29 Best Women, Biography & Autobiography Books
Women, Biography & Autobiography is a popular category for many book lovers. Our team at Speechify has curated a list of the top Women, Biography & Autobiography audiobooks everyone must read.
See the top 29 Women, Biography & Autobiography audiobooks below.
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We Are the Troopers
- By: Stephen Guinan
- Narrator: Amy Landon
- Length: 9 hours 43 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: August 30, 2022
- Language: English
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4.63(25 ratings)
4.63(25 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0027.99 USDDiscover the unlikely story of the Toledo Troopers, the winningest team in the National Women’s Football League, who won seven league championships in the 1970s–and gain full access to the players and key figures in the organization.Discover the unlikely story of the Toledo Troopers, the winningest team in the National Women’s Football League, who won seven league championships in the 1970s–and gain full access to the players and key figures in the organization.
Amid a national backdrop of the call to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, the National Women’s Football League was founded as something of a gimmick. However, the league’s star team, the Toledo Troopers, emerged to challenge traditional gender roles and amass a win-loss record never before or since achieved in American football. The players were housewives, factory workers, hairdressers, former nuns, high school teachers, bartenders, mail carriers, pilots, and would-be drill sergeants. Black, white, Latina. Mothers and daughters and aunts and sisters. But most of all, they were athletes who had been denied the opportunity to play a game they were born to play.
Before the protests and the lobbyists, before the debates and the amendments, before the marches and the mandates, there was only an obscure advertisement in a local Midwestern paper and those who answered it, women such as Lee Hollar, the only woman working the line at the Libbey glass factory; Gloria Jimenez, who grew up playing sports with her six brothers; and Linda Jefferson, one the greatest, most accomplished athletes in sports history. Stephen Guinan grew up in Toledo pulling for his hometown football team, and–in the innocence of youth–did not realize at the time what a barrier-breaking lost piece of history he was witnessing. We Are the Troopers shines light on forgotten champions who came together for the love of the game. ... Read more -
What is A Girl Worth?
- By: Rachael Denhollander
- Length: 11 hours 11 minutes
- Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
- Publish date: September 10, 2019
- Language: English
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4.61(4375 ratings)
4.61(4375 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.99 USDRecipient of Sports Illustrated’s Inspiration of the Year Award and one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People (2018) “Who is going to tell these little girls that what was done to them matters? That they are seen and valued, thatRecipient of Sports Illustrated’s Inspiration of the Year Award and one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People (2018) “Who is going to tell these little girls that what was done to them matters? That they are seen and valued, that they are not alone and they are not unprotected?” Rachael Denhollander’s voice was heard around the world when she spoke out to end the most shocking scandal in US gymnastics history. The first victim to publicly accuse Larry Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics team doctor who abused hundreds of young athletes, Rachael now reveals her full story for the first time. How did Nassar get away with it for so long? How did Rachael and the other survivors finally stop him and bring him to justice? And how can we protect the vulnerable in our own families, churches, and communities? What Is a Girl Worth? is the inspiring true story of Rachael’s journey from an idealistic young gymnast to a strong and determined woman who found the courage to raise her voice against evil, even when she thought the world might not listen. This deeply personal and compelling narrative shines a spotlight on the physical and emotional impact of abuse, why so many survivors are reluctant to speak out, what it means to be believed, the extraordinary power of faith and forgiveness, and how we can learn to do what’s right in the moments that matter most.
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Flying Free
- By: Cecilia Aragon
- Narrator: Roxanne Hernandez
- Length: 10 hours 7 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2020
- Language: English
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4.6(102 ratings)
4.6(102 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDThe daughter of a Chilean father and a Filipina mother, Cecilia Rodriguez Aragon grew up as a shy, timid child in a small midwestern town during the 1960s. Targeted by school bullies and dismissed by many of her teachers, she worried that peopleThe daughter of a Chilean father and a Filipina mother, Cecilia Rodriguez Aragon grew up as a shy, timid child in a small midwestern town during the 1960s. Targeted by school bullies and dismissed by many of her teachers, she worried that people would find out the truth: that she was INTF. Incompetent. Nerd. Terrified. Failure. This feeling stayed with her well into her twenties when she was told that “girls can’t do science” or “women just don’t know how to handle machines.”
Yet in the span of just six years, Cecilia became the first Latina pilot to secure a place on the United States Unlimited Aerobatic Team and earn the right to represent her country at the Olympics of aviation, the World Aerobatic Championships. How did she do it?
Using mathematical techniques to overcome her fear, Cecilia performed at air shows in front of millions of people. She jumped out of airplanes and taught others how to fly. She learned how to fund-raise and earn money to compete at the world level. She worked as a test pilot and contributed to the design of experimental airplanes, crafting curves of metal and fabric that shaped air to lift inanimate objects high above the earth. And best of all, she surprised everyone by overcoming the prejudices people held about her because of her race and her gender.
Flying Free is the story of how Cecilia Aragon broke free from expectations and rose above her own limits by combining her passion for flying with math and logic in unexpected ways. You don’t have to be a math whiz or a science geek to learn from her story. You just have to want to soar.
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Open Skies
- By: Niloofar Rahmani
- Narrator: Suehyla El-Attar
- Length: 8 hours 51 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2021
- Language: English
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4.57(80 ratings)
4.57(80 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDThe true story of Niloofar Rahmani and her determination to become Afghanistan’s first female air force pilot. In 2010, for the first time since the Soviets, Afghanistan allowed women to join the armed forces, and Niloofar enteredThe true story of Niloofar Rahmani and her determination to become Afghanistan’s first female air force pilot.
In 2010, for the first time since the Soviets, Afghanistan allowed women to join the armed forces, and Niloofar entered Afghanistan’s military academy.
Niloofar had to break through social barriers to demonstrate confidence, leadership, and decisiveness–essential qualities for a combat pilot. Niloofar performed the first solo flight of her class–ahead of all her male classmates–and in 2013 became Afghanistan’s first female fixed-wing air force pilot.
The US State Department honored Niloofar with the International Women of Courage Award and brought her to the United States to meet Michelle Obama and fly with the US Navy’s Blue Angels. But when she returned to Kabul, the danger to her and her family had increased significantly.
Rahmani and her family are portraits of the resiliency of refugees and the accomplishments they can reach when afforded with opportunities.
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In My Own Key
- By: Liona Boyd
- Narrator: Liona Boyd
- Length: 12 hours 24 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2018
- Language: English
Regular Price:Try for $0.0022.95 USDExotic venues, sold-out concerts, and the companionship of the world’s most powerful people have given Liona Boyd an adventure-packed lifestyle that, like her music, is one in a million. The internationally acclaimed classical guitarist hasExotic venues, sold-out concerts, and the companionship of the world’s most powerful people have given Liona Boyd an adventure-packed lifestyle that, like her music, is one in a million. The internationally acclaimed classical guitarist has crossed numerous boundaries, both musically and romantically.
