Audiobooks narrated by Michael Goldstrom

Unwritten Rules: Genesis Online, Book 1 Audiobook

Kevin was a young man enjoying his college life when a car jumped the curb and crippled his body. Unable to support himself and dependent on others to meet his needs, Kevin was slipping into depression when his best friend convinced him to play a new game called Genesis Online. The concept was simple: a revolutionary artificial intelligence controlled the game world and adapted it to the actions of the players. Even the developers didn't know what course the game could take as it evolved. Lured into the game by the prospect of earning real money, Kevin soon runs afoul of a man determined to control as much of Genesis as possible. He recruits other disenfranchised players to his side in his quest to find a way to prosper in the game. Can they stop the man who calls himself the king of Genesis from taking over everything?

Adam Horne (Author), Michael Goldstrom (Narrator)

Audiobook

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Behave by Robert Sapolsky, read by Michael Goldstrom. THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER / WINNER OF THE 2017 LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE Why do human beings behave as they do? We are capable of savage acts of violence but also spectacular feats of kindness: is one side of our nature destined to win out over the other? Every act of human behaviour has multiple layers of causation, spiralling back seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, even centuries, right back to the dawn of time and the origins of our species. In the epic sweep of history, how does our biology affect the arc of war and peace, justice and persecution? How have our brains evolved alongside our cultures? This is the exhilarating story of human morality and the science underpinning the biggest question of all: what makes us human? 'Awe-inspiring... You will learn more about human nature than in any other book I can think of' Henry Marsh 'One of the best scientist-writers of our time' Oliver Sacks

Robert M Sapolsky, Robert M. Sapolsky (Author), Michael Goldstrom (Narrator)

Audiobook

Gabriel Finley and the Lord of Air and Darkness

This exciting, emotionally rich middle grade fantasy continues the adventures of Gabriel Finley and the Raven's Riddle-which has been compared to Harry Potter, The Mysterious Benedict Society, and Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials. Gabriel Finley is longing to find his mother, who vanished without a trace when he was just a baby. Along with Gabriel's raven, Paladin-with whom he has a magical bond that enables them to become one creature and FLY!-and his three friends, he ventures back to the ruined underground city of Aviopolis to free her from the rune in which she has been imprisoned. But Aviopolis is home to Corax, the Lord of Air and Darkness, who is also Gabriel's uncle. And before Tabitha Finley is released, Gabriel must answer a riddle...or else be imprisoned for eternity within a rune himself. Praise for Gabriel Finley and the Raven's Riddle: "Both startling and moving-a vivid, compelling fantasy." -Norton Juster, author of The Phantom Tollbooth "Enchanting." -Pseudonymous Bosch, The New York Times "A great read for fantasy lovers who have worn out their copies of Harry Potter." -School Library Journal, Starred "A first-rate fantasy for middle-grade readers. Like Harry Potter,...Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series,...and Trenton Lee Stewart's Mysterious Benedict Society books." -Booklist, Starred "Not to be missed." -Publishers Weekly, Starred

George Hagen (Author), Michael Goldstrom (Narrator)

Audiobook

Refugee

A tour de force from acclaimed author Alan Gratz (Prisoner B-3087), this timely and powerful novel tells the story of three different children seeking refuge. JOSEF is a Jewish boy living in 1930s Nazi Germany. With the threat of concentration camps looming, he and his family board a ship bound for the other side of the world . . . ISABEL is a Cuban girl in 1994. With riots and unrest plaguing her country, she and her family set out on a raft, hoping to find safety in America . . . MAHMOUD is a Syrian boy in 2015. With his homeland torn apart by violence and destruction, he and his family begin a long trek toward Europe . . . All three kids go on harrowing journeys in search of refuge. All will face unimaginable dangers -- from drownings to bombings to betrayals. But there is always the hope of tomorrow. And although Josef, Isabel, and Mahmoud are separated by continents and decades, shocking connections will tie their stories together in the end. Alan Gratz (Prisoner B-3087, Projekt 1065) delivers an action-packed novel that tackles topics both timely and timeless: courage, survival, and the quest for home.

