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Speculative Los Angeles Audiobook
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Publisher Description
The debut title of a new city-based anthology series featuring stories with speculative, sci-fi, and paranormal themes
As an incubator of the future, Los Angeles has long mesmerized writers from Philip K. Dick to Aldous Huxley. With its natural disasters, Hollywood artifice, staggering wealth and poverty, urban sprawl, and diversity, one can argue that Los Angeles is already so weird, surreal, irrational, and mythic that any fiction emerging from this place should be considered speculative.
So, bestselling author Denise Hamilton commissioned some stories and did exactly that. In Speculative Los Angeles, fourteen of the city’s most prophetic voices reimagine the city in very different ways. In this audiobook, you’ll encounter twenty-first-century changelings, dirigibles plying the suburban skies, black holes and jacaranda men lurking in deep suburbia, beachfront property in Century City, walled-off canyons and coastlines reserved for the wealthy, psychic death cults, robot nursemaids, and an alternate LA where Spanish land grants never gave way to urbanization.
As with our city-based Akashic Noir Series, each story in Speculative Los Angeles is set in a distinct neighborhood filled with local color, landmarks, and flavor. Since the best speculative fiction provides a wormhole into other worlds while also commenting on our own, that is exactly what you’ll find here.
Featuring brand-new stories by: Aimee Bender, Lisa Morton, Alex Espinoza, Ben H. Winters, Denise Hamilton, Lynell George, Stephen Blackmoore, Francesca Lia Block, Charles Yu, Duane Swierczynski, Luis J. Rodriguez, A. G. Lombardo, Kathleen Kaufman, and S. Qiouyi Lu
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“Award-winning narrator Gabrielle de Cuir’s use of a robot voice in ‘Walk of Fame’ by Duane Swierczynski. She sounds like a machine—but so very human at the same time. Hard to do…Fresh and gritty.”
— AudioFile
Quotes
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“A thrill ride of grand ideas and warnings…A collection that wows the imagination like no other.”
— Michael Connelly, #1 New York Times bestselling author -
“Tales that are both wildly imaginative and emotionally grounded.”
— Los Angeles Times -
“Shows the breadth of worlds that can be created inside Los Angeles.”
— Los Angeles Daily News -
“Outstanding…Each story presents a fresh take on the magic and strangeness of LA past, present, and future…Readers should snap this up.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review) -
“An excellent collection of what-ifs that will pique readers’ imaginations.”
— Booklist -
“The stories here move among all of Los Angeles’ gritty and bright corners.”
— Kirkus Reviews -
“Speculative stories set in neighborhoods around Los Angeles…a particularly appropriate and broadly appealing place to begin the series, given its outsized role in the American imagination.”
— Shelf Awareness -
“Many [stories] have a distinctly gritty and postapocalyptic flavor that takes advantage of a uniquely LA vibe.”
— Library Journal
Awards
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A Publishers Weekly Pick of the Week
Speculative Los Angeles Listener Reviews
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About the Authors
Denise Hamilton is a writer-journalist whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Cosmopolitan, and the New York Times and is the author of five acclaimed Eve Diamond crime novels, Prisoner of Memory, Savage Garden, Last Lullaby, Sugar Skull, and The Jasmine Trade, all of which have been Los Angeles Times bestsellers. She is also the editor of and a contributor to the short story anthology Los Angeles Noir, winner of the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association Award for Best Mystery of 2007. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two young children.
Alex Espinoza was born in Tijuana, Mexico, the youngest of eleven children, and later migrated to Southern California with his family and grew up in La Puente, a suburb of Los Angeles. He earned a BA with honors from the University of California at Riverside and an MFA from the University of California at Irvine, where he was editor of the university’s literary magazine.
Aimee Bender is the author of several novels and story collections. The Butterfly Lampshade was longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Award in 2020. Her works have been widely anthologized and have been translated into sixteen languages.
Ben H. Winters is the author of World of Trouble, the concluding book in the Last Policeman trilogy. The second book, Countdown City, was an NPR Best Book of 2013 and the winner of the Philip K. Dick Award for Distinguished Science Fiction. The Last Policeman was the recipient of the 2012 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.
