In this latest listen from Foley, we follow Jess as she leaves her job and travels to Paris where she plans to stay with her brother, Ben, while she figures out what’s next. When she arrives, Ben is nowhere to be found. She begins looking into his disappearance and as she uncovers more about her brother, the apartment he lives in, and its residents she is sent on a frenzied path to discovery of the truth.
The Paris Apartment is a dark and twisty mystery/thriller listen that will keep you guessing until the very end. If you and your book club are getting lost in The Paris Apartmentthis month, then keep keep reading for our discussion questions below. Beware— SPOILERS ahead.
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1) Did you feel like you were racing to the end of this listen or was it more of a slow burn?
2) Discuss the importance of wealth throughout this story. How does Jess compare to the other residents of the apartment building?
3) Did you notice any other prevalent themes throughout this listen?
4) Even though this listen is set in the bustling city of Paris, the apartment still feels very isolated. How do you think that contributes to the story?
5) Would you have preferred to have the story told solely told from Jess’ perspective?
6) Which character/neighbor were you most suspicious of before the final twist was revealed?
7) How do you think Jess and Ben’s relationship changed after this experience? What about the other characters?
• Looking to share your love of books? Our handy Book Clubbin’ questions make it super easy to start a book club. Or, Netflix n’ buddy-read with this year’s book-to-screen adaptations (just be prepared for the perennial debate: is the book better than the movie/show?).
• If you’re looking for something extra, we’ve got author and narrator interviews to give you a gleam inside their worlds.
New to Audiobooks.com? Get your first book free, PLUS a bonus book from our VIP selection when you sign up for our one-month free trial. Digital audiobooks make audible stories come to life when you’re commuting, working out, cleaning, cooking, and more! Listening is easy with our top-rated free audiobook apps for iOS and Android, which let you download & listen to bestselling audiobooks on the go, wherever you are. Click here to get your free audiobooks!
Our Book Clubbin’ blog feature has returned and this time we’re diving into a much loved listen with a highly anticipated big screen adaptation coming our way, and that listen would be The Hating Game by Sally Thorne.
In this debut from Thorne, we follow Lucy Hutton, the nice girl working at this big publishing company. She gets along with everyone in the office and everyone loves her except her office-mate and rival, Joshua Templeman. As tensions rise due to a looming promotion that will go to either Lucy or Joshua, they push each other in ways they never thought possible between them and soon they find out that there is a fine line between hate and love.
The Hating Game film adaptation starring Lucy Hale as Lucy and Austin Stowell as Joshua hits theaters today and I know I’m itching to see this steamy listen come to life on the big screen. So, if you’re book club has decided to give The Hating Game a read before hitting the movie theater, we’ve got all the questions you need to spark a great discussion.
Keep reading for our discussion questions below. Beware— SPOILERS ahead.
—————CONTAINS SPOILERS!—————
1) How did you feel about Danny as a love interest for Lucy? Was she ever actually interested in him?
2) Would you have preferred if this book was told in alternating chapters from both Lucy and Josh’s perspective?
3) Do you see any similarities between the two companies merging and Lucy and Josh falling for each other?
4) Do you think Lucy ever truly hated Josh?
5) Do you think Lucy would have stood up for herself without Josh’s influence?
6) Why do you think Josh hid his feelings from Lucy for so long?
7) Did you pick up on the hints Josh kept leaving that he’s always loved her? Were you surprised when he revealed that his bedroom was painted the same color as her eyes?
8) Were you surprised to find out that Josh’s brother’s wife was Josh’s ex-girlfriend? Why do you think Josh hid this from Lucy?
9) What do you think Lucy and Josh’s futures look like together?
• Looking to share your love of books? Our handy Book Clubbin’ questions make it super easy to start a book club. Or, Netflix n’ buddy-read with this year’s book-to-screen adaptations (just be prepared for the perennial debate: is the book better than the movie/show?).
• If you’re looking for something extra, we’ve got author and narrator interviews to give you a gleam inside their worlds.
New to Audiobooks.com? Get your first book free, PLUS a bonus book from our VIP selection when you sign up for our one-month free trial. Digital audiobooks make audible stories come to life when you’re commuting, working out, cleaning, cooking, and more! Listening is easy with our top-rated free audiobook apps for iOS and Android, which let you download & listen to bestselling audiobooks on the go, wherever you are. Click here to get your free audiobooks!
Audiobooks.com members (including free trial members) enjoy the benefits of our VIP Rewards program, which allows you to make a selection from a specially curated list of free audiobooks every month.
