29 Best Literary, Biography & Autobiography Books
Literary, Biography & Autobiography is a popular category for many book lovers. Our team at Speechify has curated a list of the top Literary, Biography & Autobiography audiobooks everyone must read.
See the top 29 Literary, Biography & Autobiography audiobooks below.
-
Becoming Superman
- By: J. Michael Straczynski
- Narrator: Peter Jurasik
- Length: 16 hours 6 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: July 23, 2019
- Language: English
-
4.64(680 ratings)
4.64(680 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.004.99 USDFeaturing an introduction by Neil Gaiman! “J. Michael Straczynski is, without question, one of the greatest science fiction minds of our time.” — Max Brooks (World War Z) For four decades, J. Michael Straczynski has been one of theFeaturing an introduction by Neil Gaiman!
“J. Michael Straczynski is, without question, one of the greatest science fiction minds of our time.” — Max Brooks (World War Z)
For four decades, J. Michael Straczynski has been one of the most successful writers in Hollywood, one of the few to forge multiple careers in movies, television and comics. Yet there’s one story he’s never told before: his own.
In this dazzling memoir, the acclaimed writer behind Babylon 5, Sense8, Clint Eastwood’s Changeling and Marvel’s Thor reveals how the power of creativity and imagination enabled him to overcome the horrors of his youth and a dysfunctional family haunted by madness, murder and a terrible secret.
Joe’s early life nearly defies belief. Raised by damaged adults–a con-man grandfather and a manipulative grandmother, a violent, drunken father and a mother who was repeatedly institutionalized–Joe grew up in abject poverty, living in slums and projects when not on the road, crisscrossing the country in his father’s desperate attempts to escape the consequences of his past.
To survive his abusive environment Joe found refuge in his beloved comics and his dreams, immersing himself in imaginary worlds populated by superheroes whose amazing powers allowed them to overcome any adversity. The deeper he read, the more he came to realize that he, too, had a superpower: the ability to tell stories and make everything come out the way he wanted it. But even as he found success, he could not escape a dark and shocking secret that hung over his family’s past, a violent truth that he uncovered over the course of decades involving mass murder.
Straczynski’s personal history has always been shrouded in mystery. Becoming Superman lays bare the facts of his life: a story of creation and darkness, hope and success, a larger-than-life villain and a little boy who became the hero of his own life. It is also a compelling behind-the-scenes look at some of the most successful TV series and movies recognized around the world.
... Read more -
Donald Hall: Prose & Poetry
- By: Donald Hall
- Narrator: Donald Hall
- Length: 3 hours 7 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2011
- Language: English
-
4.48(32 ratings)
4.48(32 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0014.95 USDAuthor of more than thirty books of poetry and prose, Donald Hall performs here dozens of his best-loved poems, together with excerpts from six of his works of prose. Donald Hall has been writing poems for over fifty years and now stands as one ofAuthor of more than thirty books of poetry and prose, Donald Hall performs here dozens of his best-loved poems, together with excerpts from six of his works of prose. Donald Hall has been writing poems for over fifty years and now stands as one of America’s foremost poets. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Robert Frost Medal of the Poetry Society of America, the New England Book Award for nonfiction, and former Poet Laureate of New Hampshire among other honors, Donald Hall gives each listener this gift of words–words painstakingly entwined with passion, energy and love. Prose & Poetry is a tour de force–an intimate convergence of poet, author, and listener.
... Read more -
Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3
- By: Mark Twain
- Narrator: Grover Gardner
- Length: 24 hours 55 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2015
- Language: English
-
4.35(8 ratings)
4.35(8 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0029.95 USDThe surprising final chapter of a great American life When the first volume of Mark Twain’s uncensored Autobiography was published in 2010, it was hailed as an essential addition to the shelf of his works and a crucial document for ourThe surprising final chapter of a great American life
When the first volume of Mark Twain’s uncensored Autobiography was published in 2010, it was hailed as an essential addition to the shelf of his works and a crucial document for our understanding of the great humorist’s life and times. This third and final volume crowns and completes his life’s work. Like its companion volumes, it chronicles Twain’s inner and outer life through a series of daily dictations that go wherever his fancy leads.
Created from March 1907 to December 1909, these dictations present Mark Twain at the end of his life: receiving an honorary degree from Oxford University; railing against Theodore Roosevelt, founding numerous clubs; incredulous at an exhibition of the Holy Grail; credulous about the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays; relaxing in Bermuda; observing (and investing in) new technologies. The autobiography’s “Closing Words” movingly commemorate his daughter Jean, who died on Christmas Eve 1909. Also included in this volume is the previously unpublished “Ashcroft-Lyon Manuscript,” Mark Twain’s caustic indictment of his “putrescent pair” of secretaries and the havoc that erupted in his house during their residency.
Fitfully published in fragments at intervals throughout the twentieth century, Autobiography of Mark Twain has now been critically reconstructed and made available as it was intended to be read. Fully annotated by the editors of the Mark Twain Project, the complete Autobiography emerges as a landmark publication in American literature.
... Read more -
An American Childhood
- By: Annie Dillard
- Narrator: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 8 hours 27 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2011
- Language: English
-
4.35(615 ratings)
4.35(615 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0016.95 USDA memoir about parents, the world of science, and consciousness A book that instantly captured the hearts of readers across the country, An American Childhood is Pulitzer Prize–winning author Annie Dillard’s poignant, vivid memoir ofA memoir about parents, the world of science, and consciousness
A book that instantly captured the hearts of readers across the country, An American Childhood is Pulitzer Prize–winning author Annie Dillard’s poignant, vivid memoir of growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1950s.