Colleen Delany has been a sparkling jewel in the crown of Washington’s vastly talented acting community for thirty-seven days now and will confidently challenge to a fierce best out of three in “paper-rock-scissors” anyone wishing to topple her from that lofty perch. Primarily a stage actress,—having played roles at Shakespeare Theatre Company, Goodman Theatre, Arena Stage, Signature Theatre, Folger Shakespeare Library, Studio Theatre, Olney Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, Theater J, Washington Stage Guild, Theater of the First Amendment, and Source Theatre, among others—Ms. Delany does a you-name-it of various acting jobs, including audiobook narration.
Lisa Morton is a screenwriter, author of nonfiction books, Bram Stoker Award–winning prose writer, editor, and Halloween expert whose work was described by the American Library Association’s Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror as “consistently dark, unsettling, and frightening.” As a Halloween expert, she has appeared on the History Channel and BBC Radio and in the pages of Real Simple magazine and the Wall Street Journal, and she served as consultant on the first official US Postal Halloween stamps. Her most recent releases include Ghosts: A Haunted History and Cemetery Dance Select: Lisa Morton. She lives in the San Fernando Valley, and can be found online at www.LisaMorton.com.
About the Narrators
Gabrielle de Cuir, award-winning narrator, has narrated over three hundred titles and specializes in fantasy, humor, and titles requiring extensive foreign language and accent skills. She was a cowinner of the Audie Award for best narration in 2011 and a three-time finalist for the Audie and has garnered six AudioFile Earphones Awards. Her “velvet touch” as an actor’s director has earned her a special place in the audiobook world as the foremost producer for bestselling authors and celebrities.
Paul Boehmer is an American actor best known for his numerous appearances in the Star Trek universe, in addition to Frasier, Judging Amy, Guiding Light, and All My Children. He is a 1992 Masters of Fine Arts graduate of the Professional Theater Training Program at the University of Delaware. As a narrator, Paul has won several AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as an Audie Award.
Janina Edwards, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, is a native of Chicago and a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts acting program. Her 2016 performance of Voice of Freedom was a finalist for the Audie Award.
John Rubinstein is an actor, composer, and director who won a Tony Award for his starring role in Broadway’s Children of a Lesser God. He has narrated dozens of audiobooks, earning several AudioFile Earphones Awards and being named a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award for best narration in 2013.
Judy Young is a voice talent and audiobook narrator.
Justine Eyre is a classically trained actress who has narrated many audiobooks, earning the prestigious Audie Award for best narration and numerous Earphones Awards. She is multilingual and known for her great facility with accents. She has appeared on stage, with leading roles in King Lear and The Crucible, and has had starring roles in four films on the indie circuit. Her television credits include Two and a Half Men and Mad Men.
Paul Boehmer is an American actor best known for his numerous appearances in the Star Trek universe, in addition to Frasier, Judging Amy, Guiding Light, and All My Children. He is a 1992 Masters of Fine Arts graduate of the Professional Theater Training Program at the University of Delaware. As a narrator, Paul has won several AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as an Audie Award.
Roxanne Hernandez is an audio narrator and a top narrator choice for young adult, adult drama, and Latin American/Chicano literature. She was a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award for best narration in 2011.
Stefan Rudnicki first became involved with audiobooks in 1994. Now a Grammy-winning audiobook producer, he has worked on more than five thousand audiobooks as a narrator, writer, producer, or director. He has narrated more than nine hundred audiobooks. A recipient of multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards, he was presented the coveted Audie Award for solo narration in 2005, 2007, and 2014, and was named one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices in 2012.
Kate Orsini is a native of Talladega, Alabama. She earned a double major in Theatre and French Literature from Vassar College. She’s performed on stage, in film, and on TV. She currently recurs on NCIS: LA, and stars in the Zoom episodic, “The Corona Dialogues,” produced by Bonnie Hunt, for which she won Best Actress at the London Independent Film Festival.