Audiobooks narrated by Mauro Hantman

The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World

Our relentless drive to create makes us unique among living creatures. What is special about the human brain that enables us to innovate? Why don't cows choreograph dances? Why don't squirrels build elevators to their treetops? Why don't alligators invent speedboats? Weaving together the arts and sciences, neuroscientist David Eagleman and composer Anthony Brandt explore the need for novelty, the simulation of possible futures, and the social components that drive the inventiveness of our species. Taking us on a tour of human creativity from Picasso to concept cars to umbrellas to lunar travel, Brandt and Eagleman explore the cognitive software that generates new ideas, and illuminate the key facets of a creative mentality. Through understanding our ability to innovate - our most profound, mysterious, and deeply human capacity - we can meet the challenge of remaking our constantly shifting world.

Anthony Brandt, David Eagleman (Author), Mauro Hantman (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Runaway Species

Our ability to remake our world is unique among all living things. But where does our creativity come from, how does it work, and how can we harness it to improve our lives, schools, businesses, and institutions? The Runaway Species is a deep-dive into the creative mind, a celebration of the human spirit, and a vision of how we can improve our future by understanding and embracing our ability to innovate. Composer Anthony Brandt and neurologist David Eagleman seek to discover what lies at the heart of humanity's ability-and drive-to create. Examining hundreds of examples of human creativity, Brandt and Eagleman draw out what creative acts have in common and view them through the lens of cutting-edge neuroscience, uncovering the essential elements of this critical human ability and encouraging a more creative future for all of us.

David Eagleman (Author), Mauro Hantman (Narrator)

Audiobook

Friendly Fire

Drafted into the US Army, Michael Mullen left his family's Iowa farm in September 1969 to fight for his country in Vietnam. Six months later, Michael was killed, not by the North Vietnamese, but by artillery fire from friendly forces. With the government failing to provide the precise circumstances of his death, Mullen's devastated parents, Peg and Gene, demanded to know the truth. A year later, Peg Mullen was under FBI surveillance. In a riveting narrative that moves from the American heartland to the jungles of Vietnam, to an interview with Mullen's battalion commander, Lt. Col. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Bryan brings to life a military mission gone wrong, a family's explosive confrontation with their government, and the tragedy of a nation at war with itself.

C. D. B. Bryan, C. D.B. Bryan (Author), Mauro Hantman (Narrator)

Audiobook

Man in the Empty Suit

Say you’re a time traveler and you’ve already toured the entirety of human history. After a while, the outside world might lose a little of its luster. That’s why this time traveler celebrates his birthday partying with himself. Every year, he travels to an abandoned hotel in New York City in 2071, the hundredth anniversary of his birth, and drinks twelve-year-old Scotch (lots of it) with all the other versions of who he has been and who he will be. Sure, the party is the same year after year, but at least it’s one party where he can really, well, be himself. The year he turns thirty-nine, though, the party takes a stressful turn for the worse. Before he even makes it into the grand ballroom for a drink he encounters the body of his forty-year-old self, dead of a gunshot wound to the head. As the older versions of himself at the party point out, the onus is on him to figure out what went wrong—he has one year to stop himself from being murdered, or they’re all goners. As he follows clues that he may or may not have willingly left for himself, he discovers rampant paranoia and suspicion among his younger selves, and a frightening conspiracy among the elders. Most complicated of all is a haunting woman possibly named Lily who turns up at the party this year, the first person besides himself he’s ever seen at the party. For the first time, he has something to lose. Here’s hoping he can save some version of his own life. “Narrator Mauro Hantman recounts this offbeat, paradoxical saga with convincing, amusing, and disturbing portrayals of the nameless protagonist’s many selves. It's particularly amusing to hear Hantman’s delivery of his younger and elder selves criticizing each other. The verbal contrast he provides for the protagonist and grumpy, alcoholic Phil, who become friends, is striking. An uncommon plot and unconventional writing make audio the perfect vehicle for sample this oddball adventure—a treat for those who like mind-bending fiction.”—AudioFile

Sean Ferrell (Author), Mauro Hantman (Narrator)

Audiobook

Accelerated

Every afternoon Sean Benning picks up his son, Toby, on the marble steps that lead into the prestigious Bradley School. Everything at Bradley is accelerated—third graders read at the sixth grade level, they have labs and facilities to rival most universities, and the chess champions are the bullies. A single dad and struggling artist, Sean sticks out like a sore thumb amongst the power-soccer-mom cliques and ladies-who-lunch that congregate on the steps every afternoon. But at least Toby is thriving and getting the best education money can buy. Or is he? When Sean starts getting pressure from the school to put Toby on medication for ADD, something smells fishy, and it isn’t the caviar that was served at last week’s PTA meeting. Toby’s “issues” in school seem, to Sean, to be nothing more than normal behavior for an eight-year-old boy. But maybe Sean just isn’t seeing things clearly, which has been harder and harder to do since Toby’s new teacher, Jess, started at Bradley. And the school has Toby’s best interests at heart, right? But what happens when the pressure to not just keep up, but to exceed, takes hold? When things take a tragic turn, Sean realizes that the price of this accelerated life is higher than he could have ever imagined. “What starts off as an entertaining romp through the world of privileged parents and private schools spins itself into a harrowing tale. A deftly, unexpectedly terrifying first novel.”—A. M. Homes, author of May We Be Forgiven

