August, 2008
9 AM (Mon-Fri)
WHY GOOD PEOPLE DO BAD THINGS: HOW TO STOP BEING YOUR OWN WORST ENEMY
by Debbie Ford
Read by Allison Smith. (8 episodes, 7/23-8/01/08)
Why Good People Do Bad Things exposes the pervasive and often hidden impulses that
influence our everyday decisions. #1 New York Times bestselling author Debbie Ford
guides us into the heart of the duality that unknowingly operates within each one of us:
the force that compels us to live by our values, give and receive love, and be a contributing
member of the community; and the force that holds us back, sabotages our efforts, and
repeatedly steers us toward bad choices.
With Why Good People Do Bad Things Ford has created her most enduring, expansive,
and powerful work to date. Providing the tools to unlock the patterns of self-sabotage,
Ford ultimately knocks down the façade of the false self and shows us how to heal the split
between light and dark and live the authentic life within our reach.
OUTWITTING HISTORY: THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF A MAN WHO RESCUED A MILLION YIDDISH BOOKS
by Aaron Lansky
Read by Marty Kwatinetz. (12 episodes, 8/04 - 8/19/2008)
In 1980, a twenty-three-year-old student named Aaron Lansky set out to rescue the world’s abandoned Yiddish books
before it was too late. Twenty-five years and one and a half million books later, he’s still in the midst of a
great adventure. Filled with poignant and often laugh-out-loud tales from Lansky’s travels across the country as
he collected books from older Jewish immigrants—books their own children had no use for—Outwitting History also explores
brilliant Yiddish writers and enables us to see how an almost-lost culture is the bridge between the Old World and the future.
MUSICOPHILIA: TALES OF MUSIC AND THE BRAIN
by Oliver Sacks
Read by Kristina Abernathy. (12 episodes, 8/20 - 9/04/2008)
Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does—humans are a musical species.
Oliver Sacks’s compassionate, compelling tales of people struggling to adapt to different neurological conditions have fundamentally changed the way we think of our own brains, and of the human experience. In Musicophilia, he examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians, and everyday people—from a man who is struck by lightning and suddenly inspired to become a pianist at the age of forty-two, to an entire group of children with Williams syndrome, who are hypermusical from birth; from people with “amusia,” to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans, to a man whose memory spans only seven seconds—for everything but music.
Our exquisite sensitivity to music can sometimes go wrong: Sacks explores how catchy tunes can subject us to hours of mental replay, and how a surprising number of people acquire nonstop musical hallucinations that assault them night and day. Yet far more frequently, music goes right: Sacks describes how music can animate people with Parkinson’s disease who cannot otherwise move, give words to stroke patients who cannot otherwise speak, and calm and organize people whose memories are ravaged by Alzheimer’s or amnesia.
Music is irresistible, haunting, and unforgettable, andin Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks tells us why.
10
AM (Mon-Fri)
REAL CHANGE: FROM THE WORLD THAT FAILS TO THE WORLD THAT WORKS
by Newt Gingrich
Read by Ray White. (10 episodes, 7/24-8/06/08)
Are you fed up with bickering politicians, self-satisfied bureaucrats, and a government that never seems to address the real problems facing our country? Can we create a government that is small, efficient, and responsive-from the state house to the White House? Is that kind of real change even possible? Newt Gingrich, architect of the Contract with America, says it's time for citizens to demand results from our elected officials. In this revealing and exciting new book, he shows how America can achieve transformational change-from a government of bureaucratic failure to a government that can meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. As a first step, Gingrich busts the pernicious myth that America is divided between conservative red states and liberal blue states. As Gingrich points out, the American people are united on almost every important issue facing our country-including immigration, taxes, defending America, and freedom of religion. The real division is between red-white-and-blue America and a fringe on the left. Red-white-and-blue America believes overwhelmingly-by majorities of 70 percent or more-that we need a change in course. But our politicians aren't listening. Gingrich reveals why the Democratic Party can't deliver real change and why the Republican Party won't. He provides answers and a step-by-step, issue-by-issue toolkit for building a better America-the safe, innovative, and dynamic America we all want. What will take us from the world that fails to the world that works? Real change-the kind of change that happens when politicians drop their own agendas and respond to the will of the people. Newt Gingrich shows us how we can make real change a reality.
