Quntos KunQuest has been incarcerated at Angola, the Louisiana State Penitentiary, since 1997. His new novel This Life (Bookshop|Amazon), which draws on his experiences there, has earned acclaim in The New Yorker. KunQuest’s characters are vividly rendered, and voice artist Sean Crisden does a superb job of bringing them to life in the audio version. Before the Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe and What Lies Beyond (Bookshop|Amazon), by cosmologist and theoretical physicist Laura Mersini-Houghton, is partly a memoir of her childhood and teenage years living under the totalitarian communist regime in Albania, and partly a discussion of her research into the possibility that our universe is just one of many multiverses. Voice artist Xe Sands brings a warmth and sure-footedness to the audio version, making even the most challenging scientific explanations a pleasure to listen to. This is part of a complete episode.
What makes a great first line of a book? How do the best authors put together an initial sentence that draws you in and makes you want to read more? We’re talking about the openings of such novels as George Orwell’s 1984...
To slip someone a mickey means to doctor a drink and give it to an unwitting recipient. The phrase goes back to Mickey Finn of the Lone Star Saloon in Chicago, who in the late 19th century was notorious for drugging certain customers and relieving...
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