Audiobooks narrated by Jim Meskimen

A Confederate General from Big Sur Audiobook

California, 1957. Lee Mellon believes he is the descendant of the only Confederate general to have come from Big Sur and is himself a seeker of truth in his own modern-day war against the status quo. For the first time in audio, A Confederate General from Big Sur was the late Richard Brautigan's first published novel, written when he was twenty-eight.

Richard Brautigan (Author), Jim Meskimen (Narrator)

Audiobook

A Fatal Glass of Beer

This 'enjoyable lark' is a road-trip mystery with an old Hollywood backdrop, starring PI Toby Peters and the great comic W. C. Fields (Library Journal). Under names like Otis J. Raisincluster, Quigley E. Sneersight, and Cormorant Beecham III, W. C. Fields squirreled away nearly a million dollars in banks across the country during his vaudeville days-before he became one of the silver screen's most recognizable funnymen. But it's no laughing matter when a burglar has the audacity to rob him blind, stealing his bankbooks and cleaning out his accounts. Steaming, the comedian hires Hollywood private investigator Toby Peters to track down the missing dough and protect what remains of his nest egg. On a cross-country road trip through small-town 1940s America, a frequently inebriated Fields and a frequently exasperated Peters encounter complications in the form of the Amish, John Barrymore, and the Ku Klux Klan. But can they catch their elusive quarry-Lester O. Hipnoodle?

Stuart M. Kaminsky (Author), Jim Meskimen, Jim Meskimen (Narrator)

Audiobook

A Few Minutes Past Midnight

PI Toby Peters comes to the aid of Charlie Chaplin when the Little Tramp becomes a big target in this 'ingenious' mystery from the Edgar Award winner (Kirkus Reviews). In 1943, Charlie Chaplin is far from the most popular man in America. His communist sympathies and romantic indiscretions with young women have enraged everyone from right-wing radicals and the Ku Klux Klan to furious fathers. But when a knife-wielding intruder breaks into his house one night, the maniac isn't talking politics. He demands Chaplin stop making his latest black comedy about a man who murders wealthy women for their money-and specifically tells him to stay away from one Fiona Sullivan. Who? Chaplin turns to the shamus to the stars, Toby Peters, to keep him from harm and apprehend his nocturnal visitor. Peters's lead on Fiona comes from a most unlikely source-his landlady, Mrs. Irene Plaut, knows the woman. Rallying his crew of diminutive Gunther Wherthman, wrestler Jeremy Butler, and dentist Sheldon Minck, Toby's determined to catch the midnight madman before Chaplin is silenced forever.

Stuart M. Kaminsky (Author), Jim Meskimen, Jim Meskimen (Narrator)

Audiobook

A History of the Future: A World Made by Hand Novel

A History of the Future is the third thrilling novel in Kunstler’s World Made by Hand series, an exploration of family and morality as played out in the small town of Union Grove. Following the catastrophes of the twenty-first century—the pandemics, the environmental disaster, the end of oil, the ensuing chaos—people are doing whatever they can to get by and pursuing a simpler and sometimes happier existence. In little Union Grove in upstate New York, the townspeople are preparing for Christmas. Without the consumerist shopping frenzy that dogged the holidays of the previous age, the season has become a time to focus on family and loved ones. It is a stormy Christmas Eve when Robert Earle’s son Daniel arrives back from his two years of sojourning throughout what is left of the United States. He collapses from exhaustion and illness, but as he recovers, he tells the story of the break-up of the nation into three uneasy independent regions and his journey into the dark heart of the new Foxfire Republic centered in Tennessee and led by the female evangelical despot Loving Morrow. In the background, Union Grove has been shocked by the Christmas Eve double murder by a young mother of her husband and infant son. Town magistrate Stephen Bullock is in a hanging mood. A History of the Future is attention-grabbing and provocative but also lyrical, tender, and comic—a vision of a future of America that is becoming more and more convincing, and perhaps even desirable, with each passing day. “Kunstler’s post-economic-collapse and postdigital A World Made by Hand series continues with increasing literary finesse in the third installment…Kunstler skewers everything from kitsch to greed, prejudice, bloodshed, and brainwashing in this wily, funny, rip-roaring, and profoundly provocative page-turner, leaving no doubt that the prescriptive yet devilishly satiric A World Made by Hand series will continue.”—Booklist (starred review)

James Howard Kunstler (Author), Jim Meskimen (Narrator)

