Asia Audiobooks | Travel

Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China

In the last days of old Peking, where anything goes, can a murderer escape justice? Peking in 1937 is a heady mix of privilege and scandal, opulence and opium dens, rumors and superstition. The Japanese are encircling the city, and the discovery of Pamela Werner's body sends a shiver through already nervous Peking. Is it the work of a madman? One of the ruthless Japanese soldiers now surrounding the city? Or perhaps the dreaded fox spirits? With the suspect list growing and clues sparse, two detectives-one British and one Chinese-race against the clock to solve the crime before the Japanese invade and Peking as they know it is gone forever. Can they find the killer in time, before the Japanese invade? Historian and China expert Paul French at last uncovers the truth behind this notorious murder, and offers a rare glimpse of the last days of colonial Peking.

Paul French (Author), Erik Singer (Narrator)

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Undefeated: America's Heroic Fight for Bataan and Corregidor

Called "a master of the combat narrative" (The Dallas Morning News), author Bill Sloan captures the valor, fortitude, and suffering of the American defenders of the Philippines as no other author has. Abandoned by their government, the men and women of the American garrison struggled against impossible military odds, rampant disease, and slow starvation to delay inevitable surrender by the largest American military force ever. Rather than picturing these defenders as little more than helpless victims of an overwhelmingly powerful and sadistic enemy-as most previous books about the Philippines campaign have done-Undefeated credits American troops with the unexcelled heroism and indomitable spirit they displayed under the worst imaginable conditions. Interwoven throughout this panoramic narrative are the harrowing personal experiences of dozens of American soldiers, airmen, and Marines. Sloan also provides intimate, in-depth profiles of General Douglas MacArthur, who evacuated to Australia as the situation on Bataan worsened, and of General Jonathan Wainwright, who succeeded him as top U.S. commander in the Philippines and himself became a prisoner of the Japanese.

Bill Sloan (Author), Michael Prichard (Narrator)

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The Secret Piano

Zhu Xiao-Mei was three years old when she saw her first piano, a cherished instrument introduced into her family's Beijing home by her mother. Soon after, the child began to play, developing quickly into a prodigy who immersed herself in the work of such classical masters as Bach and Brahms. Her astonishing proficiency earned her a spot at the Beijing Conservatory at the tender age of eleven, where she began laying the foundation for a promising career as a concert pianist. But in 1966, with the onset of the Cultural Revolution, life as she knew it ended abruptly. The Communist Party's campaign against culture forced the closure of art schools and resulted in the deportation of countless Chinese, including Xiao-Mei and her entire family. She spent five years in a work camp in Inner Mongolia, suffering under abysmal living conditions and a brutal brainwashing campaign. Yet through it all, Xiao-Mei kept her dream alive, drawing on the power of music to sustain her courage.

Zhu Xiao-Mei (Author), Nancy Wu (Narrator)

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Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War

Stephen R. Platt is widely respected for his incisive nonfiction, particularly in regard to his knowledge and understanding of China. With Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom, Platt details the absorbing narrative of the Taiping Rebellion, which resulted in the loss of 20 million lives. Occurring in the 1850s, this is the story of a cultural movement characterized by intriguing personages such as influential military strategist Zeng Guofan and brilliant Taiping leader Hong Rengan.

Stephen R. Platt (Author), Angela Lin (Narrator)

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Behind the Beautiful Forevers

In this brilliant, breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport. As India starts to prosper, the residents of Annawadi are electric with hope. Abdul, an enterprising teenager, sees a fortune beyond counting in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Meanwhile Asha, a woman of formidable ambition, has identified a shadier route to the middle class. With a little luck, her beautiful daughter, Annawadi's most-everything girl, might become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest children, like the young thief Kalu, feel themselves inching closer to their dreams. But then Abdul is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power, and economic envy turn brutal. With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects people to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, based on years of uncompromising reporting, carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century's hidden worlds and into the hearts of families impossible to forget. Winner of the National Book Award | The PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award | The Los Angeles Times Book Prize | The American Academy of Arts and Letters Award | The New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Book Award NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times The Washington Post O: The Oprah Magazine USA Today New York The Miami Herald San Francisco Chronicle Newsday NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New Yorker People Entertainment Weekly The Wall Street Journal The Boston Globe The Economist Financial Times Newsweek/The Daily Beast Foreign Policy The Seattle Times The Nation St. Louis Post-Dispatch The Denver Post Minneapolis Star Tribune Salon The Plain Dealer The Week Kansas City Star SlateTime Out New York Publishers Weekly NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A book of extraordinary intelligence [and] humanity . . . beyond groundbreaking. Junot Díaz, The New York Times Book ReviewReported like Watergate, written like Great Expectations, and handily the best international nonfiction in years. New YorkThis book is both a tour de force of social justice reportage and a literary masterpiece. Judges' Citation for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award [A] landmark book. The Wall Street Journal A triumph of a book. Amartya Sen There are books that change the way you feel and see; this is one of them. Adrian Nicole LeBlanc [A] stunning piece of narrative nonfiction . . . [Katherine] Boo's prose is electric. O: The Oprah Magazine Inspiring, and irresistible . . . Boo's extraordinary achievement is twofold. She shows us how people in the most desperate circumstances can find the resilience to hang on to their humanity. Just as important, she makes us care. People

Katherine Boo (Author), Sunil Malhotra (Narrator)

