Donna Andrews has 35 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 6 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.9★ across 2,172 ratings. The most-rated is Why We Sleep.
Why We Sleep
Summary
The first sleep book by a leading scientific expert - Professor Matthew Walker, director of UC Berkeley's Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab - reveals his groundbreaking exploration of sleep, explaining how we can harness its transformative power to change our lives for the better. Sleep is one of the most important but least understood aspects of our life, wellness, and longevity. Until very recently, science had no answer to the question of why we sleep, or what good it served, or why we suffer such devastating health consequences when we don't sleep. Compared to the other basic drives in life - eating, drinking, and reproducing - the purpose of sleep remained elusive. But an explosion of scientific discoveries in the last 20 years has shed new light on this fundamental aspect of our lives. Now, preeminent neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker gives us a new understanding of the vital importance of sleep and dreaming. Among so many other things, within the brain, sleep enriches our ability to learn, memorize, and make logical decisions. It recalibrates our emotions, restocks our immune system, fine-tunes our metabolism, and regulates our appetite. Dreaming mollifies painful memories and creates a virtual reality space in which the brain melds past and present knowledge to inspire creativity. Walker answers important questions about sleep: How do caffeine and alcohol affect sleep? What really happens during REM sleep? Why do our sleep patterns change across a lifetime? How do common sleep aids affect us, and can they do long-term damage? Charting cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs and synthesizing decades of research and clinical practice, Walker explains how we can harness sleep to improve learning, mood, and energy levels; regulate hormones; prevent cancer, Alzheimer's, and diabetes; slow the effects of aging; increase longevity; enhance the education and lifespan of our children, and boost the efficiency, success, and productivity of our businesses. Clear-eyed, fascinating, and immensely accessible, Why We Sleep is the crucial account on sleep that will forever change listeners' minds on the subject. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2017 Matthew Walker (P)2017 Simon & Schuster, Inc.
The Rise of the Ultra Runners
Summary
Marathons are no longer impressive. Pain is to be relished, not avoided. Hallucinations are perfectly normal. Ultra running defies conventional logic. Yet this most brutal and challenging sport is now one of the fastest growing in the world. But is it an antidote to modern life or a symptom of a modern illness? Adharanand Finn travelled to the heart of the sport to find out - and to see if could become an ultra runner himself. His journey took him from the deserts of Oman to the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies, and from a 24-hour track race in Tooting to his ultimate goal, the 105-mile Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc. The Rise of the Ultra Runners is the electrifying, inspirational account of what he learned along the way. Through encounters with the sport's many colourful characters and his experiences of its soaring highs and crushing lows, Finn offers an unforgettable insight into what can be found at the boundaries of human endeavour.
©2019 Adharanand Finn (P)2019 Faber Audio
The Genius of Birds
Summary
Birds are astonishingly intelligent creatures. In fact, according to revolutionary new research, some birds rival primates and even humans in their remarkable forms of intelligence. Like humans, many birds have enormous brains relative to their size. Although small, bird brains are packed with neurons that allow them to punch well above their weight.
©2016 Jennifer Ackerman. (P)2016 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Lark! The Herald Angels Sing
Summary
It's Christmas time in Caerphilly, and the town is preparing for their live nativity. During rehearsals, Meg discovers a real baby in the manger, with a note attached that says the mother is leaving the baby girl there so that her father can take care of her, and the wording of the note implicates Meg's brother, Rob, as the father. Rob protests that he can't possibly be the father, but the town's suspicion creates a rift between him and his new girlfriend. Rob asks Meg to investigate on his behalf‚ to clear his name and to find the real parents of the baby. But every day that passes without answers is another day that spoils everyone's enjoyment of the holiday and drives the wedge between Rob and his girlfriend deeper. As Meg gets further into her investigation, she discovers the found baby is connected to something much bigger, a crime that will need to be stopped by Meg and her motley crew to save the holidays for everyone.
©2018 Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2018 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Owl Be Home for Christmas
Summary
While trapped by a snowstorm at a conference, a visiting ornithologist is murdered. Now, nobody may make it home in time for Christmas...unless Meg comes to the rescue.