To browse the current month’s selection and choose your free audiobook, simply tap into the VIP Rewards section in the Audiobooks.com app or after logging into the Audiobooks.com website.
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If you’re an Audiobooks.com member and are looking to make your free selection for September, we’ve got you covered! Check out this month’s top three VIP downloads below or click here to see the full list.
After an elite criminal profiling unit is shut down amid a storm of scandal and mismanagement, only one person emerges unscathed. Forensic psychiatrist Doctor Alexander Gregory has a reputation for being able to step inside the darkest minds to uncover whatever secrets lie hidden there and, soon enough, he finds himself drawn into the murky world of murder investigation.
In the beautiful hills of County Mayo, Ireland, a killer is on the loose. Panic has a stranglehold on its rural community and the Garda are running out of time. Gregory has sworn to follow a quiet life but, when the call comes, can he refuse to help their desperate search for justice? Murder and mystery are peppered with dark humor in this fast-paced thriller set amidst the spectacular Irish landscape.
Four murders. Two detectives. One mystifying crime.
On Christmas Eve, DCI Mackenzie Jones is called to a shooting at a remote farmhouse. Ralph Mallender believes his father lies dead inside. When three more bodies are discovered, it’s clear a festive family gathering has turned into a gruesome tragedy.
At first it seems like an open and shut case: a murder-suicide committed by Ralph’s volatile brother Cameron. Then new evidence makes Mack suspect the man who reported the crime is in fact the perpetrator.
But Mack isn’t the only one with a stake in the case. Private investigator Atticus Priest has been hired to get Ralph acquitted. That means unearthing any weaknesses in Mack’s evidence.
Irascible, impatient, and unpredictable, Atticus has weaknesses of his own. Mack knows all about them because they share a past-both professionally and personally. This time round, however, they aren’t on the same side. And as Atticus picks at the loose ends of the case, everything starts to unravel in a way neither of them could ever have predicted…
Nicole Cutty and Megan McDonald are both high school seniors in the small town of Emerson Bay, North Carolina. When they disappear from a beach party one warm summer night, police launch a massive search. No clues are found, and hope is almost lost until Megan miraculously surfaces after escaping from a bunker deep in the woods.
A year later, the bestselling account of her ordeal has turned Megan from local hero to national celebrity. It’s a triumphant, inspiring story, except for one inconvenient detail: Nicole is still missing. Nicole’s older sister Livia, a fellow in forensic pathology, expects that one day soon Nicole’s body will be found, and it will be up to someone like Livia to analyze the evidence and finally determine her sister’s fate. Instead, the first clue to Nicole’s disappearance comes from another body that shows up in Livia’s morgue that of a young man connected to Nicole’s past. Livia reaches out to Megan for help, hoping to learn more about the night the two were taken. Other girls have gone missing too, and Livia is increasingly certain the cases are connected.
But Megan knows more than she revealed in her blockbuster book. Flashes of memory are coming together, pointing to something darker and more monstrous than her chilling memoir describes. And the deeper she and Livia dig, the more they realize that sometimes true terror lies in finding exactly what you’ve been looking for.
• Looking to share your love of books? Our handy Book Clubbin’ questions make it super easy to start a book club. Or, Netflix n’ buddy-read with this year’s book-to-screen adaptations (just be prepared for the perennial debate: is the book better than the movie/show?).
• If you’re looking for something extra, we’ve got author and narrator interviews to give you a gleam inside their worlds.
New to Audiobooks.com? Get your first book free, PLUS a bonus book from our VIP selection when you sign up for our one-month free trial. Digital audiobooks make audible stories come to life when you’re commuting, working out, cleaning, cooking, and more! Listening is easy with our top-rated free audiobook apps for iOS and Android, which let you download & listen to bestselling audiobooks on the go, wherever you are. Click here to get your free audiobooks!
There’s a reason some books are considered to be “classics.” They stood the test of time and deliver topics and themes that are still relevant today. And what about those buzzy books that you’ve heard everyone talk about, but just never got around to picking up? Well guess what?! Now is the time to jump into one of these books that we think you need to read at least once in your life. We’ve highlighted a few below, but you can browse the full booklist here.
George Orwell’s 1984 is one of the most definitive texts of modern literature. Set in Oceania, one of the three inter-continental superstate that divided the world among themselves after a global war, Orwell’s masterful critique of the political structures of the time, works itself out through the story of Winston Smith, a man caught in the webs of a dystopian future, and his clandestine love affair with Julia, a young woman he meets during the course of his work for the government.
