検索キーワード： 制作 "Recorded Books" ユーモア・風刺文学・フィクション

What I wanted more than anything was to be standing beside Schmidt, in concert with Schmidt, at the foot of Saint Sebastian’s Abyss along with Schmidt, hands cupped to the sides of our faces, debating art, transcendence, and the glory of the apocalypse.” Former best friends who built their careers writing about a single work of art meet after a decades-long falling-out. One of them, called to the other’s deathbed for unknown reasons by a “relatively short” nine-page email, spends his flight to Berlin reflecting on Dutch Renaissance painter Count Hugo Beckenbauer.

For a time, Jimmy spent his expat days in Mexico unearthing pre-Columbian artifacts. Now he makes a living doing small trucking jobs and helping out with the occasional missing-person situation. But Jimmy’s laid-back lifestyle is being seriously imposed upon by a ninety-pound stalker named Louise. Add to this a sudden wave of hippies led by a murderous ex-con guru in search of psychic happenings, archaeologists unearthing (illegally) the Mayan tombs, and Louise and her weirdo husband’s quest for UFO sites, and Jimmy’s south-of-the-border existence is in danger.

In an Indian village in the 1950s, a precocious child is born into a family of Dalit coconut farmers. King Rao will grow up to be the most accomplished tech CEO in the world and, eventually, the leader of a global, corporate-led government. In a future in which the world is run by the Board of Corporations, King’s daughter, Athena, reckons with his legacy—literally, for he has given her access to his memories, among other questionable gifts.

Junior Bender, Los Angeles burglar and off-the-books detective to the felonious, is reminded that rock and roll will never die (no matter how fervently he wishes some of it would) when Hollywood’s most dangerous geriatric mobster, Irwin Dressler, retains Junior’s investigative services to solve a rather unharmonious problem. Junior has one weekend to figure out who’s to blame—a weekend that begins with his tires being slashed, threatening notes left on his car, and a theatrical backdrop falling on a drummer during the truly terrible first set of the first concert.

For decades Hazie Coogan has tended to the outsized needs of Katherine “Miss Kathie” Kenton, veteran of multiple marriages, career comebacks, and cosmetic surgeries. But danger arrives with gentleman caller Webster Carlton Westward III, who worms his way into Miss Kathie’s heart - and boudoir. Soon, Hazie discovers that this bounder has already written a celebrity memoir foretelling Miss Kathie’s death in an upcoming musical extravaganza. As the body count mounts, Hazie must execute a plan to save Katherine Kenton for her fans and for posterity.

After a botched Halloween ritual, Madison Spencer, the snarkiest dead girl in the universe, finds herself trapped in Purgatory, otherwise known as Earth. The upside: She is no longer subject to physical limitations (she can pass through doors and walls). The downside: Well, she’s still dead.

The daughter of a narcissistic film star and a billionaire, Madison is abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas, while her parents are off touting their new projects and adopting more orphans. She dies over the holiday of a mari­juana overdose - and the next thing she knows, she’s in Hell.

To his chagrin, Alaskan PI Cecil Younger learns his teenage daughter has launched her own detective agency. But when her first case goes awry, she’s going to need some help from an unlikely source: her father, who’s currently locked up in prison.

She’s a fashion model who has everything: a boyfriend, a career, a loyal best friend. But when a sudden freeway "accident" leaves her disfigured and incapable of speech, she goes from being the beautiful center of attention to being an invisible monster, so hideous that no one will acknowledge she exists. Enter Brandy Alexander, Queen Supreme, one operation away from becoming a real woman, who will teach her that reinventing yourself means erasing your past and making up something better. And that salvation hides in the last places you’ll ever want to look.

What happens when the world’s greatest literary icon dies before she finishes the final book in her best-selling series? And what happens when she leaves that book in the hands of her unstable, neurotic daughter, who swears she’s not a real writer? Sara Grayson is a 32-year-old greeting card writer about to land the toughest assignment of her life. Three weeks after the death of her mother - a world-famous suspense novelist - Sara learns that her mother’s dying wish is for her to write the final book in her best-selling series.

When Chet the dog, "the most lovable narrator in all of crime fiction" (Boston Globe), and his partner, PI Bernie Little of the desert-based Little Detective Agency, arrive to a meeting with hydrologist Wendell Nero, they are in for a shocking sight - Wendell has come to a violent and mysterious end. What did the hydrologist want to see them about? Is his death a random robbery, or something more? Chet and Bernie, working for nothing more than an eight-pack of Slim Jims, are on the case.

Spencer Quinn's Heart of Barkness is the latest in the New York Times best-selling series that the Los Angeles Times called "nothing short of masterful".

Dr. Siri Paiboun, the ex-national coroner of Laos, may have more experience dissecting bodies than making art, but when he manages to smuggle a fancy movie camera into the country he devises a plan to shoot a Lao adaptation of War and Peace. The only problem? The Ministry of Culture must approve the script first. That and he can't figure out how to turn on the camera. Meanwhile, the skeleton of a woman has appeared under the Anusawari Arch in the middle of the night. Siri assists his friend, the newly promoted Senior Police Inspector Phosy Vongvichai, with the ensuing investigation.

Sunshine State trivia buff Serge A. Storms loves eliminating jerks and pests. His drug-addled partner Coleman loves cartoons. Hot stripper Sharon Rhodes loves cocaine, especially when purchased with rich dead men's money. On the other hand, there's Sean and David, who love fishing and are kind to animals - and who are about to cross paths with a suitcase filled with $5 million in stolen insurance money. Serge wants the suitcase. Sharon wants the suitcase. Coleman wants more drugs... and the suitcase.

Ensconced in a lovely tropical villa on idyllic Triggerfish Lane, Jim Davenport anticipates the good life to come. But this isn't living -- it's Florida, and the neighborhood is not quite what it seems. It's got overly aggressive Little League parents, drug-free Rastafarians, homicidal hookers, unnatural sex and casual violence. Oh, yes, and there's a psychopathic serial killer-cum-Sunshine-State folklorist named Serge A. Storms living directly across the street.

With her phenomenally popular Miss Julia series, author Ann B. Ross has graced the New York Times and other best seller lists on her way to capturing the hearts of her many dedicated fans. Miss Julia, a graceful Southern lady with impeccable manners and a penchant for problem solving, has become a beloved heroine for countless admirers.

Expert satirist Benjamin Cheever, author of Famous After Death, uses his dark sense of humor to deliver another searing look at suburbia. Literary editor Stuart Cross and his wife Andie, a film critic, hire the talented Louise to be nanny to their two young girls. Louise’s perfection, however, begins to irritate the ambitious, but less accomplished Stuart and Andie, and soon the parents’ jealousy gets the better of them.

After a catfight at a stuffy historical society meeting nearly kills her career, Bubbles is given just one week to prove her worth to her editors at the News-Times and earn a real job there by cracking her biggest story ever: uncovering who really murdered Carol Weaver’s steel-executive husband with cyanide-tipped fingernails.

There's a different schemer or slimeball behind every door: cocaine duckpins who have survived only by the dumbest fortune, hard-luck gigolos desperate to score, undercover cops busting undercover cops who are running sting operations on undercover cops.

Sassy and quirky, with heaping doses of paranormal romance, MaryJanice Davidson's New York Times best-selling Queen Betsy series sinks its teeth into fans and never lets go. Here Betsy must return the body of her werewolf friend Antonia to her own kind in Cape Cod. And who knows how the wolves will greet her. Then there's her half-sister - the devil's own daughter - who is feeling her oats and beginning to raise a little hell.