“Dillard’s luminous prose painlessly captures the pain of growing up in this wonderful evocation of childhood. Her memoir is partly a hymn to Pittsburgh, where orange streetcars ran on Penn Avenue in 1953 when she was eight, and where the Pirates were always in the cellar. Dillard’s mother, an unstoppable force, had energies too vast for the bridge games and household chores that stymied her. Her father made low-budget horror movies, loved Dixieland jazz, told endless jokes and sight-gags, and took lonesome river trips down to New Orleans to get away. From this slightly odd couple, Dillard acquired her love of nature and taut sensitivity.”—Publishers Weekly
... Read more -
The Glass Castle
- By: Jeannette Walls
- Narrator: Jeannette Walls
- Length: 10 hours 25 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2010
- Language: English
-
4.3(1049987 ratings)
- NYT Best Sellers
4.3(1049987 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0023.95 USDMORE THAN EIGHT YEARS ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST The extraordinary, one-of-a-kind, “nothing short of spectacular” (Entertainment Weekly) memoir from one of the world’s most gifted storytellers. The Glass Castle is aMORE THAN EIGHT YEARS ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST
... Read more
The extraordinary, one-of-a-kind, “nothing short of spectacular” (Entertainment Weekly) memoir from one of the world’s most gifted storytellers.
The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette’s brilliant and charismatic father captured his children’s imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn’t want the responsibility of raising a family.
The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.
The Glass Castle is truly astonishing–a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.
The memoir was also made into a major motion picture from Lionsgate in 2017 starring Brie Larson, Woody Harrelson, and Naomi Watts. -
Facets of Ayn Rand
- By: Mary Ann Sures
- Narrator: Susan O'Malley
- Length: 3 hours 51 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2005
- Language: English
-
4.29(24 ratings)
4.29(24 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0011.95 USDFacets of Ayn Rand is based on forty-eight hours of interviews with Mary Ann and Charles Sures, longtime personal friends of Ayn Rand. Their recollections make vividly real the Ayn Rand they knew so well. Here are many examples of not only AynFacets of Ayn Rand is based on forty-eight hours of interviews with Mary Ann and Charles Sures, longtime personal friends of Ayn Rand. Their recollections make vividly real the Ayn Rand they knew so well.
Here are many examples of not only Ayn Rand’s mind and intellectual generosity in action but also lesser-known aspects of this unique woman. The result is the experience of an actual larger-than-life person.
“The person in this book is the same person I myself knew for so long; reading these pages is almost like having Ayn Rand in the room again.” —Leonard Peikoff
... Read more -
Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2
- By: Mark Twain
- Narrator: Grover Gardner
- Length: 26 hours 17 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2013
- Language: English
-
4.29(11 ratings)
4.29(11 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0029.95 USDMark Twain’s complete, uncensored Autobiography was an instant bestseller when the first volume was published in 2010, on the centennial of the author’s death, as he requested. Published to rave reviews, the Autobiography was hailed asMark Twain’s complete, uncensored Autobiography was an instant bestseller when the first volume was published in 2010, on the centennial of the author’s death, as he requested. Published to rave reviews, the Autobiography was hailed as the capstone of Twain’s career. It captures his authentic and unsuppressed voice, speaking clearly from the grave and brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions.
The eagerly awaited second volume delves deeper into Twain’s life, uncovering the many roles he played in his private and public worlds. Filled with his characteristic blend of humor and ire, the narrative ranges effortlessly across the contemporary scene. He shares his views on writing and speaking, his preoccupation with money, and his contempt for the politics and politicians of his day. Affectionate and scathing by turns, his intractable curiosity and candor are everywhere on view.
... Read more -
At Home on St. Simons
- By: Eugenia Price
- Narrator: Nan McNamara
- Length: 2 hours 33 minutes
- Publisher: Turner Publishing
- Publish date: August 01, 2021
- Language: English
-
4.29(110 ratings)
4.29(110 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDHere, for the first time outside the pages of a small Island newspaper called Georgia’s Coastal Illustrated, Eugenia shares with her worldwide reading public, some of what life was like during the first years in which she and her best friendHere, for the first time outside the pages of a small Island newspaper called Georgia’s Coastal Illustrated, Eugenia shares with her worldwide reading public, some of what life was like during the first years in which she and her best friend and fellow writer, Joyce Blackburn, were becoming Islanders. “These short pieces,” Genie says, “Include my observations day by day of what it was like at last to be at home on St. Simons. We were learning how to be neighbors, after so many years of complex life in the huge northern city of Chicago; learning how to care deeply for people with whom, at first glance, we had little in common. We were understanding what it really meant to have come home.” Eugenia Price, called by many St. Simons’ own “beloved invader”, tells you here about those early years as they were being lived. Her St. Simons Memoir, cherished by thousands, was written from memory and notes in old desk calendars, but At Home on St. Simons illuminates some of the experiences which most changed her – as they occurred. More than fourteen million people have read Eugenia Price’s books which have been translated into fifteen languages. Much of the magic these millions remember so vividly years after the reading, began in the simply, sad, joyous and absorbing events related to this singular volume. Never before published is a brand new opening chapter, in which Ms. Price attempts to explain-almost as to herself-why, in the face of such drastic change on the once provincial little coastal island, she is still-at home on St. Simons. Her readers do not have to see the Island firsthand, to recognize their own response to her sense of place.