In this colorful memoir she serves up a rich and fascinating mix: childhood with her progressive parents in England, Canada, and Mexico; exacting music studies in Toronto; down-and-out years in London and Paris; her eight-year love affair with Canadian prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau; drug experimentation in a Mexican artists’ colony; her enduring friendship with the British Royal Family; private performances for many heads of state; behind-the-scenes glimpses into her privileged years in Malibu and Beverly Hills; and whirlwind trips around the globe to eminent concert stages.
It all makes for a rousing, feisty, passionate tale, as compelling and entrancing as the music of her guitar.
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Thirty-Thousand Steps
- By: Jess Keefe
- Narrator: Mia Hutchinson-Shaw
- Length: 8 hours 48 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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4.45(37 ratings)
4.45(37 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDAfter Jess Keefe ended things with her long-term boyfriend, she moved in with her brother Matt in hopes that family could help her not only heal from the break-up but also evolve into a healthy adult. But that fantasy ended when Matt’s heroinAfter Jess Keefe ended things with her long-term boyfriend, she moved in with her brother Matt in hopes that family could help her not only heal from the break-up but also evolve into a healthy adult. But that fantasy ended when Matt’s heroin addiction came roaring back after lying dormant for years, leading to a fatal overdose on a warm October night.
Thirty-Thousand Steps is a powerful and transformative memoir that interweaves the author’s obsessive training to becoming a distance runner, along with her singular, focused research into the science of addiction in the shadow of grief after the death of her brother.
In the year that followed Matt’s death, Jess lived alone for the first time in her life while struggling with a loose, bereaved mind. She became obsessed with what happened to her brother and how things could have been different. She dove into research about addiction and drugs. She excavated their shared childhood and young adulthood for clues.
During this time, she was also learning how to become a distance runner. Jess pushed her body to its limits to quiet the chaos in her mind. After losing Matt, she knew she’d never be the same.
With a propulsive narrative, a unique voice, empathy, and even humor, Jess weaves her grieving experience together with explorations of the social, political, and scientific drivers that influenced what happened to her brother. Thirty-Thousand Steps explores the psychosocial risk factors that lead to addiction, the cudgel of Catholicism, the joy and shame in the early-aughts queer experience, and the extent to which one can push mind and body to regenerate after a major loss.
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Small Steps
- By: Peg Kehret
- Narrator: Susan Boyce
- Length: 3 hours 8 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2013
- Language: English
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4.44(6157 ratings)
4.44(6157 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0014.95 USDAcclaimed author Peg Kehret has written the true story of the year about when she was twelve and stricken with polio. At first paralyzed and terrified, she fought her way to recovery, aided by doctors and therapists, a loving family, supportiveAcclaimed author Peg Kehret has written the true story of the year about when she was twelve and stricken with polio. At first paralyzed and terrified, she fought her way to recovery, aided by doctors and therapists, a loving family, supportive roommates fighting their own battles with the disease, and plenty of grit and luck. With the humor and suspense that are her trademarks, Peg Kehret vividly recreates a year of heartbreak and triumph.
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In Extremis
- By: Lindsey Hilsum
- Narrator: Lindsey Hilsum
- Length: 13 hours 26 minutes
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Publish date: November 06, 2018
- Language: English
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4.44(2961 ratings)
4.44(2961 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0026.99 USDThe inspiring and devastating biography of Marie Colvin, the foremost war reporter of her generation, who was killed in Syria in 2012, and whose life story also forms the basis of the feature film A Private War, starring Rosamund Pike as Colvin.The inspiring and devastating biography of Marie Colvin, the foremost war reporter of her generation, who was killed in Syria in 2012, and whose life story also forms the basis of the feature film A Private War, starring Rosamund Pike as Colvin.
When Marie Colvin was killed in an artillery attack in Homs, Syria, in 2012, at age fifty-six, the world lost a fearless and iconoclastic war correspondent who covered the most significant global calamities of her lifetime. In Extremis, written by her fellow reporter Lindsey Hilsum, is a thrilling investigation into Colvin’s epic life and tragic death based on exclusive access to her intimate diaries from age thirteen to her death, interviews with people from every corner of her life, and impeccable research.
After growing up in a middle-class Catholic family on Long Island, Colvin studied with the legendary journalist John Hersey at Yale, and eventually started working for The Sunday Times of London, where she gained a reputation for bravery and compassion as she told the stories of victims of the major conflicts of our time. She lost sight in one eye while in Sri Lanka covering the civil war, interviewed Gaddafi and Arafat many times, and repeatedly risked her life covering conflicts in Chechnya, East Timor, Kosovo, and the Middle East. Colvin lived her personal life in extremis, too: bold, driven, and complex, she was married twice, took many lovers, drank and smoked, and rejected society’s expectations for women. Despite PTSD, she refused to give up reporting. Like her hero Martha Gellhorn, Colvin was committed to bearing witness to the horrifying truths of war, and to shining a light on the profound suffering of ordinary people caught in the midst of conflict.
Lindsey Hilsum’s In Extremis is a devastating and revelatory biography of one of the greatest war correspondents of her generation.
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Cockroaches
- By: Scholastique Mukasonga
- Narrator: Akrosia Samson
- Length: 4 hours 21 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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4.43(478 ratings)
4.43(478 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0014.95 USDImagine being born into a world where everything about you–the shape of your nose, the look of your hair, the place of your birth–designates you as an undesirable, an inferior, a menace, no better than a cockroach, something to be drivenImagine being born into a world where everything about you–the shape of your nose, the look of your hair, the place of your birth–designates you as an undesirable, an inferior, a menace, no better than a cockroach, something to be driven away and ultimately exterminated. Imagine being thousands of miles away while your family and friends are brutally and methodically slaughtered. Imagine being entrusted by your parents with the mission of leaving everything you know and finding some way to survive, in the name of your family and your people.
Scholastique Mukasonga’s Cockroaches is the story of growing up a Tutsi in Hutu-dominated Rwanda–the story of a happy child, a loving family, all wiped out in the genocide of 1994. A vivid, bittersweet depiction of family life and bond in a time of immense hardship, it is also a story of incredible endurance and the duty to remember that loss and those lost while somehow carrying on. Sweet, funny, wrenching, and deeply moving, Cockroaches is a window into an unforgettable world of love, grief, and horror.
