Audiobooks narrated by Raymond J. Lee

Influenced: The Impact of Social Media on Our Perception

Unpacks and pulls the curtain back on what happens to our brains and our behaviors each time we addictively engage social media and the influencers we encounter there. Individuals seeking to widen their tribes of friends, fans, and followers have an abundance of resources for building their digital footprints and social media popularity. All of this seems well and good from the perspective of revenue, exposure, and perhaps ego-building, but what is the impact of this on the human brain and our behavior? Is anyone paying attention to the lurking side effects of the social media influencer revolution? As "Dr. Brian" Boxer Wachler-one of the world's most esteemed authorities on human perception-reveals in Influenced: The Impact of Social Media on Our Perception, we are oblivious to the mental evolution that is already in process. Science is proving that our addictive reliance upon social media and its influencers is having a demonstrable impact on how we think, feel, and perceive everything around us- and even how we react to stimuli. One might think that a "Like" is nothing more than a split-second tap on a device. However, brain scans tell a different story. Our brains literally light up with every buzz, ding, alert, and ring in anticipation of how our network is responding to us. As we tap away at our devices, we anxiously seek the approval of others-often people we don't know. Influenced unpacks what happens to our brains and our behaviors each time we click "Like"; follow an influencer; consume a video; share or reshare an article; post or repost a photograph; write a comment; pile on a trend;; just scroll for new content; and why do we keep coming back for more. Dr. Boxer Wachler includes his own social and medical findings and highlights them with interviews with top influencers, the latest studies, and pop-culture anecdotes.

Brian Boxer Wachler (Author), Brian Boxer Wachler, Raymond J. Lee (Narrator)

Audiobook

House of a Thousand Lies

Diana Wolf likes to think she has it all: a rock-god husband, an empty nest, a wine cellar, and a dream home in the woods. Life is good. It has to be. But when she hires a cartographer, Kerry Perkins, to survey and map her estate in rural Tennessee, she pulls back a frayed corner of the lie that is her fairytale life. On his first night at Wolf Hollow, Kerry stumbles across a young girl's skeleton buried in the woods. But what really scares Diana is a familiar symbol carved into the girl’s skull: two wolves. A week later, the cops are digging in her backyard. Diana begins to question how good her life really is. How good of a man is her husband and how good a father? She’s not the only one with questions. Kerry Perkins can’t shake what he saw in the woods that night. He suspects that Diana recognized that symbol, that she lied to the police, that someone is watching him, and that whoever it is, they desperately want him to keep his mouth shut. His search for answers leads him to Pink, a deeply disturbed man obsessed with the Wolfs’ celebrity. Pink knows the family better than they know themselves—and he knows that the more he and Kerry dig, the more bones they will find. Told through the eyes of multiple narrators, none reliable, this is a story about parents, the lies they tell their children, and the lies they tell themselves.

Cody Luke Davis (Author), Bailey Carr, David Bendena, J. D. Jackson, Nick Mondelli, Raymond J. Lee, Romy Nordlinger, Seth Podowitz (Narrator)

Audiobook

Happy at Any Cost: The Revolutionary Vision and Fatal Quest of Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh

From award-winning Wall Street Journal reporters, "a startling portrait of one of our greatest tech visionaries, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh" (Robert Kolker, author of Hidden Valley Road), reporting on his short life and untimely death and what they mean for our culture's pursuit of happiness. Tony Hsieh—CEO of Zappos, Las Vegas developer, and all-around beloved entrepreneur—was famous for spreading happiness. He lived and breathed this philosophy, instilling an ethos of joy at his company and outlining his vision for a better workplace in his New York Times bestseller Delivering Happiness. He promoted a workplace where bosses treated employees like family members, where stress was replaced by playfulness, and where hierarchies were replaced with equality and collaboration. His outlook shaped Silicon Valley and the larger business world. Hsieh used his position at work to integrate levity into a normally competitive environment. He aspired to build his own utopian cities, pouring millions of dollars into real estate and small businesses, first in downtown Las Vegas, Nevada—where Zappos was headquartered—and then in Park City, Utah. He gave generously to his employees and close friends, including throwing infamous Zappos parties and organizing gatherings at his home, an Airstream trailer park. When Hsieh died suddenly in November of 2020, the news shook the business and tech world. Wall Street Journal reporters Kirsten Grind and Katherine Sayre quickly realized the importance of the story because of Hsieh's stature in the industry, but as they dug into the details of his final months, they realized there was a bigger story to tell. They found that Hsieh's obsession with happiness masked his darker struggles with addiction, mental health, and loneliness. In the last year of his life, he spiraled out of control, cycling out of rehab and into the waiting arms of friends who enabled his worst behavior, even as he bankrolled them from his billion-dollar fortune. Happy at Any Cost sheds light on one of the most venerated, yet vulnerable, business leaders of our time. It's about our culture's intense need to find "happiness" at all costs, our misguided worship of entrepreneurs, the stigmas still surrounding mental health, and how the trappings of fame can mask all types of deeper problems. In turn, it reveals how we conceptualize success—and define happiness—in our modern age.