©2019 Donna Andrews (P)2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos
Summary
Yorktown, Virginia, is reliving its role in the Revolutionary War by celebrating the anniversary of the British surrender in 1781. This year, plans include a reenactment of the battle and a craft fair. Meg Langslow has returned to her home town for the festivities - and to sell her wrought-iron flamingos. Meg's also trying to keep her father from scaring too many tourists with his impersonation of an 18th-century physician - not to mention saving her brother from the clutches of a con man who might steal the computer game he's invented. It's a tough job - until the swindler is found dead, slain in Meg's booth with one of her wrought-iron creations. Now Meg must add another item to her to-do list: Don't forget to solve the murder!
©2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC
The Falcon Always Wings Twice
Summary
A new side-splitting Meg Langslow mystery from award-winning, New York Times best-selling author of Terns of Endearment. When Meg's grandmother, Cordelia, hosts a Renaissance Faire at her craft center, the whole family is put to work: Meg handles the blacksmithing, Michael and the boys will be performing, and no one misses the opportunity to dress up in full regalia. More exciting to Grandfather is the pair of rare falcons he discovers breeding at the fairgrounds. Concerned for their well-being amid all the activity, he appoints himself their protector. When one of the actors performing at the fair is found dead - an actor suspected of mistreating one of the falcons, among other sins - Grandfather is a prime suspect. Donna Andrews’s long-running Meg Langslow series continues to be beloved by its fans, who loyally listen to every new installment. The Falcon Always Wings Twice is a perfect new addition, full of laughter, adventure, and Andrews's wonderful cast of wacky characters. A Macmillan Audio production from Minotaur Books
©2020 Donna Andrews (P)2020 Macmillan Audio
Murder with Peacocks
Summary
Meg Langslow's summer is not going swimmingly. In her small Virginia hometown, she's the maid of honor at the nuptials of three loved ones - each of whom has dumped the planning in her hands. One bride is set on including a Native American herbal purification ceremony while another wants live peacocks on the lawn. Only help from the town's drop-dead gorgeous hunk keeps Meg afloat in a sea of relatives and outrageous neighbors. But when an offensive newcomer, who hints at skeletons in the guests' closets, is found dead under suspicious circumstances, level-headed Meg's to-do list extends from flower arrangements and bridal registries to catching a killer - before the next event is her own funeral.
©2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC
No Nest for the Wicket
Summary
The hilly terrain next to the old Sprocket house that Meg Langslow and her fiancé, Michael, are refurbishing is the perfect location for an extreme croquet field - even the legs of cows and sheep are convenient extra wickets. Croquet has become all the rage in Caerphilly...until it appears someone in town has taken the rage a bit too literally. While stumbling down a steep bank after her ball, Meg encounters the body of a fresh female corpse with a mallet-sized dent in her head. If that isn't reason enough to call a timeout, it turns out that Michael knew the woman from years before. Ever curious, Meg decides that playing armchair sleuth is far more important than working on her game.
©2016 Donna Andrews (P)2016 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Murder with Puffins
Summary
Meg Langslow and her boyfriend, Michael, are searching for some romantic alone time. She knows the perfect place for a private getaway: her aunt's cottage on the tiny island of Monhegan. But when a series of events leads to the couple being trapped in the cottage with her entire family, their private getaway vacation slowly turns into a disaster. Meg doesn't think anything more could go wrong until a resident of the island with close ties to her mother is murdered. When her father becomes the chief suspect, she knows she can no longer sit by the cozy fireplace. In a dash to save her father and her weekend, Meg finds herself knee deep in murder once again.
©2006 Donna Andrews (P)2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Six Geese a-Slaying
Summary
Meg Langslow and Michael's house is serving as the marshalling point for the annual Caerphilly holiday parade. The theme is the 12 Days of Christmas, and it features 12 drummers from the school's marching band, 11 bagpipers, 10 leaping lords costumed in medieval finery from the college's drama department, and so on. There are also assorted floats, a live nativity scene on a flatbed truck, the three wise men on Caerphilly Zoo camels, and Santa in a bright-red horse-drawn sleigh. As the organizer, Meg's job is already hard enough, but when her nephew Eric, wide-eyed and ashen-faced, whispers, "Something's wrong with Santa...", things take a tragic turn. It turns out that the local curmudgeon, whose beard and belly made him a natural for the role, has been murdered. Now it's up to Meg and Chief Burke, who is playing one of the wise men, to tackle a twofold mission: solve the murder and save Christmas.
