Bernadette Dunne has narrated 203 audiobooks on Listento.it by 158 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.7★ across 6,128 ratings. The most-rated is Why We Sleep.
The Gunning of America
Summary
Americans have always loved guns. This special bond was forged during the American Revolution and sanctified by the Second Amendment. It is because of this exceptional relationship that American civilians are more heavily armed than the citizens of any other nation. Or so we're told. In The Gunning of America, historian Pamela Haag overturns this conventional wisdom. American gun culture, she argues, developed not because the gun was exceptional but precisely because it was not: guns proliferated in America because throughout most of the nation's history they were perceived as an unexceptional commodity, no different from buttons or typewriters. Focusing on the history of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, one of the most iconic arms manufacturers in America, Haag challenges many basic assumptions of how and when America became a gun culture. Under the leadership of Oliver Winchester and his heirs, the company used aggressive, sometimes ingenious sales and marketing techniques to create new markets for their product. Guns have never "sold themselves"; rather, through advertising and innovative distribution campaigns, the gun industry did. Through the meticulous examination of gun-industry archives, Haag challenges the myth of a primal bond between Americans and their firearms. Over the course of its 150-year history, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company sold over eight million guns. But Oliver Winchester - a shirtmaker in his previous career - had no apparent qualms about a life spent arming America. His daughter-in-law, Sarah Winchester, was a different story. Legend holds that Sarah was haunted by what she considered a vast blood fortune and became convinced that the ghosts of rifle victims were haunting her. In this provocative and deeply researched work of narrative history, Haag fundamentally revises the history of arms in America and, in so doing, explodes the clichés that have created and sustained our lethal gun culture.
©2016 Pamela Haag (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Shogun's Daughter
Summary
Japan, 1704. In an elegant mansion a young woman named Tsuruhime lies on her deathbed. The death of the Shogun's daughter has immediate consequences on his regime. Faced with his own mortality and beset by troubles, he names as his heir Yoshisato, the seventeen-year-old son he only recently discovered was his. Until five months ago, Yoshisato was raised as the illegitimate son of Yanagisawa, the shogun's favorite advisor. Yanagisawa is also the longtime enemy of Sano Ichiro. When Sano learns that Tsuruhime's death may have been a murder, he sets off on a dangerous investigation as he struggles to keep his pregnant wife and his son safe. Instead, he and his family become the accused. And this time, they may not survive the day.
©2013 Laura Joh Rowland (P)2013 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Temperatures Rising
Summary
Darkly handsome with an arrogant edge, architectural engineer Scout Ritland is the kind of American man who spells trouble. Chantal duPont should know, for she has experienced the best and worst of the country and its people. Yet here she is, home on Parrish Island, putting herself in the way of another bold Yankee. This time, however, it's for a good cause: Scout is the one man who can help her village. Scout's ready for a little recreation. But when he catches sight of an exotic beauty with electric blue eyes, events quickly spin out of control. Soon Scout is swept up by Chantal's need to help her people and the role he is to play in her ambitious plan. With each passing day, the work and the woman present him challenges he could never find at home. But as the project progresses, intrigue and adventure burn hotter than the island's volcano. And the two people who have met their match in each other face a future that could tear them apart.
©2006 Sandra Brown (P)2006 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.
Stone Mattress
Summary
A collection of highly imaginative short pieces that speak to our times with deadly accuracy. Vintage Atwood creativity, intelligence, and humor: think Alias Grace. Margaret Atwood turns to short fiction for the first time since her 2006 collection, Moral Disorder, with nine tales of acute psychological insight and turbulent relationships bringing to mind her award-winning 1996 novel, Alias Grace. A recently widowed fantasy writer is guided through a stormy winter evening by the voice of her late husband in Alphinland, the first of three loosely linked stories about the romantic geometries of a group of writers and artists. In The Freeze-Dried Bridegroom, a man who bids on an auctioned storage space has a surprise. In Lusus Naturae, a woman born with a genetic abnormality is mistaken for a vampire. In Torching the Dusties, an elderly lady with Charles Bonnet syndrome comes to terms with the little people she keeps seeing, while a newly formed populist group gathers to burn down her retirement residence. And in Stone Mattress, a long-ago crime is avenged in the Arctic via a 1.9 billion-year-old stromatolite. In these nine tales, Margaret Atwood is at the top of her darkly humorous and seriously playful game. This audiobook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.
