"These are terrific books by great authors that I handpicked from the Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX), matched up with just the right narrators and personally produced. I hope you'll enjoy them as much as I do. Check them all out here..."--Neil Gaiman
This stunning follow-up to Ellen Kushner's cult-classic novel Swordspoint is set in the same world of labyrinthine intrigue, where sharp swords and even sharper wits rule. Against a rich tapestry of artists and aristocrats, students, strumpets, and spies, a gentleman and a scholar will find themselves playing out an ancient drama destined to explode their society's smug view of itself - and reveal that sometimes the best price of uncovering history is being forced to repeat it....
In Neil's words: "If you are new to the world of Riverside, I hope the richness of The Fall of the Kings will surprise and delight you, with multi-voiced scenes set like jewels in the gold of Ellen Kushner’s own narration. And the fans of previous novels will recognize the show-stealing voices of Katherine Kellgren, Simon Jones, Nick Sullivan, along with a strong supporting cast. I myself had a cameo role in The Privilege of the Sword, and enjoyed it so much that I campaigned for a larger role in The Fall of the Kings…and I got it!"
Dimension of Miracles is a satirical science fiction novel first published by Dell in 1968. It's about Tom Carmody, a New Yorker who, thanks to a computer error, wins the main prize in the Intergalactic Sweepstakes. Tom claims his prize before the error is discovered and is allowed to keep it. However, since Tom is a human from Earth without galactic status and no space traveling experience, he has no homing instinct that can guide him back to Earth once his odyssey begins - and the galactic lottery organizers cannot transport him home.
In Neil's words: "The challenge for me with a book this funny, this strange, this perceptive was to try and find a narrator who was as iconic, somebody who could deliver the goods, somebody who could give you a book like this as it deserved to be given. And the first, and the last, and actually the only person to come to mind was John Hodgman. So I asked John, and he said yes! And he did it; he pulled it off. Listening to John—not just the suave, sensible, sane narrator of this book, but all the peculiar accents and incarnations that he is forced to adopt through here—he does it delightfully, he does it brilliantly, he's really, really funny."
James Branch Cabell's career was short-lived - his works fit neatly within the 1920s literary escapist culture and then quickly declined in popularity as the author veered away from the fantasy niche. In his heyday, Cabell garnered praise from several of his contemporaries such as H. L. Mencken and Sinclair Lewis. Lewis even acknowledged Cabell's successful Jurgen in his 1930 Nobel Prize address.
In Neil's words: "When I heard Robert Blumenfeld reading, I knew we had found the perfect narrator, and I’d like to think the opinionated, critical and controversial author of Jurgen would think so too. Jurgen may be the most famous of James Branch Cabell’s books: It was certainly the one that put him on the map, when, in January 1920, the New York Society for the Prevention of Vice took his publisher to court for violating New York’s anti-obscenity law. Suddenly, Cabell went from an admired but semi-obscure author of literary satiric fantasy in historical novels, to the guy everyone was reading because he was banned."
In the sulphurous The High Place, the amoral hero Florian enters the sleeping-beauty story and (unlike Jurgen with Helen) does not draw back at the sight of excessive beauty. Complications ensue: Beauty is realistically diminished during pregnancy, the first-born child is forfeit to Satan under the pact that guaranteed Florain's success, and an irascible saint is eager to call down holy fire on transgressors. Florian treads close to damnation and is saved only when Satan and the angel Michael conspire to let recent events become, again, a dream: he has a rare second chance and learns better.
In Neil's words: "The High Place is what happens to the story of Sleeping Beauty when told as a cautionary – yet somehow rollicking – fairy tale. Our hero – if 'hero' we may call a man who’s just murdered each of his four wives – is the elegant and aristocratic Florian de Puysange. Florian is everyone’s dream of an amoral protagonist, all elegance and flourish, witty and urbane, a complete cad who acts on every pleasure it occurs to him to desire and he gets away with it. UNTIL it all comes due. I know that without Cabell’s work – and perhaps this book in particular – I wouldn’t be the same writer I am today, and I’m sure this holds true for many of my colleagues."
Figures of Earth, subtitled "A Comedy of Appearances", follows the vicissitudes of Dom Manuel the Redeemer from his lowly swineherd origins through his unlikely elevation to the Count of Poictesme, and beyond. Published in 1921, it was the second volume of “The Biography of Manuel”, Cabell’s great work about an imaginary land that also managed to skewer the world of his upbringing as a Southern Gentleman of Virginia, and nearly everything else, besides!
In Neil's words: "After a first round of very strong but not quite perfect auditions, I told the actors that 'the most important thing with Cabell is being able to deadpan a joke. These books are written by a Virginia gentleman who is capable of making the dirtiest of dirty jokes with a straight face, and who is writing high fantasy and poetry, too.' We needed someone who could get all of that in. Robert Blumenfeld captured the accent and wit of a man who corresponded with H.L. Mencken, Sinclair Lewis, and in his lifetime counted Mark Twain among his fans."