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Ma and Me
- By: Putsata Reang
- Narrator: Putsata Reang
- Length: 11 hours 21 minutes
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Publish date: May 17, 2022
- Language: English
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4.42(366 ratings)
4.42(366 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0026.99 USD“Putsata Reang’s quiet narration of her beautiful, poignant memoir holds both deep compassion and raw pain. Reang’s ability to capture both her own and her mother’s histories, desires, and dreams–in her voice and her“Putsata Reang’s quiet narration of her beautiful, poignant memoir holds both deep compassion and raw pain. Reang’s ability to capture both her own and her mother’s histories, desires, and dreams–in her voice and her prose–is remarkable.” –AudioFile on Ma and Me
This program is read by the author.“A nuanced mediation on love, identity, and belonging. This story of survival radiates with resilience and hope.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“This openhearted memoir . . . opens the door to include queer descendants of war survivors into the growing American library of love.” –Sarah Schulman, author of Let the Record ShowWhen Putsata Reang was eleven months old, her family fled war-torn Cambodia, spending twenty-three days on an overcrowded navy vessel before finding sanctuary at an American naval base in the Philippines. Holding what appeared to be a lifeless baby in her arms, Ma resisted the captain’s orders to throw her bundle overboard. Instead, on landing, Ma rushed her baby into the arms of American military nurses and doctors, who saved the child’s life. “I had hope, just a little, you were still alive,” Ma would tell Put in an oft-repeated story that became family legend.
Over the years, Put lived to please Ma and make her proud, hustling to repay her life debt by becoming the consummate good Cambodian daughter, working steadfastly by Ma’s side in the berry fields each summer and eventually building a successful career as an award-winning journalist. But Put’s adoration and efforts are no match for Ma’s expectations. When she comes out to Ma in her twenties, it’s just a phase. When she fails to bring home a Khmer boyfriend, it’s because she’s not trying hard enough. When, at the age of forty, Put tells Ma she is finally getting married–to a woman–it breaks their bond in two.
In her startling memoir, Reang explores the long legacy of inherited trauma and the crushing weight of cultural and filial duty. With rare clarity and lyric wisdom, Ma and Me is a stunning, deeply moving memoir about love, debt, and duty.
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We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders
- By: Linda Sarsour
- Narrator: Linda Sarsour
- Length: 7 hours 34 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2020
- Language: English
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4.41(704 ratings)
4.41(704 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.99 USDLinda Sarsour, co-organizer of the Women’s March, shares an “unforgettable memoir” (Booklist) about how growing up Palestinian Muslim American, feminist, and empowered moved her to become a globally recognized activist on behalf ofLinda Sarsour, co-organizer of the Women’s March, shares an “unforgettable memoir” (Booklist) about how growing up Palestinian Muslim American, feminist, and empowered moved her to become a globally recognized activist on behalf of marginalized communities across the country.
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On a chilly spring morning in Brooklyn, nineteen-year-old Linda Sarsour stared at her reflection, dressed in a hijab for the first time. She saw in the mirror the woman she was growing to be–a young Muslim American woman unapologetic in her faith and her activism, who would discover her innate sense of justice in the aftermath of 9/11. Now heralded for her award-winning leadership of the Women’s March on Washington, Sarsour offers a “moving memoir [that] is a testament to the power of love in action” (Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow).
From the Brooklyn bodega her father owned, where Linda learned the real meaning of intersectionality, to protests in the streets of Washington, DC, Linda’s experience as a daughter of Palestinian immigrants is a moving portrayal of what it means to find one’s voice and use it for the good of others. We follow Linda as she learns the tenets of successful community organizing, and through decades of fighting for racial, economic, gender, and social justice, as she becomes one of the most recognized activists in the nation. We also see her honoring her grandmother’s dying wish, protecting her children, building resilient friendships, and mentoring others even as she loses her first mentor in a tragic accident. Throughout, she inspires you to take action as she reaffirms that we are not here to be bystanders.
In this “book that speaks to our times” (The Washington Post), Harry Belafonte writes of Linda in the foreword, “While we may not have made it to the Promised Land, my peers and I, my brothers and sisters in liberation can rest easy that the future is in the hands of leaders like Linda Sarsour. I have often said to Linda that she embodies the principle and purpose of another great Muslim leader, brother Malcolm X.”
This is her story. -
The Girl Who Escaped ISIS
- By: Farida Khalaf
- Narrator: Lara Sawalha
- Length: 7 hours 35 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2016
- Language: English
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4.38(1405 ratings)
4.38(1405 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDNamed a “Best Book of the Year” by New York Post “Farida Khalaf’s story is harrowing but crucial–especially when it comes to understanding what ISIS actually is and does.” —Glamour “As gripping as itNamed a “Best Book of the Year” by New York Post
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“Farida Khalaf’s story is harrowing but crucial–especially when it comes to understanding what ISIS actually is and does.” —Glamour
“As gripping as it is appalling…a compelling testament to the suffering of ordinary people caught up in violence far beyond their control–and to the particularly terrible price it exacts from women.” —The Guardian
A young Yazidi woman was living a normal, sheltered life in northern Iraq during the summer of 2014 when her entire world was upended: her village was attacked by ISIS. All of the men in her town were killed and the women were taken into slavery.
This is Farida Khalaf’s story.
In unprecedented detail, Farida describes her world as it was–at nineteen, she was living at home with her brothers and parents, finishing her schooling and looking forward to becoming a math teacher–and the hell it became. Held in a slave market in Syria and sold into the homes of several ISIS soldiers, she stubbornly attempts resistance at every turn. Farida is ultimately brought to an ISIS training camp in the middle of the desert, where she plots an against-all-odds escape for herself and five other girls.
A riveting firsthand account of life in captivity and a courageous flight to freedom, this astonishing memoir is also Farida’s way of bearing witness, and of ensuring that ISIS does not succeed in crushing her spirit. Her bravery, resilience, and hope in the face of unimaginable violence will fascinate and inspire. -
Isn’t Her Grace Amazing!
- By: Cheryl Wills
- Narrator: Tracey Leigh
- Length: 2 hours 56 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: May 03, 2022
- Language: English
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4.37(23 ratings)
4.37(23 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.003.99 USDA unique tribute to often overlooked women who have left an indelible mark on Gospel Music–powerful talents who overcame racism and sexism to define the genre, establish its sound, and set the standard for good sangin’ forA unique tribute to often overlooked women who have left an indelible mark on Gospel Music–powerful talents who overcame racism and sexism to define the genre, establish its sound, and set the standard for good sangin’ for generations.