... Read more -
Anton Chekhov
- By: Donald Rayfield
- Narrator: Fred Williams
- Length: 28 hours 30 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2000
- Language: English
-
4.27(175 ratings)
4.27(175 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0034.95 USDAnton Chekhov’s life was short, intense, and dominated by battles, both with his dependents and with the tuberculosis that killed him at age forty-four. The traditional image of Chekhov is that of the restrained artist torn between medicineAnton Chekhov’s life was short, intense, and dominated by battles, both with his dependents and with the tuberculosis that killed him at age forty-four. The traditional image of Chekhov is that of the restrained artist torn between medicine and literature, but Donald Rayfield’s biography reveals the life long hidden behind the noble facade. Here is a man capable of both great generosity toward needy peasants and harsh callousness toward lovers and family, a man who craved with equal passion the company of others and the solitude necessary to create his art. Based on information from Chekhov archives throughout Russia, Rayfield’s work has been hailed as a groundbreaking examination of the life of a literary master.
... Read more -
North of Normal
- By: Cea Sunrise Person
- Narrator: Cea Sunrise Person
- Length: 9 hours 33 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: January 09, 2018
- Language: English
-
4.23(9955 ratings)
4.23(9955 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.005.99 USDSex, drugs, and . . . bug stew? In the vein of The Glass Castle and Wild, Cea Sunrise Person’s compelling memoir of a childhood spent with her dysfunctional counter-culture family in the Canadian wilderness–a searing story of physical,Sex, drugs, and . . . bug stew? In the vein of The Glass Castle and Wild, Cea Sunrise Person’s compelling memoir of a childhood spent with her dysfunctional counter-culture family in the Canadian wilderness–a searing story of physical, emotional, and psychological survival.
In the late 1960s, riding the crest of the counterculture movement, Cea’s family left a comfortable existence in California to live off the land in the Canadian wilderness. But unlike most commune dwellers of the time, the Persons weren’t trying to build a new society–they wanted to escape civilization altogether. Led by Cea’s grandfather Dick, they lived a pot-smoking, free-loving, clothing-optional life under a canvas tipi without running water, electricity, or heat for the bitter winters.
Living out her grandparents’ dream with her teenage mother Michelle, young Cea knew little of the world beyond her forest. She spent her summers playing nude in the meadow and her winters snowshoeing behind the grandfather she idolized. Despite fierce storms, food shortages, and the occasional drug-and-sex-infused party for visitors, it seemed to be a mostly happy existence. For Michelle, however, now long separated from Cea’s father, there was one crucial element missing: a man. When Cea was five, Michelle took her on the road with a new boyfriend. As the trio set upon a series of ill-fated adventures, Cea began to question both her highly unusual world and the hedonistic woman at the centre of it–questions that eventually evolved into an all-consuming search for a more normal life. Finally, in her early teens, Cea realized she would have to make a choice as drastic as the one her grandparents once had in order to save herself.
While a successful international modeling career offered her a way out of the wilderness, Cea discovered that this new world was in its own way daunting and full of challenges. Containing twenty-four intimate black-and-white family photos, North of Normal is Cea’s funny, shocking, heartbreaking, and triumphant tale of self-discovery and acceptance, adversity, and strength that will leave no listener unmoved.
... Read more -
A Tale of Love and Darkness
- By: Amos Oz
- Narrator: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 23 hours 52 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2016
- Language: English
-
4.23(6675 ratings)
4.23(6675 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.95 USDTragic, comic, and utterly honest, this extraordinary memoir is at once a great family saga and a magical self-portrait of a writer who witnessed the birth of a nation and lived through its turbulent history. It is the story of a boy growing up inTragic, comic, and utterly honest, this extraordinary memoir is at once a great family saga and a magical self-portrait of a writer who witnessed the birth of a nation and lived through its turbulent history.
It is the story of a boy growing up in the war-torn Jerusalem of the forties and fifties in a small apartment crowded with books in twelve languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. His mother and father, both wonderful people, were ill-suited to each other. When Oz was twelve and a half years old, his mother committed suicide–a tragedy that was to change his life. He leaves the constraints of the family and the community of dreamers, scholars, and failed businessmen to join a kibbutz, changes his name, marries, has children, and finally becomes a writer as well as an active participant in the political life of Israel.
A story of clashing cultures and lives, of suffering and perseverance, of love and darkness.
... Read more -
Wife | Daughter | Self
- By: Beth Kephart
- Narrator: Beth Kephart
- Length: 7 hours 4 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2021
- Language: English
-
4.21(59 ratings)
4.21(59 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0016.95 USDWife | Daughter | Self investigates identity and the writing life through the perspective of one of the nation’s top memoir teachers and critics. Curiously, inventively, Beth Kephart reflects on the iterative, composite self in her newWife | Daughter | Self investigates identity and the writing life through the perspective of one of the nation’s top memoir teachers and critics.
Curiously, inventively, Beth Kephart reflects on the iterative, composite self in her new memoir–traveling to lakes and rivers, New Mexico and Mexico, the icy waters of Alaska and a hot-air balloon launch in search of understanding. She is accompanied, often, by her Salvadoran-artist husband. She spends time, a lot of time, with her widowed father. As she looks at them she ponders herself and comes to terms with the person she is still becoming. At once sweeping and intimate, Wife | Daughter | Self is a memoir built of interlocking essays by an acclaimed author, teacher, and critic.
... Read more -
Logical Family
- By: Armistead Maupin
- Narrator: Armistead Maupin
- Length: 8 hours 26 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: October 03, 2017
- Language: English
-
4.2(1970 ratings)
4.2(1970 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.005.99 USD“A book for any of us, gay or straight, who have had to find our family. Maupin is one of America’s finest storytellers, and the story of his life is a story as fascinating, as delightful and as compulsive as any of the tales he has made“A book for any of us, gay or straight, who have had to find our family. Maupin is one of America’s finest storytellers, and the story of his life is a story as fascinating, as delightful and as compulsive as any of the tales he has made up for us.”–Neil Gaiman
“I fell in love with Maupin’s effervescent Tales of the City decades ago, and his genius turn at memoir is no less compelling. Logical Family is a must read.”–Mary Karr
In this long-awaited memoir, the beloved author of the bestselling Tales of the City series chronicles his odyssey from the old South to freewheeling San Francisco, and his evolution from curious youth to ground-breaking writer and gay rights pioneer. Also included is an exclusive conversation between Maupin and bestselling author Neil Gaiman.
