Harper Audio Presents

Congratulations to Neal Shusterman – his YA novel, Challenger Deep just won the 2015 National Book Award for Young People! Challenger Deep uses a split world to convey a young man’s struggle to determine his reality in the face of schizophrenia – hear about the deeply personal origins of the novel as well as an excerpt.

WARNING: Excerpt is intended for mature audiences only, is unsuitable for children and contains graphic language. (Excerpt from Day One available from HarperAudio Presents)

Listen to exclusive author commentary and an excerpt from ‘Day Two’ from Ryan Gottis’ ALL INVOLVED, a gritty and cinematic work of fiction that vividly re-creates Los Angeles after the 1992 verdict to acquit LA police officers accused of beating Rodney King. In this excerpt Gattis tells us about the character Big Fate and his relationship to the murder victim Ernesto Vera. Narrator Anthony Ray Perez reads.

None of the Above, a first novel by I.W. Gregorio, is Mean Girls meets Middlesex -- a groundbreaking story about a teenage girl who discovers she was born intersex . . . and what happens when her secret is revealed to the entire school. Hear Gregorio talk about why we need ‘window’ books in addition to ‘mirror’ books; how training to be a surgeon made her a better writer and the joy of the editorial letter.

Hear Ryan Gattis discuss his new book ALL INVOLVED, a gritty and cinematic work of fiction that vividly re-creates Los Angeles after the 1992 verdict to acquit LA police officers accused of beating Rodney King. In the novel Gattis tells 17 interconnected first-person narratives -- gang members, firefighters, graffiti kids, and nurses caught up in extraordinary circumstances that paint a portrait of modern America itself—laying bare our history, our prejudices, and our complexities. All Involved is a literary tour de force that catapults Ryan Gattis into the ranks of such legendary talents as Dennis Lehane and Richard Price.

WARNING: Excerpt Intended for mature audiences only and is unsuitable for children. Excerpt contains graphic language.

Jason Miller talks about his debut novel, DOWN DON’T BOTHER ME, an atmospheric, wickedly funny mystery set in the flat and withering landscape of the southern Illinois mining country known as “little Egypt”.

Laura Lippman is heralded for thoughtful, timely crime novels set in her beloved hometown of Baltimore. Now a perennial New York Times bestseller, HUSH HUSH is her 12th book to feature private detective and new mother Tess Monaghan, working on a disturbing case involving murder and a manipulative mother.

Lauren Oliver, author of New York Times bestselling novels BEFORE I FALL, PANIC, and the DELIRIUM trilogy, talks to us about her new novel, VANISHING GIRLS, a gripping story about two sisters inexorably altered by a terrible accident. Lauren shares how she approaches writing for different audiences, why she chooses a central question for each of her books, how good books can explore scary topics in a safe way, the differences between writing a novel and screenplay and how screenwriting stretched her as a novelist.

Since its original landmark publication in 1980, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States has been chronicling American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official version of history taught in schools–with its emphasis on great men in high places–to focus on the street, the home, and the workplace. In this recording you’ll hear from Zinn reading from his introduction to the book, and you’ll hear Matt Damon, an American actor and Academy Award-winning screenwriter for his work on Good Will Hunting, read passages that span the Summer of 1966, the 1967 Urban Riots in Newark and Detroit, the Civil Rights Act of 1968, to name a few highlights.

KIM GORDON is an artist, musician, producer, fashion designer, writer and actress. She is a founding member of the experimental post-punk band Sonic Youth and she’s written a fierce, honest story of her life, Girl in a Band.

Hear Kim discuss her writing process and influences on her work.

Rising literary star T. Geronimo Johnson talks about his darkly humorous novel, WELCOME TO BRAGGSVILLE, where, as Ron Rash says, ‘every racial assumption is both acknowledged and challenged in ways that are at times hilarious, at other times poignant’.