Nothing in the world soothes the soul better than Gospel music. From the foot-stomping, hand-clapping melodies of yesterday to the head-bobbing, bass-thumping hits of today, Gospel music ignites the spirit and delivers the inspiration that takes us from the rough side of the mountain to the peak of God’s love and grace. That feeling of joy, peace, love, and contentment is amplified when it’s ringing through the voice of a sister who can SANG, Cheryl Wills reminds us. The remedy for a tough day at work can be alleviated with Mary Mary’s uplifting jam Shackles, the answer to your heart’s desires can be found in the harmonies of The Clark Sisters Name It, Claim It, and if you need a reminder of God’s love, there is nothing more timeless that Aretha Franklin’s stirring rendition of Amazing Grace.
Some talented performers, like Sister Rosetta Tharpe have faded from history, while singers like Yolanda Adams are at the top of her game. During the twentieth century, Willie Mae Ford spent most of her life encouraging and uplifting Christians both in church and on stage and composed more than 100 Gospel songs, yet it was men like her co-writer, Thomas A. Dorsey, who received the accolades and fame. Many women in the Gospel music industry go unnoticed, unpaid, and under-appreciated for their contributions, yet it is these women who are often the bedrock for songwriting, arranging, directing, and developing singers.
Cheryl Wills, the granddaughter of a Gospel singer, at last shines a spotlight on these spectacular women of song. The only book of its kind, Isn’t Her Grace Amazing! showcase the talents, gifts, and skills of women in the Gospel music industry. It celebrates these heroines, chronicles their journeys from the choir loft to the world’s largest stages, and reveals how they revolutionized this sacred music that is beloved worldwide. From the matriarchs of this movement to today’s chart-topping divas, Wills offers in-depth portraits of twenty-five amazing women of Gospel music–based on interviews and extensive research–behind-the-scenes stories of favorite gospel hits, and illuminates what makes each of them shine.
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To Love and Be Loved
- By: Jim Towey
- Narrator: Jim Towey
- Length: 7 hours 5 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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4.36(92 ratings)
4.36(92 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.99 USDFrom a trusted advisor and devoted friend of Mother Teresa comes a “powerful” (The Washington Free Beacon) firsthand account of the miraculous woman behind the saint and a book that is “rich in reflection on contemporaryFrom a trusted advisor and devoted friend of Mother Teresa comes a “powerful” (The Washington Free Beacon) firsthand account of the miraculous woman behind the saint and a book that is “rich in reflection on contemporary sanctity” (George Weigel).
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Mother Teresa was one of the most admired women of the 20th century, and her memory continues to inspire charitable work around the world. She believed the greatest need of a human being is to love and be loved. In 1948, she founded the Missionaries of Charity to work directly with the very poorest of Calcutta. From the efforts of one woman entering the slums of Entally, the Missionaries of Charity grew into an organization operating soup kitchens, health clinics, hospices, and shelters in 139 countries, at no cost to any government or to those who served. In 2016, she became Saint Teresa of Calcutta.
Author Jim Towey had been a high-flying Congressional staffer and lawyer in the 1980s until a brief meeting with Mother Teresa illuminated the emptiness of his life. He began volunteering at one of her soup kitchens and using his legal skills and political connections to help the Missionaries of Charity. When Mother Teresa suggested he take up shifts at her AIDS hospice, Towey realized he was all in. Soon, he gave up his job and possessions and became a full-time volunteer for Mother Teresa. He traveled with her frequently, arranged her meetings with politicians, and handled many of her legal affairs.
To Love and Be Loved is an “inspiring and joyful” (Kirkus Reviews) firsthand account of Mother Teresa’s last years, and the first book ever to detail her dealings with worldly matters. We see her gracefully navigate the opportunities and challenges to leadership, the perils of celebrity, and the humiliations and triumphs of aging. We also catch her indulging in chocolate ice cream, making jokes about mini-skirts, and telling the President of the United States he’s wrong. Above all, we see her extraordinary devotion to God and to the very poorest of His children. Mother Teresa taught Towey to be more prayerful, less selfish, more humble, less worldly, move in love with God, and less in love with himself. Her lessons are here for all to share. -
The Copenhagen Trilogy
- By: Tove Ditlevsen
- Narrator: Stine Wintlev
- Length: 11 hours 52 minutes
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Publish date: January 26, 2021
- Language: English
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4.36(5930 ratings)
4.36(5930 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0026.99 USDCalled “a masterpiece” by The Guardian, this courageous and honest trilogy from Tove Ditlevsen, a pioneer in the field of genre-bending confessional writing, explores themes of family, sex, motherhood, abortion, addiction, and being anCalled “a masterpiece” by The Guardian, this courageous and honest trilogy from Tove Ditlevsen, a pioneer in the field of genre-bending confessional writing, explores themes of family, sex, motherhood, abortion, addiction, and being an artist. This program contains all three volumes of her memoirs
Tove Ditlevsen is today celebrated as one of the most important and unique voices in twentieth-century Danish literature, and The Copenhagen Trilogy (1969-71) is her acknowledged masterpiece. Childhood tells the story of a misfit child’s single-minded determination to become a poet; Youth describes her early experiences of sex, work, and independence. Dependency picks up the story as the narrator embarks on the first of her four marriages and goes on to describe her horrible descent into drug addiction, enabled by her sinister, gaslighting doctor-husband.
Throughout, the narrator grapples with the tension between her vocation as a writer and her competing roles as daughter, wife, mother, and drug addict, and she writes about female experience and identity in a way that feels very fresh and pertinent to today’s discussions around feminism. Ditlevsen’s trilogy is remarkable for its intensity and its immersive depiction of a world of complex female friendships, family and growing up–in this sense, it’s Copenhagen’s answer to Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels. She can also be seen as a spiritual forerunner of confessional writers like Karl Ove Knausgaard, Annie Ernaux, Rachel Cusk and Deborah Levy. Her trilogy is drawn from her own experiences but unfolds like the most compelling kind of fiction.
Born in a working-class neighborhood in Copenhagen in 1917, Ditlevsen became famous for her poetry while still a teenager, and went on to write novels, stories and memoirs before committing suicide in 1976. Having been dismissed by the critical establishment in her lifetime as a working-class, female writer, she is now being rediscovered and championed as one of Denmark’s most important modern authors, with “Tove fever” gripping readers.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Somebody’s Gotta Do It
- By: Adrienne Martini
- Length: 7 hours 25 minutes
- Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
- Publish date: March 03, 2020
- Language: English
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4.35(95 ratings)
4.35(95 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.99 USDA humorous (and instructive) memoir about a progressive woman who runs for very small-town elected office in a red county–and wins (yay!)– and only then realizes the critical importance of the job Back in the fall of 2016, beforeA humorous (and instructive) memoir about a progressive woman who
runs for very small-town elected office in a red county–and wins (yay!)–
and only then realizes the critical importance of the jobBack in the fall of 2016, before casting her vote for Hillary Clinton,
Adrienne Martini, a knitter, a runner, a mom, and a resident of rural Otsego
County in snowy upstate New York, knew who her senators were, wasn’t too
sure who her congressman was, and had only vague inklings about who her
state reps were. She’d always thought of politicians as … oily. Then she spent
election night curled in bed, unable to stop shaking, texting her husband, who
was at work. And after the presidential inauguration, she reached out to Dave,
a friend of a friend, who was involved in the Otsego County Democratic Party.
