Ann Hood has 9 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 8 narrators, with an average listener rating of 2.5★ across 4 ratings. The most-rated is The Book That Matters Most.
The Book That Matters Most
Summary
An enthralling novel about love, loss, secrets, friendship, and the healing power of literature, by the best-selling author of The Knitting Circle. Ava's 25-year marriage has fallen apart, and her two grown children are pursuing their own lives outside of the country. Ava joins a book group, not only for her love of reading but also out of sheer desperation for companionship. The group's goal throughout the year is for each member to present the book that matters most to them. Ava rediscovers a mysterious book from her childhood - one that helped her through the traumas of the untimely deaths of her sister and mother. Alternating with Ava's story is that of her troubled daughter, Maggie, who, living in Paris, descends into a destructive relationship with an older man. Ava's mission to find that book and its enigmatic author takes her on a quest that unravels the secrets of her past and offers her and Maggie the chance to remake their lives.
©2016 Ann Hood (P)2016 Recorded Books
The Obituary Writer
Summary
From best-selling author Ann Hood comes a sophisticated and suspenseful novel about the poignant lives of two women living in different eras. On the day John F. Kennedy is inaugurated, Claire, a young wife and mother obsessed with the glamour of Jackie, struggles over the decision of whether to stay in a loveless but secure marriage or to follow the man she loves and whose baby she may be carrying. Decades earlier, in 1919, Vivien Lowe, an obituary writer, is searching for her lover, who disappeared in the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. By telling the stories of the dead, Vivien not only helps others cope with their grief but also begins to understand the devastation of her own terrible loss. The surprising connection between these two women will change Claire’s life in unexpected and extraordinary ways. Part literary mystery and part love story, The Obituary Writer examines expectations of marriage and love, the roles of wives and mothers, and the emotions of grief, regret, and hope.
©2013 Ann Hood (P)2013 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
She Loves You (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah)
Summary
Best-selling author Ann Hood tells the story of a girl swept up in the heart of 1960s Beatlemania. Written in her signature prose, Hood weaves a tale of four misfit friends who set off to see the Beatles' final world tour, each harboring a secret hope. What emerges is a sincere and funny story of growing up, making unexpected connections, and following your dreams even as the world in front of you - and the world at large - is changing too fast. The year is 1966. The Vietnam War rages overseas, the Beatles have catapulted into stardom, and 12-year-old Rhode Island native Trudy Mixer is not thrilled with life. Her best friend, Michelle, has decided to become a cheerleader, everyone at school is now calling her Gertrude (her hated real name), and the gem of her middle school career, the Beatles fan club, has dwindled down to only three other members - the least popular kids at school. And at home, her workaholic father has become even more distant. Determined to regain her social status and prove herself to her father, Trudy looks toward the biggest thing happening worldwide: the Beatles. She is set on seeing their final world tour in Boston at the end of the summer - and meeting her beloved Paul McCartney. So, on a hot August day, unknown to their families, Trudy and crew set off on their journey, each of them with soaring hopes for what lies ahead.
©2018 Ann Hood (P)2018 Listening Library
Ruby
Summary
A grieving young widow and a pregnant teenager find an uncommon friendship in a luminous, deeply moving novel.After a college student speeding in a blue Honda Civic kills her husband of less than a year, Olivia is completely lost. One hot summer day, she walks into the beachfront Rhode Island cottage she and David bought the previous August—the place where they had planned to someday start a family—and finds a stranger sitting at her kitchen table.Pregnant fifteen-year-old Ruby is looking for a safe haven for herself and her baby-to-be. Olivia takes her in, desperate to assuage her grief through human connection, even with a troubled teenager. But Ruby has something else that Olivia wants. When she agrees to let Olivia adopt her unborn child, Olivia’s life begins to change in ways she never imagined.A story of love, loss, and unexpected friendship, Ruby introduces two women who help each other move on with their lives in a world where there are no easy answers.