BANANA: THE FATE OF THE FRUIT THAT CHANGED THE WORLD
by Dan Koeppel
Read by Dianna DePriest. (10 episodes, 8/06 - 8/19/2008)
A gripping biological detective story that uncovers the myth, mystery, and endangered fate of the world's most humble fruit
To most people, a banana is a banana: a simple yellow fruit. Americans eat more bananas than apples and oranges combined. In others parts of the world, bananas are what keep millions of people alive. But for all its ubiquity, the banana is surprisingly mysterious; nobody knows how bananas evolved or exactly where they originated. Rich cultural lore surrounds the fruit: In ancient translations of the Bible, the "apple" consumed by Eve is actually a banana (it makes sense, doesn't it?). Entire Central American nations have been said to rise and fall over the banana.
But the biggest mystery about the banana today is whether it will survive. A seedless fruit with a unique reproductive system, every banana is a genetic duplicate of the next, and therefore susceptible to the same blights. Today's yellow banana, the Cavendish, is increasingly threatened by such a blight—and there's no cure in sight.
Banana combines a pop-science journey around the globe, a fascinating tale of an iconic American business enterprise, and a look into the alternately tragic and hilarious banana subculture (one does exist)—ultimately taking us to the high-tech labs where new bananas are literally being built in test tubes, in a race to save the world's most beloved fruit.
THE LAST LECTURE
by Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow
Read by Laura Keyes. (5 episodes, 8/20 - 8/26/2008)
"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand."
—Randy Pausch
A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?
When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave—"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"—wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have…and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.
In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.
THE SENATOR’S WIFE
by Sue Miller
Read by Roz Hosenball. (13 episodes, 8/27 - 9/12/2008)
Once again Sue Miller takes us deep into the private lives of women with this mesmerizing portrait of two marriages exposed in all their shame and imperfection, and in their obdurate, unyielding love.
Meri is newly married, pregnant, and standing on the cusp of her life as a wife and mother, recognizing with some terror the gap between reality and expectation. Delia Naughton–wife of the two-term liberal senator Tom Naughton–is Meri’s new neighbor in the adjacent New England town house. Delia’s husband’s chronic infidelity has been an open secret in Washington circles, but despite the complexity of their relationship, the bond between them remains strong. What keeps people together, even in the midst of profound betrayal? How can a journey imperiled by, and sometimes indistinguishable from, compromise and disappointment culminate in healing and grace? Delia and Meri find themselves leading strangely parallel lives, both reckoning with the contours and mysteries of marriage, one refined and abraded by years of complicated intimacy, the other barely begun.
Here are all the things for which Sue Miller has always been beloved–the complexity of experience precisely rendered, the richness of character and emotion, the superb economy of style–fused with an utterly engrossing story.
1
PM (Mon-Fri)
DOG MAN: AN UNCOMMON LIFE ON A FARAWAY MOUNTAIN
by Martha Sherrill
Read By Jonie LaBouff. (9 episodes, 7/31-8/12/08)
How one man's consuming passion for dogs saved a legendary breed from extinction and led him to a difficult, more soulful way of life in the wilds of Japan's remote snow country
As Dog Man opens, Martha Sherrill brings us to a world that Americans know very little about-the snow country of Japan during World War II. In a mountain village, we meet Morie Sawataishi, a fierce individualist who has chosen to break the law by keeping an Akita dog hidden in a shed on his property.
