Deborah Reed has 5 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators. The most-rated is Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan.
The Days When Birds Come Back
Summary
June is in transition, reeling from her divorce, trying to stay sober, and faced with a completely stalled career. She returns to the beautiful Oregon coast where she grew up and must decide what to do with her late and much-loved grandparents' charming cedar-shingled home, a place haunted by memories of her childhood. Jameson comes highly recommended to renovate the old house to sell, and from their first contact, his curiosity is piqued by June. He, too, is unmoored as he struggles to redefine his marriage in the aftermath of tragic loss, and over the course of the summer, his conversations with June about the house quickly turn to the personal - of secrets hidden in walls and of stories from the past half told. Sensing connection, June and Jameson can't seem to stop circling each other, shying away from hurt. But what can the future hold as long as they are gripped so firmly by the past? Brimming with empathy, The Days When Birds Come Back, like the house itself, is a graceful testament to endurance, rebuilding, and the possibilities of coming home.
©2018 Deborah Reed (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Things We Set on Fire
Summary
From the bestselling author of Carry Yourself Back to Me comes another tightly plotted, emotionally complex audiobook about strangers who happen to be part of the same family. A series of tragedies brings Vivvie's young grandchildren into her custody, and her two estranged daughters back under one roof. Jackson, Vivvie's husband, was shot and killed 30 years ago, and the ramifications have splintered the family into their own isolated remembrances and recriminations. This deeply personal, hauntingly melancholy look at the damages families inflict on each other - and the healing that only they can provide - is filled with flinty, flawed, and complex people stumbling towards some kind of peace. Like Elizabeth Strout and Kazuo Isiguro, Deborah Reed understands a story, and her characters reveal themselves in the subtleties: the space between the thoughts, the sigh behind the smile, and the unreliable lies people tell themselves that ultimately reveal the deepest truths. "Reed is fearless in nudging her characters toward disaster, and the listener follows with a thumping heart, confident in the story's authoritative prose and, ultimately, redeeming spirit. I was genuinely moved by this audiobook, and recommend it highly." (Antonya Nelson, author of Bound: A Novel and Some Fun: Stories and a Novella).
©2013 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.; 2013 Deborah Reed
Carry Yourself Back to Me
Summary
With a broken heart, a stalled career, and a troubled family, singer-songwriter Annie Walsh seeks refuge at her secluded home, surrounded by a lush Florida tangelo grove and the company of her old dog Detour. But a crime connected to her brother Calder threatens to tear her family apart, and Annie is forced to shore up her loyalties and question some profound disappointments of her past. From the ever-changing present, where each hour brings an unforeseen piece of news, to the poignant childhood days of first allegiances and life-changing losses, circumstances converge and Annie steps out to lull the listener into this soulful, stirring journey like a fine and forlorn love ballad. Carry Yourself Back to Me cultivates an often tender, sometimes tart world of love and loss. Inflected with melancholy and redeemed by melody, this deeply affecting story is certain to strike a resonant chord in the heart.
©2011 Deborah Reed (P)2011 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Olivay
Summary
We don't believe that our lives can change in an instant - until they do. Olivay, widowed for a year and sleepwalking through life, meets Henry by chance. She takes him to her Los Angeles loft, thinking it will just be for the night. But the following morning, bombs detonate across the city; mayhem and carnage fill the streets; and her loft is covered in broken glass and her own blood. Henry is skittish, solicitous, and strangely distracted. Who is this man she's marooned with as the city goes on lockdown? Why is she catching him in lie after lie? Is he somehow connected to her husband's death and the terrorist attacks outside? With eloquent and suspenseful prose, Olivay explores the wreckage of loss and the collision of grief, desire, and terror in its aftermath. As the characters get pushed outside their comfort zones, forced to walk the thin line between destruction and salvation, Olivay keeps readers guessing what will become of Olivay and Henry until the very end.
©2015 Deborah Reed (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved
Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan
Summary
The story of a famous abstract painter at the end of her life - her family, her art, and the long-buried secrets that won’t stay hidden for much longer. Ninety-three-year-old Violet Swan has spent a lifetime translating tragedy and hardship into art, becoming famous for her abstract paintings, which evoke tranquility, innocence, and joy. For nearly a century, Violet has lived a peaceful, private life of painting on the coast of Oregon. The “business of Violet” is run by her only child, Francisco, and his wife, Penny. But shortly before Violet's death, an earthquake sets a series of events in motion, and her deeply hidden past begins to resurface. When her beloved grandson returns home with a family secret in tow, Violet is forced to come to terms with the life she left behind so long ago - a life her family knows nothing about. A generational saga set against the backdrop of 20th-century America and into the present day, Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan is the story of a girl who escaped rural Georgia at 14 during World War II, crossing the country alone and broke. It is the story of how that girl met the man who would become her devoted husband, how she became a celebrated artist, and above all, how her life, inspired by nothing more than the way she imagined it to be, would turn out to be her greatest masterpiece.
©2020 Deborah Reed (P)2020 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company