As much as it is an entertaining read, 1984 is also a brilliant, and more importantly, a timeless satirical attack on the social and political structures of the world.
Little Women is one of the best loved books of all time. Lovely Meg, talented Jo, frail Beth, spoiled Amy: these are hard lessons of poverty and of growing up in New England during the Civil War. Through their dreams, plays, pranks, letters, illnesses, and courtships, women of all ages have become a part of this remarkable family and have felt the deep sadness when Meg leaves the circle of sisters to be married at the end of Part I.
Part II, chronicles Meg’s joys and mishaps as a young wife and mother, Jo’s struggle to become a writer, Beth’s tragedy, and Amy’s artistic pursuits and unexpected romance. Based on Louisa May Alcott’s childhood, this lively portrait of nineteenth-century family life possesses a lasting vitality that has endeared it to generations of readers.
Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.
All The Light We Cannot See was the winner of both the 2015 Audie Award for Fiction as well as the 2015 Pulitzer Prize.
Obsessed with the idea of creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material with which to fashion a new being, shocking his creation to life with electricity. But this botched creature, rejected by its creator and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy Frankenstein and all that he holds dear.
Mary Shelley’s chilling gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley near Lord Byron’s villa on Lake Geneva. It would become the world’s most famous work of Gothic horror, and Frankenstein’s monster an instantly-recognisable symbol of the limits of human creativity.
In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor—engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar’s first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city’s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.
The Underground Railroad is both a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner and is now an original Amazon Prime Video series directed by Barry Jenkins.
William Golding’s classic novel of primitive savagery and survival is one of the most vividly realized and riveting works in modern fiction. The tale begins after a plane wreck deposits a group of English school boys, aged six to twelve on an isolated tropical island. Their struggle to survive and impose order quickly evolves from a battle against nature into a battle against their own primitive instincts. Golding’s portrayal of the collapse of social order into chaos draws the fine line between innocence and savagery.
Jonas’s world is perfect. Everything is under control. There is no war or fear of pain. There are no choices. Every person is assigned a role in the community. When Jonas turns 12 he is singled out to receive special training from The Giver. The Giver alone holds the memories of the true pain and pleasure of life. Now, it is time for Jonas to receive the truth. There is no turning back
On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy (Nick) parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Amy’s husband, Nick, is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer?
A #1 New York Times bestseller, Gone Girl was named the best book of the year and one of the most influential books of the decade.
• Looking to share your love of books? Our handy Book Clubbin’ questions make it super easy to start a book club. Or, Netflix n’ buddy-read with this year’s book-to-screen adaptations (just be prepared for the perennial debate: is the book better than the movie/show?).
• If you’re looking for something extra, we’ve got author and narrator interviews to give you a gleam inside their worlds.
New to Audiobooks.com? Get your first book free, PLUS a bonus book from our VIP selection when you sign up for our one-month free trial. Digital audiobooks make audible stories come to life when you’re commuting, working out, cleaning, cooking, and more! Listening is easy with our top-rated free audiobook apps for iOS and Android, which let you download & listen to bestselling audiobooks on the go, wherever you are. Click here to get your free audiobooks!
If you’re an audiobook enthusiast and/or a frequent audiobook listener and you haven’t heard of AudioFile magazine yet, you’ll want to learn more about this great listener resource. AudioFile magazine is a publication devoted entirely to audiobooks and is the perfect reading material for anyone who enjoys spoken-word recordings and audio entertainment.
Each issue of AudioFile magazine includes: • Reviews of bestsellers, classics, fiction, mystery–all subjects • Focus on the audio performance • Interviews & behind-the-scenes with authors and narrators • Best of the best audiobook recommendations
Once you’ve discovered your next great listen with AudioFile, it’s easy to return to Audiobooks.com and simply search for the book in our app and start listening.
New to Audiobooks.com? Get your first book free, PLUS a bonus book from our VIP selection when you sign up for our one-month free trial. Digital audiobooks make audible stories come to life when you’re commuting, working out, cleaning, cooking, and more! Listening is easy with our top-rated free audiobook apps for iOS and Android, which let you download & listen to bestselling audiobooks on the go, wherever you are. Click here to get your free audiobooks!
After an epilepsy-related accident tragically ended Adam Prashaw’s young life, he left a legacy of changed lives and a trove of social media posts documenting his life as a transgender man, his relationships, and his everyday ups and downs. In Soar, Adam, Soar, his father, Rick Prashaw, retells Adam’s story alongside his son’s own words. And in the audiobook edition, John Dickhout brings the book to life with an emotional intensity only possible thanks to his incredible connection to the family: John was the recipient of Adam’s heart via organ donation after Adam’s untimely death.
*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Listen in full to the complete interview by playing the video above!*
Audiobooks.com: Rick, you say early on in your book that you always knew you would write a book about your son. Where did that conviction come from?
Rick: I was a journalist, I was a Catholic priest, and a storyteller. I had this kid named Adam that doctors identified at birth as a girl and yet intuitively, especially the mother, but also me definitely saw at least a tomboy and certainly a boy in progress. So I knew I had a fascinating story. I wanted to tell that story, the pride of being dad to this kid late in life, given my priesthood part of my my life. And I just knew that this was a story, given his personality, his his joy, and the journey that he was on. It was something that I wanted to tell them.
Audiobooks.com:And you described writing annual birthday letters to Adam that provided a bit of the basis for your book. But then, when did you finally properly sit down to write his story? And what was that process like?
Rick: I retired and… I was so keen to write for myself. And so I did have those letters. I had probably more significant, as it turned out, Adam’s social media and Facebook posts to tell. Both in the years identifying as Rebecca and then later in terms of his huge coming out with his post, “I am Adam.” And so I had all of that material to draw on and also, of course, the family trips and all the adventures that everyone knows about in their in their family life.
[But it was] what happened in 2016 that completely, dramatically shifted the tone of the book. I was in California on a holiday[…] And I got the worst call of my life when we learned that Adam, who had a lifetime of dealing with epilepsy […] had been found face down in a hot tub. Friends had been with him, but they had left to retrieve some clothes in his apartment. He was resuscitated and I had to fly home for this weekend vigil to see if we would get the miracle that we were hoping and praying for. And that was not to be. And yet there was to be some life coming out of that tragedy as Adam was a registered organ donor and he was able to save four lives. So as tragic as it was and as much of grieving, the story started to bubble up inside of me. That lifeline for me was to tell again his entire story, including the gender story, the epilepsy story, but also now a remarkable organ donor part to the book.
Audiobooks.com: And that’s where John, the narrator, comes into the conversation. How did you two become connected and and what was that like?
John:Being a transplant recipient is unlike anything else. And I was pretty obsessed with wanting to find out whatever I could, if I could, about my donor, this person that gave me my life back. […] I had this immense need or desire to share my gratitude somehow, if I could. Soon found out that that wasn’t really promoted. In fact, I remember my post transplant coordinator […] said, “John, you’ll never know who your donor was.” You can send an anonymous letter, which I did, of course. But I remember in my head thinking, “Oh, yeah, well, we’ll see about that.”
So I sent an anonymous letter just to somehow try to put into words the immense gratitude I was feeling toward my my donor and, of course, my donor’s family, who made the decision in a very trying time to grant their wishes of their loved one to be an organ donor. And I wasn’t necessarily expecting, certainly hoping, but not expecting to get a letter in return. But I did. And in that letter, which was just full of love and…sorry, and overwhelming gratitude toward me for having reached out and I was pretty stunned.
But also there were a lot of clues which I think the Trillium Gift of Life Network maybe and Adam had a hand in letting slip through. But there were a lot of clues about this wonderful young man who was my organ donor. So, I just went to the Google machine and plugged in a few keywords from this marvelous letter that I received. And the first thing that popped up was a an obituary. And I could tell immediately that it was written by the same hand as the person who’d sent me this wonderful letter. So, I contrived a plan. I wanted to respect their anonymity and privacy. So, I did remain anonymous for as long as I could until it was absolutely certain that my organ donor[‘s family], which turned out to be Rick, wanted to connect. […] Short story, I created a fake Facebook page called Heart Recipient and sent him an anonymous note and went from there.
Audiobooks.com: So, once you two got connected and Rick, you understood John’s background, did you always have him in mind to narrate the book?
Rick: I think for about five seconds I said, “Oh, I really want to do this myself. You know, this would be such a good experience for me. I’ve never done this.” That thought left me when John popped into my head and I said, “He’d be the perfect choice.” I mean, we were now friends. We knew each other, [and our] families. I was very aware of his golden attitude. I knew he was a community theater actor. I knew he had seized on his desire to be a professional actor. So, I knew he had the skills and I can joke on the good days that he had his “heart” in it for sure. And and I said, “He’s just so perfect.” And of course, then being a professional product, he had to go out and and earn it and do the audition and everything.
Audiobooks.com: What was it like recording it? Were you surprised by anything during the recording process?