©2014 O.W. Toad, Ltd. (P)2015 Audible Inc.
The Secret Lives of Wives
Summary
A best-selling, groundbreaking author investigates wives who thrive, sharing their uncensored strategies for staying married. America’s high divorce rate is well known, but little attention has been paid to the flip side: couples who creatively (sometimes clandestinely) manage to build marriages that last longer than we ever thought possible. What’s the secret? To find out, best-selling journalist Iris Krasnow interviewed more than 200 wives whose marriages have survived for 15-70 years. They are a diverse cast, yet they share one common and significant trait: they have made bold, sometimes secretive and shocking, choices on how to keep their marital vows, “till death do us part,” as Krasnow says, “without killing someone first.” In raw, candid, titillating stories, Krasnow’s cast of wise women give voice to the truth about marriage and the importance of maintaining a strong sense of self apart from the relationship. Some spend summers apart. Some make time for wine with the girls. One septuagenarian has a recurring date with an old flame from high school. In every case, the marriage operates on many tracks, giving both spouses license to pursue the question, who am I apart from my marriage? Krasnow’s goal is to give women permission to create their own marriages at any age. Marital bliss is possible, she says, if each partner is blissful apart from the other. A fascinating window on the many faces of modern relationships, The Secret Lives of Wives brims with inspiring and daring examples of women who have it both ways: a committed marriage and personal adventures in uncharted territory. For anyone who wants to stay married and stay sane, this is the book to read.
©2011 Iris Krasnow (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Purple Diaries
Summary
1936 was a great year for the movie industry - the financial setbacks of the Great Depression were subsiding, so theater attendance was up. Americans everywhere were watching the stars, and few stars shined as brightly as one of America's most enduring screen favorites, Mary Astor. But Astor's personal story wasn't a happy one. Born poor and widowed at 24, Mary Astor had spent years looking for stability when she met and wed Dr. Franklyn Thorpe. The marriage had been rocky from the start and both were unfaithful, but they did not divorce before Mary Astor gave birth to little Marylyn Thorpe. What followed was a custody battle that pushed the Spanish Civil War and Hitler's 1936 Olympics off the front page all over America. Although Astor and Thorpe were both ruthless fighters, Thorpe held a trump card: the two diaries Mary Astor had been keeping for years. In these diaries, Astor detailed her own affairs as well as the myriad dalliances of some of Hollywood's biggest names. The studio heads, longtime controllers of public perception, were desperate to keep such juicy details from leaking. At risk from the information in those diaries was an entire fledgling industry. With the support of the Astor family, including unlimited access to the photographs and memorabilia of Mary Astor's estate, Joseph Egan presents a portrait of a great film actress in her most challenging role - a determined mother battling for her daughter, regardless of the harm that her affairs and her most intimate secrets could do to her career, the careers of her friends, or even Hollywood itself.
©2016 Joseph Egan (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Ayn Rand and the World She Made
Summary
Ayn Rand is the author of two phenomenally best-selling ideological novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, which have sold over 12 million copies in the United States alone. Through them, she built a right-wing cult following in the late 1950s and became the guiding light of Libertarianism and of White House economic policy in the 1960s and '70s. Her defenses of radical individualism and of selfishness as a "capitalist virtue" have permanently altered the American cultural landscape.