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The Rape of Nanking

In December 1937, one of the most brutal massacres in the long annals of wartime barbarity occurred in the capital of China. The Japanese army swept into Nanking and not only looted and burned the defenseless city but systematically raped, tortured, and murdered half of the city's remaining population, some 300,000 Chinese civilians. Amazingly, the account of this atrocity was denied by the Japanese government. The Rape of Nanking tells the story from three perspectives: that of the Japanese soldiers who performed it, of the Chinese civilians who endured it, and finally, that of a group of Europeans and Americans who refused to abandon the city and were able to create a safety zone that saved almost 300,000 Chinese. Among these was John Rabe, the tireless German leader of the rescue effort, whom Iris Chang called the "Oskar Schindler of China." "Compelling in its emotional breadth, impressive in its intellectual width. From the first page, it seizes hold of your emotional and intellectual centers and will not loosen its grip until the last page, if even then."-Ventura Star

Iris Chang (Author), Anna Fields (Narrator)

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The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II

In December 1937, one of the most brutal massacres in the long annals of wartime barbarity occurred in the capital of China. The Japanese army swept into Nanking and not only looted and burned the defenseless city but systematically raped, tortured, and murdered half of the city's remaining population, some 300,000 Chinese civilians. Amazingly, the account of this atrocity was denied by the Japanese government. The Rape of Nanking tells the story from three perspectives: that of the Japanese soldiers who performed it, that of the Chinese civilians who endured it, and finally, that of a group of Europeans and Americans who refused to abandon the city and were able to create a safety zone that saved almost 300,000 Chinese. Among these was John Rabe, the tireless German leader of the rescue effort, whom Iris Chang called the "Oskar Schindler of China."

Iris Chang (Author), Anna Fields (Narrator)

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Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power

On the world maps common in America, the Western Hemisphere lies front and center, while the Indian Ocean region all but disappears. This convention reveals the geopolitical focus of the now-departed twentieth century, but in the twenty-first century that focus will fundamentally change. In this pivotal examination of the countries known as "Monsoon Asia"—which include India, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, Burma, Oman, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Tanzania—bestselling author Robert D. Kaplan shows how crucial this dynamic area has become to American power. It is here that the fight for democracy, energy independence, and religious freedom will be lost or won, and it is here that American foreign policy must concentrate if the United States is to remain relevant in an ever-changing world. From the Horn of Africa to the Indonesian archipelago and beyond, Kaplan exposes the effects of population growth, climate change, and extremist politics on this unstable region, demonstrating why Americans can no longer afford to ignore this important area of the world.

Robert D. Kaplan (Author), John Pruden (Narrator)

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The Last Train from Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back

Drawing on the voices of atomic bomb survivors and the new science of forensic archaeology, Charles Pellegrino describes the events and aftermath of two days in August 1945 when nuclear devices detonated over Japan changed life on Earth forever. The Last Train from Hiroshima offers listeners a stunning "you are there" time capsule, gracefully wrapped in elegant prose. Charles Pellegrino's scientific authority and close relationship with the A-bomb's survivors make his account the most gripping and authoritative ever written. At the narrative's core are eyewitness accounts of those who experienced the atomic explosions firsthand—the Japanese civilians on the ground and the American fliers in the air. Thirty people are known to have fled Hiroshima for Nagasaki—where they arrived just in time to survive the second bomb. One of them, Tsutomu Yamaguchi, is the only person who experienced the full effects of the cataclysm at ground zero both times. The second time, the blast effects were diverted around the stairwell in which Yamaguchi had been standing, placing him and a few others in a shock cocoon that offered protection, while the entire building disappeared around them. Pellegrino weaves spellbinding stories together within a narrative that challenges the "official report," showing exactly what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki—and why.

Charles Pellegrino (Author), Arthur Morey (Narrator)

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Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

In Wild Swans Jung Chang recounts the evocative, unsettling, and insistently gripping story of how three generations of women in her family fared in the political maelstrom of China during the 20th century. Chang's grandmother was a warlord's concubine. Her gently raised mother struggled with hardships in the early days of Mao's revolution and rose, like her husband, to a prominent position in the Communist Party before being denounced during the Cultural Revolution. Chang herself marched, worked, and breathed for Mao until doubt crept in over the excesses of his policies and purges. Born just a few decades apart, their lives overlap with the end of the warlords' regime and overthrow of the Japanese occupation, violent struggles between the Kuomintang and the Communists to carve up China, and, most poignant for the author, the vicious cycle of purges orchestrated by Chairman Mao that discredited and crushed millions of people, including her parents.

Jung Chang (Author), Joy Omanski, Joy Osmanski (Narrator)

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Pearl Harbor: FDR Leads the Nation into War

Franklin D. Roosevelt famously called December 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy." History would prove him correct; the events of that day—when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor—ended the Great Depression, changed the course of FDR's presidency, and swept America into World War II. In Pearl Harbor, acclaimed historian Steven M. Gillon provides a vivid, minute-by-minute account of Roosevelt's skillful leadership in the wake of the most devastating military assault in American history. FDR proved both decisive and deceptive, inspiring the nation while keeping the real facts of the attack a secret from congressional leaders and the public. Pearl Harbor explores the anxious and emotional events surrounding the attack on Pearl Harbor, showing how the president and the American public responded in the pivotal twenty-four hours that followed, a period in which America burst from precarious peace into total war.

Steven M. Gillon (Author), John Pruden (Narrator)

Audiobook

Nanjing Requiem

Author Ha Jin's celebrated works have claimed several top literary awards, including three Pushcart Prizes. In Nanjing Requiem, the Japanese are poised to invade Nanjing. The dean of Jinling Women's College, Minnie Vautrin mistakenly believes her American citizenship will protect the school. But Vautrin's life becomes a daily struggle as the school becomes a refugee camp'and the slaughter of refugees begins.

Ha Jin (Author), Angela Lin (Narrator)

Audiobook

Asia Audiobooks in Travel