Why we think it’s a great listen: A performance so poignant, we gave Bronson Pinchot (yes, Balki from Perfect Strangers) our inaugural Narrator of the Year award.... In the monsoon season of 1968-69 at a fire support base called Matterhorn, located in the remote mountains of Vietnam, a young and ambitious Marine lieutenant wants to command a company to further his civilian political ambitions. But two people stand in his way.

For Meredith Gale, ending her life seems like her only choice, and that choice is the reason she’s dangling by her fingertips from a bridge high above the freezing water of the San Francisco Bay. But someone or some thing has other plans for Meredith, and as her fingers slip from the cold steel of the bridge, a disembodied voice asks her a simple question: “Candidate 13: Do you wish to be saved?” Realizing her mistake too late, Meredith screams “Yes!” and instantly finds herself transported to a mysterious island, alongside hundreds of other Candidates like her.

The Ruins follows two American couples enjoying a pleasant, lazy beach holiday together in Mexico. On an impulse, they go off with newfound friends in search of one of their group, the young German who, in pursuit of a girl, has headed for the remote Mayan ruins, site of a fabled archeological dig.

During the last desperate days of the Vietnam War, American soldier Israel Broussard is assigned to a secret CIA PSYOP far behind enemy lines meant to drive terror into the heart of the North Vietnamese and end an unwinnable war. When the mission goes sideways, Broussard is plunged into a nightmare he soon finds he is unable to escape, dragging a remnant of that night in the Laotian wilderness with him no matter how far he runs.

The planet is called Banshee. The air is unbreathable, the water poisonous. It is the home of the most implacable enemies that humanity, in all its interstellar expansion, has ever encountered. Felix is a scout in A-team Two. Highly competent, he is the sole survivor of mission after mission. Yet he is a man consumed by fear and hatred.

Hailed as one of the finest novels to come out of the Second World War, The Naked and the Dead received unprecedented critical acclaim upon its publication and has since become part of the American canon. This fiftieth anniversary edition features a new introduction created especially for the occasion by Norman Mailer.

The war between Almacia and the Empire of Kolakolvia is in its hundredth year. Casualties grow on both sides as the conflict leaves no corner of the world untouched. Illarion Glaskov’s quiet life on the fringes of the empire is thrown into chaos when an impossible tragedy strikes his village. When he is conscripted into the Tsarist military, he is sent to serve in The Wall - an elite regiment that pilots suits of armor made from the husks of dead golems.

Covert government operative Danielle Laidlaw leads an expedition into the deepest reaches of the Amazon in search of a legendary Mayan city. Assisted by a renowned university professor and protected by a mercenary named Hawker, her team journeys into the tangled rain forest - unaware that they are replacements for a group that vanished weeks before, and that the treasure they are seeking is no mere artifact but a breakthrough discovery that could transform the world.

Fifty people go to sleep in their own beds and wake up in a compound in the middle of the jungle. Men and women from all walks of life with only one thing in common - none of them know where they are or how they got there. Alex is a paratrooper. Yael is a mathematician. Max is a law professor. They can't leave - a lethal barrier surrounds the facility, but no one knows if it's there to keep them in, or to keep something out.

The Khao San Road, Bangkok—first stop for the hordes of rootless young Westerners traveling in Southeast Asia. On Richard's first night there, in a low-budget guest house, a fellow traveler slashes his wrists, bequeathing to Richard a meticulously drawn map to "the Beach." The Beach, as Richard has come to learn, is the subject of a legend among young travelers in Asia: a lagoon hidden from the sea, with white sand and coral gardens, freshwater falls surrounded by jungle, plants untouched for a thousand years.

They each had their reasons for being a soldier. They each had their illusions. Goodrich came from Harvard. Snake got the tattoo - Death Before Dishonor - before he got the uniform. And Hodges was haunted by the ghosts of family heroes. They were three young men from different worlds plunged into a white-hot, murderous realm of jungle warfare as it was fought by one Marine platoon in the An Hoa Basin, 1969. They had no way of knowing what awaited them. Nothing could have prepared them for the madness to come. And in the heat and horror of battle they took on new identities, took on each other, and were each reborn in fields of fire....

It's the dawning of a new age for mankind when the Catteni descend to Earth and easily overcome the Earth's population. Thousands are herded onto slave ships headed for the intergalactic auction block. Kris Bjornsen is captured in Denver on her way to her college classes and wakes up on the primitive planet Barevi.

After the bombs rain down, the entire world is an open wound; it is in those bleeding years that William Fox becomes a man. William flees with his family to Magnolia, a farm in Tennessee, while America descends into madness, anarchy, and death. With the aid of elite Special Forces units, Magnolia emerges as beacon of hope and stability. But evil is hungry and relentless. A new threat stalks the Earth. To save his people, and perhaps all of humanity, William must be more than a lethal soldier; he must become a hero.

"Greetings from the dead," declares Maxwell Broadbent on the videotape he left behind after his mysterious disappearance. A notorious treasure hunter and tomb robber, Broadbent accumulated over a half a billion dollars' worth of priceless art, gems, and artifacts before vanishing—along with his entire collection—from his mansion in New Mexico. At first, robbery is suspected, but the truth proves far stranger: As a final challenge to his three sons, Broadbent has buried himself and his treasure somewhere in the world, hidden away like an ancient Egyptian pharaoh.

It's been twelve years since the undead hordes swept over the earth forcing mankind to the brink of extinction. We now live like rats, scavenging in the ruins of our fallen civilization as the dead hunt us night and day. There is little left to scavenge, however. Grocery stores were emptied ages ago, gas tanks have long been dry and bullets are so precious that a man is lucky to have two to his name. Still, we survive. But for how much longer? Instinct and love have combined to turn Darwin's theory on its head. The strongest didn't survive in this world. They were the first to die, leaving behind a generation of orphans. It's a generation that's never had a full belly. It's a generation that has no idea what an Xbox did, or what algebra is for. It's a generation of children who never laugh out loud, and who have learned to cry softly because the dead are always near and the dead are always so very, very hungry.