Audiobook

A Man and His Presidents: The Political Odyssey of William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. is widely regarded as the most influential American conservative writer, activist, and organizer in the postwar era. In this nuanced biography, Alvin Felzenberg sheds light on little-known aspects of Buckley's career, including his role as back-channel adviser to policy makers, his intimate friendship with both Ronald and Nancy Reagan, his changing views on civil rights, and his break with George W. Bush over the Iraq War. Felzenberg demonstrates how Buckley conveyed his message across multiple platforms and drew upon his vast network of contacts, his personal charm, his extraordinary wit, and his celebrity status to move the center of political gravity in the United States closer to his point of view. Including many rarely seen photographs, this account of one of the most compelling personalities of American politics will appeal to conservatives, liberals, and even the apolitical.

Alvin S. Felzenberg (Author), Jim Meskimen (Narrator)

Audiobook

Act One: An Autobiography

Moss Hart’s Act One, which Lincoln Center Theater presented in 2014 as a play written and directed by James Lapine, is one of the greatest American memoirs—a glorious memorial to a bygone age filled with all the wonder, drama, and heartbreak that surrounded Broadway in the early twentieth century. Hart’s story inspired a generation of theatergoers, dramatists, and readers everywhere as he eloquently chronicled his impoverished childhood and his long, determined struggle to reach the opening night of his first Broadway hit. Act One is the quintessential American success story. “The ultimate Broadway memoir by the master who raised the bar for all of us.”—Julie Andrews

Moss Hart (Author), Jim Meskimen (Narrator)

Audiobook

Ai! Pedrito!

.It has been said that somewhere in the world you have an exact double. Thisrocket-ride of a novel ignites with the sudden cry of "Ai! Pedrito!",as Naval Lieutenant Tom Smith discovers that his exact look-alike is thenotorious South American revolutionary and spy, Pedrito Miraflores. Inspired bya real incident in the life of L. Ron Hubbard, "Ai! Pedrito!" is afun-to-read, compelling novel of what can sometimes happen when intelligencegoes wrong. -Mystery Scene A rollicking and unpredictable adventure through the world of spies and double agents, lovers and enemies (often one and same). It has been said that somewhere in the world you have an exact double. This rocket-ride of a novel ignites with the sudden cry of "Ai! Pedrito!", as Naval Lieutenant Tom Smith discovers that his exact look-alike is the notorious South American revolutionary and spy, Pedrito Miraflores. Inspired by a real incident in the life of L. Ron Hubbard, "Ai! Pedrito!" is a fun-to-read, compelling novel of what can sometimes happen when intelligence goes wrong. "All the fast pacing of James Bond and the adventure of Indiana Jones." Mystery Scene

Kevin J. Anderson, L. Ron Hubbard (Author), Jim Meskimen, R.F. Daley, Various, Various Narrators, Various Narrators (Narrator)

Audiobook

Alibaba: The House that Jack Ma Built

An engrossing, insider's account of how a teacher built one of the world's most valuable companies-rivaling Walmart & Amazon-and forever reshaped the global economy. In just a decade and half Jack Ma, a man from modest beginnings who started out as an English teacher, founded and built Alibaba into one of the world's largest companies, an e-commerce empire on which hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers depend. Alibaba's $25 billion IPO in 2014 was the largest global IPO ever. A Rockefeller of his age who is courted by CEOs and Presidents around the world, Jack is an icon for China's booming private sector and the gatekeeper to hundreds of millions of middle class consumers. Duncan Clark first met Jack in 1999 in the small apartment where Jack founded Alibaba. Granted unprecedented access to a wealth of new material including exclusive interviews, Clark draws on his own experience as an early advisor to Alibaba and two decades in China chronicling the Internet's impact on the country to create an authoritative, compelling narrative account of Alibaba's rise. How did Jack overcome his humble origins and early failures to achieve massive success with Alibaba? How did he outsmart rival entrepreneurs from China and Silicon Valley? Can Alibaba maintain its 80% market share? As it forges ahead into finance and entertainment, are there limits to Alibaba's ambitions? How does the Chinese government view its rise? Will Alibaba expand further overseas, including in the U.S.? Clark tells Alibaba's tale in the context of China's momentous economic and social changes, illuminating an unlikely corporate titan as never before.

