Books with author Audible Studios

Jon Ronson is fascinated by madness, extraordinary behaviour and the human mind. He has spent his life investigating crazy events, following fascinating people and unearthing unusual stories. Collected here from various sources (including The Guardian and GQ America) are the best of his adventures. Always intrigued by our ability to believe the unbelievable, Jon meets the man preparing to welcome the aliens to Earth, the woman trying to build a fully conscious robotic replica of the love of her life and the Deal or No Deal contestants with a foolproof system to beat the Banker. Jon realizes that it's possible for our madness to be a force for good when he meets America's real-life superheroes or a force for evil when he meets the Reverend 'Death' George Exoo, who has dubiously assisted in more than a hundred mercy killings. He goes to a UFO convention in the Nevada desert with Robbie Williams, asks Insane Clown Posse (who are possibly America's nastiest rappers) whether it's true they've actually been evangelical Christians all along and rummages through the extensive archives of Stanley Kubrick. Frequently hilarious, sometimes disturbing, always entertaining, these compelling encounters with people on the edge of madness will have you wondering just what we're capable of. This is an updated edition with new afterword, written and narrated by Jon Ronson.

The Barefoot Investor for Families: the only kids' money guide you'll ever need. This audiobook is perfect for parents, grandparents and anyone who listened to The Barefoot Investor and asked: 'Why the hell wasn't I taught this years ago?'. Written and narrated by Scott Pape, you'll hear him share the 10 things every kid needs to know about money before they flee the nest. And it's simple, you can teach them over dinner, once a week. The audiobook is structured around one family 'money meal' each week. If you follow the roadmap, with dedicated lessons for each age group, your children will know how to do things like: Learn the life-changing value of hard work Set up a fee-free bank account (or jam jars!) Go on a Treasure Hunt around the house and sell some of their old 'stuff' second-hand Save you hundreds on household bills Learn to cook at least two low-cost, yummy, nutritious meals from scratch. Scott's mission is to make sure your kids are financially strong so they never, ever get sucked into the traps that middle-aged bankers have developed to rob them of their money and their confidence. Scott Pape is the author of one of the best-selling Australian books ever, The Barefoot Investor: The Only Money Guide You'll Ever Need. His simple, funny and practical advice has changed people's lives for the better. Start talking with your kids about money now - it's never too late.

Rules for Being a Man: Don't cry Love sport Play rough Drink beer Don't talk about feelings But Robert Webb has been wondering for some time now: are those rules actually any use? To anyone? Looking back over his life, from schoolboy crushes (on girls and boys) to discovering the power of making people laugh (in the Cambridge Footlights with David Mitchell), and from losing his beloved mother to becoming a husband and father, Robert Webb considers the absurd expectations boys and men have thrust upon them at every stage of life. Hilarious and heartbreaking, How Not to Be a Boy explores the relationships that made Robert who he is as a man, the lessons we learn as sons and daughters, and the understanding that sometimes you aren't the Luke Skywalker of your life - you're actually Darth Vader.

In addition to his work as an entrepreneur, corporate executive, and consultant, for the last 16 years August Turak worked alongside the Trappist monks of Mepkin Abbey, watching firsthand as they undertook new enterprises and sustained an incredibly successful business practice. Service and selflessness are at the heart of this 1,500-year-old monastic tradition's remarkable business success, an ancient though immensely relevant economic model that preserves what is positive and productive about capitalism while transcending its ethical limitations and internal contradictions. Combining the lessons he's learned from 30 years of business experience with intimate portraits of the monks at work, Turak shows how Trappist principles have been successfully applied in a variety of business settings. He demonstrates how the monks and such agnostics as Warren Buffett are wildly successful not despite their fanatical commitment to the highest principles but because of them. Turak also points to other transformational organizations that share critical components of the abbey's philosophy conducive to success.

"Cinderella" retold. In the wake of her father's death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. Consumed with grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, rereading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away, as they are said to do. When she meets the dark and dangerous fairy Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be granted. The day that Ash meets Kaisa, the King's Huntress, her heart begins to change. Instead of chasing fairies, Ash learns to hunt with Kaisa. Though their friendship is as delicate as a new bloom, it reawakens Ash's capacity for love - and her desire to live. But Sidhean has already claimed Ash for his own, and she must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love. Entrancing, empowering, and romantic, Ash is about the connection between life and love, and solitude and death, where transformation can come from even the deepest grief.

In the late 1980s Jon Ronson was the keyboard player in the Frank Sidebottom Oh Blimey Big Band. Frank wore a big fake head. Nobody outside his inner circle knew his true identity. This became the subject of feverish speculation during his zenith years. Together, they rode relatively high. Then it all went wrong. Twenty-five years later and Jon has co-written a movie, Frank, inspired by his time in this great and bizarre band. Frank is set for release in 2014, starring Michael Fassbender, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Domhnall Gleeson and directed by Lenny Abrahamson. Frank: The True Story that Inspired the Movie is a memoir of funny, sad times and a tribute to outsider artists too wonderfully strange to ever make it in the mainstream. It tells the true story behind the fictionalized movie. Jon Ronson is an award-winning writer and documentary maker. He is the author of four best sellers, Them: Adventures with Extremists, The Men Who Stare at Goats, The Psychopath Test and Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries, and two collections, Out of the Ordinary: True Tales of Everyday Craziness and What I Do: More True Tales of Everyday Craziness. He lives in London and New York City.