Award-winning author, narrator, and screenwriter Neil Gaiman personally selected this book, and, using the tools of the Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX), cast the narrators and produced this work for his audiobook label, Neil Gaiman Presents. In this exciting new "illuminated production", the author herself reads her own work, supported by a full cast.
In Neil's words: "The Privilege of the Sword is read by author Ellen Kushner and other luminaries you may recognize. Casting Felicia Day is a coup for me - incredibly satisfying as an audiobook producer, not just because Felicia's an incredibly talented actress, but also because the quality of her performance matches the voice Ellen Kushner hears when she thinks of Lady Katherine. And that's equally true for the other voice actors: Katherine Kellgren, Nick Sullivan, Joe Hurley, and Barbara Rosenblat."
India Morgan Phelps - Imp to her friends - is schizophrenic. Struggling with her perceptions of reality, Imp must uncover the truth about her encounters with creatures out of myth - or from something far, far stranger....
In Neil's words: "It's really important for me to find the voice that comes closest to the voice in the author's head. For this book, that turned out to be Suzy Jackson - someone who sounded young, but not naive; someone who could catalogue the sharp-detailed Imp's carefully observed daily life, but also convey the blurred edges of her reality."
Vincent Ettrich, a genial philanderer, discovers he has died and come back to life, but he has no idea why, or what the experience was like. Gradually, he discovers he was brought back by his true love, Isabelle, because she is pregnant with their child - a child who, if raised correctly, will play a crucial role in saving the universe.
In Neil's words: "Victor Bevine manages to convey three aspects of Vincent's personality: the womanizing hedonist he was in life, the now-dead fellow trying to control his rising panic who realizes his one-night-stand knows today is his mother's birthday, and, ultimately, the loving, heroic, family man who undertakes a bit task for the sake of his unborn son and - incidentally - the rest of humanity. That's a tall order for any narrator."
This invaluable collection of Avram Davidson's resonant, witty short stories describes some incidents in the career of many-times-Doctor Engelbert Eszterhazy, loyal subject of the Triune Monarchy of Scythia- Pannonia-Transbalkania, located in a 19th-century Europe whose political landscape will be, after a little reflection, familiar to most fantasy listeners. Enquire with Doctor Eszterhazy into curious matters: the lurley, the old woman who lived with a bear, gingerbread men, dancing goats, and more.
In Neil's words: "This is the first place all the Eszterhazy stories have been collected together, including 'The Odd, Old Bird,' which was not part of the print edition. If you love fantasy, if you love alternate worlds, or if you just love stories well-told, that's who Avram Davidson is - someone who knows a great deal more than you do and is damned if both of you aren't going to have a great time in Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania."
Available to American readers for the first time, this landmark collection gathers four groundbreaking fantasy classics from the acclaimed author of Light. Set in the imagined city of Viriconium, here are the masterworks that revolutionized a genre and enthralled a generation of readers: The Pastel City, A Storm of Wings, In Viriconium, and Viriconium Nights. Back in print after a long absence, these singular tales of a timeless realm and its enigmatic inhabitants are now reborn and compiled to captivate a whole new generation.
In Neil's words: "Viriconium is 3 novels and a short story collection. It's gloriously ambitious, as if we are imagining an alternate version of someplace that may be London, even if it is a punk-sensibility London in a post-apocalyptic future. It's as if Mike Harrison remembered a place that will never exist, or at least not for millennia, and fleshed it out with art and legends and glorious gods hiding amidst the population. Simon Vance (the Millenium trilogy) is the gold-standard of narrators, and I’m thrilled and proud to have him. He’s brilliant."
Meet Anita Thompson: she's young, she's lovely, she's clever, and she's a witch. A real one. Anita lives in two worlds: the modern world of supermarkets and sports cars, radio and rock-and-roll, where she is a thoroughly modern girl with a thoroughly modern interest in boys and fast living and her own independence. But she also lives in the ancient and rustic world of traditions, cauldrons, and familiars.
In Neil's words: "Anita is an almost forgotten novel by one of the finest UK writers. It works on two levels. The stories are a product of the 1960s - they come out of a swinging world and a 'Georgy Girl' time, and Keith Roberts, then a young art director, has captured that feel. At the same time, it's about a teenage witch being brought up her Granny. He writes about her falling in love, getting her heart broken, about change and growing up and compromise, about what magic is and how you can lose it sometimes and how you can get it back."
On the treacherous streets of Riverside, a man lives and dies by the sword. Even the nobles on the Hill turn to duels to settle their disputes. Within this elite, dangerous world, Richard St. Vier is the undisputed master, as skilled as he is ruthless--until a death by the sword is met with outrage instead of awe, and the city discovers that the line between hero and villain can be altered in the blink of an eye.