Duncan Clark (Author), Jim Meskimen (Narrator)

Audiobook

American Happiness and Discontents: The Unruly Torrent, 2008-2020

Examine the ways in which expertise, reason, and manners are continually under attack in our institutions, courts, political arenas, and social venues with this collection from the Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative columnist. George F. Will has been one of this country's leading columnists since 1974. He won the Pulitzer Prize for it in 1977. The Wall Street Journal once called him "perhaps the most powerful journalist in America." In this new collection, he examines a remarkably unsettling thirteen years in our nation's experience, from 2008 to 2020. Included are a number of columns about court cases, mostly from the Supreme Court, that illuminate why the composition of the federal judiciary has become such a contentious subject. Other topics addressed include the American Revolutionary War, historical figures from Frederick Douglass to JFK, as well as a scathing assessment of how State of the Union Addresses are delivered in the modern day. Mr. Will also offers his perspective on American socialists, anti-capitalist conservatives, drug policy, the criminal justice system, climatology, the Coronavirus, the First Amendment, parenting, meritocracy and education, China, fascism, authoritarianism, Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys, and the morality of enjoying football. American Happiness and Discontents: The Unruly Torrent, 2008-2020 is a collection packed with wisdom and leavened by humor from one the preeminent columnists and intellectuals of our time.

George F. Will (Author), Jim Meskimen (Narrator)

Audiobook

American Underdog: Proof That Principles Matter

From David Brat, the college professor who made political headlines when he unseated Majority Leader Eric Cantor, comes his plan for restoring fiscal liberty for America. Congressman David Brat's odds-defying win against Eric Cantor--a triumph of a modest $200,000 campaign fund against a $5 million war chest--immediately brought David Brat, heretofore a liberal arts college economics professor, into the political limelight. Now, in his first book, AMERICAN UNDERDOG, Brat examines how we brought down the status quo by tapping into moral and economic lessons as old as our civilization and discusses how Washington can learn from history instead of ignoring it. A fighter for children, he illuminates how our current fiscal policies are selling their future, and outlines new ways to move forward with a conservative agenda that provides fairer treatment for all.

David Brat (Author), Jim Meskimen (Narrator)

Audiobook

An Unfortunate Woman: A Journey

This is Richard Brautigan's last novel, published posthumously in 2000, now in audio for the first time. Richard Brautigan was an original-brilliant and wickedly funny. His books resonated with the 1960s, making him an overnight counterculture hero. Taken in its entirety, his body of work reveals an artistry that outreaches the literary fads that so quickly swept him up. Dark, funny, and exquisitely haunting, his final book-length fiction explores the fragile, mysterious shadowland surrounding death. Told with classic Brautigan wit, poetic style, and mordant irony, An Unfortunate Woman assumes the form of a peripatetic journal chronicling the protagonist's travels and oblique ruminations on the suicide of one woman and the death of a close friend from cancer. After Richard Brautigan committed suicide, the manuscript of An Unfortunate Woman was found among his possessions by his only child, daughter Ianthe Brautigan. It had been completed over a year earlier but was still unpublished at the time of his death. Finding that it was too painful to face her father's presence page after page, she put the manuscript aside. Years later, having completed a memoir about her father's life and death, Ianthe Brautigan reread An Unfortunate Woman, and finally, clear-eyed, she saw that it was her father's work at its best and had to be published. "A semiautobiographical description of one man's experience of the classic symptoms of depression...Even so, Brautigan maintains his ironic humor and his ability to write clear, often crystalline prose...The reader cannot help being moved by this candid cri de coeur of a soul in anguish, and to his fans, these last words will be a book to treasure."-Publishers Weekly

Richard Brautigan (Author), Jim Meskimen (Narrator)

Audiobook

Backfire

San Francisco judge Ramsey Hunt, longtime friend to FBI agents Lacey Sherlock and Dillon Savich, begins the murder trial of Clive and Cindy Cahill only to have federal prosecutor Mickey O'Rourke, known for his relentless, aggressive style, suddenly turn tentative and distracted. Hunt suspects that something is very wrong - and then O'Rourke goes missing and Judge Hunt gets shot in the back. Savich and Sherlock receive news of the attack as a mysterious note is delivered to Savich at the Hoover Building: FOR WHAT YOU DID YOU DESERVE THIS. Who sent the note? What does it mean? As Ramsey Hunt's life hangs in the balance, Savich and Sherlock race to San Francisco to answer the question: Why would anyone shoot the judge? When they discover one answer, more questions arise until Savich and Sherlock face the final shock.

Catherine Coulter (Author), Deanna Hurst, Jim Meskimen (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks Narrated by Jim Meskimen