©1999 Ann Hood (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
An Italian Wife
Summary
From the bestselling author of The Obituary Writer comes the stirring multigenerational story of an Italian family. An Italian Wife opens in turn-of-the-century Italy, when young Josephine Rimaldi is forced to follow her new husband to America in an arranged marriage and finds herself in a strange country with a man she doesn't know or love. Bound by tradition, she gives birth to seven children; the last, conceived in a passionate affair, Josephine must give up for adoption. Josephine spends the rest of her life searching for this child, keeping her secret even as her other children, whose stories unfold in surprising ways, go off to war, get married, and make their own mistakes: Her son suffers in World War I. Her daughter struggles to assimilate in the new world of the 1950s American suburbs. And her granddaughters experiment with the sex, drugs, and rock and roll of the 1970s. Poignant, sensual, and deeply felt, An Italian Wife is a sweeping and evocative portrait of a family bound by love and heartbreak.
©2014 Ann Hood (P)2014 Blackstone Audio
Morningstar
Summary
In her admired works of fiction, including the recent The Book That Matters Most, Ann Hood explores the transformative power of literature. Now, with warmth and honesty, Hood reveals the personal story behind these works of fiction. Growing up in a mill town in Rhode Island, in a household that didn't foster the love of literature, Hood nonetheless learned to channel her imagination and curiosity by devouring The Bell Jar, Marjorie Morningstar, The Harrad Experiment, and other works. These titles introduced her to topics that could not be discussed at home: desire, fear, sexuality, and madness. Later, Johnny Got His Gun and The Grapes of Wrath influenced her political thinking as the Vietnam War became news; Dr. Zhivago and Les Miserables stoked her ambition to travel the world. With characteristic insight and charm, Hood showcases the ways in which books gave her life and can transform - even save - our own.
©2017 Anne Hood (P)2017 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Places to Stay the Night
Summary
Libby woke up that morning and knew it was time to leave…Libby Harper, unsatisfied with her suburban life, abandons Massachusetts, her two teenage children, and Tom, her husband of eighteen years. Depressed and feeling trapped, she is determined to realize her fantasies of Hollywood fame before it is too late.Dana has been expecting her mother to walk out for years. Her older brother, Troy, who is always in trouble, has been struggling to get his mother’s attention for most of his life. But it is Tom, their father, who is hit the hardest. Once, he and Libby were the most beautiful couple in town. Rudderless without the woman he has loved since ninth grade, he is a man drowning when Renata Handy enters their lives.Renata has left Manhattan behind to return home with her terminally ill eight-year-old daughter. She finds an unexpected haven with Tom Harper, her high-school crush—and his shattered family.A Literary Guild selection, Places to Stay the Night is a story of the dreams we leave behind…and the ways we can find ourselves again.
©1993 Ann Hood (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Kitchen Yarns: Notes on Life, Love, and Food
Summary
In this warm collection of personal essays and recipes, best-selling author Ann Hood nourishes both our bodies and our souls. From her Italian-American childhood through raising and feeding a growing family and cooking with her new husband, food writer Michael Ruhlman, Ann Hood has long appreciated the power of a good meal. Growing up, she tasted love in her grandmother's tomato sauce and dreamed of her mother's special-occasion Fancy Lady Sandwiches. Later, the kitchen became the heart of Hood's own home. She cooked pork roast to warm her first apartment, used two cups of dried basil for her first attempt at making pesto, taught her children how to make their favorite potatoes, found hope in her daughter's omelet after a divorce, and fell in love again - with both her husband and his foolproof chicken stock. With her signature humor and tenderness, Hood details all these recipes and more in Kitchen Yarns, along with tales of loss and starting from scratch, family love, and feasts with friends, and how the perfect meal is one that tastes like home.
©2018 Ann Hood (P)2018 Recorded Books
Do Not Go Gentle
Summary
The day my father was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer, I decided to go and find him a miracle. Do Not Go Gentle is a transporting memoir about Ann Hood’s quest to find a cure, if not an outright miracle, that would cure her father’s cancer. Her “spiritual Odyssey, with a secret history all its own” would take her from Rhode Island to El Santuario de Chimayo, New Mexico, in search of dirt reputed to contain astonishing healing powers. Along the way, Hood tells the story of her family, their immigration to America, and the author’s reconnection with her Italian heritage. Most of all, this touching memoir is a valentine to the man who was, in Hood’s own words, “the love of my life”.
©2000 Ann Hood (P)2014 Audible, Inc.