The Bright List

Greta Christina on Kinky Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns... and MORE!

Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, and More, by Greta Christina

"Her characters are bold, brazen and willing to go to any length to live out their fantasies. Bending is a must read for anyone with an erotic imagination -- or who wants to develop one."

- Rachel Kramer Bussel, editor, "Orgasmic" and "Cheeky Spanking Stories"

“These are not sweet, gentle, happy stories about unicorns f-king rainbows, (except for the story about the unicorn f-king the rainbow.)”

--Greta Christina

 

Brilliant atheist philosopher Greta Christina throws down the S/M gauntlet with her one-of-a-kind erotic short stories. This is an unapologetic journey through Christina’s questions about when and where boundaries become unspeakable— or not.

Not for the shy.

Narrated by Greta Christina, herself. No one could do it better.

--Willow Pennell

 

The Untold Stories of Black Gay Men of the South

Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South, by E. Patrick Johnson

"It's pretty rare to pick up a book, turn randomly to any page, and find such a powerful personal story that you have to close the book for a moment to take it in. But the oral histories featured in Sweet Tea . . . cast just that kind of spell."
-- The Advocate

Sweet Tea is such a special book; a milestone in gay literature, Black history, and Southern history. We’re proud to bring this to Audible.

Southern and African American culture both have a reputation for being hostile to gay men. It’s no wonder that gay black men living in the South have been all but invisible. E. Patrick Johnson brings these lives to light.

Sweet Tea brings interviews with black gay men of every age and from all over the South. They talk about living with racism and homophobia, finding each other, their families, and living the lives they wish for. Exploring their lives in the present and in the past. 

Audible acquired the beautifully produced, never-released existing narration, from the University of North Carolina. It's truly touching.

Narrated by  E. Patrick Johnson, the editor, who is just as remarkable in his narration as he was as an editor!

--Susie Bright and Willow Pennell

The Female Robin Hood! Gender Bending in Sherwood Forest!

Scarlet, by A.C. Gaughen

When my daughter was three, she was swept up in the legend of Robin Hood.

She dressed up in green and shot imaginary arrows all through the house. She thought nothing of playing a “boy” character.

By the time she was four, she’d learned enough from the kids at pre-school that the only place in the Robin Hood story for girls, was as Maid Marion: waiting. 

But our new heroine, by A.C. Gaughen, is named Scarlet, and she is waiting for no one. She's on the run from the malevolent Lord Gisbourne and has joined Robin Hood's Merry Men as a boy. Nobody but Robin and Big John knows her secret.

Scarlet can take care of herself. “Rob and John shot daggers at each other. With their eyes, leastways. I’m the only one who shoots real daggers.”

But that doesn’t preclude some tantalizing romantic tension between her and Robin, “'I’ll keep your heart, Scar,' he whispered. 'If you keep mine.'”

Action, romance, and gender-bending in medieval England; Scarlet is satisfying in every way.

Narrated by the honey-voiced Helen Stern, a veteran romance and erotica reader, she brings just the right amount of swagger and vulnerability to our heroine.

--Willow Pennell

Loch Ness Legacy? It's Darwin’s DaVinci Code!

Loch Ness Legacy, by Boyd Morrison

Boyd Morrison’s actual life sounds like an action movie, from NASA employee who got to fly in theVomit Comet, the same plane used to train astronauts for zero gravity, to Jeopardy! champion.

Morrison made news with his success on Amazon after he broke away from his publisher to publish on his own. His writing is so gripping, so fun that his audience followed him to the world of ebooks.

Loch Ness Legacy is B movie material all the way--in the BEST possible sense. 

A fast paced conspiracy thriller. Loch Ness Legacy is based around Darwin and his insight into the “secret” of evolution that comes from a perilous encounter with--YES-- the Loch Ness Monster. 

Lots of tight-paced action with a cryptographer heroine, Neo-Nazis, crazy fascists on the loose, and the possibility of WWIII if a lost manuscript isn’t found in time!

Grab your popcorn and hold on for a bumpy ride.

Narrated by David Marantz, narrator of another Boyd Morrison Bright List favorite The Roswell Conspiracy.

--Willow Pennell

My Mother's Wars—Lillian Faderman's Brilliant Memoir

My Mother’s Wars, by Lillian Faderman

"Lillian Faderman is an extraordinary storyteller, one of the few who can tell a painful story, with a complex ending—and imbue it with humor, sensuality and earthy grace, in every sentence."

—Amy Bloom, author of Away

Lillian Faderman’s mother was an immigrant, a garment worker, a woman in love with a man who would never marry her, a single mother, and a jew desperately trying to bring her family to America during the Holocaust. 

Regret infused her life and Faderman swore she’d never live a life like her mother’s, but as she writes in the introduction, “though I’d known all her secrets, I hadn’t known her.”

Faderman wrote this book to try to understand her mother. It's a tale of making it on one’s own in a time when an unmarried mother was a pariah, and an examination of forgiving one’s family the turns they made.

