Carol Monda has narrated 84 audiobooks on Listento.it by 73 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.3★ across 3,837 ratings. The most-rated is Dooku: Jedi Lost (Star Wars).
A Manual for Cleaning Women
Summary
"I have always had faith that the best writers will rise to the top, like cream, sooner or later, and will become exactly as well-known as they should be - their work talked about, quoted, taught, performed, filmed, set to music, anthologized. Perhaps, with the present collection, Lucia Berlin will begin to gain the attention she deserves." - Lydia Davis, from the foreword A Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With the grit of Raymond Carver, the humor of Grace Paley, and a blend of wit and melancholy all her own, Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday, uncovering moments of grace in the laundromats and halfway houses of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Bay Area upper class, among switchboard operators and struggling mothers, hitchhikers, and bad Christians. Listeners will revel in this remarkable collection from a master of the form and wonder how they'd ever overlooked her in the first place.
©2015 Lucia Berlin (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
No Rest for the Dead
Summary
More than 20 New York Times best-selling authors team up to create a first-rate serial novel - a collaboration that combines the skills of America's greatest storytellers to produce a gripping, spellbinding mystery. "The lineup of writers who have contributed to this mystery is akin to the Murderers' Row of the 1927 New York Yankees. There is not a weak spot in the bunch." —David Baldacci, from the Introduction Alexander McCall Smith. Sandra Brown. Faye Kellerman. J.A. Jance. Jeffery Deaver. Kathy Reichs. Lisa Scottoline. Jeff Lindsay. These are only a handful of the names that make up the all-star lineup of authors behind No Rest for the Dead, a tale of vengeance, greed, and love that flows seamlessly, in the words of David Baldacci, "as it passes from one creator's mind to the next." When Christopher Thomas, a ruthless curator at San Francisco's McFall Art Museum, is murdered and his decaying body is found in an iron maiden in a Berlin museum, his wife, Rosemary, is the primary suspect, and she is tried, convicted and executed. Ten years later, Jon Nunn, the detective who cracked the case, is convinced that the wrong person was put to death. In the years since the case was closed, he's discovered a web of deceit and betrayal surrounding the Thomases that could implicate any number of people in the crime. With the help of the dead woman's friend, he plans to gather everyone who was there the night Christopher died and finally uncover the truth, suspect by suspect. Solving this case may be Nunn's last chance for redemption… but the shadowy forces behind Christopher's death will stop at nothing to silence the past forever. In this innovative storytelling approach, each of 25 best-selling writers brings their distinctive voice to a chapter of the narrative, building the tension to a shocking, explosive finale. With contributions from David Baldacci (Introduction), Jeff Lindsay, Alexander McCall Smith, Jonathan Santlofer, Sandra Brown, Faye Kellerman, Kathy Reichs, Benjamin Kelly, John Lescroart, T. Jefferson Parker, Gayle Lynds, Matthew Pearl, J. A. Jance, Michael Palmer, Marcia Talley, P. D. James, Diana Gabaldon, Philip Margolin, Tess Gerritsen, Katherine Neville, Lisa Scottoline, R. L. Stine, Jeffery Deaver, Laurie H. Armstrong, Brian Gruley, Robert Dugoni.
©2011 Sandra Brown, David Baldacci, R.L. Stine, Lisa Scottoline, Jeffery Deaver, David Baldacci (P)2011 Simon & Schuster
Nyxia Unleashed
Summary
"File this book under A for Amazing." (Jay Kristoff, New York Times best-selling author) Discover book two in the sci-fi space trilogy that Bustle described as "The 100 meets Illuminae" and Marie Lu called "a high-octane thriller". Emmett Atwater thought Babel's game sounded easy. Get points. Get paid. Go home. But it didn't take long for him to learn that Babel's competition was full of broken promises, none darker or more damaging than the last one. Now Emmett and the rest of the Genesis spaceship survivors must rally and forge their own path through a new world. Their mission from Babel is simple: extract nyxia, the most valuable material in the universe, and play nice with the indigenous Adamite population. But Emmett and the others quickly realize they are caught between two powerful forces - Babel and the Adamites - with clashing desires. Will the Genesis team make it out alive before it's too late? Praise for book 1 in The Nyxia Triad: "A high-octane thriller... Nyxia grabs you from the first line and never lets go." (Marie Lu, number one New York Times best-selling author of the Young Elites series) "Brilliant concept meets stellar execution in this fast-paced deep space adventure. I was hooked from page one." (Victoria Schwab, number one New York Times best-selling author)
©2018 Scott Reintgen (P)2018 Listening Library
Generation Loss
Summary
Cass Neary made her name in the 70s as a photographer embedded in the burgeoning punk movement in New York City. Her pictures of the musicians and the hangers-on, the infamous, the damned, and the dead, earned her a brief moment of fame. Thirty years later she is adrift, on her way down and almost out when an old acquaintance sends her on a mercy gig to interview a famously reclusive photographer who lives on an island in Maine. When she arrives Down East, Cass stumbles across a decades-old mystery that is still claiming victims, and she finds one final shot at redemption.
