Audiobooks narrated by Janet Song

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon Audiobook

This stunning fantasy inspired by Chinese folklore is a companion novel to Starry River of the Sky and the New York Times bestselling and National Book Award finalist When the Sea Turned to Silver In the valley of Fruitless mountain, a young girl named Minli lives in a ramshackle hut with her parents. In the evenings, her father regales her with old folktales of the Jade Dragon and the Old Man on the Moon, who knows the answers to all of life's questions. Inspired by these stories, Minli sets off on an extraordinary journey to find the Old Man on the Moon to ask him how she can change her family's fortune. She encounters an assorted cast of characters and magical creatures along the way, including a dragon who accompanies her on her quest for the ultimate answer. Grace Lin, author of the beloved Year of the Dog and Year of the Rat returns with a wondrous story of adventure, faith, and friendship. A fantasy crossed with Chinese folklore, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is a timeless story reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz and Kelly Barnhill's The Girl Who Drank the Moon. Once again, she has created a charming, engaging book for young readers.

Grace Lin (Author), Janet Song (Narrator)

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Abandoned: America's Lost Youth and the Crisis of Disconnection

A deeply affecting exposé of America’s hidden crisis of disconnected youth, in the tradition of Matthew Desmond and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc For the majority of young adults today, the transition to independence is a time of excitement and possibility. But nearly five million young people—or a stunning 11.7 percent of youth aged sixteen to twenty-four—experience entry into adulthood as abrupt abandonment, a time of disconnection from school, work, and family. For this growing population of Americans, which includes kids aging out of foster care and those entangled with the justice system, life screeches to a halt when adulthood arrives. Abandoned is the first-ever exploration of this tale of dead ends and broken dreams. Journalist Anne Kim skillfully weaves heart-rending stories of young people navigating early adulthood alone, in communities where poverty is endemic and opportunities almost nonexistent. She then describes a growing awareness—including new research from the field of adolescent brain science—that “emerging adulthood” is just as crucial a developmental period as early childhood, and she profiles an array of unheralded programs that provide young people with the supports they need to achieve self-sufficiency. A major work of deeply reported narrative nonfiction, Abandoned joins the small shelf of books that change the way we see our society and point to a different path forward.

Anne Kim (Author), Janet Song (Narrator)

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Apple, Tree: Writers on Their Parents

It happens to us all: we think we've settled into an identity, a self, and then out of nowhere and with great force, the traces of our parents appear to us, in us-in mirrors, in gestures, in reaction and reactivity, at weddings and funerals, and in troubled thoughts that crouch in dark corners of our minds. In this masterful collection of new essays, the apple looks at the tree. Twenty-five writers deftly explore a trait they've inherited from a parent, reflecting on how it affects the lives they lead today-how it shifts their relationship to that parent (sometimes posthumously) and to their sense of self. Apple, Tree's all-star lineup of writers brings eloquence, integrity, and humor to topics such as arrogance, obsession, psychics, grudges, table manners, luck, and laundry. Contributors include Laura van den Berg, S. Bear Bergman, John Freeman, Jane Hamilton, Mat Johnson, Daniel Mendelsohn, Kyoko Mori, Ann Patchett, and Sallie Tisdale, among others. Together, their pieces form a prismatic meditation on how we make fresh sense of ourselves and our parents when we see the pieces of them that live on in us.

Lise Funderburg, Various Authors (Author), Bronson Pinchot, Dara Rosenberg, Elisabeth Rodgers, Feodor Chin, Janet Song, Kevin Kenerly, Kyla Garcia, Robin Miles, Steven Jay Cohen (Narrator)

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The Spirit of the Dragon

From the bestselling author of Daughters of the Dragon comes an epic novel of a star-crossed couple who must defy tradition, war, and prejudice to keep their love alive. At the urging of a Los Angeles detective, international rights lawyer Anna Carlson assists in a murder investigation. It’s a personal request from Suk-bo Yi, a ninety-nine-year-old woman questioned in a mysterious death at a Koreatown nursing home. A stranger to Anna, Suk-bo has a tale to tell. For reasons of her own, she’s chosen Anna—only Anna—to hear it… Suk-bo’s story begins in 1937, when the Japanese occupying Korea force her to marry one of their own, named Hisashi. In spite of their differences, they fall madly in love, pitting them against two violently opposing cultures. When Hisashi joins the Japanese Imperial Army and disappears, Suk-bo embarks on a quest through years of war, bigotry, and poverty to find him. But Suk-bo’s unfolding history reveals more than Anna can imagine: an heirloom comb bearing an intricately carved two-headed dragon binding her to Suk-bo’s past. Soon Anna will discover her own legacy at the heart of Suk-bo’s epic love story.

