Anna Pasternak has 3 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 3 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 4 ratings. The most-rated is The Real Wallis Simpson.
The Real Wallis Simpson
Summary
Wallis Simpson is known as the woman at the center of the most scandalous love affair of the 20th century, but in this “unputdownable...lively and detailed” (The Times, London) biography, discover a woman wronged by history with new information revealed by the latest research those who were close to the couple.
The story that has been told repeatedly is this: The handsome, charismatic, and popular Prince Edward was expected to marry a well-bred virgin who would one day become queen of England when he ascended the throne. But when the prince was nearly 40, he fell in love with a divorced American woman - Wallis Simpson. No one thought the relationship would last, and when the prince did become king, everyone assumed that was the end of the affair. But to the shock of the British establishment, the new king announced his intention to marry the American divorcée.
Overnight, Wallis was accused of entrapping the prince in a seductive web in order to achieve her audacious ambition to be queen. After declaring that he could not rule without the woman he loved, the king abdicated, and his family banished him and his new wife from the country. The couple spent the rest of their days in exile, but happy in their devoted love for each other.
Now, Anna Pasternak’s The American Dutchess tells a different story: that Wallis was the victim of the abdication, not the villain. Warm, well-mannered, and witty, Wallis was flattered by Prince Edward’s attention, but like everyone else, she never expected his infatuation to last. She never anticipated his jealous, possessive nature - and his absolute refusal to let her go. Edward’s true dark nature, however, was no secret to the royal family, the church, or the Parliament; everyone close to Edward knew that beyond his charming façade, he was utterly unfit to rule. Caught in Edward’s fierce obsession, she became the perfect scapegoat for those who wished to dethrone the troubled king. With profound insight and evenhanded research, Pasternak pulls back the curtain on one of the darkest fairy tales in recent memory and effortlessly reveals “[A] host of intriguing insights into a misunderstood woman” (Kirkus Reviews).
©2019 Anna Pasternak (P)2019 Simon & Schuster
Lara
Summary
The heartbreaking story of the love affair between Boris Pasternak, the author of Doctor Zhivago, and Olga Ivinskaya - the true tragedy behind the timeless classic. When Stalin came into power in 1924, the Communist government began persecuting dissident writers. Though Stalin spared the life of Boris Pasternak - whose novel in progress, Doctor Zhivago, was suspected of being anti-Soviet - he persecuted Boris' mistress, typist, and literary muse, Olga Ivinskaya. Boris' affair with Olga devastated the straitlaced Pasternaks, and they were keen to disavow Olga's role in Boris' writing process. Twice Olga was sentenced to work in Siberian labor camps, where she was interrogated about the book Boris was writing, but she refused to betray the man she loved. When Olga was released from the gulags, she assumed that Boris would leave his wife for her, but, trapped by his family's expectations and his own weak will, he never did. Drawing on previously neglected family sources and original interviews, Anna Pasternak explores this hidden act of moral compromise by her great-uncle and restores to history the passionate affair that inspired and animated Doctor Zhivago. Devastated that Olga suffered on his behalf and frustrated that he could not match her loyalty to him, Boris instead channeled his thwarted passion for Olga into the love story in Doctor Zhivago. Filled with the rich detail of Boris' secret life, Lara unearths a moving love story of courage, loyalty, suffering, drama, and loss and casts a new light on the legacy of Doctor Zhivago.
©2017 Anna Pasternak (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
Princess In Love
Summary
This book tells the true story of the love between a man and a woman, a love that was both passionate and full of hope and yet ultimately hopeless. The woman was Diana, the Princess of Wales; the man was Captain James Hewitt. Their love lasted for nearly 5 years; this is their story.
©1994 Anna Pasternak (P)2009 Phoenix