Bronwen Hruska (Author), Mauro Hantman (Narrator)

Audiobook

Jack's Book: An Oral Biography of Jack Kerouac

The classic and fascinating story of Jack Kerouac, "King of the Beats" and American literary legend, recorded through the voices of his friends and lovers. Authors Barry Gifford and Lawrence Lee retraced Kerouac's life at home and on the road and talked with the prophets, musicians, poets, socialites, and working people who knew him. Some are famous (Allen Ginsberg, Gore Vidal, William Burroughs); some are not (Jack's boyhood buddies, his lovers, his barroom companions). All have contributed to a remarkably vibrant, riveting portrait of a life. We see Jack at Columbia University and on the scene of Greenwich Village; speeding across the tarmac of America with Neal Cassidy ("Dan Moriarty" in Kerouac's classic novel, On the Road); at home with his possessive mother; in California, drinking wine and talking Buddhism; and finally, in Florida, where his life ends tragically at forty-seven years old. Jack's Book, like Kerouac's novels, makes a unique contribution to our understanding of a man and a generation that shaped the dreams and visions of those who followed.

Barry Gifford, Lawrence Lee (Author), Mauro Hantman (Narrator)

Audiobook

Immobility

You open your eyes for what you know is not the first time and you remember nothing. You find out that a catastrophic event known as the Kollaps has destroyed life as we know it. Someone claiming to be your friend tells you that you're needed. Something crucial has been stolen-but under no circumstances can you know what or why. You've got to get it back or something bad is going to happen. And you've got to get it back fast, so they can freeze you again before your own time runs out. Paralyzed from the waist down, you're being carried around on the backs of two men who don't seem anything like you at all. Who inject you regularly and tell you it's for your own good...to stop the disease, or else they must cut directly into your spine. Welcome to the life of Josef Horkai....Critically acclaimed and O. Henry prize-winning author Brian Evenson turns his literary eye to a post-apocalyptic earth in this dazzling science fiction novel.

Brian Evenson (Author), Mauro Hantman (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Funny Man: A Novel

The funny man is a middling comic in an unnamed city. By day he takes care of his infant son, by night he performs in small clubs, sandwiched between other aspiring comics. His wife waits tables to support the family. It doesn't sound like much, but they're happy, more or less. Until the day he comes up with it. His thing. His gimmick. And everything changes. He's a headliner, and the venues get bigger fast. Pretty soon it's Hollywood and a starring role in a blockbuster, all thanks to the gimmick. Which is: He performs with his fist in his mouth to the wrist. Jokes, impressions, commercials--all with his fist in his mouth to the wrist. The people want him--are crazy for him--but only with his fist in his mouth. And the funny man, he is tired of having his fist in his mouth. And so, the novel begins, his career's in tatters, his family's left him, and he's on trial for shooting an unarmed man six times. But for the second time in his life, against all odds, he's found love. This time with another celebrity, who may or may not be sending him coded messages, and may or may not be equally in love--or even know he exists. A coruscating satire of our culture of celebrity, The Funny Man documents one individual's slide from everyman to monster, even as it reveals the potential for grace--and mercy--in his life.

John Warner (Author), Mauro Hantman (Narrator)

Audiobook

A Kiss Before Dying

A Kiss Before Dying not only debuted the talent of best-selling novelist Ira Levin to rave reviews, it also set a new standard in the art of mystery and suspense. Now a modern classic, as gripping in its tautly plotted action as it is penetrating in its exploration of a criminal mind, it tells the shocking tale of a young man who will stop at nothing—not even murder—to get where he wants to go. For he has dreams; plans. He also has charm, good looks, sex appeal, intelligence. And he has a problem. Her name is Dorothy; she loves him, and she’s pregnant. The solution may demand desperate measures. But, then, he looks like the kind of guy who could get away with murder. Compellingly, step by determined step, the novel follows this young man in his execution of one plan he had neither dreamed nor foreseen. Nor does he foresee how inexorably he will be enmeshed in the consequences of his own extreme deed. “The book is a succession of quite legitimate surprises, the suspense is admirably sustained, the detail is thorough and convincing, and the writing is considerably above the level usually associated with fictional crime and passion. A pleasure to recommend.” --The New Yorker

Ira Levin (Author), Mauro Hantman (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks Narrated by Mauro Hantman