William Andrews (Author), Emily Woo Zeller, Janet Song (Narrator)

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Red Oblivion

When Jill Lau receives an early morning phone call that her elderly father has fallen gravely ill, she and her sister, Celeste, catch the first flight from Toronto to Hong Kong. The man they find languishing in the hospital is a barely recognizable shadow of his old indomitable self. According to his housekeeper, a couple of mysterious photographs arrived anonymously in the mail in the days before his collapse. These pictures are only the first link in a chain of events that begin to reveal the truth about their father's past and how he managed to escape from Guangzhou, China, during the Cultural Revolution to make a new life for himself in Hong Kong. Someone from the old days has returned to haunt him-exposing the terrible things he did to survive and flee one of the most violent periods of Chinese history, reinvent himself, and make the family fortune. Can Jill piece together the story of her family's past without sacrificing her father's love and reputation?

Leslie Shimotakahara (Author), Janet Song (Narrator)

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Marilyn and Me

'A beautifully woven page turner' Heather Morris, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz A gripping and heartwrenching novel of damage and survival, grief and unexpected solace, Marilyn and Me is a fascinating - and timely - insight into an extraordinary time and place How do you translate the present, when you can't let go of the past? It is the winter of 1954 and in the rubble-strewn aftermath of the Korean war Marilyn Monroe has come to Seoul to perform to the US soldiers stationed there. Incongruous in her silk dress and flawless makeup, she sings of seduction and love, dazzling battle-scarred Americans and Koreans alike. Alice, the woman chosen to be Marilyn's translator, was once Kim Ae-sun, before her name was stolen from her - along with so much else - by the war. With her prematurely grey hair, her fraying lace gloves and the memories that will engulf her if she lets them, Alice works as a typist for the US military. It is a job that has enabled her to survive, and to forget. As they travel across the country, over the four days of Marilyn's tour, the two women begin to form an unlikely friendship. But when Alice becomes embroiled in a sting operation involving the entrapment of a Communist spy she is forced to confront the past she has been trying so hard to escape.

Ji-Min Lee (Author), Janet Song (Narrator)

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Love in the New Millennium

The most ambitious work of fiction by a writer widely considered the most important novelist working in China today. In this darkly comic novel, a group of women inhabits a world of constant surveillance, where informants lurk in the flower beds and false reports fly. Conspiracies abound in a community that normalizes paranoia and suspicion. Some try to flee-whether to a mysterious gambling bordello or to ancestral homes that can be reached only underground through muddy caves, sewers, and tunnels. Others seek out the refuge of Nest County, where traditional Chinese herbal medicines can reshape or psychologically transport the self. Each life is circumscribed by buried secrets and transcendent delusions. Can Xue's masterful love stories for the new millennium trace love's many guises-satirical, tragic, transient, lasting, nebulous, and fulfilling-against a kaleidoscopic backdrop of commerce and industry, fraud and exploitation, and sex and romance drawn from the East and the West.

Can Xue (Author), Janet Song (Narrator)

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All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir

Nicole Chung was born severely premature, placed for adoption by her Korean parents, and raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town. From childhood, she heard the story of her adoption as a comforting, prepackaged myth. She believed that her biological parents had made the ultimate sacrifice in the hope of giving her a better life, that forever feeling slightly out of place was her fate as a transracial adoptee. But as Nicole grew up-facing prejudice her adoptive family couldn't see, finding her identity as an Asian American and as a writer, becoming ever more curious about where she came from-she wondered if the story she'd been told was the whole truth. With the same warmth, candor, and startling insight that has made her a beloved voice, Nicole Chung tells of her search for the people who gave her up, which coincided with the birth of her own child. All You Can Ever Know is a profound, moving chronicle of surprising connections and the repercussions of unearthing painful family secrets-vital reading for anyone who has ever struggled to figure out where they belong.