Kirsten Grind (Author), Raymond J. Lee (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Damage Done

Imagine a world devoid of violence-a world where fists can't hit, guns don't kill, and bombs can't destroy. In this tantalizing novel of possibility, this has-suddenly and inexplicably-become our new reality. The U.S. president must find a new way to wage war. The Pope ponders whether the Commandment "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is still relevant. A dictator takes his own life after realizing that the violence he used to control his people is no longer an option. In the first days after the change, seven people who have experienced violence struggle to adapt to this radical new paradigm: Dab, a bullied middle schooler; Marcus, a high-school student whose brother is the last victim of gun violence in America; Ann, a social worker stuck in an abusive marriage; Richard, a professor whose past makes him expect the worst in the present; Gabriela, who is making a dangerous border crossing into the U.S.; the Empty Shell, a dissident writer waiting to be tortured in a notorious prison; and Julian, a white supremacist plotting a horrific massacre. As their fates intertwine, the promise and perils of this new world begin to take shape. Although violence is no longer possible, mindless cruelty is still alive and well-and those bent on destruction still seek the means to achieve it. For fans of Ben Winters and Sarah Pinsker, this mind-bending and thought-provoking novel pushes the limits of fiction, questioning the violence sewn into our DNA.

Michael Landweber (Author), Anna Caputo, Cary Hite, Dominique Franceschi, Dominique Franceschi-Cybulski, Gary Bennett, J. D. Jackson, Raymond J. Lee, Senn Annis, Zac Aleman (Narrator)

Audiobook

Cold: A Novel

A boy, a body, a girl, a secret. From award-winning author Mariko Tamaki, Cold is a haunting YA audiobook about a shocking murder in a quiet town and four students who knew too much and said too little. This is the story of a boy who died—and a girl who wants to know why. Todd Mayer is dead. Now he's some sort of ghost, hovering over his body, which has just been found in the town park, naked and frozen in the snow. As detectives investigate Todd's homicide, talking to the very people who are responsible for how he died, Todd replays the events that lead him to his end in the park. Georgia didn't know Todd. But she can’t stop thinking about him. Maybe because they’re both outcasts at their school, or because they’re both queer. It might also be because Georgia has a feeling she’s seen Todd somewhere before, somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be. In the vein of The Lovely Bones, this dual narrative is told through the voices of Todd in his afterlife and Georgia as she uncovers the truth behind his death, resulting in an immersive, emotional, and provocative listen. A Macmillan Audio production from Roaring Brook Press

Mariko Tamaki (Author), Katharine Chin, Raymond J. Lee (Narrator)

Audiobook

League of Liars

In this fantasy thriller, four teens charged with murder and caught up with the illegal use of magic band together to devise the ultimate jailbreak. Perfect for fans of Six of Crows and How to Get Away with Murder. Ever since his mother was killed, seventeen-year-old Cayder Broduck has had one goal-to see illegal users of magic brought to justice. People who carelessly use extradimensional magic for their own self-interest, without a care to the damage it does to society or those around them, deserve to be punished as far as Cayder is concerned. Because magic always has a price. So when Cayder lands a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to apprentice under a premier public defender, he takes it. If he can learn all the tricks of public defense, the better he'll be able to dismantle defense arguments when he's a prosecutor. Then he'll finally be able to make sure justice is served. But when he meets the three criminals he's supposed to defend, it no longer seems so black and white. They're teenagers, like him, and their stories are . . . complicated, like his. Vardean, the prison where Cayder's new clients are incarcerated, also happens to be at the very heart of the horrible tear in the veil between their world and another dimension-where all magic comes from. League of Liars is a dark and twisty mystery set in a richly-drawn world where nothing is as it seems, rife with magic, villains and danger.

Astrid Scholte (Author), Emily Shaffer, Graham Halstead, Raymond J. Lee, Susan Bennett (Narrator)

Audiobook

Once a Bitcoin Miner: Scandal and Turmoil in the Cryptocurrency Wild West

There is the Bitcoin story of the headlines, but there is a more important one behind them: tangled plots sprawling like roots deep underground, entire worlds in which we are just passersby. In Once a Bitcoin Miner, journalist and author Ethan Lou takes listeners on a richly told first-person narrative through the proverbial cryptocurrency Wild West. From investing in Bitcoin in university to his time writing for Reuters, and then mining the digital asset, Lou meets the late Gerald Cotten (of QuadrigaCX) and a co-founder of Ethereum and hangs out in North Korea with Virgil Griffith, the man later arrested for allegedly teaching blockchain to the totalitarian state. Coming of age during the 2008 financial crisis, Lou's generation has a natural affinity with this rebel internet money, this so-called millennial gold, created in the wake of that economic storm. At once a personal story of adventure and fortune, this book is also a work of journalistic rigor, a deep dive into this domain that everyone hears about yet nobody truly knows and into the lives of the fast-talkers, the exiles, the ambitious, and the daring, forging their paths in a new world harsh and unpredictable.