The size and stability of the American middle class were once the envy of the world. But changes unleashed in the 1960s pitted Americans against one another politically in new and destructive ways. These battles continued to rage from that day to now, while everyone has fallen behind economically except the wealthy. Right-wing culture warriors blamed the decline on the moral shortcomings of "other" Americans - black people, feminists, gays, immigrants, union members - to court a fearful white working- and middle-class base with ever more bitter "us vs. them" politics. Liberals tried, but mostly failed, to make the case that we're all in this together. In What's the Matter with White People?, popular Salon columnist Joan Walsh argues that the biggest divide in America today is not about party or ideology, but about two competing narratives for why everything has fallen apart since the 1970s. One side sees an America that has spent the last 40 years bankrupting the country providing benefits and advantages to the underachieving, the immoral, and the undeserving, no matter the cost to Middle America. The other sees an America that has spent the last 40 years bankrupting the country providing benefits and advantages to the very rich, while allowing a measure of cultural progress for the different and the downtrodden. It matters which side is right, and how the other side got things so wrong. Walsh connects the dots of American decline through trends that began in the 1970s and continue today - including the demise of unions, the stagnation of middle-class wages, the extension of the right's "Southern Strategy" throughout the country, the victory of Reagan Republicanism, the increase in income inequality, and the drop in economic mobility. Citing her extended family as a case in point, Walsh shows how liberals unwittingly collaborated in the "us vs. them" narrative, rather than developing an inspiring, persuasive vision of a more fair, united America. She also explores how the GOP's renewed culture war.

Nature is out of balance in the human world. The sun hasn't shone in years, and crops are failing. Worse yet, strange and hostile creatures have begun to appear. The people's survival hangs in the balance. To solve the crisis, the oracle stones are cast, and Kaede and Taisin, two seventeen-year-old girls, are picked to go on a dangerous and unheard-of journey to Tanlili, the city of the Fairy Queen. Taisin is a sage, thrumming with magic, and Kaede is of the earth, without a speck of the otherworldly. And yet the two girls' destinies are drawn together during the mission. As members of their party succumb to unearthly attacks and fairy tricks, the two come to rely on each other and even begin to fall in love. But the Kingdom needs only one huntress to save it, and what it takes could tear Kaede and Taisin apart forever. The exciting adventure prequel to Malinda Lo's highly acclaimed novel Ash is overflowing with lush Chinese influences and details inspired by the I Ching, and is filled with action and romance.

White Americans have long been comfortable in the assumption that they are the cultural norm. Now that notion is being challenged, as white people wrestle with what it means to be part of a fast-changing, truly multicultural nation. Facing chronic economic insecurity, a popular culture that reflects the nation's diverse cultural reality, and a future in which they will no longer constitute the majority of the population, and with a black president in the White House, whites are growing anxious. This anxiety has helped to create the Tea Party movement, with its call to "take our country back". By means of a racialized nostalgia for a mythological past, the Right is enlisting fearful whites into its campaign for reactionary social and economic policies. In urgent response, Tim Wise has penned his most pointed and provocative work to date. Employing the form of direct personal address, he points a finger at whites' race-based self-delusion, explaining how such an agenda will only do harm to the nation's people, including most whites. In no uncertain terms, he argues that the hope for survival of American democracy lies in the embrace of our multicultural past, present, and future.

All the Ways the World Can End by Abby Sher is at times heart wrenching while at others hilarious. Lenny (short for Eleanor) feels like the world is about to end. Her best friend is moving to San Francisco and her dad is dying. To cope with her stress, Lenny is making a list of all the ways the world can end - designer pathogens, blood moon prophecies, alien invasion - and stockpiling supplies in a bunker in the backyard. Then she starts to develop feelings for her dad's very nice young doctor - and she thinks he may have feelings for her, too. Spoiler alert: he doesn't. But a more age-appropriate love interest might. In a time of complete uncertainty, one thing's for sure: Lenny's about to see how everything is ending and beginning. All at the same time.

Risky Is the New Safe is a different kind of book for a different kind of thinking - a thought-provoking manifesto for risk takers. It will challenge you to think laterally, question premises, and be a contrarian. Disruptive technology, accelerating speed of change, and economic upheaval are changing the game. The same tired, old conventional thinking won't get you to success today. Risky Is the New Safe will change the way you look at everything! You'll view challenges - and the corresponding opportunities they provide - in entirely new and exciting ways. You'll recognize powerful new gateways to creating wealth. In this mind-bending audiobook you'll discover: How mavericks like Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, and Mark Cuban think differently - and what you can learn from them The six-month online course that could allow you to earn more than a PhD How social media changes branding and marketing forever, and what that means for you What happens when holo-suites and virtual-reality sex come about, and how you need to prepare The new religion of ideas: How to become an "idea generator" and declare as a free agent What will cause the Euro, precious metals, and oceanfront real estate to collapse - and how that can make you rich!

Here is Bill Bryson's entertaining and illuminating book about the history of the way we live - complete, unabridged and read by the author. Bill Bryson was struck one day by the thought that we devote more time to studying the battles and wars of history than to considering what history really consists of: centuries of people quietly going about their daily business. This inspired him to start a journey around his own house, an old rectory in Norfolk, considering how the ordinary things in life came to be. Along the way, he researched the history of anything and everything, from architecture to electricity, from food preservation to epidemics, from the spice trade to the Eiffel Tower, from crinolines to toilets. And he discovered that there is a huge amount of history, interest and excitement - and even a little danger - lurking in the corners of every home. Where A Short History of Nearly Everything was a sweeping panorama of the world, the universe and everything, At Home peers at private life through a microscope. Bryson applies the same irrepressible curiosity, irresistible wit, stylish prose, and masterful storytelling that made A Short History of Nearly Everything one of the most lauded books of the last decade.