Showing results by narrator "Michael Murray" in Literature & Fiction

Twenty years after he conquered the underground pool circuit in The Hustler, "Fast" Eddie Felson is playing exhibition matches with former rival Minnesota Fats in shopping malls. With one failed marriage and years of running a pool hall behind him, Eddie is now ready to regain the skills needed to compete in a world of pool that has changed dramatically since he left.

Anthony Bourdain chases the fumigation truck in Bergen County, New Jersey. Dave Eggers tells it straight: Illinois is Number 1. Louise Erdrich loses her bikini top in North Dakota. Jonathan Franzen gets waylaid by New York's publicist...and personal attorney...and historian...and geologist. John Hodgman explains why there is no such thing as a "Massachusettsean." 

Wise beyond his years, Brandon understands he's the only one in this world he can count on. It's an outlook that serves him well the day his mama leaves him behind at the Raleigh bus station and sets off to Canada with "her destiny" - the latest man that she hopes will bring her happiness. The day his mother leaves, Brandon takes the first step toward shaping his own destiny. Soon, he finds himself spending pleasant days playing with his cousins on his grandparents' farm and trying to forget the past.

One summer day, a countercultural drifter known only as the Sunlight Man appears in Batavia, New York. Jailed for painting the word "LOVE" across two lanes of traffic, the Sunlight Man encounters Fred Clumly, a 64-year-old town sheriff. Throughout the course of this impressive narrative, the dialogue between these two men becomes a microcosm of the social unrest that epitomized America during this significant historical period - and culminates in an unforgettable ending.

In the early 17th century, a crippled, graying, almost toothless veteran of Spain's wars against the Ottoman Empire published a novel. It was the story of a poor nobleman, his brain addled from studying too many novels of chivalry, who deludes himself that he is a knight errant and sets off on hilarious adventures. That story, Don Quixote, went on to sell more copies than any other book beside the Bible, making its author, Miguel de Cervantes, the single most-read author in human history.

Look who's on the Dick Gibson Radio Show: Arnold the Memory Expert ("I've memorized the entire West Coast shoreline - except for cloud cover and fog banks"). Bernie Perk, the burning pharmacist. Henry Harper, the nine-year old orphan millionaire, terrified of being adopted. The woman whose life revolves around pierced lobes. An evil hypnotist. Swindlers. Con-men. And Dick Gibson himself. Anticipating talk radio and its crazed hosts, Stanley Elkin creates a brilliant comic world held together by American manias and maniacs in all their forms.

This darkly satirical drama by Gore Vidal finds two presidential contenders seeking the endorsement of an aging ex-president, and explores how personal agendas can change the course of a nation's destiny. The political intrigues rampant in Vidal's 1960 setting are strangely similar what is going on today. Includes an interview with actors Fred Thompson and Marsha Mason.

When at 42, the obese, anxious, and gentle Henry Soames marries seventeen-year-old Callie Wells - who is pregnant with the child of a local boy - it is much more than years which define the gulf between them. But the beauty of this audiobook is the gradual revelation of the bond that develops as this unlikely couple experiences courtship and marriage, the birth of a son, isolation, forgiveness, work, and death in a small Catskill community in the 1950s. The plot turns on tragic events - they might be accidents

In a gloomy mansion in Madison, Wisconsin, a sheltered and sensitive young man slips a visiting professor his secret manuscript—a staggering and beautiful fantasy of knights, knaves, and fools, a rich tale of timeless battles with the devil himself over power and destiny.

The final novel by John Gardner, Mickelsson's Ghosts, originally published in 1982 just months before his untimely death in a motorcycle accident, is a tour de force. The protagonist Peter Mickelsson, a former star philosophy professor at Brown, relocates to Binghamton University. On the verge of bankruptcy, separated from his wife, in questionable mental health, and drinking heavily, Mickelsson decides to buy a country house in northeastern Pennsylvania.

Ex-GI Will Gardestang just wanted to go to college on the GI Bill and get on with his life. After a chance meeting, he befriends Tommy Gatchell and Rico Challoner, two young men who share his love for philosophical debate, and soon all three participate in an ESP experiment. After Will and Rico display apparent psychic abilities, Rico begins to become panicky and in short order is killed before their eyes, seemingly long distance by his superiors in a devil-worshipping cult. Enraged over the death of their friend, Will and Tommy vow to track down the killers and unmask their diabolic plans.

In the Texas Panhandle town of Amarillo, New York attorney Max Friedman is assigned to represent a nightmare client. Joe Wagner is a violent man, dangerous both to family and friends. As Max builds his defense case for murder, he reveals a reason for Joe's violence. But is it a justification?

Laid to waste by drink, Agathon, a seer, is a shell of a man. He sits imprisoned with his apprentice, Peeker, for his presumed involvement in a rebellion against the Spartan tyrant Lykourgos. Confined to a cell, the men produce extraordinary writings that illustrate the stories of their lives and give witness to Agathon's deterioration and the growth of Peeker from a bashful young apprentice to a self-assured and passionate seer.

New York City in the 1970s is a dark, dangerous, and threatening place. One of the bright spots in this decaying metropolis is Paul Konig. As the city’s chief medical examiner, he has developed an impressive reputation for his skills in forensic pathology - skills that will be put to the ultimate test when a dangerous psychopath kidnaps Konig’s daughter. Herbert Lieberman takes his readers on a gruesome journey through the ten most difficult days in the life of a man at the very end of his rope.

Boswell is Stanley Elkin's first and funniest novel: the comic odyssey of a twentieth-century groupie who collects celebrities as his insurance policy against death. James Boswell - a strong man and professional wrestler (his most heroic match is with the Angel of Death) - is a con man, a gate crasher, and a moocher of epic talent.

Regretting his affair with a Republican journalist, Ralph becomes caught in the middle of a political controversy when his former lover's tell-all book is published, and then Bill is murdered, leaving Ralph the prime suspect in the crime.

The scene is the children's ward of a great hospital, and the story of a profoundly moving account of a young doctor's involvement in the life of Mary Berquam, an enchanting 11 year old girl affected with leukemia. He learns how to be a better, more compassionate doctor from this child.

Several centuries ago, a young Sioux woman called Lark rebels against her people's traditions and crosses the plains to save her adopted sister from a bad marriage proposal and return the girl to the Pawnee village from which she was abducted in childhood. At the end of her journey, Lark finds herself the center of a mysterious Pawnee ritual that undermines her plan as well as her confidence. 

Theirs is a fight to right the wrongs inflicted on them by "the white settlers." They know they are too small to take on the entire country, but they don't need to. Over a few tension-filled days as the battles rages over abundant energy resources, the frantic prime minister can only watch as the insurrection paralyzes the country. But when energy-dependent Americans discover the southward flow of Canadian hydroelectricity, oil, and natural gas is halted, they do not remain passive.

Journalist Daniel Mandelkern leaves Hamburg on assignment to interview Dirk Svensson, a reclusive children's book author who lives alone on the Italian side of Lake Lugano with his three-legged dog. Mandelkern has been quarreling with his wife (who is also his editor); he suspects she has other reasons for sending him away. After stumbling on a manuscript of Svensson's about a complicated ménage à trois, Mandelkern is plunged into mysteries past and present.