Stephanie Smee - translator has 2 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators, with an average listener rating of 2★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is The Godmother.
The Godmother
Summary
A taut and darkly funny account of an unusual woman and her voyage into the underground ecosystem of crime and justice in contemporary France. Meet Patience Portefeux, 53, an underpaid Franco-Arab judicial interpreter for the Ministry of Justice who specialises in telephone tapping. Widowed after the sudden death of her husband, Patience is now wedged between university fees for her two grown-up daughters and nursing home costs for her ageing mother. She’s laboured for 25 years to keep everyone’s heads above water. Happening upon an especially revealing set of police wiretaps ahead of all other authorities, Patience makes a life-altering decision that sees her intervening in - and infiltrating - the machinations of a massive drug deal. She thus embarks on an entirely new career path: Patience becomes The Godmother’ This is not life in the French idyll of postcards and stock photos. With a gallery of traffickers, dealers, police officers and politicians who are more real than life itself, a sharp and amusing gaze on everyday survival in contemporary France and an unforgettable woman at its centre, Hannelore Cayre’s best-selling novel shines a torchlight on a European criminal underground that has rarely been seen.
©2019 Hannelore Cayre (P)2019 Bolinda Publishing
No Place to Lay One's Head
Summary
In 1921, Françoise Frenkel - a Jewish woman from Poland - opens Berlin's very first French bookshop. It is a dream come true. The bookshop attracts artists and diplomats, celebrities and poets - even the French ambassador himself. It brings Françoise peace, friendship and prosperity. Then one summer's day in 1939, the dream ends. It ends after Kristallnacht, when Jewish shops and businesses are smashed to pieces. It ends when no one protests. So, just weeks before the war breaks out, Françoise flees to France. In Paris, on the wireless and in the newspapers, horror has made itself at home. When the city is bombed, Françoise seeks refuge in Nice, which is awash with refugees and terrible suffering. Children are torn from their parents; mothers throw themselves under buses. Horrified by what she sees, Françoise goes into hiding. She survives only because strangers risk their lives to protect her. Unfolding in Berlin and Paris and against the romantic landscapes of Southern France, No Place to Lay One's Head is a heartbreaking tale of human cruelty and unending kindness, of a woman whose lust for life refuses to leave her, even in her darkest hours.
©2018 Francoise Frenkel (P)2018 Audible, Ltd