Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British journalist, naval intelligence officer, and creator of the fictional British spy, James Bond. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst, and at universities in Switzerland and Germany, Fleming s failure at the Foreign Office entrance exams led to brief careers with Reuters and as a stockbroker before he joined British Naval Intelligence in 1939. As personal assistant to the director, Fleming excelled, and his wartime service provided ample background for his later Bond stories.

Fleming s Bond novels and short-story collections are among the best-selling books of all time, and serve as the basis for the highly-successful movie franchise, which has starred such acclaimed actors as Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig as James Bond. In addition to the Bond series, Fleming wrote the children s classic Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang: The Magical Car. He died in 1964 of heart disease.

Simon Vance is an award-winning actor and an AudioFile Golden Voice with over forty Earphones Awards. He has won thirteen prestigious Audie Awards and was Booklist's very first Voice of Choice in 2008. He has narrated more than eight hundred audiobooks over almost thirty years, beginning when he was a radio newsreader for the BBC in London.