Maybe she could help out with phone calls or fundraising? But Dave’s idea was:
she should run for office. Someone had to do it.And so, in the year that 26,000 women (up from 920 the year before)
contacted EMILY’s List about running for offices large and small, Adrienne
Martini ran for the District 12 seat on the Otsego County Board. And became
one of the fourteen delegates who collectively serve one rural American
county, overseeing a budget of $130 million. Highway repair? Soil and water
conservation? Child safety? Want Wi-Fi? Need a coroner?It turns out, local office matters a lot to any government by the people for
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the people. -
Ciao Bella!
- By: Kate Langbroek
- Narrator: Kate Langbroek
- Length: 12 hours 43 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Australia
- Publish date: January 01, 2021
- Language: English
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4.34(1355 ratings)
4.34(1355 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0033.99 USDKate Langbroek’s deliciously funny and inspiring memoir about moving to Italy with her family to seek la dolce vita. ‘A wonderful story, beautifully written, filled with heart and humour’ Liane Moriarty (reviewing Ciao Bella! onKate Langbroek’s deliciously funny and inspiring memoir about moving to Italy with her family to seek la dolce vita.
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‘A wonderful story, beautifully written, filled with heart and humour’ Liane Moriarty (reviewing Ciao Bella! on 3pm Pick Up, KIIS 1065)
I wasn’t looking to fall in love. It just happened. There were moments, encounters as fleeting as feelings. Sometimes – tellingly – they emerged from chaos.
When Kate Langbroek first dreamed of moving to Italy, she imagined a magnificent sun-drenched pastiche of long lunches and wandering through cobbled laneways clutching a loaf of crusty bread and a bottle of wine, Sophia Loren-style, while handsome men called out ‘Ciao Bella!’
In the stark light of day the dream Kate shared with her husband Peter after an idyllic holiday in Italy seemed like madness. They didn’t speak Italian. They knew no one in Italy. They had four children. Kate also had the best job in the world on a top-rating radio show with her longtime friend, Dave Hughes.
But the siren song of Italy was irresistible. This would be the adventure of a lifetime, a precious opportunity to spend more time with their children – Lewis, Sunday, Artie and Jannie – and it came from a deep well inside to seize life after they almost lost Lewis to leukaemia.
Ciao Bella! is about having a dream and living it as Kate shares the sublime joys and utter chaos of adapting to a new life in Bologna, what you discover about yourself when you are a stranger in a strange land, and how she fell in love. With a country.
Deliciously funny, insightful and often deeply moving, Ciao Bella! is Kate’s love letter to Italy and her family. It is also a glorious reminder of what Italians can teach us about living life to the full – and what really matters when the world goes to hell in a handbasket. -
Truth Be Told
- By: Beverley McLachlin
- Narrator: Beverley McLachlin
- Length: 11 hours 9 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster
- Publish date: January 01, 2019
- Language: English
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4.32(940 ratings)
4.32(940 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDFormer Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada Beverley McLachlin offers an intimate and revealing look at her life from her childhood in the Alberta foothills to her career on the Supreme Court, where she helped to shape the social and moralFormer Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada Beverley McLachlin offers an intimate and revealing look at her life from her childhood in the Alberta foothills to her career on the Supreme Court, where she helped to shape the social and moral fabric of the country.
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As a young girl, Beverley McLachlin’s world was often full of wonder–at the expansive prairie vistas around her, at the stories she discovered in the books at her local library, and at the diverse people who passed through her parents’ door. While her family was poor, their lives were rich in the ways that mattered most. Even at a young age, she had an innate sense of justice, which was reinforced by the lessons her parents taught her: Everyone deserves dignity. All people are equal. Those who work hard reap the rewards. Willful, spirited, and unusually intelligent, she discovered in Pincher Creek an extraordinary tapestry of people and perspectives that informed her worldview going forward.
Still, life in the rural Prairies was lonely, and gaining access to education–especially for girls–wasn’t always easy. As a young woman, McLachlin moved to Edmonton to pursue a degree in philosophy. There, she discovered her passion lay not in academia, but in the real world, solving problems directly related to the lives of the people around her. And in the law, she found the tools to do exactly that.
She soon realized, though, that the world was not always willing to accept her. In her early years as an articling student and lawyer, she encountered sexism, exclusion, and old boys’ clubs at every turn. And outside the courtroom, personal loss and tragedies struck close to home. Nonetheless, McLachlin was determined to prove her worth, and her love of the law and the pursuit of justice pulled her through the darkest moments.
McLachlin’s meteoric rise through the courts soon found her serving on the highest court in the country, becoming the first woman to be named Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. She rapidly distinguished herself as a judge of renown, one who was never afraid to take on morally complex or charged debates. Over the next eighteen years, McLachlin presided over the most prominent cases in the country–involving Charter challenges, same-sex marriage, and euthanasia. One judgment at a time, she laid down a legal legacy that proved that fairness and justice were not luxuries of the powerful but rather obligations owed to each and every one of us.
With warmth, honesty, and deep wisdom, McLachlin invites us into her legal and personal life–into the hopes and doubts, the triumphs and losses on and off the bench. Through it all, her constant faith in justice remained her true north. In an age of division and uncertainty, McLachlin’s memoir is a reminder that justice and the rule of law remain our best hope for a progressive and bright future. -
The Bright Hour
- By: Nina Riggs
- Narrator: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 7 hours 34 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2017
- Language: English
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4.3(13484 ratings)
4.3(13484 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USD* INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * “Stunning…heartrending…this year’s When Breath Becomes Air.” –Nora Krug, The Washington Post “Beautiful and haunting.” –Matt McCarthy, MD, USA TODAY* INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER *
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“Stunning…heartrending…this year’s When Breath Becomes Air.” –Nora Krug, The Washington Post
“Beautiful and haunting.” –Matt McCarthy, MD, USA TODAY
“Deeply affecting…simultaneously heartbreaking and funny.” —People (Book of the Week)
“Vivid, immediate.” –Laura Collins-Hughes, The Boston Globe
Starred reviews from * Kirkus Reviews * Publishers Weekly * Library Journal *
Best Books of 2017 Selection by * The Washington Post *
Most Anticipated Summer Reading Selection by * The Washington Post * Entertainment Weekly * Glamour * The Seattle Times * Vulture * InStyle * Bookpage * Bookriot * Real Simple * The Atlanta Journal-Constitution *
The New York Times bestseller by poet Nina Riggs, mother of two young sons and the direct descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson, is “a stunning…heart-rending meditation on life…It is this year’s When Breath Becomes Air” (The Washington Post).