During the war, the magnificent and intensely loyal Japanese hunting dogs are donated to help the war effort, eaten, or used to make fur vests for the military. By the time of the Japanese surrender in 1945, there are only sixteen Akitas left in the country. The survival of the breed becomes Morie's passion and life, almost a spiritual calling.
Devoted to the dogs, Morie is forever changed. His life becomes radically unconventional-almost preposterous-in ultra-ambitious, conformist Japan. For the dogs, Morie passes up promotions, bigger houses, and prestigious engineering jobs in Tokyo. Instead, he raises a family with his young wife, Kitako-a sheltered urban sophisticate-in Japan's remote and forbidding snow country.
Their village is isolated, but interesting characters are always dropping by-dog buddies, in-laws from Tokyo, and a barefoot hunter who lives in the wild. Due in part to Morie's perseverance and passion, the Akita breed strengthens and becomes wildly popular, sometimes selling for millions of yen. Yet Morie won't sell his spectacular dogs. He only likes to give them away.
Morie and Kitako remain in the snow country today, living in the traditional Japanese cottage theydesigned together more than thirty years ago-with tatami mats, an overhanging roof, a deep bathtub, and no central heat. At ninety-four years old, Morie still raises and trains the Akita dogs that have come to symbolize his life.
In beautiful prose that is a joy to read, Martha Sherrill opens up the world of the Dog Man and his wife, providing a profound look at what it is to be an individualist in a culture that reveres conformity-and what it means to live life in one's own way, while expertly revealing Japan and Japanese culture as we've never seen it before.
LIFE BEYOND MEASURE: LETTERS TO MY GREAT-GRANDDAUGHTER
by Sidney Poitier
Read by Jim Beattie. (9 episodes, 8/13 - 8/25/2008)
Sidney Poitier is one of the most revered actors in the history of Hollywood. He has overcome enormous obstacles in extraordinary times and is a role model for many Americans because of his convictions, bravery, and grace. Poitier reflects on this amazing life in Life Beyond Measure, offering inspirational advice and personal stories in the form of extended letters to his great-granddaughter. Writing for all who admire his example and who search for wisdom only a man of great experience can offer, this American icon shares his thoughts on love, faith, courage, and the future.
Sidney Poitier was the first black actor to win the Academy Award for best actor for his outstanding performance in Lilies of the Field in 1963. His landmark films include The Defiant Ones, A Patch of Blue, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and To Sir, With Love. He has starred in over forty films, directed nine, and written four. He is the author of two autobiographies: This Life and the "Oprah's Book Club" pick and New York Times bestseller The Measure of a Man. Among many other accolades, Poitier has been awarded the Screen Actors Guild's highest honor, the Life Achievement Award, for an outstanding career and humanitarian accomplishment. He is married, has six daughters, four grandchildren, and one great-granddaughter.
GAME OF MY LIFE: ATLANTA BRAVES – MEMORABLE STORIES OF BRAVES BASEBALL
by Jack Wilkinson
Read by Roy Harris & Eric Singer. (8 episodes, 8/26 - 9/04/2008)
More than 30 former and current Atlanta Braves players celebrate the extraordinary moments that have shaped the franchise's rich heritage, which includes a major league record 14 straight divisional titles.
10 PM (Mon-Sat)
KILLER HEAT
by Linda Fairstein
Read By Marty Kwatinetz. (12 episodes, 7/21-8/02/08)
It’s August in New York, and the only thing that’s hotter than the pavement is Manhattan D.A. Alex Cooper’s professional and personal life. Just as she’s claiming an especially gratifying victory in a rape case, she gets the call: the body of a young woman has been found in an abandoned building. The brutality of the murder is disturbing enough, but when a second body, beaten and disposed of in exactly same manner, is found off the Belt Parkway, the city’s top brass want the killer found fast, before the tabloids can start churning out ghoulish serial killer headlines.