©2009 Anne C. Heller (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Goddesses of Kitchen Avenue
Summary
Trudy Marino never expected her life to turn out perfectly. But at 46, she was content with what she did have: her caring husband Rick...20-plus happy years raising three accomplished kids...and a lovely house in the artistic, vibrantly diverse town of Pueblo, New Mexico. But a heartbreaking discovery and a suddenly shattered marriage now has Trudy looking back on the choices she didn’t make - and where she might go from here. Struggling to pick up the pieces, Trudy finds support from a quirky, eclectic group of friends and neighbors - her goddesses of Kitchen Avenue - all of whom are trying in their own unique ways to navigate life’s little surprises. There’s Jade, a fiery social worker who’s finding unexpected strength to deal with her “player” ex-husband, thanks to a most unorthodox passion; Jade’s grandmother, Roberta, who has just lost her husband of 62 years - and through memory and piercing grief wonders what to do with the rest of her life; Shannelle, Trudy’s young neighbor and an aspiring writer, determined to realize her talent despite formidable obstacles...including the husband who’s afraid her success will be his loss; and Angel, a young, quietly knowing photographer who makes Trudy uncover a sensuality she never knew - even as he tries to get over the one love he can never really forget. As Trudy faces her future, she discovers that figuring out what to let go and what to keep is just as difficult as moving on. As she weighs what she and Rick still share against new possibilities, she’ll surprise everyone - including herself - as she tries to reconcile the best of both. From an acclaimed voice in fiction, this is a wry, beguiling, heartfelt, and warmly wise novel about second chances, unexpected choices, and the dreams that we all hunger to fulfill.
©2004 Barbara Samuel (P)2004 Books on Tape, Inc.
I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did
Summary
Social networks are the defining cultural movement of our time, empowering us in constantly evolving ways. We can all now be reporters, alerting the world to breaking news; participate in crowd-sourced scientific research; and become investigators, helping the police solve crimes. Social networks have even helped to bring down governments. But they have also greatly accelerated the erosion of our personal privacy rights - and anyone could become a victim. If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest nation in the world. While that nation appears to be a comforting small town in which we socialize with our selective group of friends, it and the rest of the Web are actually lawless frontiers of hidden and unpredictable dangers. The same power of information that can topple governments can destroy a person’s career or marriage. As leading expert on social networks and privacy Lori Andrews shows through groundbreaking research and a host of stunning stories of abuses, as we work and chat and shop and date over the Web, we are opening ourselves up to increasingly intrusive and anonymous surveillance by employers, schools, lawyers, the police, and aggressive data aggregator services. Some mobile Web devices are even being programmed to listen in on us and feed data services a steady stream of information about what we are doing. Even the best services can’t remove our personal data from the Web for long. As Andrews shows, the legal system cannot be counted on to protect us. In the thousands of cases brought to trial by those whose rights have been violated, judges have most often ruled against them. That is why, in addition to revealing the dangers and providing the best expert advice about protecting ourselves, Andrews proposes that we all become supporters of a constitution for the Web, which she has drafted and introduces in this book. Now is the time to join her and take action - the very future of privacy is at stake. Lori Andrews is a law professor and the director of the Institute for Science, Law, and Technology at Illinois Institute of Technology. She has served as a regular advisor to the US government on ethical issues regarding new technologies and was the chair of the federal committee on ethical and legal issues concerning the Human Genome Project.
©2011 Lori Andrews (P)2012 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Same Beach, Next Year
Summary
New York Times best-selling author Dorothea Benton Frank returns to her magical Lowcountry of South Carolina in this bewitching story of marriage, love, family, and friendship that is infused with her warm and engaging earthy humor and generous heart. One enchanted summer, two couples begin a friendship that will last more than 20 years and transform their lives. A chance meeting on the Isle of Palms, one of Charleston's most stunning barrier islands, brings former sweethearts Adam Stanley and Eve Landers together again. Their respective spouses, Eliza and Carl, fight sparks of jealousy flaring from their imagined rekindling of old flames. As Adam and Eve get caught up on their lives, their partners strike up a deep friendship - and flirt with an unexpected attraction - of their own. Year after year Adam, Eliza, Eve, and Carl eagerly await their reunion at Wild Dunes, a condominium complex at the island's tip end, where they grow closer with each passing day, building a friendship that will withstand financial catastrophe, family tragedy, and devastating heartbreak. The devotion and love they share will help them weather the vagaries of time and enrich their lives as circumstances change, their children grow up and leave home, and their twilight years approach. Bursting with the intoxicating richness of Dorothea Benton Frank's beloved Lowcountry - the sultry sunshine, cool ocean breezes, icy cocktails, and starry velvet skies - Same Beach, Next Year is a dazzling celebration of the infrangible power of friendship, the enduring promise of summer, and the indelible bonds of love.
