Awards:
2024 Silver Medal IPPY Award for “The Horoscope Writer” – Mystery Thriller
2018 Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audiobook Production for “The Hate You Give”
2018 Audie Award for Best Female Narrator for “The Hate You Give”
2016 PEN Ackery Prize, Short Listed for “Pour Me”
By: Ash Bishop
Narrated by: Ryan Burke, James Babson, and Mara Wilson
Who is The Horoscope Writer? It’s not Bobby Frindley. He’s an ex-Olympic athlete who has fast-talked his way into an entry-level position at a dying newspaper. He’s supposed to be writing horoscopes, but someone has been doing his job for him . . .
On his first night on the job, Bobby receives an email with twelve gruesome, highly-detailed horoscopes, along with a chilling ultimatum: print them and one will come true, or ignore them and all of them will.
Working with a skeptical co-worker, Bobby investigates the horoscope writer’s true identity, but the closer he gets to the truth, the more the predictions begin to be about him. Has he attracted the attention of a cruel puppeteer? Or is it possible that, like any good horoscope, it’s all in his mind?
©2023 Ash Bishop (P)2023 CamCat Books
• Unabridged Audiobook
• Categories: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
What is an IPPY you ask?
Conducted annually, the Independent Publisher Book Awards honor the year’s best independently published titles from around the world. The awards are intended to bring increased recognition to the thousands of exemplary independent, university, and self-published books released each year.
The “IPPY” Awards were conceived as a broad-based, unaffiliated awards program open to all members of the independent publishing industry, and are open to authors and publishers worldwide who produce books written in English and appropriate for the North American market.
By: Angie Thomas
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Directed by: Ryan Burke
Every now and then a book comes along that speaks to your soul. Angie Thomas’ debut novel, The Hate U Give, is one such book. Each editor here has listened, and the feeling afterwards is unanimous – this is one of the best performances we’ve ever encountered. Thomas’ message is both timely and transcendent. Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, this book is important, necessary, fearless, and, quite simply, stunning.
Narrator Bahni Turpin manages to give voice to such a broad and rich cast of characters, each with their own authentic perspective, demonstrating the power of performance to bring new depth to a complex social issue.
Eight starred reviews ∙ William C. Morris Award Winner ∙ National Book Award Longlist ∙ Printz Honor Book ∙ Coretta Scott King Honor Book ∙ Number-One New York Times Best Seller!
“Absolutely riveting!” (Jason Reynolds)
“Stunning.” (John Green)
“This story is necessary. This story is important.” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)
“Heartbreakingly topical.” (Publishers Weekly, starred review)
“A marvel of verisimilitude.” (Booklist, starred review)
“A powerful, in-your-face novel.” (The Horn Book, starred review)
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.
Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.
But what Starr does – or does not – say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.
And don’t miss On the Come Up, Angie Thomas’s powerful follow-up to The Hate U Give.
©2017 Angela Thomas (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
What is an Odyssey you ask?
This annual award is given to the producer of the best audiobook produced for children and/or young adults, available in English in the United States. The selection committee also selects honor titles. The Odyssey Award is jointly given and administered by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) and the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), divisions of ALA, and is sponsored by Booklist.
The selection committee consists of nine members: four members appointed by ALSC; four members appointed by YALSA; a chair, whose appointment alternates between ALSC and YALSA divisions; and a consultant from the staff of Booklist magazine who works with audiobooks. The consultant may participate fully in all book discussions but may not participate in voting.
What is an Audie you ask?
The Audie Awards® is the premier awards program in the United States recognizing distinction in audiobooks and spoken-word entertainment. Publishers and rights holders enter titles in various categories for recognition of achievement. Finalists are selected, and then one winner is awarded in each category at the Audies Gala.
“Bahni Turpin’s powerful narration of this timely novel will inspire listeners to find their own voices”
By: A. A. Gill
Narrated by: Dougray Scott
Directed by: Ryan Burke
A. A. Gill’s memoir begins in the dark of a dormitory with six strangers. He is an alcoholic, dying in the last-chance saloon – driven to dry out, not out of a desire to change but mainly through weariness. He tells the truth – as far as he can remember it – about drinking and about what it is like to be drunk.
Pour Me is about the blackouts, the collapse, the despair: ‘Pockets were a constant source of surprise – a lamb chop, a votive candle, earrings, notes written on paper and ripped from books’ and even, once, a pigeon. ‘Morning pockets,’ he says, ‘were like tiny crime scenes.’ He recalls the lost days, lost friends, failed marriages…. But there was also ‘an optimum inebriation, a time when it was all golden, when the drink and the pleasure made sense and were brilliant’.
Sobriety regained, there are painterly descriptions of people and places, unforgettable musings about childhood and family, art and religion, friendships and fatherhood and, most movingly, the connections between his cooking, dyslexia and his missing brother.
Full of raw and unvarnished truths, exquisitely written throughout, Pour Me is about lost time and self-discovery. Lacerating, unflinching, uplifting, it is a classic about drunken abandon.
Read by Dougray Scott.
2016, PEN Ackerley Prize, Short-listed
©2015 A. A. Gill (P)2017 Orion Publishing Group
What is the PEN Ackerly Prize you ask?
Offering a genuine shortlist of just three titles, the Ackerley Prize—now called the TLS Ackerley Prize—is focused, as you may recall, on memoir and autobiography.
the Ackerley Prize was established in 1982 in memory of JAR Ackerley (1896–1967), an author and longtime literary editor of The Listener magazine.
The honor is given annually to a literary autobiography by British author for a work published in the United Kingdom in the previous year.
The name change—to the TLS Ackerley Prize—reflects a new feature: The award now is to be given in partnership with the Times Literary Supplement and has been renamed the TLS Ackerley Prize, something announced in an event on Wednesday evening (June 25).
Until 2023, the program was known as the PEN Ackerley Prize. Presumably, the Times Literary Supplement connection provides viability lost after the English PEN association.