Between dodging the bullets of the gang members who are infuriated by Alex’s most recent courtroom victory and keeping a rendezvous with a charming restaurateur, a serial killer on the loose is the last thing she needs on her plate right now. Then a third victim is found, and it becomes clear to Alex and her team that time is not on their side.
Through Alex’s peerless interrogation skills—and one big break—the search becomes focused on someone who has a twisted obsession with the military, and things grow increasingly dangerous when the chase leads to a chain of small, abandoned islands around New York harbor.
Once again Linda Fairstein brilliantly orchestrates a page-turning mix of cutting-edge legal issues and forensics, New York City history, and spine-tingling suspense. And at the center of it all is Alex Cooper—stunning, single-minded, accomplished, and not to be trifled with whether she’s in or out of a courtroom.
SEEN IT ALL AND DONE THE REST
by Pearl Cleage
Read by Jacquee Minor. (13 episodes, 8/04 - 8/18/2008)
(*GaRRS interviews the author, Ms. Cleage, at end of final episode on 8/18.)
For Josephine Evans, home was on the stages of the world where she spent thirty years establishing herself as one of the finest actresses of her generation. Josephine was the toast of Europe, and her fabulous apartment in Amsterdam’s theater district was a popular gathering place for an international community of artists, actors, and expatriates who considered themselves true citizens of the world. Josephine lived above and beyond the reach of conventional definitions of who and what an African American diva could be, and her legions of loyal fans loved her for it. She had a perfect life and enough sense to live it to the hilt, but then a war she didn’t fully understand turned everything upside down, thrusting her into a role she never wanted and was not prepared to play. Suddenly the target of angry protests aimed at the country she had never really felt was her own, Josephine is forced to return to America to see if she can create a new definition of home.
Camping out with her granddaughter, Zora, who is housesitting in Atlanta’s West End; and trying to avoid the unwanted attentions of Dig It!, the city’s brand-new gossip magazine, Josephine struggles to reclaim her old life even as she scrambles to shape her new one. Hoping her friend Howard Denmond is as good as his word when he promises to engineer her triumphant return to the European stage, Josephine sets out to increase her nest egg by selling the house her mother willed her, only to find the long-neglected property has become home to squatters who have no intention of leaving.
But an unexpected reunion with an old friend offers Josephine a chance to set things right. Spurning an offer fromunscrupulous land developer Greer Woodruff, Josephine gathers new friends around her, including Victor Causey, a lawyer whose addictions left him homeless but still determined to protect his mother; Louie Baptiste, a displaced New Orleans chef hoping to return to the city he loves; and Aretha Hargrove, recovering from her role in the same scandal that sent Zora running for cover. As Greer gets serious about her plan to tear the community apart, Josephine finds herself playing the most important role of her life, showing her neighbors what courage really is and learning the true meaning of coming home.
YOU CAN OBSERVE A LOT BY WATCHING: WHAT I’VE LEARNED ABOUT TEAMWORK FROM THE YANKEES AND LIFE
by Yogi Berra with Dave Kaplan
Read by Jim Beattie. (5 episodes, 8/19 - 8/23-2008)
"The most valuable team player in sports" shows you what "teamwork" really means
What does it take to be a real team player, especially in a society that glorifies selfishness and a corporate culture that often uses "team player" as a buzzword but rewards only the showboaters and prima donnas? Well, You Can Observe a Lot by Watching. In this happy and hilarious guide to teamwork, sportsmanship, and winning, Yogi Berra draws on the timeless wisdom handed down by example from ballplayers who came before him to inspire you to make the right choices and become not only a better team player—at sports, at work, and in life—but a better person.
Filled with colorful stories from his life and career, not to mention the down-to-earth wit and insight that Yogi fans love, You Can Observe a Lot by Watching shows you how to make a bad team good and a good team great.
SEND YOURSELF ROSES: THOUGHTS ON MY LIFE, LOVE, AND LEADING ROLES
By Kathleen Turner with Gloria Feldt
Read by Maurice Glatzer. (10 episodes, 8/25 - 9/04/2008)
From her film debut as the sultry schemer in Body Heat to her award-winning role as Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, actress Kathleen Turner's unique blend of beauty, intelligence, and raw sexuality has driven her personal and professional life. Now, in this gutsy memoir, the screen icon tells us of the risks she's taken and the lessons she's learned-sometimes the hard way.
For the first time, Turner shares her childhood challenges-a life lived in countries around the world until her father, a State Department official whom she so admired, died suddenly when she was a teenager. She talks about her twenty year marriage, and why she and her husband recently separated, her close relationship with her daughter, her commitment to service, and how activism in controversial causes has bolstered her beliefs. And Turner reveals the pain and heartbreak of her struggle with rheumatoid arthritis, and how, in spite of it, she made a daring decision: to take a break from the movies and relaunch her stage career.
Along the way, Turner describes what it's like to work with legends like Jack Nicholson, Michael Douglas, William Hurt, Steve Martin, Francis Ford Coppola, John Huston, John Waters, Edward Albee...and, with characteristic irreverent humor, shares her behind-the-screen stories of dealing with all types of creative, intimidating, and inspiring characters.
Kathleen Turner has always known that she would play the lead in the story of her life. It's impossible not to take her lessons on living, love, and leading roles to heart. And it won't be long until you'll be sending yourself roses!
11 PM (Mon-Sat)
HOPE'S BOY: A MEMOIR
by Andrew Bridge
Read By Bob Brier. (12 episodes, 7/23-8/05/08)
From a disastrous decade in foster care to Harvard Law School and beyond: this is the profoundly moving memoir of one boy who beat the system.
Filled with vivid scenes and empathetic description, refreshingly free of the self-absorption that mars so many horrendous childhood sagas,
Hope's Boy is compulsively readable.
(Review from The Washington Post - Juliet Wittman)
DAKOTA
by Martha Grimes
Read by Lyn Cioci. (13 episodes, 8/06 - 8/20/2008)
Grimes's beloved Andi Oliver returns, on the run from her past
In this stunning sequel to Grimes's beloved Biting the Moon, young Andi Oliver is an amnesiac and drifter who awoke in a Santa Fe bed and breakfast with a man's belongings tossed about the room. Adopting a name from the initials on her backpack, Andi moves from one waitress job to the next, from Idaho to North Dakota.
It is in Dakota that she is hired at Klavan's, a massive pigfarming facility that specializes in the dark art of modern livestock management. As Andi begins to uncover the truth about Klavan's and a slaughterhouse called Big Sun, two men are on her trail, one a gunman hired to kill her, another who has followed her across three states demanding something from her forgotten past.
Dakota signals the return of one of Martha Grimes's most indelible heroines, a smart and troubled young woman who, though she doesn't know her own identity, knows right from wrong. Set against the breathtakingly expansive backdrop of the American plains, Dakota will reward Grimes's legion of fans as well as attracting new readers.
THE BOOK OF MARIE
by Terry Kay
Read by Wanda McMullen. (13 episodes, 8/21 - 9/04/2008)
Terry Kay has crafted a beautiful, realistic look at the people of his native state of Georgia and their reactions to the arrival of integration and the many changes it brought to their lives. The citizens of Overton, GA, a small rural community with a class C high school, are seen as teenagers in the 1950s, and again at their 50th high school reunion.
Marie, an outsider from the North who joins the senior class in 1954, is an outspoken critic of all things Southern, and is shunned by her class members except for Cole, the popular football quarterback and very traditional Southern male. Despite their cultural differences, an unexplained attraction emerges.
After their graduation and separation, their strange friendship is continued and revealed through the letters they exchange as the years pass. The arrival of the 50th Reunion vividly shows the changes that have occured in Overton because of integration and civil rights, and the direct effect it has had on the lives of the class of 1954.
Through his many brilliantly developed characters Kay also addresses the issues of male aging, and the importance of place and friendship in creating a satisfactory life.
The Book of Marie has captured a sometimes forgotten generation and its role in history. It is a stunning discovery.
Review by James Stevens "outsource11" (Atlanta, GA USA)
MIDNIGHT (Tues-Sun)
WICKED CITY
by Ace Atkins
Read By Tom Jowers. (5 episodes, 7/25-8/06/08)
Phenix City, Alabama, from its founding during the Civil War, has been the dirty, not-so-little secret of the South. It is a riverside no-man's land, a place where a blind eye has historically been turned to vice of every sort, including prostitution, gambling, and even murder. Atkins shows us Phenix City in its 1950s hey-day, where a battle is building between a handful of decent citizens and the underworld willing to do anything to maintain their control. Atkins draws from the worlds of pulp and Faulkner, using characters from the town's true history to tell a story of the best and worst of morality, and the ambiguity in between.
DUMA KEY
by Stephen King
Read by Bill Davis. (27 episodes, 8/07 - 9/06/2008)
NO MORE THAN A DARK PENCIL LINE ON A BLANK PAGE. A HORIZON LINE, MAYBE.
BUT ALSO A SLOT FOR BLACKNESS TO POUR THROUGH...
A terrible accident takes Edgar Freemantle's right arm and scrambles his memory and his mind, leaving him with little but rage as he begins the ordeal of rehabilitation. When his marriage suddenly ends, Edgar begins to wish he hadn't survived his injuries. He wants out. His psychologist suggests a new life distant from the Twin Cities, along with something else:
"Edgar, does anything make you happy?"
"I used to sketch."
"Take it up again. You need hedges...hedges against the night."
Edgar leaves for Duma Key, an eerily undeveloped splinter of the Florida coast. The sun setting into the Gulf of Mexico calls out to him, and Edgar draws. Once he meets Elizabeth Eastlake, a sick old woman with roots tangled deep in Duma Key, Edgar begins to paint, sometimes feverishly; many of his paintings have a power that cannot be controlled. When Elizabeth's past unfolds and the ghosts of her childhood begin to appear, the damage of which they are capable is truly devastating.
The tenacity of love, the perils of creativity, the mysteries of memory and the nature of the supernatural -- Stephen King gives us a novel as fascinating as it is gripping and terrifying.
2AM (Tues-Sun)
BROTHER, I'M DYING
by Edwidge Danticat
Read By Monique Nero. (10 episodes, 7/27-8/07/08)
From the best-selling author of The Dew Breaker, a major work of nonfiction: a powerfully moving family story that centers around the men closest to her heart—her father, Mira, and his older brother, Joseph.
From the age of four, Edwidge Danticat came to think of her uncle Joseph, a charismatic pastor, as her “second father,” when she was placed in his care after her parents left Haiti for a better life in America. Listening to his sermons, sharing coconut-flavored ices on their walks through town, roaming through the house that held together many members of a colorful extended family, Edwidge grew profoundly attached to Joseph. He was the man who “knew all the verses for love.”
And so she experiences a jumble of emotions when, at twelve, she joins her parents in New York City. She is at last reunited with her two youngest brothers, and with her mother and father, whom she has struggled to remember. But she must also leave behind Joseph and the only home she’s ever known.
Edwidge tells of making a new life in a new country while fearing for the safety of those still in Haiti as the political situation deteriorates. But Brother I’m Dying soon becomes a terrifying tale of good people caught up in events beyond their control. Late in 2004, his life threatened by an angry mob, forced to flee his church, the frail, eighty-one-year-old Joseph makes his way to Miami, where he thinks he will be safe. Instead, he is detained by U.S. Customs, held by the Department of Homeland Security, brutally imprisoned, and dead within days. It was a story that made headlines around the world. Hisbrother, Mira, will soon join him in death, but not before he holds hope in his arms: Edwidge’s firstborn, who will bear his name—and the family’s stories, both joyous and tragic—into the next generation.