©2017 Dorothea Benton Frank (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
The Right Address
Summary
The Right Address sears through the upper crust of New York's glittering Park Avenue scene to dish the dirt on the ladies who lunch, the gents who club, and the desperate climbers who will stop at nothing to join the backstabbing, champagne-sipping, socialite-eat-socialite stratosphere. When Melanie Sartomsky, wily Floridian flight attendant, snares billionaire divorcie Arthur "the coffin king" Korn, she is catapulted into the creme de la creme of Park Avenue society, where hiring the wrong decorator is tantamount to social suicide, and where, if you're anyone, your personal assistant has a personal assistant. But Melanie quickly discovers that in the world of the rich and idle, malicious gossip is as de rigeur as owning 20 pairs of Manolo Blahniks. And despite her frenzied plunge into the charity circuit and the right dinner reservations, her neighbors are Givenchy-clad vultures who see her as nothing more than a reinvented trailer trollop. To make matters worse, when a snide society-rag journalist rakes her over the coals, Melanie's reputation is toast. Meanwhile, Melanie is not the only billionaire in the neighborhood coming unhinged. Kleptomania, adultery, plagiarism, and a grisly Harlem sex murder are just a few of the secrets swirling under the pedigreed patina of furs and emeralds on Park Avenue. Authors Jill Kargman and Carrie Karasyov know a thing or two about their subject matter. They met at the Upper East Side's chic Spence School and claim that The Right Address is inspired by "the insane socialites we've eavesdropped on our entire lives." Meow. So kick off your Jimmy Choos, crack open the Veuve Clicquot, and get ready for a rollicking, unforgettable tour of the richer-and-bitchier-than-thou set.
©2004 C. Karasyov and J. Kargman (P)2004 Books on Tape
The Twelve Jays of Christmas
Summary
The cast of Donna Andrews’ New York Times best-selling Meg Langslow mystery series is back for an unforgettable holiday story in The Twelve Jays of Christmas. Meg's brother Rob and his fiancé Delaney have been engaged for some time now. In fear of their mothers’ propensity for over-the-top celebrations, they decide to throw a party just before Christmas and then elope. When a blizzard traps their guests inside, the two mothers find out about the planned elopement and start trying to pull together the kind of over-the-top event the couple was trying to avoid in the first place. To make matters worse, a murder is afoot. Will Meg manage to help the snowbound would-be eloping couple thwart their mothers' grandiose wedding plans and solve a murder among the assembled friends and relatives? A Macmillan Audio production from Minotaur Books
©2021 Donna Andrews (P)2021 Macmillan Audio
We Are Satellites
Summary
From award-winning author Sarah Pinsker comes a novel about one family and the technology that divides them. Everybody's getting one. Val and Julie just want what’s best for their kids, David and Sophie. So when teenage son David comes home one day asking for a Pilot, a new brain implant to help with school, they reluctantly agree. This is the future, after all. Soon, Julie feels mounting pressure at work to get a Pilot to keep pace with her colleagues, leaving Val and Sophie part of the shrinking minority of people without the device. Before long, the implications are clear, for the family and society: get a Pilot or get left behind. With government subsidies and no downside, why would anyone refuse? And how do you stop a technology once it's everywhere? Those are the questions Sophie and her anti-Pilot movement rise up to answer, even if it puts them up against the Pilot's powerful manufacturer and pits Sophie against the people she loves most.
