Terms of Engagement explores father and son as intimate enemies, each yearning to be understood, acknowledged, and validated by the other. Raw and gripping, these nine stories take place in collision territory – where father and son engage in trying to repair their alienation. Despite this, hope is the theme that pulses through the collection. Hope propels: a desperate father’s attempt to get his stay-at-home son off his ass and functioning like an adult; a teenager’s uncertain effort to rescue his emotionally distant father; a thirty-year father’s strategy to reconnect to his estranged son; and a new dad to break free of his own father’s insidious influence.
Terms of Engagement delves into the heart of the matter: who am I, as a human being?
The breath-taking cast of narrators featured in this recording have won Audie Awards, Grammy Awards, innumerable AudioFile Earphone Awards, and beyond their narration talents, have been celebrated on stages and screens all over the world.
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“A quiet lyricism emerges from these stories and it serves to underscore their emotional impact. Ruben can touch you deeply – and he can break your heart.”
— T.C. Boyle, New York Times bestselling author
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As an audiobook producer/director, Paul Alan Ruben has won numerous industry awards, including two Grammy Awards for Best Spoken Word. He’s been published by Pif Magazine, Pennsylvania English/35 and Connotation Press, and contributed to various non-fiction print and online publications. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Scott Brick, an acclaimed voice artist, screenwriter, and actor, has performed on film, television, and radio. He attended UCLA and spent ten years in a traveling Shakespeare company. Passionate about the spoken word, he has narrated a wide variety of audiobooks. winning won more than fifty AudioFile Earphones Awards and several of the prestigious Audie Awards. He was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine and the Voice of Choice for 2016 by Booklist magazine.
Josh Hurley is an actor, improviser, AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator, and writer. His audiobook credits include Saving Lucas Biggs and Where Things Come Back. He lives in New York.
David Ledoux has narrated a wide range of audio books, for which he was won and been nominated for several Audie and Earphones awards. He was named a 2010 Best Voice by AudioFile magazine for his narration of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, and he also narrated Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants and Douglas Copeland’s Nostradamus, among many others.
Hillary Huber, a Los Angeles–based voice talent with hundreds of commercials and promos under her belt, was bitten by the audiobook bug in 2005. She now records books on a regular basis and has been nominated for several Audie Awards and won numerous Earphones Awards.
Edoardo Ballerini, an American actor, director, film producer, and multiaward–winning narrator. He has won several Audie Awards for best narration, including for 2019’s Best Male Narrator of the Year. He was named by Booklist as winner of their 2023 Voice of Choice Award, and was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine in 2019. He has narrated over two hundred audiobooks, from classics to modern masters, from bestsellers to the inspirational, from Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners to spine-tingling series, and much more. In television and film, he is best known for his roles in A Murder at the End of the World, The Sopranos, 24, I Shot Andy Warhol, Dinner Rush, and Romeo Must Die. He is also trained in theater and continues to do much work on stage.
Dan Bittner is an actor and voice talent and winner of several AudioFile Earphones Awards for audio narration. He has starred on stage and on the screen, in movies such as Men in Black, Adventureland, and the Producers: The Movie Musical. He has also appeared onstage as Macbeth and Sherlock Holmes in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Rick Adamson is an award-winning voice artist with more than twenty years’ experience in voiceovers, spoken word events, event announcing, and children’s media, as well as commercials for well-known international corporations. He has narrated numerous television and film documentaries, including Croatia, co-narrated with Martin Sheen. His audiobook narration includes more than two dozen major books, as well as dozens of early-reader titles for juveniles. He won the prestigious Audie Award in 2011 for Best Inspirational/Faith-Based Fiction for In a Heartbeat, and he was among the finalists for the 2006 Audie Award for Best Personal Development/Motivational Work for Younger Next Year. He earned an AudioFile Earphones Award for the ensemble narration of Rough Water.
Fred Berman has won several AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. He is an actor of theater, film, and television whose credits include Broadway’s The Lion King, Law & Order, and Directing Eddie, among others. He was featured in Entertainment Weekly for his work on the Walking Dead audiobook series.
Geoffrey Cantor is a magna cum laude graduate of Amherst College. His stage work includes the Broadway play Side Man, as well as Romeo and Juliet and Dinner with Friends. On television, he has appeared on The Sopranos and Law & Order, and his film credits include Public Enemies, When in Rome, and Heavy Petting.
George Guidall, winner of more than eighty AudioFile Earphones Awards, has won three of the prestigious Audie Award for Excellence in Audiobook Narration. In 2014 the Audio Publishers Association presented him with the Special Achievement Award for lifetime achievement/ During his thirty-year recording career he has recorded over 1,700 audiobooks, won multiple awards, been a mentor to many narrators, and shown by example the potential of fine storytelling. His forty-year acting career includes starring roles on Broadway, an Obie Award for best performance off Broadway, and frequent television appearances.
Adam Grupper, award-winning narrator, has garnered honors from AudioFile magazine, Publishers Weekly, iTunes, the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences, and the Audio Publishers Association. He has been in eleven Broadway productions, including the acclaimed revival of Fiddler on the Roof. His film and television credits include The Rebound, Homeland, Master of None, Music and Lyrics, Two Weeks Notice, Elementary, and Allegiance.
Tavia Gilbert is an acclaimed narrator of more than four hundred full-cast and multivoice audiobooks for virtually every publisher in the industry. Named the 2018 Voice of Choice by Booklist magazine, she is also winner of the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. She has earned numerous Earphones Awards, a Voice Arts Award, and a Listen-Up Award. Audible.com has named her a Genre-Defining Narrator: Master of Memoir. In addition to voice acting, she is an accomplished producer, singer, and theater actor. She is also a producer, singer, photographer, and a writer, as well as the cofounder of a feminist publishing company, Animal Mineral.