Audiobooks by James McBride

Deacon King Kong: The New York Times and Oprah's Book Club Pick

Brought to you by Penguin. THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK From the winner of a National Book Award and author of The Good Lord Bird, soon to be a TV series starring Ethan Hawke The year is 1969. In a housing project in south Brooklyn, a shambling old church deacon called Sportscoat shoots - for no apparent reason - the local drug-dealer who used to be part of the church's baseball team. The repercussions of that moment draw in the whole community, from Sportscoat's best friend - Hot Sausage - to the local Italian mobsters, the police (corrupt and otherwise), and the stalwart ladies of the Five Ends Baptist Church. DEACON KING KONG is a book about a community under threat, about the ways people pull together in an age when the old rules are being rewritten. It is very funny in places, and heartbreaking in others. From a prize-winning storyteller, this New York Times bestseller shows us that not all secrets are meant to be hidden, and that the communities we build are fragile but vital. 'Deacon King Kong is deeply felt, beautifully written and profoundly humane; McBride's ability to inhabit his characters' foibled, all-too-human interiority helps transform a fine book into a great one' The New York Times Book Review 'A hilarious, pitch-perfect comedy set in the Brooklyn projects of the late 1960s. This alone may qualify it as one of the year's best novels.' The Washington Post What Goodreads readers are saying: ***** 'Deacon King Kong is one of those novels whose brilliance sneaks up on you. I haven't been this pleasantly surprised by a book in a while.' ***** 'I do believe I just finished one of my all time favorite books. I loved every minute spent with Sportcoat and his community. A good old fashioned yarn shot through with truth, spirit, and humor. I LOVED it!' ***** 'This book was a balm for my soul, a portrait of a black church community circa 1969 with sweet characters (well, most of them), interconnections that stretch back decades, and a plot with more than one mystery at its heart.' ***** ''Deacon' has the texture of folk lore and fable mixed with the unexpected rhythms of jazz and the noisy streets of late 1960s Brooklyn.' ***** 'The ending was one of those where you clutch your heart and want to hug the book (or your Kindle).' © James McBride 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

James McBride, James Mcbride (Author), Dominic Hoffman (Narrator)

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Five-Carat Soul

Exciting new fiction from James McBride, the first since his National Book Award-winning novel The Good Lord Bird. The stories in Five-Carat Soul-none of them ever published before-spring from the place where identity, humanity, and history converge. They're funny and poignant, insightful and unpredictable, imaginative and authentic-all told with McBride's unrivaled storytelling skill and meticulous eye for character and detail. McBride explores the ways we learn from the world and the people around us. An antiques dealer discovers that a legendary toy commissioned by Civil War General Robert E. Lee now sits in the home of a black minister in Queens. Five strangers find themselves thrown together and face unexpected judgment. An American president draws inspiration from a conversation he overhears in a stable. And members of The Five-Carat Soul Bottom Bone Band recount stories from their own messy and hilarious lives. As McBride did in his National Book award-winning The Good Lord Bird and his bestselling The Color of Water, he writes with humor and insight about how we struggle to understand who we are in a world we don't fully comprehend. The result is a surprising, perceptive, and evocative collection of stories that is also a moving exploration of our human condition.

James McBride (Author), Arthur Morey, Dominic Hoffman, Nile Bullock, Prentice Onayemi (Narrator)

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Kill 'Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul

National Book Award winner James McBride goes in search of the "real" James Brown after receiving a tip that promises to uncover the man behind the myth. His surprising journey illuminates not only our understanding of this immensely troubled, misunderstood, and complicated soul genius but the ways in which our cultural heritage has been shaped by Browns legacy. Kill Em and Leave is more than a book about James Brown. Browns rough-and-tumble life, through McBrides lens, is an unsettling metaphor for American life: the tension between North and South, black and white, rich and poor. McBrides travels take him to forgotten corners of Browns never-before-revealed history: the country town where Browns family and thousands of others were displaced by Americas largest nuclear power bomb-making facility; a South Carolina field where a long-forgotten cousin recounts, in the dead of night, a fuller history of Browns sharecropping childhood, which until now has been a mystery. McBride seeks out the American expatriate in England who co-created the James Brown sound, visits the trusted right-hand manager who worked with Brown for forty-one years, and interviews Browns most influential nonmusical creation, his "adopted son," the Reverend Al Sharpton. He describes the stirring visit of Michael Jackson to the Augusta, Georgia, funeral home where the King of Pop sat up all night with the body of his musical godfather, spends hours talking with Browns first wife, and lays bare the Dickensian legal contest over James Browns estate, a fight that has consumed careers; prevented any money from reaching the poor schoolchildren in Georgia and South Carolina, as instructed in his will; cost Browns estate millions in legal fees; and left James Browns body to lie for more than eight years in a gilded coffin in his daughters yard in South Carolina. James McBride is one of the most distinctive and electric literary voices in America today, and part of the pleasure of his narrative is being in his presence, coming to understand Brown through McBrides own insights as a black musician with Southern roots. Kill Em and Leave is a song unearthing and celebrating James Browns great legacy: the cultural landscape of America today. Praise for Kill Em and Leave "The definitive look at one of the greatest, most important entertainers, The Godfather, Da Number One Soul Brother, Mr. Please, Please Himself - JAMES BROWN." - Spike Lee "Please, please, please: Can anybody tell us who and what was James Brown? At last, the real deal: James McBride on James Brown is the matchup weve been waiting for, a musician who came up hard in Brooklyn with JB hooks lodged in his brain, a monster ear for the truth, and the chops to write it. This is no celeb bio but a compelling personal quest - so very timely, angry, hilarious, and as irresistible as any James Brown beat." - Gerri Hirshey, author of Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music "An unconventional and fascinating portrait of Soul Brother No. 1 and the significance of his rise and fall in American culture." - Kirkus Reviews From the Hardcover edition.