Armistead Maupin was born in the mid-twentieth century and raised in the heart of conservative North Carolina, Armistead Maupin lost his virginity to another man “on the very spot where the first shots of the Civil War were fired.” Realizing that the South was too small for him, this son of a traditional lawyer packed his earthly belongings into his Opel GT (including a beloved portrait of a Confederate ancestor), and took to the road in search of adventure. It was a journey that would lead him from a homoerotic Navy initiation ceremony in the jungles of Vietnam to that strangest of strange lands: San Francisco in the early 1970s.
Reflecting on the profound impact those closest to him have had on his life, Maupin shares his candid search for his “logical family,” the people he could call his own. “Sooner or later, we have to venture beyond our biological family to find our logical one, the one that actually makes sense for us,” he writes. “We have to, if we are to live without squandering our lives.” From his loving relationship with his palm-reading Grannie who insisted Maupin was the reincarnation of her artistic bachelor cousin, Curtis, to an awkward conversation about girls with President Richard Nixon in the Oval Office, Maupin tells of the extraordinary individuals and situations that shaped him into one of the most influential writers of the last century.
Maupin recalls his losses and life-changing experiences with humor and unflinching honesty, and brings to life flesh-and-blood characters as endearing and unforgettable as the vivid, fraught men and women who populate his enchanting novels. What emerges is an illuminating portrait of the man who depicted the liberation and evolution of America’s queer community over the last four decades with honesty and compassion–and inspired millions to claim their own lives.
... Read more -
The Wars of the Roosevelts
- By: William J. Mann
- Narrator: Christopher Grove
- Length: 21 hours 16 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: December 06, 2016
- Language: English
-
4.19(402 ratings)
4.19(402 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0040.99 USDThe award-winning author presents a provocative, thoroughly modern revisionist biographical history of one of America’s greatest and most influential families–the Roosevelts–exposing heretofore unknown family secrets and detailingThe award-winning author presents a provocative, thoroughly modern revisionist biographical history of one of America’s greatest and most influential families–the Roosevelts–exposing heretofore unknown family secrets and detailing complex family rivalries with his signature cinematic flair.
Drawing on previously hidden historical documents and interviews with the long-silent “illegitimate” branch of the family, William J. Mann paints an elegant, meticulously researched, and groundbreaking group portrait of this legendary family. Mann argues that the Roosevelts’ rise to power and prestige was actually driven by a series of intense personal contest that at times devolved into blood sport. His compelling and eye-opening masterwork is the story of a family at war with itself, of social Darwinism at its most ruthless–in which the strong devoured the weak and repudiated the inconvenient.
Mann focuses on Eleanor Roosevelt, who, he argues, experienced this brutality firsthand, witnessing her Uncle Theodore cruelly destroy her father, Elliott–his brother and bitter rival–for political expediency. Mann presents a fascinating alternate picture of Eleanor, contending that this “worshipful niece” in fact bore a grudge against TR for the rest of her life, and dares to tell the truth about her intimate relationships without obfuscations, explanations, or labels.
Mann also brings into focus Eleanor’s cousins, TR’s children, whose stories propelled the family rivalry but have never before been fully chronicled, as well as her illegitimate half-brother, Elliott Roosevelt Mann, who inherited his family’s ambition and skill without their name and privilege. Growing up in poverty just miles from his wealthy relatives, Elliott Mann embodied the American Dream, rising to middle-class prosperity and enjoying one of the very few happy, long-term marriages in the Roosevelt saga. For the first time, The Wars of the Roosevelts also includes the stories of Elliott’s daughter and grandchildren.
Deeply psychological and finely rendered, The Wars of the Roosevelts illuminates not only the enviable strengths but also the profound shame of this remarkable and influential family.
... Read more -
Orwell
- By: Michael Shelden
- Narrator: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 18 hours 59 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2012
- Language: English
-
4.18(192 ratings)
4.18(192 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0029.95 USDIn his probing and revelatory biography of one of the great prose stylists of the twentieth century, acclaimed biographer Michael Shelden breaks new ground in the evocation of George Orwell’s personal life and in our understanding of his art.In his probing and revelatory biography of one of the great prose stylists of the twentieth century, acclaimed biographer Michael Shelden breaks new ground in the evocation of George Orwell’s personal life and in our understanding of his art. Based on original interviews, previously undiscovered letters and documents, and astute literary detective work, Orwell is the major biography of one of the great yet elusive literary figures of our time.
Shelden reveals the author of 1984 and Animal Farm as a lively, engaging literary personality. Few writers can rival Orwell’s experience of history: being shot through the throat in the Spanish Civil War, holding the position of colonial police superintendent in Burma, and living through the Blitz. Shelden restores a sense of drama and passion to this writer’s life and shows him to be a captivating, even heroic character struggling against great public and private turmoil.