©2021 Sarah Pinsker (P)2021 Penguin Audio
Threading the Needle
Summary
From New York Times best-selling author Marie Bostwick comes a beautiful novel of sisterhood lost and found - and of the ways we create the rich tapestries that encompass the past and the future. The economic downturn has hit New Bern, Connecticut, and Tessa Woodruff’s herbal apothecary shop, For the Love of Lavender, is suffering. So is her once-happy 34-year marriage to Lee. They’d given up everything to come back to New Bern from Boston and start their business, but now they’re wondering if they made the right decision. To relieve the strain, Tessa signs up for a quilting class at the Cobbled Court Quilt Shop and, to her surprise, rediscovers the power of sisterhood - along with the childhood friend she thought she’d lost forever. Madelyn Beecher left New Bern 20 years ago and never looked back. But when her husband is convicted of running a Ponzi scheme and she’s left with nothing but her late grandmother’s cottage, she is forced to return to the town she fled. Unfortunately, the cottage is in terrible shape. Madelyn’s only hope is to transform it into an inn. But to succeed, she’ll need the help of her fellow quilters, including the one friend she never thought she’d see again - or forgive. Now Madelyn and Tessa will have to relive old memories, forge new ones, and realize it’s possible to start over, one stitch at a time - as long as you’re surrounded by friends. Marie Bostwick was born and raised in the Northwest. She and her family have moved a score of times, living in eight U.S. states and two Mexican cities, and collecting a vast and cherished array of friends and experiences. She has three handsome sons and now lives with her husband in Connecticut, where she writes, reads, quilts, and is active in her local church.
©2011 Marie Bostwick (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Time's Magpie
Summary
From the critically acclaimed best-selling author of Bee Season comes a travelogue through the magical and historic city of Prague, a city of vast beauty and wonderfully intimate detail. In Time's Magpie, Myla Goldberg uses her eye for the wonder of tiny objects and everyday things to put us in touch with the essence of this haunting and fantastical place. Goldberg takes us through the city's historic streets, some eerily transformed by the devastating flood of 2002; to Lunapark, home to bumper cars, go-carts, and a discomfiting array of Technicolor confections; and through Strahov Monastery, where the cabinets of curiosity display everything from butterfly specimens to a supposedly real jabberwocky. We attend an anti-war protest in Old Town square and watch the skateboarders do tricks on a ramped marble pedestal that once held a statue of Lenin.
©2004 Myla Goldberg (P)2004 Books on Tape
For My Own
Summary
Snowy days and steamy nights... This year, a modern-day Scrooge learns the true meaning of Christmas with the help of a suddenly sexy old friend. A down-on-his-luck baseball star finds a beautiful new beginning with a hometown girl. And a prim-and-proper teacher is determined to bring out the holiday spirit in a grumpy tree farmer. Settle in for the season with this collection of very merry short fiction.
©2013 Alison Packard, Shari Mikels, and Kinley Cade (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Kingfisher
Summary
In the new fantasy from the award-winning author of the Riddle-Master Trilogy, a young man comes of age amid family secrets and revelations - and transformative magic. Hidden away from the world by his mother, the powerful sorceress Heloise Oliver, Pierce has grown up working in her restaurant in Desolation Point. One day, unexpectedly, strangers pass through town on the way to the legendary capital city. "Look for us," they tell Pierce, "if you come to Severluna. You might find a place for yourself in King Arden's court." Lured by a future far away from the bleak northern coast, Pierce makes his choice. Heloise, bereft and furious, tells her son the truth: about his father, a knight in King Arden's court; about an older brother he never knew existed; about his father's destructive love for King Arden's queen and Heloise's decision to raise her younger son alone. As Pierce journeys to Severluna, his path twists and turns through other lives and mysteries: an inn where ancient rites are celebrated, though no one will speak of them; a legendary local chef whose delicacies leave diners slowly withering from hunger; his mysterious wife, who steals Pierce's heart; a young woman whose need to escape is even greater than Pierce's; and finally, in Severluna, King Arden's youngest son, who is urged by strange and lovely forces to sacrifice his father's kingdom. Things are changing in that kingdom. Oldmagic is on the rise. The immensely powerful artifact of an ancient god has come to light, and the king is gathering his knights to quest for this profound mystery, which may restore the kingdom to its former glory - or destroy it....