©2008 Elizabeth Hand (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Taster
Summary
Amid the turbulence of World War II, a young German woman finds a precarious haven closer to the source of danger than she ever imagined - one that will propel her through the extremes of privilege and terror under Hitler's dictatorship. In early 1943, Magda Ritter's parents send her to relatives in Bavaria, hoping to keep her safe from the Allied bombs strafing Berlin. Young German women are expected to do their duty - working for the Reich or marrying to produce strong, healthy children. After an interview with the civil service, Magda is assigned to the Berghof, Hitler's mountain retreat. Only after weeks of training does she learn her assignment: she will be one of several young women tasting the Führer's food, offering herself in sacrifice to keep him from being poisoned. Perched high in the Bavarian Alps, the Berghof seems worlds away from the realities of battle. Though terrified at first, Magda gradually becomes used to her dangerous occupation - though she knows better than to voice her misgivings about the war. But her love for a conspirator within the SS and her growing awareness of the Reich's atrocities draw Magda into a plot that will test her wits and loyalty in a quest for safety, freedom, and, ultimately, vengeance. Vividly written and ambitious in scope, The Taster examines the harrowing moral dilemmas of war in an emotional story filled with acts of extraordinary courage.
©2018 V.S. Alexander (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Beautiful You
Summary
From the author of Fight Club, the classic portrait of the damaged contemporary male psyche, now comes this novel about the apocalyptic marketing possibilities of female pleasure. Beautiful You is Palahniuk's much-anticipated satire of the emerging erotic thriller genre, a mash-up of mommy porn and chick lit à la Sex and the City, and fantasy lit à la Clan of the Cave Bear. Imagine if Ira Levin had a baby with Jean Auel. Penny Harrigan is a low-level associate in a big Manhattan law firm with an apartment in Queens and no love life at all. So it comes as a great shock when she finds herself invited to dinner by one C. Linus Maxwell, aka "Climax-Well", a software mega-billionaire and lover of the most gorgeous and accomplished women on earth. After dining at Manhattan's most exclusive restaurant, he whisks Penny off to a hotel suite in Paris, where he proceeds, notebook in hand, to bring her to previously undreamed-of heights of orgasmic pleasure for days on end. What's not to like? This: Penny discovers that she is a test subject for the final development of a line of sex toys to be marketed in a nationwide chain of boutiques called Beautiful You. So potent and effective are these devices that women by the millions line up outside the stores on opening day and then lock themselves in their room with them and stop coming out. Except for batteries. Maxwell's plan for erotically enabled world domination must be stopped. But how?
©2014 Chuck Palahniuk (P)2014 Recorded Books
Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead
Summary
Claire DeWitt is not your average private investigator. She has brilliant skills of deduction and is an ace at discovering evidence. But Claire also uses her dreams, omens, and mind-expanding herbs to help her solve mysteries, and relies on Détection—the only book published by the great and mysterious French detective Jacques Silette before his death. The tattooed, pot-smoking Claire has just arrived in post-Katrina New Orleans, the city she’s avoided since her mentor, Silette’s student Constance Darling, was murdered there. Claire is investigating the disappearance of Vic Willing, a prosecutor known for winning convictions in a homicide-plagued city. Has an angry criminal enacted revenge on Vic? Or did he use the storm as means to disappear? Claire follows the clues, finding old friends and making new enemies—foremost among them Andray Fairview, a young gang member who just might hold the key to the mystery.