... Read more -
Inside One Author’s Heart
- By: Eugenia Price
- Narrator: Nan McNamara
- Length: 3 hours 30 minutes
- Publisher: Turner Publishing
- Publish date: August 01, 2021
- Language: English
-
4.16(19 ratings)
4.16(19 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDInside One Author’s Heart offers a rare glimpse behind the image of a bestselling writer. Instead of her sweeping tales of the Old South, Ms. Price focuses on herself, her readers, and the special way in which they nourish each other. SheInside One Author’s Heart offers a rare glimpse behind the image of a bestselling writer. Instead of her sweeping tales of the Old South, Ms. Price focuses on herself, her readers, and the special way in which they nourish each other. She tells it straight-with “warts and flaws” and, at all times, an endearing sense of humor about herself and her work. Here Ms. Price reveals how she creates her haunting novels, and how she brings her characters to life on paper. Here are the heartfelt dialogues between Ms. Price and her readers. Here is the real Eugenia Price, eternally optimistic, yet strangely intimidated by her own success. The story ranges from Ms. Price’s early years as a writer living in Chicago, to how she fled in the 1960’s for privacy to the sanctuary of St. Simons Island. And this is the most riveting part of her narrative. This deeply private and spiritual woman not only absorbed her new surroundings, she also created a mystique about the island and its history.
... Read more -
Eat Your Mind
- By: Jason McBride
- Narrator: Candace Thaxton
- Length: 13 hours 14 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
-
4.15(35 ratings)
4.15(35 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0023.99 USD“It’s shocking to learn that this is McBride’s first book…Eat Your Mind does everything a good biography should and more” –Los Angeles Times The first full-scale authorized biography of the pioneering experimental“It’s shocking to learn that this is McBride’s first book…Eat Your Mind does everything a good biography should and more” –Los Angeles Times
... Read more
The first full-scale authorized biography of the pioneering experimental novelist Kathy Acker, one of the most original and controversial figures in 20th-century American literature.
Kathy Acker (1947-1997) was a rare and almost inconceivable thing: a celebrity experimental writer. Twenty-five years after her death, she remains one of the most original, shocking, and controversial artists of her era. The author of visionary, transgressive novels like Blood and Guts in High School; Empire of the Senses; and Pussy, King of Pirates, Acker wrote obsessively about the treachery of love, the limitations of language, and the possibility of revolution.
She was notorious for her methods–collaging together texts stolen from other writers with her own diaries, sexual fantasies, and blunt political critique–as well as her appearance. With her punkish hairstyles, tattoos, and couture outfits, she looked like no other writer before or after. Her work was exceptionally prescient, taking up complicated conversations about gender, sex, capitalism, and colonialism that continue today.
Acker’s life was as unruly and radical as her writing. Raised in a privileged but oppressive Upper East Side Jewish family, she turned her back on that world as soon as she could, seeking a life of romantic and intellectual adventure that led her to, and through, many of the most thrilling avant-garde and countercultural moments in America: the births of conceptual art and experimental music; the poetry wars of the 60s and 70s; the mainstreaming of hardcore porn; No Wave cinema and New Narrative writing; Riot grrrls, biker chicks, cyberpunks. As this definitive, “sympathetic, studious” (Edmund White, winner of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters) biography shows, Acker was not just a singular writer, she was also a titanic cultural force who tied together disparate movements in literature, art, music, theatre, and film.
A feat of literary biography, Eat Your Mind draws on exclusive interviews with hundreds of Acker’s intimates as well as her private journals, correspondence, and early drafts of her work, acclaimed journalist and critic Jason McBride, offers a thrilling account and a long-overdue reassessment of a misunderstood genius and revolutionary artist. -
A Light So Lovely
- By: Sarah Arthur
- Length: 6 hours 24 minutes
- Publisher: Zondervan
- Publish date: August 07, 2018
- Language: English
-
4.13(648 ratings)
4.13(648 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0021.99 USDMadeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time has captured the imagination of millions – from literary sensation to timeless classic and now a major motion picture starring Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Storm Reid, and Mindy Kaling. AMadeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time has captured the imagination of millions – from literary sensation to timeless classic and now a major motion picture starring Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Storm Reid, and Mindy Kaling. A Light So Lovely tells the story of the woman at the center of it all – her imagination, her faith, her pattern of defying categories, and what readers today can learn from her legacy.¬†
Bestselling and beloved author Madeleine L’Engle, Newbery winner for A Wrinkle in Time, was known the world round for her imaginative spirit and stories. She was also known to spark controversy – too Christian for some, too unorthodox for others. Somewhere in the middle was a complex woman whose embrace of paradox has much to say to a new generation of readers today.¬†
A Light So Lovely paints a vivid portrait of this enigmatic icon’s spiritual legacy, starting with her inner world and expanding into fresh reflections of her writing for readers today. Listen in on intimate interviews with L’Engle’s literary contemporaries such as Philip Yancey and Luci Shaw, L’Engle’s granddaughter Charlotte Jones Voiklis, and influential fans such as Makoto Fujimura, Nikki Grimes, and Sarah Bessey, as they reveal new layers to the woman behind the stories we know and love. A vibrant, imaginative read, this book pulls back the curtain to illuminate L’Engle’s creative journey, her persevering faith, and the inspiring, often unexpected ways these two forces converged.¬†
For anyone earnestly searching the space between sacred and secular, miracle and science, faith and art, come and find a kindred spirit and trusted guide in Madeleine – the Mrs Whatsit to our Meg Murry – as she sparks our imagination anew.¬†
... Read more -
Maude
- By: Donna Mabry
- Narrator: Shana Gagnon
- Length: 10 hours 32 minutes
- Publisher: Dreamscape Media
- Publish date: June 23, 2015
- Language: English
-
4.1(31293 ratings)
4.1(31293 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.002.99 USDIn 1906, I was barely over fourteen years old, and it was my wedding day. My older sister, Helen, came to my room, took me by the hand, and sat me down on the bed. She said, ‘You’ve always been a good girl, Maude, and done what I toldIn 1906, I was barely over fourteen years old, and it was my wedding day. My older sister, Helen, came to my room, took me by the hand, and sat me down on the bed. She said, ‘You’ve always been a good girl, Maude, and done what I told you. Now, you’re going to be a married woman, and he will be the head of the house. When you go home tonight after your party, no matter what he wants to do to you, you have to let him do it. Do you understand?’ I didn’t understand, but I nodded my head anyway. It sounded strange to me, the way so many things did. I would do what she told me. I didn’t have a choice, any more than I had a choice in being born.