In Neil's words: "Swordspoint is a fairy tale of sorts, but a fairy tale for grown-ups, as if Jane Austen wrote fantasy. It’s an imaginary world where the characters are real people: a Vanity Fair of aristocrats, rogues, orphans, and heroes; a book where the best swordsman in the land can make more money dueling at private parties than he can as a knight-errant. Several key scenes are dramatized and in those soundscapes you'll hear the cadences of the marketplace, the music of the drawing rooms and, of course, the ring of steel drawn from scabbard.'"
Five thousand years out of the Labyrinth, the Minotaur finds himself in the American South, living in a trailer park and working as a line cook at a steakhouse. No longer a devourer of human flesh, the Minotaur is a socially inept, lonely creature with very human needs. But over a two-week period, as his life dissolves into chaos, this broken and alienated immortal awakens to the possibility for happiness and to the capacity for love.
In Neil's words: "In Steve Sherrill's fiction, the Minotaur is alive and relatively well, working as a short-order cook at a greasy spoon in North Carolina called Grub's Rib. The novel covers two weeks in M's life, from his home at the Lucky-U trailer park - where he repairs cars in his spare time - and back to Grub's Rib, where M has a crush on an epileptic waitress named Kelly. After we heard Holter Graham's audition for the book, Steve had this to say: 'Holter's handling of the Minotaur's grunt was PERFECT. Exactly what I heard in my head.'"
Thomas Abbey is a man stuck in a rut. To kick-start his life, he takes a sabbatical to work on a biography of his favorite writer, the mysterious Marshall France. Although Abbey has been warned that France's daughter, Anna, has blocked all previous attempts at her father's biography, he is surprised to find her the soul of small-town hospitality and quite excited about Abbey's proposal. Even stranger than Anna's behavior, though, is the town itself. The people seem to know what their future holds - freak accidents and all - down to the hour.
In Neil's words: "I chose The Land of Laughs because I love Jonathan Carroll's books and want to bring them to as wide an audience as possible. In this book, we learn about the fragile balance for some people between fiction and reality, and the dangers of retreating into a beloved book. I suspected the character of Thomas Abbey would be both a challenge and an opportunity for the right narrator. Edoardo Ballerini conveys a certain wistfulness and vulnerability underneath Abbey's grumpiness. He is a perfect guide for this journey."
Considered Keith Roberts' masterwork, this novel consists of linked short stories (six measures and a coda) of a 20th century in which the Roman Catholic Church controls the Western world, and has done so since Queen Elizabeth of England was assassinated in 1588. The Protestant Reformation never happened, and the world is kept in a Dark Age of steam-power transportation, with no allowance for electrical power, by a tyrannical Rome.
In Neil's words: "There's a general consensus that Pavane is one of the great alternate history novels. I read one story from Pavane when I was nine, in an English science fiction monthly magazine and it scarred me. It was the first time a short story made me cry. It was Keith Roberts' masterpiece: profound and still remarkable. I love the way the narrator, Steven Crossley, subtly but definitely distinguishes each storyteller from the others, so that the unified whole really is more than the sum of its parts."
In contemporary London, Michael Kearney is a serial killer on the run from the entity that drives him to kill. He is seeking escape in a future that doesn' t yet exist - a quantum world that he and his physicist partner hope to access through a breach of time and space itself.
In Neil's words: "Light indeed shines through the three braided plot strands. In the audiobook, the strands are united by the talent of the narrator, Julian Elfer. Elfer's energy and attention to small moments illuminate the entire work. Part of the delight of a novel like this, for science fiction fans, or just for people who like good books, is watching the department of science fiction known as Space Opera be polished up, dusted off, and reinvented for the future. It's a dark book, but there's a lot of light in here too. Enjoy."
In the wickedly bittersweet and hilarious You Must Go and Win, the Ukrainian-born musician Alina Simone traces her bizarre journey through the indie rock world, from disastrous Craigslist auditions with sketchy producers to catching fleas in a Williamsburg sublet. But Simone offers more than down-and-out tales of her time as a struggling musician: she has a rapier wit, slashing and burning her way through the absurdities of life, while offering surprising and poignant insights.
In Neil's words: "Alina Simone uses her life as material to tell stories that are funny, heartwarming, tragic, often all at the same time. Her subjects, whether music, religion, Russia, or family, are conjured and dissected with warm humor and sharp eyes. Probably it's a really good thing she never became an international rock star: she wouldn't have written this if she had. As far as casting a narrator, well, this one was easy. Alina Simone is a singer-songwriter, and a writer, and a traveler. This is her first audiobook, and she reads it as well as she writes."
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