We are breathless but we love the days. They are promises. They are the only way to walk from one night to the other.
Poet and essayist Nina Riggs was just thirty-seven years old when initially diagnosed with breast cancer–one small spot. Within a year, she received the devastating news that her cancer was terminal.
How does a dying person learn to live each day “unattached to outcome”? How does one approach the moments, big and small, with both love and honesty? How does a young mother and wife prepare her two young children and adored husband for a loss that will shape the rest of their lives? How do we want to be remembered?
Exploring motherhood, marriage, friendship, and memory, Nina asks: What makes a meaningful life when one has limited time? “Profound and poignant” (O, The Oprah Magazine), The Bright Hour is about how to make the most of all the days, even the painful ones. It’s about the way literature, especially Nina’s direct ancestor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and her other muse, Montaigne, can be a balm and a form of prayer.
Brilliantly written and exceptionally moving, it’s a “deeply affecting memoir, a simultaneously heartbreaking and funny account of living with loss and the specter of death. As Riggs lyrically, unflinchingly details her reality, she finds beauty and truth that comfort even amid the crushing sadness” (People, Book of the Week).
Tender and heartwarming, The Bright Hour “is a gentle reminder to cherish each day” (Entertainment Weekly, Best New Books) and offers us this important perspective: “You can read a multitude books about how to die, but Riggs, a dying woman, will show you how to live” (The New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice). -
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
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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.
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The Nine
- By: Gwen Strauss
- Narrator: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 13 hours 33 minutes
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Publish date: May 04, 2021
- Language: English
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4.28(2142 ratings)
4.28(2142 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0026.99 USDThe Nine follows the true story of the author’s great aunt Helene Podliasky, who led a band of nine female resistance fighters as they escaped a German forced labor camp and made a ten-day journey across the front lines of World War II fromThe Nine follows the true story of the author’s great aunt Helene Podliasky, who led a band of nine female resistance fighters as they escaped a German forced labor camp and made a ten-day journey across the front lines of World War II from Germany back to Paris.
This program includes a bonus conversation with the author, as well as an archival recording of Martine Podliasky singing the Champs de Marais at her mother, Helene Podliasky’s, funeral.
The nine women were all under thirty when they joined the resistance. They smuggled arms through Europe, harbored parachuting agents, coordinated communications between regional sectors, trekked escape routes to Spain and hid Jewish children in scattered apartments. They were arrested by French police, interrogated and tortured by the Gestapo. They were subjected to a series of French prisons and deported to Germany.
The group formed along the way, meeting at different points, in prison, in transit, and at Ravensbruck. By the time they were enslaved at the labor camp in Leipzig, they were a close-knit group of friends. During the final days of the war, forced onto a death march, the nine chose their moment and made a daring escape.
Drawing on incredible research, this powerful, heart-stopping narrative is a moving tribute to the power of humanity and friendship in the darkest of times.
A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press
“A compelling, beautifully written story of resilience, friendship and survival. The story of Women’s resistance during World War II needs to be told and The Nine accomplishes this in spades.”–Heather Morris, New York Times bestselling author of Cilka’s Journey
“This haunting account provides yet more evidence not only of the power of female friendship but that the often unrecorded courage and resilience of ordinary women must be honored and celebrated. It’s a most inspiring read…Utterly gripping.” –Anne Sebba, author of Les Parisiennes
“The Nine is poignant, powerful, and shattering, distilling the horror of the Holocaust through the lens of nine unforgettable women…Gwen Strauss melds a poet’s pen and a decade of research into a tale of friendship, courage, and indomitable will.” –Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author
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The Triumph of Nancy Reagan
- By: Karen Tumulty
- Narrator: Kate Reading
- Length: 25 hours 20 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2021
- Language: English
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4.27(203 ratings)
4.27(203 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0034.99 USDThe definitive biography of the fiercely vigilant and politically astute First Lady who shaped one of the most consequential presidencies of the 20th century: Nancy Reagan.The made-in-Hollywood marriage of Ronald and Nancy Reagan is more than a loveThe definitive biography of the fiercely vigilant and politically astute First Lady who shaped one of the most consequential presidencies of the 20th century: Nancy Reagan.
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The made-in-Hollywood marriage of Ronald and Nancy Reagan is more than a love story–it’s the partnership that made him president. Of the pair, Nancy was the one with the sharper instincts about people, the superior radar for trouble, and the keen sense of how to secure his place in history. The only person in the world to whom Ronald Reagan felt truly close, Nancy understood how to foster his strengths and compensate for his weaknesses. Neither timid nor apologetic about wielding her power, Nancy Reagan became “the most influential and complex First Lady of our time” (Walter Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of The Code Breaker).
But that confidence took years to develop. Nancy’s traumatic early childhood instilled in her a lifelong anxiety and a craving for security. Born into a broken marriage, she spent seven years yearning for the absent mother who abandoned her to pursue an acting career. When she met Ronnie, who had a difficult upbringing of his own, the two fractured halves became whole. And as Ronnie turned from acting to politics, she did too, helping build the scaffolding of his rise and cultivating the wealthy and powerful figures who would help pave his way. Not only was Nancy crucial in shaping Ronald’s White House team and in softening her husband’s rhetoric, she became an unseen force pushing her husband toward what she saw as his grandest purpose–to shake his image as a warmonger and leave behind a more peaceful world.
This “riveting, beautifully written portrait” (Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pulitzer Prize-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author of Leadership) reveals new details surrounding the tumultuous presidency. The Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty spent four years interviewing the people who knew this couple best and draws on overlooked archives, letters, memoirs, and White House records, compiling the most extensive biography of Nancy Reagan yet. From the AIDS epidemic to tensions with the Soviets and the war on drugs, this book shows how Nancy Reagan became one of the most influential First Ladies of the century. -
Consent
- By: Vanessa Springora
- Narrator: Anne-Marie Piazza
- Length: 4 hours 32 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: February 16, 2021
- Language: English
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4.27(1475 ratings)
4.27(1475 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USD“Consent” is a Molotov cocktail, flung at the face of the French establishment, a work of dazzling, highly controlled fury…By every conceivable metric, her book is a triumph.” — The New York Times Already an“Consent” is a Molotov cocktail, flung at the face of the French establishment, a work of dazzling, highly controlled fury…By every conceivable metric, her book is a triumph.” — The New York Times
Already an international literary sensation, an intimate and powerful memoir of a young French teenage girl’s relationship with a famous, much older male writer–a universal #MeToo story of power, manipulation, trauma, recovery, and resiliency that exposes the hypocrisy of a culture that has allowed the sexual abuse of minors to occur unchecked.