... Read more -
Mother Winter
- By: Sophia Shalmiyev
- Narrator: Sophia Shalmiyev
- Length: 5 hours 38 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2019
- Language: English
-
4.08(294 ratings)
4.08(294 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USD“Lyrical and emotionally gutting.” —O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE “Intellectually satisfying [and] artistically profound.” —KIRKUS REVIEWS (STARRED REVIEW) “Mesmeric.”–THE PARIS REVIEW “Vividly“Lyrical and emotionally gutting.” —O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE
... Read more
“Intellectually satisfying [and] artistically profound.” —KIRKUS REVIEWS (STARRED REVIEW)
“Mesmeric.”–THE PARIS REVIEW
“Vividly awesome and truly great.” –EILEEN MYLES
“Gorgeous, gutting, unforgettable.” –LENI ZUMAS
“Brilliant.” –MICHELLE TEA
An arresting memoir equal parts refugee-coming-of-age story, feminist manifesto, and meditation on motherhood, displacement, gender politics, and art that follows award-winning writer Sophia Shalmiyev’s flight from the Soviet Union, where she was forced to abandon her estranged mother, and her subsequent quest to find her.
Russian sentences begin backward, Sophia Shalmiyev tells us on the first page of her striking lyrical memoir. To understand the end of her story, we must go back to the beginning.
Born to a Russian mother and an Azerbaijani father, Shalmiyev was raised in the stark oppressiveness of 1980s Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), where anti-Semitism and an imbalance of power were omnipresent in her home. At just eleven years old, Shalmiyev’s father stole her away to America, forever abandoning her estranged alcoholic mother, Elena. Motherless on a tumultuous voyage to the states, terrified in a strange new land, Shalmiyev depicts in urgent, poetic vignettes her emotional journeys through an uncharted world as an immigrant, artist, and, eventually, as a mother of two. As an adult, Shalmiyev voyages back to Russia to search endlessly for the mother she never knew–in her pursuit, we witness an arresting, impassioned meditation on art-making, gender politics, displacement, and most potently, motherhood. -
Inadvertent
- By: Karl Ove Knausgaard
- Narrator: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 1 hours 32 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2018
- Language: English
-
4.08(660 ratings)
4.08(660 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.009.95 USDThe Why I Write series is based on the Windham-Campbell Lectures, delivered annually to commemorate the awarding of the Donald Windham-Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes at Yale University. Administered by Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book andThe Why I Write series is based on the Windham-Campbell Lectures, delivered annually to commemorate the awarding of the Donald Windham-Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes at Yale University. Administered by Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the series publishes works based on the lecture given by the event’s keynote speaker.
In Inadvertent, internationally bestselling author Karl Ove Knausgaard reveals his beginnings as a writer and his literary influences, his creative development and his struggles. But this text is more than a window into the writer’s frame of mind. It’s also a glimmering meditation on literature and creativity–on its limitations and its freedoms. From Jorge Luis Borges to Edvard Munch, the text explores Knausgaard’s relationship to art that’s moved him, and how that art situates itself in our culture. The text is both biographical and philosophical, and raises as many questions as it provides answers.
... Read more -
A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War
- By: Joseph Loconte
- Length: 6 hours 38 minutes
- Publisher: Thomas Nelson
- Publish date: June 30, 2015
- Language: English
-
4.08(3841 ratings)
4.08(3841 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0021.99 USDHad there been no Great War, there would have been no Hobbit, no Lord of the Rings, no Narnia, and perhaps no conversion to Christianity by C. S. Lewis. The First World War laid waste to a continent and brought about the end of innocence—andHad there been no Great War, there would have been no Hobbit, no Lord of the Rings, no Narnia, and perhaps no conversion to Christianity by C. S. Lewis.
The First World War laid waste to a continent and brought about the end of innocence—and the end of faith. Unlike a generation of young writers who lost faith in the God of the Bible, however, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis found that the Great War deepened their spiritual quest. Both men served as soldiers on the Western Front, survived the trenches, and used the experience of that conflict to ignite their Christian imagination.
Tolkien and Lewis produced epic stories infused with the themes of guilt and grace, sorrow and consolation. Giving an unabashedly Christian vision of hope in a world tortured by doubt and disillusionment, the two writers created works that changed the course of literature and shaped the faith of millions. This is the first book to explore their work in light of the spiritual crisis sparked by the conflict.
... Read more -
Surprised by Joy
- By: C. S. Lewis
- Narrator: Geoffrey Howard
- Length: 6 hours 37 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2009
- Language: English
-
4.06(55022 ratings)
4.06(55022 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0016.95 USDIn the closest thing we have to an autobiography, C. S. Lewis, an unfailingly honest and perceptive observer of self, here shares the story of his personal spiritual journey. With characteristic candor and insight, he describes how his “searchIn the closest thing we have to an autobiography, C. S. Lewis, an unfailingly honest and perceptive observer of self, here shares the story of his personal spiritual journey. With characteristic candor and insight, he describes how his “search for joy” led him from the conventional Christianity of his childhood to a youthful atheism, and finally back to an assured Christianity compatible with his formidable intellect. With no pretense, Lewis describes his early schooldays, his experiences in the trenches during World War I, and his undergraduate life at Oxford, where he reasoned his way to God. Lewis’ “surprise” holds continuing interest not only for admirers of his work but for any modern seeker concerned with the compatibility of the rational and the spiritual.
