her, Payal ropes in her archnemesis, Philip Kim, to help. It’s the perfect plan. Minus Philip’s snarky, annoying quips and lack of faith in its success. But as Payal lies to the people she loves, hides the too-Indian parts of herself in front of her crush, and learns that maybe Philip isn't the worst, she starts to wonder if what she's been looking for has been scowling at her all along...

Contact: [email protected]

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ID: 669354

Title: What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures

Author: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson

Narrator: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Ayisha Siddiqa, Jacqueline Woodson, Steve Connell

Format: Unabridged

Length: 21:54:40

Language: English

Release date: 09-17-24

Publisher: Random House (Audio)

Genres: Non-Fiction, Science & Technology, Animals & Nature, Social Science

Summary:

Our climate future is not yet written. What if we act as if we love the future?

Sometimes the bravest thing we can do while facing an existential crisis is imagine life on the other side. This provocative and joyous book maps an inspiring landscape of possible climate futures.

Through clear-eyed essays and vibrant conversations, infused with data and poetry, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson guides us through solutions and possibilities at the nexus of science, policy, culture, and justice. Visionary farmers and financiers, architects and advocates, help us conjure a flourishing future, one worth the effort it will take—from every one of us, with whatever we have to offer—to create.

If you haven’t yet been able to picture a transformed and replenished world—or to see yourself, your loved ones, and your community in it—this book is for you. If you haven’t yet found your role in shaping this new world or you’re not sure how we can actually get there, this book is for you.

With grace, humor, and humanity, Johnson invites readers to ask and answer this ultimate question together: What if we get it right?

On imagination, possibility, and transformation with

Paola Antonelli • Xiye Bastida • Jade Begay • Wendell Berry • Régine Clément • Steve Connell • Erica Deeman • Abigail Dillen • Brian Donahue • Jean Flemma • Kelly Sims Gallagher • Rhiana Gunn-Wright • Olalekan Jeyifous • Corley Kenna • Bryan C. Lee Jr. • Franklin Leonard • Adam McKay • Bill McKibben • Kate Marvel • Samantha Montano • Kate Orff • Leah Penniman • Marge Piercy • Colette Pichon Battle • Kendra Pierre-Louis • Judith D. Schwartz • Jigar Shah • Ayisha Siddiqa • Bren Smith • Oana Stănescu • Mustafa Suleyman • Jacqueline Woodson

*This audiobook edition includes a downloadable PDF containing photographs, diagrams, and an Anti-Apocalypse mixtape.

Contact: [email protected]

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ID: 752247

Title: Buried Deep and Other Stories

Author: Naomi Novik

Narrator: Anisha Dadia, Billie Fulford-Brown, Bronwen Price, Elizabeth Knowelden, Ell Potter, Frankie Corzo, Imani Jade Powers, Lauren Fortgang, Lisa Flanagan, Naomi Novik, Nicholas Guy Smith, Saskia Maarleveld, Simon Vance, Steve West

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12:46:33

Language: English

Release date: 09-17-24

Publisher: Random House (Audio)

Genres: Science Fiction & Fantasy

Summary:

A thrilling collection of thirteen short stories that span the worlds of the New York Times bestselling author of the Scholomance trilogy, including a sneak peek at the land where her next novel will be set.

From the dragon-filled Temeraire series and the gothic magical halls of the Scholomance trilogy, through the realms next door to Spinning Silver and Uprooted, this stunning collection takes us from fairy tale to fantasy, myth to history, and mystery to science fiction as we travel through Naomi Novik’s most beloved stories. Here, among many others, we encounter: 

• A mushroom witch who learns that sometimes the worst thing in the Scholomance can be your roommate. 

• The start of the Dragon Corps in ancient Rome, after Mark Antony hatches a dragon’s egg and bonds with the hatchling. 

• A young bride in the Middle Ages who finds herself gambling with Death for the highest of stakes. 

• A delightful reimagining of Pride & Prejudice, in which Elizabeth Bennet captains a Longwing dragon. 

• The first glimpse of the world of Abandon, the setting of Novik’s upcoming epic fantasy series—a deserted continent populated only by silent and enigmatic architectural mysteries.