John: I got hold of some cubicle walls and built this little makeshift studio. And one thing that surprised me is how bloody hot it got after six hour, eight hour days. The process itself was very interesting to me. You know, you’re live basically with the engineer who’s putting it together as you go. And I guess the one thing I found surprising is how difficult it is to say an entire sentence without stopping and how many times you stop and start and start again. In fact, I hear it when I when I listen to the book now that the first couple of chapters I might be finding my rhythm a little bit.
But that was that was an interesting part of the process. The the most nerve wracking part is thinking about what all those people to whom the book means so much and so many different things, how they would accept it and how I could possibly do justice to their memories, particularly those people that know Rick and [Adamn’s mother] Suzanne and all of his family and, of course, Adam. To try to put a voice to what they already have in their heads was a little bit daunting.
Audiobooks.com: And so, Rick, for you, what was it like to hear John bring the book to life?
Rick: I rely on Adam’s family and friends, and they just rave about John and the voice and the telling of the story. So, he certainly has no worries. He shouldn’t have any worries. The people that really know the story, know my boy, are just thrilled with the with the audiobook.
Audiobooks.com: And certainly, John, your narration brings an extraordinarily personal element to the audiobook. What do you think really elevates the audio experience, perhaps not above print, but certainly as a wonderful companion?
John: Yeah. So, I mean, really, for me, knowing that I feel, anyway for the for the listener, that just knowing that story or maybe discovering the story as it unfolds on its own lifts the senses, I suppose. That’s another interesting thing. The engineer who recorded the audiobook with me wasn’t aware. He knew that Rick and I had a connection, but he didn’t know what it was until we got to those chapters in the book. So, it was pretty neat to experience that with someone who’s hearing it for the first time. So, yeah, that I think that it’s going to mean different things and it’s going to touch different people in different ways. But I certainly think if you’ve got a heart, it’ll probably mean something to you.
Rick: Jemma, I get notes. One of the great surprises as an author that I had is to get notes from strangers and they tell you what the story does, what this boy does. So, sometimes when you’re a publisher, they all want to know what section of the bookstore, what’s the hashtag to use here? And for sure, there’s a gender story. He was this tomboy that was like Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird or Tatum O’Neal played that picture in the Paper Moon. Very much looked like those two characters. So this is a gender story. There’s the epilepsy story. There’s the organ donor story, but there’s the family acceptance of this kid.
And then somebody finally, one of the podcasters said, it’s a love story. And that’s what I like the best to hear, that it’s a love story not just of people like family and parents and friends for Adam, but it’s Adam’s love for himself, where he had the courage and the resiliency to be who he was and to love who he wanted to love. […]
There’s just so many angles and so many audiences out there for the story.
Audiobooks.com: I wonder what lessons you might draw for us from his life as the world moves collectively through this time of hardship. What would Adam have to say about this right now?
Rick: I just chuckle in the good days about Adam getting the biggest kick out of a book written about him, an audiobook that John is the voice. I, just as a dad, I think that’s where I go to to enjoy thinking about Adam watching all of this from his place now. He would enjoy the celebrity and the attention of it. It would be always from the fun perspective, because no matter how many times life knocked them down, it was always get back up and and like, “What’s next? Let’s go to a sunny place.” He’d whine for a day on Facebook and then he’d be back in his happy place. […] I take enormous comfort in thinking of Adam being so happy in terms of his story being out there.
Publisher Summary:
Coming out. Coming in. Coming home.
Adam Prashaw’s life was full of surprises from the moment he was born. Assigned female at birth, and with parents who had been expecting a boy, he spent years living as ‘Rebecca Danielle Adam Prashaw’ before coming to terms with being a transgender man. Adam captured hearts with his humor, compassion, and intensity. After a tragic accident cut his life short, he left a legacy of changed lives and a trove of social media posts documenting his life, relationships, transition, and struggles with epilepsy, all with remarkable transparency and directness.
In Soar, Adam, Soar, his father, a former priest, retells Adam’s story alongside his son’s own words. From early childhood, through coming out first as a lesbian and then as a man, and his battles with epilepsy and refusal to give in, it chronicles Adam’s drive to define himself, his joyful spirit, and his love of life, which continues to conquer all.
New to Audiobooks.com? Get your first book free, PLUS a bonus book from our VIP selection when you sign up for our one-month free trial. Digital audiobooks make audible stories come to life when you’re commuting, working out, cleaning, cooking, and more! Listening is easy with our top-rated free audiobook apps for iOS and Android, which let you download & listen to bestselling audiobooks on the go, wherever you are. Click here to get your free audiobooks!