... Read more -
George Eliot
- By: Kathryn Hughes
- Narrator: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 20 hours 36 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2009
- Language: English
-
4.04(218 ratings)
4.04(218 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0031.95 USDThe daughter of a respectable self-made businessman, the middle-aged Eliot was cast into social exile when she began a scandalous liaison with married writer and scientist George Henry Lewes. Only her burgeoning literary success allowed her toThe daughter of a respectable self-made businessman, the middle-aged Eliot was cast into social exile when she began a scandalous liaison with married writer and scientist George Henry Lewes. Only her burgeoning literary success allowed her to overcome society’s disapproval and eventually take her proper place at the heart of London’s literary elite. The territory of her novels encompassed the entire span of Victorian society.
Kathryn Hughes has wrought a balanced, sympathetic, and intensely engaging biography, the first to grapple equally with the personal dramas that shaped Eliot’s psyche and with her broader social and intellectual milieu. A lively portrait emerges of a woman and writer by turns ambitious and insecure, cerebral and earthy, provocative and conservative—contradictions which not only express the spirit of Eliot’s time, but speak eloquently to our own.
... Read more -
Joy
- By: Abigail Santamaria
- Narrator: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 14 hours 10 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2015
- Language: English
-
4.03(365 ratings)
4.03(365 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0022.95 USDThe first full biography of Joy Davidman brings her out from C. S. Lewis’ shadow, where she has long been hidden, to reveal a powerful writer and thinker. Joy Davidman is known, if she is known at all, as the wife of C. S. Lewis. TheirThe first full biography of Joy Davidman brings her out from C. S. Lewis’ shadow, where she has long been hidden, to reveal a powerful writer and thinker.
Joy Davidman is known, if she is known at all, as the wife of C. S. Lewis. Their marriage was immortalized in the film Shadowlands and Lewis’ memoir A Grief Observed. Now, through extraordinary new documents as well as years of research and interviews, Abigail Santamaria brings Joy Davidman Gresham Lewis to the page in the fullness and depth she deserves.
A poet and radical, Davidman was a frequent contributor to the communist vehicle New Masses and an active member of New York literary circles in the 1930s and ’40s. Born Jewish in the Bronx, she was an atheist, then a practitioner of Dianetics; she converted to Christianity after experiencing a moment of transcendent grace. A mother, a novelist, a vibrant and difficult and intelligent woman, she set off for England in 1952, determined to captivate the man whose work had changed her life.
Davidman became the intellectual and spiritual partner Lewis never expected but cherished. She helped him refine his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, and to write his novel Till We Have Faces. Their relationship—begun when Joy wrote to Lewis as a religious guide—grew from a dialogue about faith, writing, and poetry into a deep friendship and a timeless love story.
... Read more -
Blackbird
- By: Jennifer Lauck
- Narrator: Jennifer Lauck
- Length: 5 hours 44 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2000
- Language: English
-
4.03(8537 ratings)
4.03(8537 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0015.95 USDWith the startling emotional immediacy of a fractured family photo album, Jennifer Lauck’s incandescent memoir is the story of an ordinary girl growing up at the turn of the 1970s and the truly extraordinary circumstances of a childhood lost.With the startling emotional immediacy of a fractured family photo album, Jennifer Lauck’s incandescent memoir is the story of an ordinary girl growing up at the turn of the 1970s and the truly extraordinary circumstances of a childhood lost. Wrenching and unforgettable, Blackbird will carry your heart away.
... Read more
To young Jenny, the house on Mary Street was home — the place where she was loved, a blue-sky world of Barbies, Bewitched, and the Beatles. Even her mother’s pain from her mysterious illness could be patted away with powder and a kiss on the cheek. But when everything that Jenny had come to rely on begins to crumble, an odyssey of loss, loneliness, and a child’s will to survive takes flight…. -
A Small Place
- By: Jamaica Kincaid
- Narrator: Robin Miles
- Length: 1 hours 48 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2016
- Language: English
-
4.03(11590 ratings)
4.03(11590 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.009.95 USDFrom the award-winning author of Annie John comes a brilliant look at colonialism and its effects in Antigua. “If you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see. If you come by aeroplane, you will land at the V. C. BirdFrom the award-winning author of Annie John comes a brilliant look at colonialism and its effects in Antigua.
“If you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see. If you come by aeroplane, you will land at the V. C. Bird International Airport. Vere Cornwall (V. C.) Bird is the prime minister of Antigua. You may be the sort of tourist who would wonder why a prime minister would want an airport named after him–why not a school, why not a hospital, why not some great public monument. You are a tourist and you have not yet seen …”
So begins Jamaica Kincaid’s expansive essay, which shows us what we have not yet seen of the ten-by-twelve-mile island in the British West Indies where she grew up.
Lyrical, sardonic, and forthright by turns, in a Swiftian mode, A Small Place cannot help but amplify our vision of one small place and all that it signifies.
... Read more -
A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition
- By: Ernest Hemingway
- Narrator: John Bedford Lloyd
- Length: 6 hours 44 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2009
- Language: English
-
4.03(6256 ratings)
4.03(6256 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.95 USDErnest Hemingway’s classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s, now available in a restored edition, includes the original manuscript along with insightful recollections and unfinished sketches.Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remainsErnest Hemingway’s classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s, now available in a restored edition, includes the original manuscript along with insightful recollections and unfinished sketches.
... Read more
Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway’s most enduring works. Since Hemingway’s personal papers were released in 1979, scholars have examined the changes made to the text before publication. Now, this special restored edition presents the original manuscript as the author prepared it to be published.