Though the stories are vastly different, there is a unifying theme: wrestling with destiny, and the lengths some will go to find their own and fulfill its promise.

Contact: [email protected]

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ID: 730149

Title: Sage Warrior: Wake to Oneness, Practice Pleasure, Choose Courage, Become Victory

Author: Valarie Kaur

Narrator: Harjit 'dolly' Kaur Brar, Valarie Kaur

Format: Unabridged

Length: 14:28:56

Language: English

Release date: 09-10-24

Publisher: Random House (Audio)

Genres: Biography & Memoir, Non-Fiction, Health & Wellness, Social Science, History & Culture, Mindfulness & Meditation

Summary:

Profound inner wisdom for courageous action—from the author of See No Stranger and founder of the Revolutionary Love Project, a “prophetic voice of our generation” (America Ferrera)

How do we find the wisdom to envision a new world and the courage to fight for it?

How do we survive seemingly apocalyptic times?

In a world on fire, how do we find love and joy?

We are not the first to ask these questions—in fact, seeking answers to them forged one of the world's great wisdom traditions. In a time riven by caste, conquest, and cruelty, Sikhs blazed the path of the sant sipahi, the sage warrior. The sage radiates love and Oneness; the warrior activates that ethical power to fight for humanity. These energies empowered the first Sikhs to survive near-annihilation in South Asia nearly half a millennium ago. The sage warrior is the essential archetype for our time of turmoil—one we can all embody to cultivate our souls and transform the world.

Valarie Kaur combines the epic, immersive story of her Sikh ancestors—centering the stories of the women who worked to map the path of the sage warrior—with the chronicle of a personal journey: her pilgrimage with her young  children to the Panjab, India, where the stories unfolded, an occasionally comic adventure woven with sublime moments of connection and insight. Each chapter offers a lesson that emerges from the stories—from practicing pleasure to metabolizing grief to choosing courage.

Sage Warrior shimmers with wisdom: Every story is accompanied by meditations, illuminating new ways of seeing and being. This journey is for anyone—from any faith tradition or spiritual practice or none at all—who hungers for a better world and is ready to discover the depth of their own power.

This audiobook includes a downloadable PDF that contains an illustrated map of Punjab, an ancestral tree, a family photo, a glossary, and acknowledgments from the printed book.

Contact: [email protected]

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ID: 568844

Title: Rage: On Being Queer, Black, Brilliant . . . and Completely Over It

Author: Lester Fabian Brathwaite

Narrator: Lester Fabian Brathwaite

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7:34:23

Language: English

Release date: 09-10-24

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Genres: Biography & Memoir, Fiction & Literature, Essays & Anthologies

Summary:

A debut book from Entertainment Weekly writer and former Out magazine editor Lester Fabian Brathwaite, Rage is a darkly comedic exploration of Blackness, queerness, and the American Dream, at a time when creative anger feels like the best response to inequality.

One romantic hopeful had greeted Lester Fabian Brathwaite on a dating app with this gem: “You into race play?” Being young, queer, gifted, and Black, Lester has found that his best tool for navigating American life is gallows humor. If you don’t laugh, you cry—or, you summon your inner rage. With biting wit, Lester’s book Rage interrogates all the ways that systemic racism and homophobia have shaped our society. All to pose that proverbial question: Can a gurl live?

Rage is one part memoir, one part cultural critique, one part live grenade. He contrasts his tragic-comedic love life with the ideals he had formed from bingeing (straight, white) Hollywood depictions. And he is quick to side-eye the misogyny and internalized homophobia that some people reveal in statements like “masc for masc” on dating profiles. Lester also dives deep into representations of queer life from RuPaul’s Drag Race to The Birdcage (Robin Williams was a snack in Versace), and explores our cultural understanding of Black genius through stories of James Baldwin, Whitney Houston, and Nina Simone.

Lester’s razor-sharp voice, coupled with his searing social commentary on topics such as dating, rejection, racism, sexuality, identity, and more, offer an increasingly divided world an engaging and original read.

Contact: [email protected]