List $59.95

Written by Richard Ford - Audio book performed by Joe Barrett - Unabridged Fiction - 20 COMPACT DISCS - 25 hours

Publisher, Random House Audiobooks (October 2006)

Listen to an MP3 audio clip.

BONUS: Includes an exclusive interview with the author.

With The Sportswriter, in 1986, Richard Ford commenced a cycle of novels that ten years later—after Independence Day won both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN /Faulkner Award—was hailed by The Times of London as "an extraordinary epic [that] is nothing less than the story of the twentieth century itself." Now, a decade later, Frank Bascombe returns, with a new lease on life (and real estate), more acutely in thrall to life's endless complexities than ever before.

His story resumes in the autumn of 2000, when his trade as a realtor on the Jersey Shore is thriving, permitting him to revel in the acceptance of "that long, stretching-out time when my dreams would have mystery like any ordinary person's; when whatever I do or say, who I marry, how my kids turn out, becomes what the world—if it makes note at all—knows of me, how I'm seen, understood, even how I think of myself before whatever there is that's wild and unassuagable rises and cheerlessly hauls me off to oblivion." But as a presidential election hangs in the balance, and a post nuclear—family Thanksgiving looms before him along with crises both marital and medical, Frank discovers that what he terms the Permanent Period is fraught with unforeseen perils: "All the ways that life feels like life at age fifty-five were strewn around me like poppies."

A holiday, and a novel, no one will ever forget—at once hilarious, harrowing, surprising, and profound. The Lay of the Land is astonishing in its own right and a magnificent expansion of one of the most celebrated chronicles of our time.

About the Author: In addition to the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award, RICHARD FORD has received the PEN /Malamud Award for short fiction, and his work has been translated into fifteen languages. He lives in Maine and New Orleans.

About the Performer: JOE BARRETT, a 30-year acting veteran, has appeared off Broadway in Reunion and on Broadway in Raggedy Ann. His television credits include Late Night with Conan O'Brian and The Late Show with David Letterman, Harper Valley PTA. and Alice. He has appeared in such films as Series 7 and Eat and Run.