Publisher, Recorded Books (November 2006)

NOTE: RETAIL EDITIONS are packaged in attractive, compact cardboard, jewel-case or DVD shrink-wrapped boxes, with full-color art.

High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the loss of his mother. He is angry and he is alone, with only the books on his shelf for company.

But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness, and as he takes refuge in the myths and fairytales so beloved of his dead mother he finds that the real world and the fantasy world have begun to meld. The Crooked Man has come, with his mocking smile and his enigmatic words: “Welcome, your majesty. All hail the new king.”

With echoes of Gregory Maguire’s Wicked and C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, author John Connolly introduces us to a cast of not-quite-familiar characters. Like the seven socialist dwarfs who poison an uninvited (and unpleasant) princess and try to peg the crime on her stepmother. Or the Loups, the evil human-canine hybrids spawned long ago by the union of a wolf and a seductive girl in a red cloak.

As war rages across Europe, David is violently propelled into a land that is both a construct of his imagination yet frighteningly real, a strange reflection of his own world composed of myths and stories, populated by wolves and worse-than-wolves, and ruled over by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a legendary book…The Book of Lost Things.

About the Author: John Connolly was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1968 and has, at various points in his life, worked as a journalist, a barman, a local government official, a waiter and a dogsbody at Harrods department store in London. He studied English in Trinity College, Dublin, and journalism at Dublin City University, subsequently spending five years working as a freelance journalist for The Irish Times newspaper, to which he continues to contribute.

John Connolly is based in Dublin but divides his time between his native city and the United States, where each of his novels has been set.

About the Performer: Actor and narrator Steven Crossley has made an enchanted journey from sitting in front of his family’s radio when he was a child to sitting behind a microphone at the Recorded Books studio in Manhattan as a narrator. “Almost my first recollection of listening to stories—and this is in line with a lot of English children—was listening to the radio as a child,” said the London resident, “in particular, Children’s Hour at three in the afternoon.”

Besides his love of that radio show, one of Crossley’s first oral readings deeply planted the acting seed in his heart. “I’ve always had a feeling for reading stories,” he said. “I didn’t have any drama classes in my school, but I had a wonderful English master who had us read in front of the class. I read Lord of the Flies by William Golding.” When he saw the looks on the other students’ faces and felt their rapt attention, “I knew I had a bit of aptitude for it even then.” So even before joining any school plays, he experienced the joy of drama through reading aloud.

After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he embarked on a busy acting career. He has appeared in two films, a dozen television shows and nearly 30 roles in regional theaters and on larger stages in both the USA and England. Crossley has even played a part on an interactive CD-ROM! Finally, though, it is the challenging variety of roles in his audiobook assignments that keeps attracting him to the recording studio. “I get to play such a wonderful cast of characters, from 65-year-old men to 14-year-old women. I’m being stretched as an actor.”

Aside from broadening his dramatic range, Crossley feels that he has refined his approach to his audience since he became a professional narrator. “From recording books, I am constantly reminding myself I am speaking to somebody. If you’re on stage, you have a tendency to talk at somebody. When I’m in the studio, I remind myself to communicate with somebody. Hopefully that’s fed my acting.”

His memories of people, their mannerisms, and ways of speaking have proven to be invaluable references for him in the studio. “When I’m creating a character, I think of people I know. I don’t impersonate them, I just think of them while I’m reading. It helps to have a clear image of the character, and that image is always aided by the writer.”

The process of creating a character is an intuitive process. “It’s different with every book,” Crossley says. “Some characters I make detailed notes about. Once I’ve got the image of the character, then I’ve got the character. I frequently wait until the point of letting the character speak before giving it a voice.”