©2016 Patricia A. McKillip (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
Madam President
Summary
An up-close look at Edith Wilson, a first lady with unequaled responsibilities during her husband's presidency. After President Woodrow Wilson suffered a paralyzing stroke in the fall of 1919, his wife, First Lady Edith Wilson, began to handle the day-to-day responsibilities of the chief executive. Mrs. Wilson had had little formal education and had only been married to President Wilson for four years, yet in the tenuous peace following the end of World War I, she dedicated herself to managing the office of the president, reading all correspondence intended for her bedridden husband. Though her Oval Office authority was acknowledged in Washington circles at the time - one senator called her "the presidentress who had fulfilled the dream of suffragettes by changing her title from First Lady to Acting First Man" - her legacy as the first woman president is now largely forgotten. William Hazelgrove's Madam President is a vivid, engaging portrait of the woman who became the acting president of the United States in 1919, months before women officially won the right to vote.
©2016 William Hazelgrove (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Dating Is Murder
Summary
Wollie Shelley is a greeting card artist struggling to keep afloat financially and to pursue - despite a series of recent disasters - the search for the love of her life. She reluctantly agrees to be a contestant on the reality television show Biological Clock. The show's premise: six eligible singles date each other, and the audience votes on which couple would make the best parents. Alas, Wollie isn't having much luck finding a man she'd like to date "off the air", much less father her child. As the biological clock ticks away, Wollie gets caught up in a much more pressing demand on her time. Her friend Annika has vanished into thin air and Wollie is convinced that she's in grave danger. When Wollie reports the disappearance to the Los Angeles Police Department, however, the detective assigned to the case seems more interested in dating Wollie than in finding her friend. So Wollie springs into action - and lands right in the middle of an FBI investigation into an international drug cartel. She soon finds herself being stalked by an assortment of threatening characters, including her fellow television contestants, who will stop at nothing to beat the clock. With Dating Is Murder, Kozak delivers another sparkling treasure, a laugh-out-loud funny, literate mystery for readers of Janet Evanovich and Sue Grafton, and for Kozak's own growing legion of fans.
©2005 Harley Jane Kozak (P)2005 Books on Tape, Inc.
A Star for Mrs. Blake
Summary
The United States Congress in 1929 passed legislation to fund travel for mothers of the fallen soldiers of World War I to visit their sons’ graves in France. Over the next three years, 6,693 Gold Star Mothers made the trip. In this emotionally charged, brilliantly realized novel, April Smith breathes life into a unique moment in American history, imagining the experience of five of these women. They are strangers at the start, but their lives will become inextricably intertwined, altered in indelible ways. These very different Gold Star Mothers travel to the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery to say final good-byes to their sons and come together along the way to face the unexpected: a death, a scandal, and a secret revealed. None of these pilgrims will be as affected as Cora Blake, who has lived almost her entire life in a small fishing village off the coast of Maine, caring for her late sister’s three daughters, hoping to fill the void left by the death of her son, Sammy, who was killed on a scouting mission during the final days of the war. Cora believes she is managing as well as can be expected in the midst of the Depression, but nothing has prepared her for what lies ahead on this unpredictable journey, including an extraordinary encounter with an expatriate American journalist, Griffin Reed, who was wounded in the trenches and hides behind a metal mask, one of hundreds of "tin noses" who became symbols of the war. With expert storytelling, memorable characters, and beautiful prose, April Smith gives us a timeless story, by turns heartwarming and heartbreaking, set against a footnote of history - little known, yet unforgettable.
©2014 April Smith (P)2014 Random House Audio