Ethan Lou (Author), Raymond J. Lee (Narrator)

Audiobook

My Brilliant Life

“A moving, earnest, and deeply-felt exploration of a unique family in all its joys and disappointments . . . an utter delight.” —Claire Lombardo, New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had Ae-ran Kim's My Brilliant Life explores family bonds and out-of-the-ordinary friendships, interweaving the past and present of a tight-knit family, finding joy and happiness in even the most difficult times. Areum lives life to its fullest, vicariously through the stories of his parents, conversations with Little Grandpa Jang—his sixty-year-old neighbor and best friend—and through the books he reads to visit the places he would otherwise never see. For several months, Areum has been working on a manuscript, piecing together his parents’ often embellished stories about his family and childhood. He hopes to present it on his birthday, as a final gift to his mom and dad; their own falling-in-love story. Through it all, Areum and his family will have you laughing and crying, for all the right reasons. A Macmillan Audio production from Forge Books “This novel snuck up on me and captured my heart.” —Margarita Montimore, USA Today bestselling author of Oona Out of Order

Ae-Ran Kim (Author), Raymond J. Lee (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Mermaid from Jeju

In the aftermath of World War II, Goh Junja is a girl just coming into her own. She is the latest successful deep-sea diver in a family of strong haenyeo. Confident she is a woman now, she urges her mother to allow her to make their annual trip to Mt. Halla, where they trade sea delicacies for pork. A sea-village girl, Junja has never been to the mountains, where it smells like mushrooms and earth, and it is there she falls in love with mountain-boy Yang Suwol, who rescues her after a particularly harrowing journey. But when Junja returns one day later, it is just in time to see her mother take her last breath, beaten by the waves during a dive she was taking in Junja's place.Spiraling in grief, Junja sees her younger siblings sent to live with their estranged father, Suwol gone, and the ghost of her mother haunting their home-from the meticulously tended herb garden that has begun sprouting weeds to the field where their bed sheets are beaten. She has only her grandmother and herself. But the world moves on without Junja. The political climate is perilous. Still reeling from Japan's forced withdrawal from the peninsula, Korea is forced to accommodate the rapid establishment of US troops, and Junja's grandmother, who lived through the Japanese invasion that led to Korea's occupation, understands the signs of danger all too well. When Suwol is arrested for working with and harboring communists, Junja must learn to navigate a tumultuous world unlike anything she's ever known.

Sumi Hahn (Author), Cindy Kay, Raymond J. Lee (Narrator)

Audiobook

Frankly in Love

Brought to you by Penguin. Frank Li is a high school senior living in Southern California. Frank's parents emigrated from Korea, and have pretty much one big rule for Frank - he must only date Korean girls. But he's got strong feelings for a girl in his class, Brit - and she's not Korean. His friend Joy Song is in the same boat and knows her parents will never accept her boyfriend, so they make a pact: they'll pretend to date each other in order to gain their freedom. Frank thinks fake-dating is the perfect plan, but it leaves him wondering if he ever really understood love - or himself - at all. David Yoon's debut novel is a quirky, authentic, heartbreaking romantic comedy and a refreshingly different take on race, immigrant communities, friendship and family.

David Yoon (Author), Raymond J. Lee (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Ruler's Guide :China's Greatest Emperor and His Timeless Secrets of Success

In the classic tradition of Sun Tzu's The Art of War, here for the first time in English is the timeless wisdom of China's greatest emperor Tang Taizong (598-649 AD), which is still being studied more than 1300 years later as an invaluable guide to leading and managing. Tang Taizong is arguably the greatest Emperor in Chinese history. In Asia, many historians rank him with such rulers as Augustus, Genghis Khan, and Napoleon. When he founded the Tang dynasty, Taizong was only twenty-eight years old, and his chief accomplishments were on the battlefield, where he personally slew 1,000 of the enemy. Ultimately, he would defeat the descendants of Attila the Hun, open up the Silk Road trading route, create a golden age of prosperity and cosmopolitan culture, preside over a society in which women enjoyed higher status, and allow Christianity and Islam into China for the first time as well as introduce Buddhism into Tibet. His dynasty would last 300 years. Here, author Chinghua Tang presents conversations between Taizong and his gifted advisers that reveal core aspects of leadership, among them: how to appraise oneself and assess others, how to enhance organizational effectiveness, how to compete with rivals, how to grow power and influence without losing the respect of others, how to learn from the rise and fall of predecessors, and how to craft one's legacy. An indispensable guide that is as relevant for a middle-manager, military commander, or athletic coach as for a school principal, political leader, or over-stressed parent, The Ruler's Guide doesn't just reveal the insights that have kept Taizong's legacy alive, it spells out how that wisdom is a match for today's fast-paced, ever changing world.

Chinghua Tang (Author), Raymond J. Lee, Raymond Lee (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks Narrated by Raymond J. Lee