New true crime book now on Audible!

 

Happy to announce my recording of a new true crime book on Audible! This one is called Close To Home: Sexual Abusers and Serials Killers, Memoir and Murder by Janine O'Neill.  

"On January 9, 2002, twelve-year-old Ashley Pond left her family’s apartment in Oregon City, Oregon, to catch her bus to school. Then, she vanished.

Ashley loved her single-parent mother, but she hated her drinking, and the father figures in her life had come and gone. So she had learned to rely on her friends. Recently, however, things in her life had become even more complicated, so when she disappeared, many people believed she’d simply run away.

But Janine O’Neill had prosecuted crimes against children in Oregon City for seven years. She knew, with absolute certainty, that a twelve-year-old in that community would never vanish under the circumstances Ashley reportedly had unless something had gone terribly wrong.

Then, another girl went missing, and the son of a self-proclaimed serial killer identified himself as the prime suspect in both disappearances. O’Neill became obsessed with the story—so obsessed she eventually quit her full-time job and set off on a multistate search into the past with one overriding question: Could anything be scarier than what the public believed had happened to these girls?The answer, she learned, was yes."

To listen to the sample and/or purchase the book, head to Audible here. 

New full-cast production from The Online Stage now on Audible

 

I was very happy to take part in this group project as a member of The Online Stage! David Stifel and Josh Innerst voiced the main characters of Dante and Virgil while the rest of us claimed the smaller roles for The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri.  

"The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, presented by The Online Stage.

Welcome to Dante's The Divine Comedy, the ultimate journey to Paradise. Follow Italian writer and philosopher Dante Alighieri and his guide, the poet Virgil, through each circle of hell, over the mountain of Purgatory, and ultimately to Paradise, to be reunited with his beloved Beatrice. Dante meets many familiar faces among the sinners and the saved and learns many things of value throughout his long, dangerous journey.

Cast:

Dante - Josh Innerst

Virgil - David Stifel

Other Voices - Anna Grace, Erin Grassie, Marcia Dunbar, Chris Marcellus, Merete Mohs, Ted Wenskus, Trisha Rose, John Burlinson, Andy Harrington, Hann Lightwood, Rob Goll, Ron Altman, Alyssa Petrey, Andrew Coleman, Tyler Hyrchuk, Russell Gold, P. J. Morgan, Stephen Indrisano, Lee Ann Howlett, Jeff Moon, Rosie O'Toole, Marty Krz, J.D. Sutter, Ariana Mertz, Linda Barrans, and Grace Keller Scotch."

To listen to the sample and/or purchase the recording, head to Audible here. 

New nonfiction book now on Audible

My latest recording was just released on Audible today:  Sympathy, Madness, and Crime by Karen Roggenkamp.  

"In one of her escapades as a reporter for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, the renowned Nellie Bly feigned insanity in 1889 and slipped, undercover, behind the grim walls of Blackwell's Island mental asylum. She emerged ten days later with a vivid tale about life in a madhouse. Her asylum articles merged sympathy and sensationalism, highlighting a developing professional identity—that of the American newspaperwoman.

The Blackwell's Island story is just one example of how newspaperwomen used sympathetic rhetoric to depict madness and crime while striving to establish their credentials as professional writers. Working against critics who would deny them access to the newsroom, Margaret Fuller, Fanny Fern, Nellie Bly, and Elizabeth Jordan subverted the charge that women were not emotionally equipped to work for mass-market newspapers. They transformed their supposed liabilities into professional assets, and Sympathy, Madness, and Crime explores how, in writing about insane asylums, the mentally ill, prisons, and criminals, each deployed a highly gendered sympathetic language to excavate a professional space within a male-dominated workplace.

As the periodical market burgeoned, these pioneering, courageous women exemplified how narrative sympathy opened female space within the "hard news" city room of America's largest newspapers. Sympathy, Madness, and Crime offers a new chapter in the unfolding histories of nineteenth-century periodical culture, women's professional authorship, and the narrative construction of American penal and psychiatric institutions."

To listen to the sample and/or purchase the book, head to Audible here.

 

New group recording available for pre-order on Audible!

 

Up for pre-order now on Audible! I was very happy to participate as a member of Voices of Today in this reading of poetry from William Blake: Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

"This collection arguably contains some of the most charming lyrics ever written in English. The childlike simplicity and trust of these artless verses are unique.

Blake’s poems can be enjoyed, not only for their historical importance in an age which was fiercely proud of its genius and its traditions, but also for their simple and beautiful expression of “two contrary states of the human soul.”

Songs of Innocence was originally a complete collection of twenty-three poems, first printed in 1789. In 1794, a composite collection entitled Songs of Innocence and of Experience, containing forty-seven poems, was published.

Full cast of narrators:

Emma Faye

Ben Stevens

Lyndal Curran Doolan

Erin Grassie

Ron Altman

Linda Barrans

Lee Ann Howlett

Stephen Gage

Denis Daly

Shane Emmett

Christianne Lupher

Gary McFadden

Alan Weyman

Roberta Jackson

Kris Keppeler

Nancy Beard

Sarah Bacaller

Kendra Murray

Rosalind Murphy

Lisa Negrón

Graham Scott

Terah Tucker

Bria Sterling

Laura E. Richcreek

Adam Skousen

Blaise Doran

Aisling Gray

John Burlinson

Charlie Albers

Gregory Dwyer

Stephanie Németh-Parker

Trisha Rose

Tim Dehn

Ginger White

Rhonda Federman"

 

To pre-order, head to Audible here.