Sometimes, all it takes is a single voice to shatter the silence of complicity.
Thirty years ago, Vanessa Springora was the teenage muse of one of the country’s most celebrated writers, a footnote in the narrative of a very influential man in the French literary world.
At the end of 2019, as women around the world began to speak out, Vanessa, now in her forties and the director of one of France’s leading publishing houses, decided to reclaim her own story, offering her perspective of those events sharply known.
Consent is the story of one precocious young girl’s stolen adolescence. Devastating in its honesty, Vanessa’s painstakingly memoir lays bare the cultural attitudes and circumstances that made it possible for a thirteen-year-old girl to become involved with a fifty-year-old man who happened to be a notable writer. As she recalls the events of her childhood and her seduction by one of her country’s most notable writers, Vanessa reflects on the ways in which this disturbing relationship changed and affected her as she grew older.
Drawing parallels between children’s fairy tales and French history and her personal life, Vanessa offers an intimate and absorbing look at the meaning of love and consent and the toll of trauma and the power of healing in women’s lives. Ultimately, she offers a forceful indictment of a chauvinistic literary world that has for too long accepted and helped perpetuate gender inequality and the exploitation and sexual abuse of children.
Translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer
“…One of the belated truths that emerges from [Consent] is that Springora is a writer. […]Her sentences gleam like metal; each chapter snaps shut with the clean brutality of a latch.” — The New Yorker
“Consent [is] rapier-sharp, written with restraint, elegance and brevity.” — The Times (London)
“[Consent] has something steely in its heart, and it departs from the typical American memoir of childhood abuse in exhilarating ways.” — Slate
“Lucid and nuanced…[Consent] will speak to trauma survivors everywhere.” — Los Angeles Review of Books
“A piercing memoir about the sexually abusive relationship she endured at age 14 with a 50-year-old writer…This chilling account will linger with readers long after the last page is turned.” — Publishers Weekly
“Springora’s lucid account is a commanding discussion of sexual abuse and victimization, and a powerful act of reclamation.” — Booklist
“A chilling story of child abuse and the sophisticated Parisians who looked the other way…[Springora] is an elegant and perceptive writer.” — Kirkus
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Irena’s Children
- By: Tilar J. Mazzeo
- Narrator: Amanda Carlin
- Length: 10 hours 31 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2016
- Language: English
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4.26(3783 ratings)
4.26(3783 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDFrom the New York Times bestselling author of The Widow Clicquot comes an extraordinary and gripping account of Irena Sendler–the “female Oskar Schindler”–who took staggering risks to save 2,500 children from death andFrom the New York Times bestselling author of The Widow Clicquot comes an extraordinary and gripping account of Irena Sendler–the “female Oskar Schindler”–who took staggering risks to save 2,500 children from death and deportation in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II.
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In 1942, one young social worker, Irena Sendler, was granted access to the Warsaw ghetto as a public health specialist. While she was there, she began to understand the fate that awaited the Jewish families who were unable to leave. Soon she reached out to the trapped families, going from door to door and asking them to trust her with their young children. Driven to extreme measures and with the help of a network of local tradesmen, ghetto residents, and her star-crossed lover in the Jewish resistance, Irena ultimately smuggled thousands of children past the Nazis. She made dangerous trips through the city’s sewers, hid children in coffins, snuck them under overcoats at checkpoints, and slipped them through secret passages in abandoned buildings.
But Irena did something even more astonishing at immense personal risk: she kept a secret list buried in bottles under an old apple tree in a friend’s back garden. On it were the names and true identities of these Jewish children, recorded so their families could find them after the war. She could not know that more than ninety percent of their families would perish.
Irena’s Children, “a fascinating narrative of…the extraordinary moral and physical courage of those who chose to fight inhumanity with compassion” (Chaya Deitsch author of Here and There: Leaving Hasidism, Keeping My Family), is a truly heroic tale of survival, resilience, and redemption. -
Don’t Let It Get You Down
- By: Savala Nolan
- Narrator: Savala Nolan
- Length: 6 hours 46 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2021
- Language: English
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4.26(423 ratings)
4.26(423 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDA “brutal, beautifully rendered” (The New York Times Book Review) collection of essays that offers poignant reflections on living between society’s most charged, politicized, and intractable polar spaces–between black andA “brutal, beautifully rendered” (The New York Times Book Review) collection of essays that offers poignant reflections on living between society’s most charged, politicized, and intractable polar spaces–between black and white, rich and poor, thin and fat.
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Savala Nolan knows what it means to live in the in-between. Descended from a Black and Mexican father and a white mother, Nolan’s mixed-race identity is obvious, for better and worse. At her mother’s encouragement, she began her first diet at the age of three and has been both fat and painfully thin throughout her life. She has experienced both the discomfort of generational poverty and the ease of wealth and privilege.
It is these liminal spaces–of race, class, and body type–that the essays in Don’t Let It Get You Down excavate, presenting a clear and nuanced understanding of our society’s most intractable points of tension. The twelve essays that comprise this collection are rich with “gorgeous prose” (Nadia Owusu, author of Aftershocks) and are as humorous and as full of Nolan’s appetites as they are of anxiety. The result is lyrical and magnetic.
In “On Dating White Guys While Me,” Nolan realizes her early romantic pursuits of rich, preppy white guys weren’t about preference but about self-erasure. In the titular essay “Don’t Let it Get You Down,” we traverse the cyclical richness and sorrow of being Black in America as Black children face police brutality, “large Black females” encounter unique stigma, and Black men carry the weight of other people’s fear. In “Bad Education,” we see how women learn to internalize rage and accept violence to participate in our own culture. And in “To Wit and Also,” we meet Filliss, Grace, and Peggy, the enslaved women owned by Nolan’s white ancestors, reckoning with the knowledge that America’s original sin lives intimately within our present stories. Over and over again, Nolan reminds us that our true identities are often most authentically lived not in the black and white, but in the grey of the in-between.