Alan Gratz (Author), Assaf Cohen, Kyla Garcia, Michael Goldstrom (Narrator)

Audiobook

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

It's no exaggeration to say that Behave is one of the best nonfiction books I've ever read.' David P. Barash,The Wall Street Journal From the celebrated neurobiologist and primatologist, a landmark, genre-defining examination of human behavior, both good and bad, and an answer to the question:Why do we do the things we do? Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: he starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy. And so the first category of explanation is the neurobiological one. A behavior occurs--whether an example of humans at our best, worst, or somewhere in between. What went on in a person's brain a second before the behavior happened? Then Sapolsky pulls out to a slightly larger field of vision, a little earlier in time: What sight, sound, or smell caused the nervous system to produce that behavior? And then, what hormones acted hours to days earlier to change how responsive that individual is to the stimuli that triggered the nervous system? By now he has increased our field of vision so that we are thinking about neurobiology and the sensory world of our environment and endocrinology in trying to explain what happened. Sapolsky keeps going: How was that behavior influenced by structural changes in the nervous system over the preceding months, by that person's adolescence, childhood, fetal life, and then back to his or her genetic makeup? Finally, he expands the view to encompass factors larger than one individual. How did culture shape that individual's group, what ecological factors millennia old formed that culture? And on and on, back to evolutionary factors millions of years old. The result is one of the most dazzling tours d'horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted, a majestic synthesis that harvests cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines to provide a subtle and nuanced perspective on why we ultimately do the things we do...for good and for ill. Sapolsky builds on this understanding to wrestle with some of our deepest and thorniest questions relating to tribalism and xenophobia, hierarchy and competition, morality and free will, and war and peace. Wise, humane, often very funny, Behave is a towering achievement, powerfully humanizing, and downright heroic in its own right.

Robert M. Sapolsky (Author), Michael Goldstrom (Narrator)

Audiobook

Letterman: The Last Giant of Late Night

New York Times comedy critic Jason Zinoman delivers the definitive story of the life and artistic legacy of David Letterman, the greatest television talk show host of all time and the signature comedic voice of a generation. In a career spanning more than thirty years, David Letterman redefined the modern talk show with an ironic comic style that transcended traditional television. While he remains one of the most famous stars in America, he is a remote, even reclusive, figure whose career is widely misunderstood. In Letterman, Jason Zinoman, the first comedy critic in the history of the New York Times, mixes groundbreaking reporting with unprecedented access and probing critical analysis to explain the unique entertainer’s titanic legacy. Moving from his early days in Indiana to his retirement, Zinoman goes behind the scenes of Letterman’s television career to illuminate the origins of his revolutionary comedy, its overlooked influences, and how his work intersects with and reveals his famously eccentric personality. Zinoman argues that Letterman had three great artistic periods, each distinct and part of his evolution. As he examines key broadcasting moments—"Stupid Pet Tricks" and other captivating segments that defined Late Night with David Letterman—he illuminates Letterman’s relationship to his writers, and in particular, the show’s co-creator, Merrill Markoe, with whom Letterman shared a long professional and personal connection. To understand popular culture today, it’s necessary to understand David Letterman. With this revealing biography, Zinoman offers a perceptive analysis of the man and the artist whose ironic voice and caustic meta-humor was critical to an entire generation of comedians and viewers—and whose singular style ushered in new tropes that have become clichés in comedy today.

Jason Zinoman (Author), Michael Goldstrom (Narrator)

Audiobook

Tell Me How This Ends Well: A Novel

Why is tonight different from all other nights? Tonight we kill dad. In 2022, American Jews face an increasingly unsafe and anti-Semitic landscape at home. Against this backdrop, the Jacobson family gathers for Passover in Los Angeles. But their immediate problems are more personal than political, with the three adult children, Mo, Edith, and Jacob, in various states of crisis, the result, each claims, of a lifetime of mistreatment by their father, Julian. The siblings have begun to suspect that Julian is hastening their mother Roz's demise, and years of resentment boil over as they debate whether to go through with the real reason for their reunion: an ill-considered plot to end their father’s iron rule for good. That is, if they can put their bickering, grudges, festering relationships, and distrust of one another aside long enough to act. And God help them if their mother finds out . . . Tell Me How This Ends Well presents a blistering and prescient vision of the near future, turning the exploits of one very funny, very troubled family into a rare and compelling exploration of the state of America, and what it could become.

David Samuel Levinson (Author), Michael Goldstrom (Narrator)

Audiobook

Archangel

Archangel is the second installment of the explosive, pulse-pounding Spectre War science fiction series. An enemy you can't kill. A soldier who can't fight. An interstellar war that can't be won—until now. As a soldier of the Celestial Expanse, Guardian First Class Michael Sorenson knows better than anyone that when the Spectres invade, there are only two options—run or die. However, his defensive war takes on a whole new spin when he’s recruited into Division 7, a research and development facility with the ultimate mission: to create a large-scale weapon that can kill Spectres en masse. Here Michael joins a team of military elite who have the daring—and dangerous—task of taking new weapons prototypes out into the field for testing on enemy troops. Yet the closer they come to developing a working WMD, the more it becomes clear: there’s a saboteur in R&D. With all signs pointing to a massive Spectre attack brewing on the horizon, the creation of a new weapons system yields an opportunity to end the threat once and for all. As the days count down toward its launch, Michael must hunt down the saboteur…before the saboteur kills again.