James McBride (Author), Dominic Hoffman (Narrator)

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The Color of Water

The New York Times bestselling story from the author of The Good Lord Bird, winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction. Who is Ruth McBride Jordan? A self-declared "light-skinned" woman evasive about her ethnicity, yet steadfast in her love for her twelve black children. James McBride, journalist, musician, and son, explores his mother's past, as well as his own upbringing and heritage, in a poignant and powerful debut, The Color Of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother. The son of a black minister and a woman who would not admit she was white, James McBride grew up in "orchestrated chaos" with his eleven siblings in the poor, all-black projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn. "Mommy," a fiercely protective woman with "dark eyes full of pep and fire," herded her brood to Manhattan's free cultural events, sent them off on buses to the best (and mainly Jewish) schools, demanded good grades, and commanded respect. As a young man, McBride saw his mother as a source of embarrassment, worry, and confusion-and reached thirty before he began to discover the truth about her early life and long-buried pain. In The Color of Water, McBride retraces his mother's footsteps and, through her searing and spirited voice, recreates her remarkable story. The daughter of a failed itinerant Orthodox rabbi, she was born Rachel Shilsky (actually Ruchel Dwara Zylska) in Poland on April 1, 1921. Fleeing pogroms, her family emigrated to America and ultimately settled in Suffolk, Virginia, a small town where anti-Semitism and racial tensions ran high. With candor and immediacy, Ruth describes her parents' loveless marriage; her fragile, handicapped mother; her cruel, sexually-abusive father; and the rest of the family and life she abandoned. At seventeen, after fleeing Virginia and settling in New York City, Ruth married a black minister and founded the all- black New Brown Memorial Baptist Church in her Red Hook living room. "God is the color of water," Ruth McBride taught her children, firmly convinced that life's blessings and life's values transcend race. Twice widowed, and continually confronting overwhelming adversity and racism, Ruth's determination, drive and discipline saw her dozen children through college-and most through graduate school. At age 65, she herself received a degree in social work from Temple University. Interspersed throughout his mother's compelling narrative, McBride shares candid recollections of his own experiences as a mixed-race child of poverty, his flirtations with drugs and violence, and his eventual self- realization and professional success. The Color of Water touches readers of all colors as a vivid portrait of growing up, a haunting meditation on race and identity, and a lyrical valentine to a mother from her son.

James McBride (Author), J. D. Jackson, Jd Jackson, Susan Denaker (Narrator)

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The Good Lord Bird

Winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction A Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, Oprah Magazine Top 10 Book of the Year "A magnificent new novel by the best-selling author James McBride." -cover review of The New York Times Book Review "Outrageously entertaining." -USA Today "James McBride delivers another tour de force" -Essence "So imaginative, you'll race to the finish." -NPR.org "Wildly entertaining.- 4-star People lead review A boisterous, highly entertaining, altogether original novel." - Washington Post From the bestselling author of The Color of Water and Song Yet Sung comes the story of a young boy born a slave who joins John Brown's antislavery crusade-and who must pass as a girl to survive. Henry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1857, when the region is a battleground between anti- and pro-slavery forces. When John Brown, the legendary abolitionist, arrives in the area, an argument between Brown and Henry's master quickly turns violent. Henry is forced to leave town-with Brown, who believes he's a girl. Over the ensuing months, Henry-whom Brown nicknames Little Onion-conceals his true identity as he struggles to stay alive. Eventually Little Onion finds himself with Brown at the historic raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859-one of the great catalysts for the Civil War. An absorbing mixture of history and imagination, and told with McBride's meticulous eye for detail and character, The Good Lord Bird is both a rousing adventure and a moving exploration of identity and survival.

James McBride (Author), Michael Boatman (Narrator)

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Song Yet Sung

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Good Lord Bird, winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction, and Kill 'Em and Leave, a James Brown biography. In the days before the Civil War, a runaway slave named Liz Spocott breaks free from her captors and escapes into the labyrinthine swamps of Maryland's eastern shore, setting loose a drama of violence and hope among slave catchers, plantation owners, watermen, runaway slaves, and free blacks. Liz is near death, wracked by disturbing visions of the future, and armed with the Code, a fiercely guarded cryptic means of communication for slaves on the run. Liz's flight and her dreams of tomorrow will thrust all those near her toward a mysterious, redemptive fate. Filled with rich, true details-much of the story is drawn from historical events-and told in McBride's signature lyrical style, Song Yet Sung is a story of tragic triumph, violent decisions, and unexpected kindness.From the Trade Paperback edition.

James McBride (Author), Leslie Uggams (Narrator)

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