Featuring a personal foreword by Patrick Hemingway, Ernest’s sole surviving son, and an introduction by grandson of the author, Seán Hemingway, editor of this edition, the book also includes a number of unfinished, never-before-published Paris sketches revealing experiences that Hemingway had with his son, Jack, and his first wife Hadley. Also included are irreverent portraits of literary luminaries, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ford Maddox Ford, and insightful recollections of Hemingway’s own early experiments with his craft.
Widely celebrated and debated by critics and readers everywhere, the restored edition of A Moveable Feast brilliantly evokes the exuberant mood of Paris after World War I and the unbridled creativity and unquenchable enthusiasm that Hemingway himself epitomized. -
A Moveable Feast
- By: Ernest Hemingway
- Narrator: James Naughton
- Length: 4 hours 24 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2006
- Language: English
-
4.03(101938 ratings)
4.03(101938 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.95 USDErnest Hemingway’s classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s, now available in a restored edition, includes the original manuscript along with insightful recollections and unfinished sketches.Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remainsErnest Hemingway’s classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s, now available in a restored edition, includes the original manuscript along with insightful recollections and unfinished sketches.
... Read more
Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway’s most enduring works. Since Hemingway’s personal papers were released in 1979, scholars have examined the changes made to the text before publication. Now, this special restored edition presents the original manuscript as the author prepared it to be published.
Featuring a personal foreword by Patrick Hemingway, Ernest’s sole surviving son, and an introduction by grandson of the author, Seán Hemingway, editor of this edition, the book also includes a number of unfinished, never-before-published Paris sketches revealing experiences that Hemingway had with his son, Jack, and his first wife Hadley. Also included are irreverent portraits of literary luminaries, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ford Maddox Ford, and insightful recollections of Hemingway’s own early experiments with his craft.
Widely celebrated and debated by critics and readers everywhere, the restored edition of A Moveable Feast brilliantly evokes the exuberant mood of Paris after World War I and the unbridled creativity and unquenchable enthusiasm that Hemingway himself epitomized.
Cliff Weitzman
Cliff Weitzman is a dyslexia advocate and the CEO and founder of Speechify, the #1 text-to-speech app in the world, totaling over 100,000 5-star reviews and ranking first place in the App Store for the News & Magazines category. In 2017, Weitzman was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list for his work making the internet more accessible to people with learning disabilities. Cliff Weitzman has been featured in EdSurge, Inc., PC Mag, Entrepreneur, Mashable, among other leading outlets.
Recent Blogs
-
July 06, 2023
Which books are available on Spotify?
-
July 06, 2023
Are audiobooks free on Spotify with membership?
-
June 25, 2023
Top Destinations for Free eBooks and Audiobooks Online
-
June 25, 2023
Best Alternative to Barnes & Noble Online
-
June 25, 2023
The Best Places to Buy eBooks: Beyond the Kindle Ecosystem
-
June 25, 2023
What are the best places to find free ebooks?
-
June 25, 2023
Best Independent Companies to Buy eBooks from
-
April 19, 2023
How many Game of Thrones books are there?
-
April 19, 2023
Where to buy cheap books: A comprehensive guide
-
April 19, 2023
How many Jack Reacher books are there?
-
April 19, 2023
How many FNAF books are there?
-
April 19, 2023
How many Warrior Cats books are there?
-
April 19, 2023
How many Wheel of Time books are there?
-
April 19, 2023
The best Vampire Survivors powerups in order
-
April 19, 2023
How to read the Robert Galbraith books in order
-
April 19, 2023
How to read the Artemis Fowl books in order
-
April 19, 2023
How to read Craig Johnson’s books in order
-
April 19, 2023
How to read Cassandra Clare’s books in order
-
April 19, 2023
How to read Lee Child’s books in order
-
April 18, 2023
How to read the In Death book series in order
-
April 18, 2023
Best book quotes
-
April 18, 2023
A tale of two cities reviewed
-
April 18, 2023
All the President’s Men reviewed
-
April 18, 2023
Tintin reviewed
-
April 18, 2023
What are adult coloring books?
-
April 18, 2023
How to read the Percy Jackson books in order
-
April 11, 2023
How to find charities for the blind
-
April 11, 2023
What is the best Bible app
-
April 11, 2023
Where to find free audio Bible downloads
-
April 11, 2023
What is the best free Bible app
More in this series
- 17 Best Composition & Creative Writing Books
- 12 Best Creative Ability Books
- 12 Best Colonial Period (1600-1775) Books
- Best books by Virginia Woolf
- 29 Best Christian Church Books
- 13 Best Agriculture & Food Books
- 29 Best History & Theory Books
- 20 Best Depression Books
- 12 Best Budgeting Books
- 29 Best Hard Science Fiction, Fiction Books
- 29 Best Revolutionary Period (1775-1800), History Books
- Books recommended by Sarah Silverman
- 15 Best Civil Rights, History Books
- 13 Best Manners & Etiquette Books
- 21 Best Affirmations Books
- 11 Best Russia & the Former Soviet Union, Political Science Books
- 29 Best Political Process Books
- 29 Best Gothic Books
- 15 Best Parent & Adult Child Books
- 29 Best General, Health & Fitness Books
- 11 Best Mammals, Juvenile Fiction Books
- 29 Best International Mystery & Crime Books
- 12 Best Exegesis & Hermeneutics, Religion Books
- 18 Best Survival Stories Books
- 13 Best Diplomacy, Political Science Books
- 14 Best Eating Disorders Books
- 27 Best Strategic Planning Books
- 22 Best Women in Business, Business & Economics Books
- 23 Best Counseling & Recovery, Religion Books
- 10 Best Children’s Studies Books