Told with tremendous feeling, this is a true-life epic on an intimate scale: a deeply affecting story of home and family—of two men’s lives and deaths, and of a daughter’s great love for them both.
STORMY WEATHER
by Paulette Jiles
Read by Dana Letson. (11 episodes, 8/08 - 8/20/2008)
Oil is king of East Texas during the darkest years of the Great Depression. The Stoddard girls—responsible Mayme, whip-smart tomboy Jeanine, and bookish Bea—know no life but an itinerant one, trailing their father from town to town as he searches for work on the pipelines and derricks; that is, when he's not spending his meager earnings at gambling joints, race tracks, and dance halls. And in every small town in which the windblown family settles, mother Elizabeth does her level best to make each sparse, temporary house they inhabit a home.
But the fall of 1937 ushers in a year of devastating drought and dust storms, and the family's fortunes sink further than they ever anticipated when a questionable "accident" leaves Elizabeth and her girls alone to confront the cruelest hardships of these hardest of times. With no choice left to them, they return to the abandoned family farm.
It is Jeanine, proud and stubborn, who single-mindedly devotes herself to rebuilding the farm and their lives. But hard work and good intentions won't make ends meet or pay the back taxes they owe on their land. In desperation, the Stoddard women place their last hopes for salvation in a wildcat oil well that eats up what little they have left . . . and on the back of late patriarch Jack's one true legacy, a dangerous racehorse named Smoky Joe. And Jeanine, the fatherless "daddy's girl," must decide if she will gamble it all . . . on love.
THE TIN ROOF BLOWDOWN
by James Lee Burke
Read by Tom Jowers. (14 episodes, 8/21 - 9/05/2008)
In the waning days of summer, 2005, a storm with greater impact than the bomb that struck Hiroshima peels the face off southern Louisiana.
This is the gruesome reality Iberia Parish Sheriff's Detective Dave Robicheaux discovers as he is deployed to New Orleans. As James Lee Burke's new novel, The Tin Roof Blowdown, begins, Hurricane Katrina has left the commercial district and residential neighborhoods awash with looters and predators of every stripe. The power grid of the city has been destroyed, New Orleans reduced to the level of a medieval society. There is no law, no order, no sanctuary for the infirm, the helpless, and the innocent. Bodies float in the streets and lie impaled on the branches of flooded trees. In the midst of an apocalyptical nightmare, Robicheaux must find two serial rapists, a morphine-addicted priest, and a vigilante who may be more dangerous than the criminals looting the city.
In a singular style that defies genre, James Lee Burke has created a hauntingly bleak picture of life in New Orleans after Katrina. Filled with complex characters and depictions of people at both their best and worst, The Tin Roof Blowdown is not only an action-packed crime thriller, but a poignant story of courage and sacrifice that critics are already calling Burke's best work.
5AM (Tues-Sun)
HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS
by J.K. Rowling
Read by Eric Longman. (21 episodes, 7/11 - 8/03/2008)
Don't miss the seventh and final book in J.K. Rowling's bestselling Harry Potter series!
It's hard to imagine a better ending than the one she's written for her saga after 10 years, more than 4,000 pages and close to 400 million copies in print. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows may be a miracle of marketing, but it's also a miraculous book that earns out, emotionally and artistically. …I cried at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It's that rare thing, an instant classic that earns its catharsis honestly, not through hype or sentiment but through the author's vision and hard work.
(Review from The Washington Post - Elizabeth Hand)
IN DEFENSE OF FOOD: AN EATER’S MANIFESTO
by Michael Pollan
Read by Wanda McMullen. (8 episodes, 8/05 - 8/13/2008)
What to eat, what not to eat, and how to think about health: a manifesto for our times
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." These simple words go to the heart of Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, the well-considered answers he provides to the questions posed in the bestselling The Omnivore's Dilemma.