©2008 Donna Andrews (P)2017 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon
Summary
Poor Meg Langslow. She's blessed in so many ways. Michael, her boyfriend, is a handsome, delightful heartthrob who adores her. She's a successful blacksmith, known for her artistic wrought-iron creations. But somehow Meg's road to contentment is more rutted and filled with potholes than seems fair. There are Michael's and Meg's doting but demanding mothers, for a start. And then there's the fruitless hunt for a place big enough for the couple to live together. And a succession of crises brought on by the well-meaning but utterly wacky demands of her friends and family. Demands that Meg has a hard time refusing, which is why she's tending the switchboard of Mutant Wizards, where her brother's computer games are created, and handling all the office management problems that no one else bothers with. For companionship, besides a crew of eccentric techies, she has a buzzard with one wing, who she must feed frozen mice thawed in the office microwave, and Michael's mother's nightmare dog. Not to mention the psychotherapists who refuse to give up their lease on half of the office space, and whose conflicting therapies cause continuing dissension. This is not what Meg had in mind when she agreed to help her brother move his staff to new offices. In fact, the atmosphere is so consistently loony that the office mail cart makes several passes through the reception room, with the office practical joker lying on top of it pretending to be dead, before Meg realizes that he's become the victim of someone who wasn't joking at all. He's been murdered for real. Donna Andrews's debut book, Murder with Peacocks, won the St. Martin's Malice Domestic best first novel contest and reaped a harvest of other honors as well. This is the fourth book in the Meg Langslow series, which features the intrepid Meg and her cast of oddball relatives. Their capers are a lighthearted joy to read.
©2003 Donna Andrews (P)2003 Books on Tape, Inc.
The Gift of the Magpie
Summary
An AudioFile Earphones Award-winning production. New York Times best-selling author Donna Andrews returns with another Meg Langslow mystery crafted "firmly in the grand tradition of Agatha Christie's Christmas books" (Toronto Globe and Mail). The 28th audiobook and the seventh Christmas mystery in the Meg Langslow series, The Gift of the Magpie is yet another wonderfully merry and funny book from New York Times best-selling author Donna Andrews. Meg’s running Caerphilly’s Helping Hands for the Holidays project, in which neighbors help each other with things they can’t do and can’t afford to have done. Her hopes for a relatively peaceful (if busy) Christmas vanish when someone murders Harvey the Hoarder, whose house the Helping Hands were decluttering. Was there any truth to the rumor that he had something valuable hidden beneath all his junk? Was one of his friends, neighbors, or relatives greedy enough to murder him for the rumored treasure? And what about the magpie that has been bringing her family bits of tinsel and costume jewelry - does the bird’s latest gift hold a clue to solving the crime? Full of intrigue, this Christmas mystery will take listeners home to Caerphilly, where the suspense falls as thick as the snow. A Macmillan Audio production from Minotaur Books
©2020 Donna Andrews (P)2020 Macmillan Audio
How the Finch Stole Christmas!
Summary
Meg's husband has decided to escalate his one-man show of Dickens's A Christmas Carol into a full-scale production with a large cast including their sons Jamie and Josh as Tiny Tim and young Scrooge and Meg helping as stage manager. When a famous, although slightly over-the-hill, actor comes to town to play the starring role of Scrooge, no one expects that he's bringing a lot of baggage and enemies with him. Like Andrews' previous Christmas books Six Geese a-Slaying, Duck the Halls, and The Nightingale Before Christmas, How the Finch Stole Christmas! is guaranteed to put the ho ho hos into the holidays of cozy lovers everywhere with its gut-bustingly funny mystery.
©2017 Donna Andrews (P)2017 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Duck the Halls
Summary
A few nights before Christmas, Meg is awakened when Michael is summoned to the New Life Baptist Church, where someone has rigged a cage full of skunks in the choir loft. The lengthy process of de-skunking the church requires its annual pre-Christmas concert to relocate to Trinity Episcopal, despite the protests of Mr. Vess, an elderly vestryman. Meanwhile, when Meg helps her grandfather take the skunks to the zoo, they discover that his boa has been stolen - only to turn up later during the concert slithering out from the ribbon-bedecked evergreens. It's clear that some serious holiday pranksters are on the loose, and Meg is determined to find them. But before she can, a fire breaks out at Trinity, and Mr. Vess is discovered dead.