Perfect for fans of Heavy by Kiese Laymon and Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay, Don’t Let It Get You Down delivers a “deeply personal insight” (Layla F. Saad, New York Times bestselling author of Me and White Supremacy) on race, class, bodies, and gender in America today. -
A Chance in the World
- By: Steve Pemberton
- Narrator: Steve Pemberton
- Length: 8 hours 5 minutes
- Publisher: Thomas Nelson
- Publish date: September 17, 2019
- Language: English
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4.26(3230 ratings)
4.26(3230 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.99 USD“Pemberton’s beautifully told story is a rags to riches journey–beginning in a place and with a jarring set of experiences that could have destroyed his life. But Steve’s refusal to give in to those forces, and his resolve to“Pemberton’s beautifully told story is a rags to riches journey–beginning in a place and with a jarring set of experiences that could have destroyed his life. But Steve’s refusal to give in to those forces, and his resolve to create a better life, shows a courage and resilience that is an example for many of us to follow.”
–Stedman Graham, author, educator
Home is the place where our life stories begin. A Chance in the World is the astonishing true story of a boy destined to become a man of
- resilience
- determination
- and vision.
Down in the dank basement, amidst my moldy, hoarded food and beloved worm-eaten books, I dreamed that my real home, the place where my story had begun, was out there somewhere, and one day I was going to find it.
Taken from his mother at age three, Steve Klakowicz lives a terrifying existence. Caught in the clutches of a cruel foster family and subjected to constant abuse, Steve finds his only refuge in a box of books given to him by a kind stranger. In these books, he discovers new worlds he can only imagine and begins to hope that one day he might have a different life, that one day he will find his true home.
A fair-complexioned boy with blue eyes, a curly Afro, and a Polish last name, he is determined to unravel the mystery of his origins and find his birth family. Armed with just a single clue, Steve embarks on an extraordinary quest for his identity, only to find that nothing is as it appears.
Through it all, Steve’s story teaches us that no matter how broken our past, no matter how great our misfortunes, we have it in us to create a new beginning and to build a place where love awaits.
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Finding Jackie
- By: Oline Eaton
- Narrator: Jo Anna Perrin
- Length: 11 hours 3 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2023
- Language: English
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4.25(3 ratings)
4.25(3 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDJackie. One name was all you needed. A paragon of femininity, fashion, ideal American wifeliness and motherhood, she was also fiercely independent, the first of the modern First Ladies. Then her husband was murdered, changing her world andJackie. One name was all you needed. A paragon of femininity, fashion, ideal American wifeliness and motherhood, she was also fiercely independent, the first of the modern First Ladies. Then her husband was murdered, changing her world and ours.
Traumatized and exposed, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy nonetheless built a new life for herself in an America similarly haunted by upheaval. She dated and traveled ceaselessly before scandalizing the world by marrying a foreigner, living abroad, climbing pyramids, cruising the oceans, and wandering Europe braless and barefoot.
But the story of Jackie’s reinvention has been culturally erased. In Finding Jackie, author Oline Eaton pieces it back together.
Jackie’s story–treated like the national soap opera and transmitted through newspapers, magazines, images, and TV during the 1960s and 1970s–became wired into America’s emotional grid. Here, in Finding Jackie, she’s rediscovered as an adventurer, a wanderer, a woman, and an idea in whom, for over half a century, many Americans and people around the globe have deeply, fiercely wanted to believe.
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A House in the Sky
- By: Amanda Lindhout
- Narrator: Amanda Lindhout
- Length: 13 hours 17 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2013
- Language: English
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4.25(51058 ratings)
4.25(51058 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0023.95 USDThe New York Times bestselling memoir of a woman whose curiosity led her to the world’s most remote places and then into fifteen months of captivity: “Exquisitely told…A young woman’s harrowing coming-of-age story and anThe New York Times bestselling memoir of a woman whose curiosity led her to the world’s most remote places and then into fifteen months of captivity: “Exquisitely told…A young woman’s harrowing coming-of-age story and an extraordinary narrative of forgiveness and spiritual triumph” (The New York Times Book Review).
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As a child, Amanda Lindhout escaped a violent household by paging through issues of National Geographic and imagining herself visiting its exotic locales. At the age of nineteen, working as a cocktail waitress, she began saving her tips so she could travel the globe. Aspiring to understand the world and live a significant life, she backpacked through Latin America, Laos, Bangladesh, and India, and emboldened by each adventure, went on to Sudan, Syria, and Pakistan. In war-ridden Afghanistan and Iraq she carved out a fledgling career as a television reporter. And then, in August 2008, she traveled to Somalia–“the most dangerous place on earth.” On her fourth day, she was abducted by a group of masked men along a dusty road.
Held hostage for 460 days, Amanda survives on memory–every lush detail of the world she experienced in her life before captivity–and on strategy, fortitude, and hope. When she is most desperate, she visits a house in the sky, high above the woman kept in chains, in the dark.
Vivid and suspenseful, as artfully written as the finest novel, A House in the Sky is “a searingly unsentimental account. Ultimately it is compassion–for her naive younger self, for her kidnappers–that becomes the key to Lindhout’s survival” (O, The Oprah Magazine). -
Surpassing Certainty
- By: Janet Mock
- Narrator: Janet Mock
- Length: 7 hours 51 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2017
- Language: English
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4.24(2060 ratings)
4.24(2060 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USD“A defining chronicle of strength and spirit” (Kirkus Reviews), Surpassing Certainty is a portrait of a young woman searching for her purpose and place in the world–without a road map to guide her. This memoir “should be“A defining chronicle of strength and spirit” (Kirkus Reviews), Surpassing Certainty is a portrait of a young woman searching for her purpose and place in the world–without a road map to guide her. This memoir “should be required reading for your 20s” (Cosmopolitan).
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A few months before her twentieth birthday, Janet Mock is adjusting to her days as a first-generation college student at the University of Hawaii and her nights as a dancer at a strip club. Finally content in her body after her teenage transition, she vacillates between flaunting and concealing herself as she navigates dating and disclosure, sex and intimacy, and most important, letting herself be truly seen. Under the neon lights of Club Nu, Janet meets Troy, a yeoman stationed at Pearl Harbor naval base, who becomes her first. The pleasures and perils of their relationship serve as a backdrop for Janet’s progression through all the universal growing pains–falling in and out of love, living away from home, and figuring out what she wants to do with her life.
Fueled by her dreams and an inimitable drive, Janet makes her way through New York City intent on building a career in the highly competitive world of magazine publishing–within the unique context of being trans, a woman, and a person of color. Hers is a timely glimpse about the barriers many face–and a much-needed guide on how to make a way out of no way.
Long before she became one of the world’s most respected media figures and lauded leaders for equality and justice, Janet learned how to advocate for herself before becoming an advocate for others. In this “honest and timely appraisal of what it means to be true to yourself” (Booklist), Surpassing Certainty offers an “exquisitely packaged gift of her experiences…that signals something greater” (Bitch Magazine).
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.
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