My Mother's Wars has the sweep of early twentieth century history, but unlike most books and biographies about the period, there is no triumphant overcoming of hardship, only a puzzled making do. The story of a real life.

Narrated by Suzanne Toren who narrated the excellent Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.

--Willow Pennell

When "Occupy" Met "Trainspotting." Peace, Love, & Petrol Bombs!

Peace, Love, and Petrol Bombs, by D. D. Johnston

“You want to hear Spocky’s explanation of capitalism? No, of course you don’t. No one wants to hear Spocky’s explanation of capitalism.”

No, you don’t want to hear Mr. Spocky, but you DO want to hear Johnston’s account of a hapless Scottish burger-flipper’s encounters with Europe’s Anarchist protest movement during the World Bank Summit of 2000.

Think, "Occupy" Meets Trainspotting.  With laffs.

Punks, hippies, anarchists, vegans, and the police converge from across Europe, tear gas is thrown, bombs are flung, and all hell breaks loose. 

D.D. Johnston’s writing is playful, creative, and a real joy to listen to. He has a knack for dialogue and capturing the zeal for language in the young, and alliances made and broken on strangers couches of Europe.

A boisterous romp, Peace, Love, and Petrol Bombs gets to the heart of outcast culture, and political theory all while making you laugh out loud.

Narrated by Roger Clark, a whiz with the variety of accents and has impeccable comic timing in this reading.

--Willow Pennell

From Las Vegas to Georgia, A Mother and Daughter Tear. It. Up.

Nowhere Is a Place, by Bernice L. McFadden

With praise from Terry McMillian and Toni Morrison, Bernice L. McFadden is a powerhouse of contemporary African American literature. She weaves together the personal and historical in a way that makes her stories matter deeply to the listener. 

McFadden writes confident, lyrical fiction exploring family dynamics, and the past. History and family history--one and the same; slavery, escape, Native Americans, Africans and European slave owners-- their fates bound and futures woven together by DNA. 

On a road trip from Las Vegas to Georgia, the tensions and skeletons in the closet of a mother and daughter bubble. Sherry presses her mother, Dumpling, for family stories. What unfolds is a family history rife with tragedy and courage. Sherry comes to understand the dynamics of her family, and finds the inspiration to reveal her own deep secrets.

Nowhere is a Place was short-listed in 2007 for the Hurston Wright Legacy Award in Fiction 

Narrated by Audio-powerhouse Robin Miles.

"From her first Earphones Award for Cane River [2002] to several Audie nominations and awards, Miles has rocked audiobook lovers with her thoughtful narrations and stunning vocal characterizations."

--AudioFile

--Willow Pennell

Can a Blonde Heiress Fall in Love with her Housekeeper?

Heart Block, by Melissa Brayden

An Upstairs, Downstairs, opposites-attract lesbian romance from Bold Strokes Books, Heart Block is a juicy summer listen.

A WASP-y blonde business woman hires a lighthearted, earthy Guatemalan immigrant to help clean and pack her mother’s things. An uneasy boss-employee relationship turns into a full-blown love affair, an affair that blossoms into an alliance.

It’s a satisfying story you won’t want to stop listening to.

Narrated by Mia Chiaromonte, who we liked so much reading Hungry: A Mother and Daughter Fight Anorexia

--Willow Pennell

When Women Get Debauched in the Afternoon

The Afternoons of a Woman of Leisure, by Elizabeth Bennett

With clear nods to Story of O and Belle de Jour, The Afternoons of a Woman of Leisure takes you on a clandestine erotic journey of pain, pleasure, betrayal and revenge.

A bored housewife, married to a much older man, decides she needs a new phase in life. She gets involved in “O” organization but becomes the victim of shifting alliances within the group. Betrayed she plots an elaborate, murderous punishment. 

Afternoons is excellent pulp, a not-so-guilty pleasure. 

Narrated by Julie McKay who worked on pulp classic, The Girls in 3-B.

--Aretha Bright and Willow Pennell

Justin Vivian Bond Performs Tango: My Childhood Backwards, and in High Heels

Tango: My Childhood Backwards, and in High Heels, by Justin Vivian Bond

"Like Bond, the memoir is droll, pensive and filled with zingers teetering between funny and ferocious."

--The New York Times

Didn’t catch one of Mx Justin Vivian Bond’s celebrated cabaret performances this summer? Well, Bond’s Lambda Literary Award winning memoir is now available at Audible and you'd better FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELT.

Hilton Als, theater critic for The New Yorker, calls Mx Justin Vivian Bond "The greatest cabaret artist of (v's) generation," and you can hear why. The range this story displays, from whisper sweet to tough as nails, is enthralling.

Bond’s memoir concerns a childhood in the Sixties and Seventies, knowing she wasn’t like the other boys. There are all sorts of fun things the author talks about that reflects the era such as "Frosted Watermelon" lipstick, not to mention the quack psychiatrist that told him as a child that his "gay-ness" was a just a passing faze. 

There’s innocence lost and found, confusion, sweetness and more. It’s serious, deep, and deeply entertaining.

Performed by the author, naturally.

--Willow Pennell