©2013 Donna Andrews (P)2013 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Swan for the Money
Summary
Meg Langslow's eccentric parents have a new hobby: growing roses and entering them in highly competitive shows. Dad's gardening skill and Mother's gift for selecting and arranging the blossoms should make them an unbeatable team - and Meg is relieved they've taken up such a safe, gentle hobby. She even volunteers to help when the Caerphilly Garden Club sponsors its first annual rose show. But after a few hours of dealing with her parents' competitors, Meg sees trouble...Rose growers are so cutthroat that they will do nearly anything to win the Black Swan trophy - making them all prime suspects when Meg discovers that someone is attempting to kill the wealthy woman on whose estate the competition is being held. Meg tries to leave the detecting to the local police and focus on the competition, but she just can't help getting her hands dirty when lives are at stake....
©2010 Donna Andrews (P)2018 Dreamscape Media, LLC
The Penguin Who Knew Too Much
Summary
Maybe there are people in Antarctica with penguins in their basements, but in Virginia? Finding a body down there is somewhat more likely for Meg. Explaining the penguins' presence is easy; Meg's dad volunteered to take care of the birds until the future of the bankrupt local zoo could be determined. But identifying the body in the basement proves a harder task. Meg and Michael have been planning to elope to avoid the elaborate wedding their mothers have begun to organize; a plan that's threatened by both the murder investigation and the carnival of animals. The only way to set things right, Meg decides, is to identify both their uninvited visitor and the killer who put him in their basement.
©2008 Donna Andrews (P)2017 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Some Like it Hawk
Summary
Meg Langslow is plying her blacksmith's trade at Caerphilly Days, a festival inspired by the town's sudden notoriety as "The Town That Mortgaged Its Jail". The lender has foreclosed on all Caerphilly's public buildings, and all employees have evacuated - except one. Phineas Throckmorton, town clerk, has been barricaded in the courthouse basement for over a year. But the lender seems increasingly determined to evict him, and may succeed after one of its executives is found shot, apparently from inside the basement. Meg and her fellow townspeople suspect that someone hopes to end the siege by framing Mr. Throckmorton. Meg soon deduces that the killer isn't just trying to end the siege but to conceal information that would help the town reclaim its buildings.
©2012 Donna Andrews (P)2012 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Terns of Endearment
Summary
Meg's grandfather has been booked to give lectures on a cruise as part of the education/entertainment itinerary, and he's arranged for a passel of family members to join him. The passengers’ vacation quickly becomes a nightmare when they wake up to find themselves broken down and in need of repairs. Things get even worse when a crew member announces to all that a woman has jumped overboard, leaving behind her shoes, shawl, and a note. The note reveals she's a disliked member of a writers' group onboard for a retreat, and the group is split on whether this is in-character for her. The captain decides not to investigate, saying he'll notify American authorities when they reach their destination. But Meg's father decides they need to look into whether there was possible foul play while the prime suspects are all stuck on board. It'll be a race against the clock to solve this mystery before they make the necessary repairs and return to shore.
©2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC
We'll Always Have Parrots
Summary
Meg Langslow knew the fan convention for her actor-boyfriend's hit television series was going to be the ultimate in weird. But she came along because she figured Michael could use an occasional dose of sanity, and because it was an inspired place to sell her hand-crafted weapons. And so far, she was dealing pretty well with the costumed fans camped outside, the batch of escaped parrots and monkeys frolicking throughout the hotel, and the minefield of egos lurking behind the show's success. But soon after Meg goes head-to-head with egomaniacal series star Tamerlaine Wynncliffe-Jones, the "Queen B" turns up brutally murdered. Now, with Michael in the running as prime suspect, Meg will go up against an all-star cast of not-even-innocent parties, hidden identities, and buried motives. And she'll cross swords with a deviously obsessed murderer determined to write her out of this picture for good.
©2004 Donna Andrews (P)2004 Books on Tape, Inc.