Margaret Fortune (Author), Alex McKenna, Michael Goldstrom (Narrator)

Audiobook

Mikhail and Margarita: A Novel

It is 1933 and Mikhail Bulgakov's enviable career is on the brink of being dismantled. His friend and mentor, the poet Osip Mandelstam, has been arrested, tortured, and sent into exile. Meanwhile, a mysterious agent of the secret police has developed a growing obsession with exposing Bulgakov as an enemy of the state. To make matters worse, Bulgakov has fallen in love with the dangerously candid Margarita. Facing imminent arrest, and infatuated with Margarita, he is inspired to write his masterpiece, The Master and Margarita, a scathing novel critical of both power and the powerful. Ranging between lively readings in the homes of Moscow's literary elite to the Siberian Gulag, Mikhail and Margarita recounts a passionate love triangle while painting a portrait of a country whose towering literary tradition is at odds with a dictatorship that does not tolerate dissent. Margarita is a strong, idealistic, seductive woman who is fiercely loved by two very different men, both of whom will fail in their attempts to shield her from the machinations of a regime hungry for human sacrifice. Debut novelist Julie Lekstrom Himes launches a rousing defense of art and the artist during a time of systematic deception, and she movingly portrays the ineluctable consequences of love for one of history's most enigmatic literary figures.

Julie Lekstrom Himes (Author), Michael Goldstrom (Narrator)

Audiobook

Rift: The Complete Rift Saga: Books 1-3

From the ruins of what used to be North America, a new nation was forged by survivors of the Fall. They called this new nation the Covenant, and two centuries later, it is stronger than ever. The Moon people, descendants of lunar colonists who returned to Earth to rebuild it, rule with an iron fist, to ensure their dominance over the original inhabitants, the English. For the Covenant is a nation where a chosen few prosper at the cost of everyone else, and while the English are forced to serve their masters their entire lives, the Moon people have mastered the greatest secret, the secret of life itself. In the Rift Saga we follow Sue and Dave, two English teens sent off to serve, Evan, a soldier and a member of one of the most prominent families of the Moon people, and Mark, the oldest man on Earth, as they find themselves in the midst of events, uncovering conspiracies that have kept the Moon people in power ever since they left their dusty refuge behind. Sooner or later, in different ways, they will all find that lies and deception can only work for so long, and sooner or later the truth will be unveiled. What will happen once the veil of lies unravels? The Rift Saga takes place more than two centuries after the events of Exodus, in a dystopian society forged from the ashes of global disaster. The Complete Rift Saga consists of Rift (Book 1), Covenant (Book 2), and Legacy (Book 3).

Andreas Christensen (Author), Michael Goldstrom (Narrator)

Audiobook

I Survived #04: I Survived the Bombing of Pearl Harbor, 1941

Seventy years later, Pearl Harbor comes to life for a new generation of readers! History's most terrifying moments are brought vividly to life in the action-packed fictional I SURVIVED series! Do you have what it takes to survive ... the bombing of Pearl Harbor? Eleven-year-old Danny Crane is alone on his favorite beach in Hawaii when the world is torn apart and World War II officially hits the United States. Does he have what it takes to find his way home in the midst of the bombs, the smoke, and the destruction of the day that will live in infamy?

Lauren Tarshis (Author), Michael Goldstrom (Narrator)

Audiobook

Confessions of an Imaginary Friend

A TIME magazine Top 10 Children's Book of 2015The whimsical 'autobiography' of an imaginary friend who doesn't know he'simaginary--perfect for fans of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane and Toy StoryJaques Papier has the sneaking suspicion that everyone except his sister Fleur hates him. Teachers ignore him when his hand is raised in class, he is never chosen for sports teams, and his parents often need to be reminded to set a place for him at the dinner table. But he is shocked when he finally learns the truth: He is Fleur's imaginary friend! When he convinces Fleur to set him free, he begins a surprising and touching, and always funny quest to find himself--to figure out who Jacques Papier truly is, and where he belongs.Readers will fall in love with Jacque's sweet, quirky voice as he gives them a look at life from an incredible new perspective From the Hardcover edition.

Michelle Cuevas (Author), Michael Goldstrom (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks Narrated by Michael Goldstrom