Nicole Chung (Author), Janet Song (Narrator)

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How I Became a North Korean: A Novel

Yongju is an accomplished student from one of North Korea's most prominent families. Jangmi has had to fend for herself since childhood, most recently by smuggling goods across the border. Danny is a Chinese-American teenager of North Korean descent whose quirks and precocious intelligence have long marked him as an outcast in his California high school. These three disparate lives converge when each of them travels to the region where China borders North Korea-Danny, to visit his mother, who is working as a missionary there, after a humiliating incident keeps him out of school; Yongju, to escape persecution after his father is killed at the hands of the Dear Leader himself; and Jangmi, to protect her unborn child. As they struggle to survive in a place where danger seems to close in on all sides, they come to form a kind of adopted family. But will Yongju, Jangmi, and Danny find their way to the better lives they risked everything for?

Krys Lee (Author), Janet Song (Narrator)

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The Dragon Queen

As tensions rise on the Korean peninsula, US diplomat Nate Simon is sent to Seoul to gauge the political situation and advise the president. He also needs to find out why someone sent the president an ancient, intricately carved comb with an ivory inlay of a two-headed dragon. Though familiar with Korea's language and culture, Nate knows little of its troubled history. Beautiful and mysterious embassy aide Anna Carlson believes it's time he learns, starting with the extraordinary story of Korea's last queen. Seoul, 1866. The beautiful orphan Ja-young is chosen to be the child bride of Gojong, Korea's boy king. Highly intelligent but shy, Ja-young faces a choice: she can be a stone queen-silent and submissive-or she can be a dragon queen and oppose enemies and empires that try to rule Korea during the age of Imperialism. Her choice leads her to forge a legend that will endure far beyond her lifetime. The more Nate discovers, the more he comes to realize that Queen Min's story is still relevant today. Now the choice is up to him: be submissive and accepting . . . or change the world.

William Andrews (Author), Janet Song, Todd McLaren (Narrator)

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Leftover in China: The Women Shaping the World's Next Superpower

Forty years ago in China, marriage was universal, compulsory, and a woman's only means to a livelihood. Enter the one-child policy, which despite its horrors, resulted in China's first generations of urban only-daughters?girls who were raised without brothers and pushed to study, achieve, and succeed as if they were sons. Fast forward to the present, where in an urbanized economic powerhouse, enough of these women have decided to postpone marriage?or not marry at all?to spawn a label: "leftovers." Unprecedentedly well-educated and goal-oriented, they struggle to find partners in a society where gender roles have not evolved as vigorously as the society itself. Part critique of China's paternalistic ideals, part playful portrait of the romantic travails of China's trailblazing women, Roseann Lake's Leftover in China employs colorful anecdotes, hundreds of interviews, and rigorous historical and demographic research to show how the "leftovers" are the ultimate linchpin to China's future.

Roseann Lake (Author), Janet Song (Narrator)

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The Language of Solitude: A Novel

Brooding expat and journalist Paul Leibovitz is beginning to imagine a new life for himself in Hong Kong, one in which the grief over a recent family tragedy doesn't consume him and his love for Christine Wu brings him great joy. When Christine gets an unexpected and emotionally-charged letter from her estranged brother, Paul journeys with her to a remote village outside Shanghai, where a mysterious illness is affecting the locals. Paul discovers a powerful chemical conglomerate is polluting a nearby lake, and Chinese officials are doing nothing to stop it. The victims demand justice, but taking legal action could prove even more dangerous than the strange disease itself. Government intimidation and political corruption threaten to suppress even the most passionate and audacious environmental activists. If Paul doesn't walk away, he could pull the woman he loves back into a world she escaped from decades ago-putting their relationship and their lives at risk. Suspenseful and rife with the page-turning storytelling that defines Sendker's remarkable work and harks back to The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, The Language of Solitude offers a peerless look into contemporary China. Translated by Christine Lo

Jan-Philipp Sendker (Author), George Newbern, Janet Song (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Janet Song