Humans used to know how to eat well, Pollan argues. But the balanced dietary lessons that were once passed down through generations have been confused, complicated, and distorted by food industry marketers, nutritional scientists, and journalists-all of whom have much to gain from our dietary confusion. As a result, we face today a complex culinary landscape dense with bad advice and foods that are not "real." These "edible foodlike substances" are often packaged with labels bearing health claims that are typically false or misleading. Indeed, real food is fast disappearing from the marketplace, to be replaced by "nutrients," and plain old eating by an obsession with nutrition that is, paradoxically, ruining our health, not to mention our meals. Michael Pollan's sensible and decidedly counterintuitive advice is: "Don't eat anything that your great-great grandmother would not recognize as food."
Writing In Defense of Food, and affirming the joy of eating, Pollan suggests that if we would pay more for better, well-grown food, but buy less of it, we'll benefit ourselves, our communities, and the environment at large. Taking a clear-eyed look at what science does and does not know about the links between diet and health, he proposes a new way to think about the question of what to eat that is informed by ecology and tradition rather than by theprevailing nutrient-by-nutrient approach.
In Defense of Food reminds us that, despite the daunting dietary landscape Americans confront in the modern supermarket, the solutions to the current omnivore's dilemma can be found all around us.
In looking toward traditional diets the world over, as well as the foods our families-and regions-historically enjoyed, we can recover a more balanced, reasonable, and pleasurable approach to food. Michael Pollan's bracing and eloquent manifesto shows us how we might start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives and enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy.
BORN STANDING UP: A COMIC'S LIFE
by Steve Martin
Read by Kevin Burnup. (5 episodes, 8/14 - 8/19/2008)
At age 10, Steve Martin got a job selling guidebooks at the newly opened Disneyland. In the decade that followed, he worked in Disney's magic shop, print shop, and theater, and developed his own magic/comedy act. By age 20, studying poetry and philosophy on the side, he was performing a dozen times a week, most often at the Disney rival, Knott's Berry Farm.
Obsession is a substitute for talent, he has said, and Steve Martin's focus and daring his sheer tenacity are truly stunning. He writes about making the very tough decision to sacrifice everything not original in his act, and about lucking into a job writing for The Smothers Brothers Show. He writes about mentors, girlfriends, his complex relationship with his parents and sister, and about some of his great peers in comedy Dan Aykroyd, Lorne Michaels, Carl Reiner, Johnny Carson. He writes about fear, anxiety and loneliness. And he writes about how he figured out what worked on stage.
This book is a memoir, but it is also an illuminating guidebook to stand up from one of our two or three greatest comedians. Though Martin is reticent about his personal life, he is also stunningly deft, and manages to give readers a feeling of intimacy and candor. Illustrated throughout with black-and-white photographs collected by Martin, this book is instantly compelling visually and a spectacularly good read.
BEYOND REACH
by Karin Slaughter
Read by Lynn Maxwell. (15 episodes, 8/20 - 9/05/2008)
With over 13 million copies of her books sold in twenty-two countries, #1 internationally bestselling author Karin Slaughter delivers “crime fiction at its finest.” Now she returns to Grant county, Georgia where the lightning-fast plot, vivid forensic detail, and heart-stopping suspense will thrust readers into the darkest corners of their own imaginations—and push Slaughter to the top of the national bestseller lists.
Sara Linton—resident medical examiner/pediatrician in Grant County, Georgia,—has plenty of hardship to deal with, including defending herself in a heartbreaking malpractice suit. So when her husband, Police chief Jeffery Tolliver, learns that his friend and coworker detective Lena Adams has been arrested for murder and needs Sara’s help, she is not sure she can handle the pressure of it all. But soon Sara an Jeffery are sitting through evidence, peeling back the layers of a mystery that grows darker by the day—until an intricate web of betrayal and vengeance begins to unravel. And suddenly the lives of Sara, Lena, and Jeffery are hanging by the slenderest of threads.
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