Jessica Anya Blau has 5 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 5 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 2 ratings. The most-rated is The Unexpected Spy.
The Unexpected Spy
Summary
A highly entertaining account of a young woman who went straight from her college sorority to the CIA, where she hunted terrorists and WMDs "A thrilling tale...Walder’s fast-paced and intense narrative opens a window into life in two of America’s major intelligence agencies." (Publishers Weekly, starred review) When Tracy Walder enrolled at the University of Southern California, she never thought that one day she would offer her pink beanbag chair in the Delta Gamma house to a CIA recruiter, or that she’d fly to the Middle East under an alias identity. The Unexpected Spy is the riveting story of Walder's tenure in the CIA and, later, the FBI. In high-security, steel-walled rooms in Virginia, Walder watched al-Qaeda members with drones as President Bush looked over her shoulder and CIA Director George Tenet brought her donuts. She tracked chemical terrorists and searched the world for weapons of mass destruction. She created a chemical terror chart that someone in the White House altered to convey information she did not have or believe, leading to the Iraq invasion. Driven to stop terrorism, Walder debriefed terrorists - men who swore they’d never speak to a woman - until they gave her leads. She followed trails through North Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, shutting down multiple chemical attacks. Then Walder moved to the FBI, where she worked in counterintelligence. In a single year, she helped take down one of the most notorious foreign spies ever caught on American soil. Catching the bad guys wasn’t a problem in the FBI, but rampant sexism was. Walder left the FBI to teach young women, encouraging them to find a place in the FBI, CIA, State Department or the Senate - and thus change the world. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press
©2020 Tracy Walder (P)2020 Macmillan Audio
The Trouble with Lexie
Summary
From the beloved author of The Summer of Naked Swim Parties and The Wonder Bread Summer comes the jaw-dropping story of Lexie James, a counselor at an exclusive New England prep school whose search for happiness lands her in unexpectedly wild trouble. Lexie James escaped: After being abandoned by her alcoholic father and kicked out of the apartment to make room for her mother's boyfriend, Lexie made it on her own. She earned a master's degree, conquered terrifying panic attacks, got engaged to the nicest guy she'd ever met, and landed a counseling job at the prestigious Ruxton Academy, a prep school for the moneyed children of the elite. But as her wedding date nears, Lexie has doubts. Yes, she's created the stable life she craved as a child, but is stability really what she wants? In her moment of indecision, Lexie strikes up a friendship with a Ruxton alumnus, the father of her favorite student. It's a relationship that blows open Lexie's carefully constructed life and then dunks her into shocking situations with headline-worthy trouble. The perfect cocktail of naughtiness, heart, adventure, and humor, The Trouble with Lexie is a wild and poignant story of the choices we make to outrun our childhoods - and the choices we have to make to outrun our entangled adult lives.
©2016 Jessica Anya Blau (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers
Love and Death with the In Crowd
Summary
We think of the past as a more innocent time. But in these stories of California teenagers acting out in the last years of the '70s, it's easy to see that love, loss, and heartbreak are even more poignant when viewed through 15- or 16-year-old eyes. Surrounded by friends and family who are spinning with their own losses and heartache, these teenage girls navigate the terrors and tenderness of life in the only ways they know how. In this touching and moving pair of coming-of-age stories, best-selling author Jessica Anya Blau makes it clear that once you step over certain lines, there's no going back. Jessica Anya Blau's newest novel, The Wonder Bread Summer, was picked for CNN's, NPR's, Vanity Fair's, and Oprah Book Club's summer reading lists. It received multiple offers from Hollywood movie studios and was optioned. Her novel Drinking Closer to Home was featured in Target stores as a "Breakout Book" and made many Best Books of the Year lists. Blau's first novel, The Summer of Naked Swim Parties, was a national best seller and was picked as a Best Summer Book by the Today Show, the New York Post, and New York magazine. The San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers chose it as one of the Best Books of the Year, and the film rights have been optioned. Blau cowrote the screenplay for Franny, a film starring Frances Fisher and Steve Howey. This is a short audiobook published by Shebooks - high-quality fiction, memoir, and journalism for women, by women.
©2014 Jessica Anya Blau (P)2015 Audible, Inc.
Mating Calls
Summary
Could a little yellow pill be responsible for landing Lexie James in the bed of her lover - and her lover's wife? Whatever the reason for this charmingly reckless school counselor's bad behavior, you've never been on a bender like this one. This a short audiobook published by Shebooks - high quality fiction, memoir, and journalism for women, by women.
©2013 Jessica Anya Blau (P)2015 Audible, Inc.
Mary Jane
Summary
"I LOVED this novel....If you have ever sung along to a hit on the radio, in any decade, then you will devour Mary Jane at 45 rpm." (Nick Hornby) Almost Famous meets Daisy Jones and the Six in this funny, wise, and tender novel about a 14-year-old girl’s coming of age in 1970s Baltimore, caught between her straight-laced family and the progressive family she nannies for - who happen to be secretly hiding a famous rock star and his movie star wife for the summer. In 1970s Baltimore, 14-year-old Mary Jane loves cooking with her mother, singing in her church choir, and enjoying her family’s subscription to the Broadway-Showtunes-of-the-Month record club. Shy, quiet, and bookish, she’s glad when she lands a summer job as a nanny for the daughter of a local doctor. A respectable job, Mary Jane’s mother says. In a respectable house. The house may look respectable on the outside, but inside it’s a literal and figurative mess: clutter on every surface, Impeachment: Now More Than Ever bumper stickers on the doors, cereal and takeout for dinner. And even more troublesome (were Mary Jane’s mother to know, which she does not): The doctor is a psychiatrist who has cleared his summer for one important job - helping a famous rock star dry out. A week after Mary Jane starts, the rock star and his movie star wife move in. Over the course of the summer, Mary Jane introduces her new household to crisply ironed clothes and a family dinner schedule, and has a front-row seat to a liberal world of sex, drugs, and rock and roll (not to mention group therapy). Caught between the lifestyle she’s always known and the future she’s only just realized is possible, Mary Jane will arrive at September with a new idea about what she wants out of life, and what kind of person she’s going to be.
©2021 Jessica Anya Blau (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers