Publisher Description
“Riveting, original, and chillingly plausible, Kill Show is both an urgent reckoning with the ethics of true crime and a tense mystery in its own right. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.”—Flynn Berry, Edgar Award–winning author of Northern Spy
When sixteen-year-old Sara Parcell goes missing, it’s an utter tragedy—and an entertaining national obsession—in this thoughtful and addictively readable novel that offers a fresh and provocative take on whodunits and true crime.
Sara Parcell disappeared without a trace on a crisp April morning in Frederick, Maryland. Her tragic story was a national obsession and the centerpiece of a controversial television docuseries that followed her disappearance in real time. But is it possible that everyone missed the biggest secret of all?
Ten years after these events, the people who knew Sara best are finally ready to talk. In this genre-bending novel, Daniel Sweren-Becker fashions an oral history around the seemingly familiar crime of a teenage girl gone missing. Yet Kill Show, filled with diabolical twists and provocative social commentary, is no standard mystery. Through “interviews” with family members, neighbors, law enforcement, television executives, and a host of other compelling characters, Sweren-Becker constructs a riveting tale about one family’s tragedy—and Hollywood’s insatiable desire to exploit it.
By revealing the seedy underbelly of the true crime entertainment machine, Kill Show probes literary territory beyond the bounds of the standard whodunit; it’s a thoughtful exploration into America’s obsession with the mysteries, cold cases, and violent tales we turn to for comfort. Groundbreaking, fast-moving, and informed, this is a novel about who’s really responsible for the tragedies we love to consume.
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“An ensemble of wildly talented narrators elevate this fictional true-crime case told through first-person interviews…Robert Fass’s narration is made to sound like a telephone call, a device that creates a more immersive experience for listeners. Melissa Redmond’s assertive performance embodies a gusty TV producer who turns the case into a media spectacle…A compelling audio with a winning combination of narrators. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
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AudioFile
About the Narrators
Byron Wagner is an audiobook narrator and voiceover artist based in Los Angeles. He began his career in entertainment at age eight, performing as a magician and ventriloquist for children’s parties, then graduated to theater, radio, TV, and film. After living in the UK for several years, his continuing love of acting and reading have happily led him back to the other side of the studio glass, doing voice acting and narrating, directing, and producing audiobooks.
Fred Sanders, an actor and Earphones Award–winning narrator, has received critics’ praise for his audio narrations that range from nonfiction, memoir, and fiction to mystery and suspense. He been seen on Broadway in The Buddy Holly Story, in national tours for Driving Miss Daisy and Big River, and on such television shows as Seinfeld, The West Wing, Will and Grace, Numb3rs,Titus, and Malcolm in the Middle. His films include Sea of Love, The Shadow, and the Oscar-nominated short Culture. He is a native New Yorker and Yale graduate.
Robert Fass is a veteran actor and twice winner of the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. He has earned multiple Earphones Awards and been named in AudioFile magazine’s list of the year’s best narrations for six years.
Xe Sands has more than a decade of experience bringing stories to life through narration, performance, and visual art, including recordings of the Nightwalkers series from Jaquelyn Frank. She has received several honors, including AudioFile Earphones Awards and a coveted Audie Award, and she was named Favorite Debut Romance Narrator of 2011 in the Romance Audiobooks poll.
Christine Lakin is an Earphones Award–winning narrator and acclaimed television actress, best known for her roles as Alicia “Al” Lambert on the hit family comedy Step by Step and as Joan of Arc on Showtime’s Reefer Madness.
Fred Sanders, an actor and Earphones Award–winning narrator, has received critics’ praise for his audio narrations that range from nonfiction, memoir, and fiction to mystery and suspense. He been seen on Broadway in The Buddy Holly Story, in national tours for Driving Miss Daisy and Big River, and on such television shows as Seinfeld, The West Wing, Will and Grace, Numb3rs,Titus, and Malcolm in the Middle. His films include Sea of Love, The Shadow, and the Oscar-nominated short Culture. He is a native New Yorker and Yale graduate.
J. Michael Straczynski is a New York Times bestselling and award-winning author who has written hundreds of hours of television, major motion pictures, and graphic novels. He is the widely acclaimed creator of Babylon 5, cocreator of Netflix’s Sense8, and writer for Clint Eastwood’s Changeling, which was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Screenplay. His other awards include two Hugo Awards, the SFWA Ray Bradbury Award, the Eisner Award, the American Cinema Foundation E Pluribus Unum Award, the Indie Book Award, the GLAAD Media Award, the Eagle Award, two Emmy Awards, and the SDCC Icon Award. The author of Together We Will Go, Becoming Superman, and Becoming a Writer, Staying a Writer, Straczynski lives in California.
Robert Fass is a veteran actor and twice winner of the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. He has earned multiple Earphones Awards and been named in AudioFile magazine’s list of the year’s best narrations for six years.
Pun Bandhu is an award-winning actor who has worked on Broadway, off Broadway, in TV, and in film. He is the recipient of the Colorado Theatre Guild’s Henry Award for Best Supporting Actor and New Dramatists’ Bowden Award for his distinguished collaboration on new works.
James Langton, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, trained as an actor at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and later as a musician at the Guildhall School in London. He has worked in radio, film, and television, also appearing in theater in England and on Broadway. He is also a professional musician who led the internationally renowned Pasadena Roof Orchestra from 1996 to 2002.