©2011 Original material by Sara Gran. (P)2011 HighBridge Company
Final Scream
Summary
When she was only 16, Cassidy Buchanan fell for the 19-year-old bad boy in town, Brig McKenzie, who'd had his share of run-ins with both the law and the local women. Then a terrible fire killed Cassidy's sister, and Brig, the chief suspect, was forced to run away. Seventeen years later, an eerily similar fire seriously injures Cassidy's husband, Chase, who happens to be Brig's brother. With the earlier fire still an open case, suspicion turns to Cassidy, the only unharmed person connected to both tragedies.
©2005 Susan Lisa Jackson (P)2006 Recorded Books
Suddenly
Summary
In the idyllic small town of Tucker, Vermont, life flows at a rhythmic pace for pediatrician Paige Pfeiffer. But when Mara O'Neill, her best friend and medical partner, inexplicably kills herself, Paige's comfortable world is suddenly shattered. Temporarily caring for Mara's newly adopted baby daughter while she comes to grips with her grief, Paige clings to the hope that, in time, her orderly life will return. What she hadn't counted on were the unforeseen joys that often come with change, including the attentions of Noah Perrine, acting head of the private school where Paige coaches girls' athletics. Noah fills Paige's life with hope, and offers her things she never thought she wanted. Paige never expected to find the meaning of life in the death of a friend.
©2004 Barbara Delinsky (P)2011 Simon & Schuster
The Stepsister Scheme
Summary
What would happen if an author went back to the darker themes of the original fairy tales for his plots, and then crossed the Disney princesses with Charlie's Angels? What's delivered is The Stepsister Scheme, a whole new take on what happened to Cinderella and her prince after the wedding. And with Jim C. Hines penning the tale, listeners can bet it won't be "and they lived happily ever after."
©2009 Jim C. Hines (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
The Girl on the Balcony
Summary
In 1968, Olivia Hussey became one of the most famous faces in the world, immortalized as the definitive Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo & Juliet. Now the iconic girl on the balcony shares the ups and downs of her truly remarkable life and career.... At only 16 years old, she was an internationally celebrated overnight discovery. The part was an opportunity of a lifetime for a simple girl from Buenos Aires, Argentina. But for Olivia, admired for her beauty and innocence and praised as a fresh and burgeoning young talent, the role of movie star was hard to play and, harder still, to live up to. In this candid memoir, Olivia Hussey tells her story - from being an "It Girl" in swinging '60s London and her enduring friendship with Romeo & Juliet costar Leonard Whiting, through three tumultuous marriages - including one with Dean Martin's son, Dino - motherhood, stage-four breast cancer, debilitating agoraphobia, bankruptcy, and ultimately, a journey of self-discovery in India that led her on a path to fulfillment. She brings listeners intimately close to the legendary performers she knew, loved, worked with, and battled, including The Beatles, Vanessa Redgrave, Bette Davis, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Liza Minnelli, Anthony Perkins, Christopher Reeve, Lawrence Olivier, Ingrid Bergman, and more. Olivia also finally reveals for the first time, the identity of the actor - a fellow young newcomer - who raped her, but who would not break her. Featuring a foreword by her star-making director Franco Zeffirelli, Olivia Hussey's memoir shines with her luminous spirit and perseverance as she reflects on her unique life and experiences - inspiring, surprising, and fascinating to hear.
©2018 Olivia Hussey and Alexander Martin (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Element-X
Summary
When a huge alien spacecraft crashes on the island of Cuba, the world scrambles to investigate. Secretive organizations have waited for generations for this opportunity, and they do not hesitate to send in recovery teams. Cooperation between nations breaks down as every government wants the newly discovered technology for themselves. Naturally, the Cubans have beaten everyone else, and the island is beginning to change. Aircraft flying reconnaissance are swatted from the skies. Commandos can’t make a landing on the beaches without being annihilated. Malena Marin is a new XCU agent with special abilities. She’s sent with a team of veterans on a mission to secure the landing site or die trying. Unfortunately, the enemy knows they’re coming. As the conflict grows and turns increasingly violent, the aliens themselves enter the game. And they have plans of their own....
©2012 B. V. Larson (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The Song Remains the Same
Summary
Best-selling author Allison Winn Scotch showcases heroines who face monumental life changes with unmatched fervor and grace. When Nell Slattery awakens in a hospital bed, she cannot remember who she is, much less the horrific plane crash that put her there. Now, with the help of her friends and family, she’s beginning to piece her memory back together. But she cannot shake the suspicion that her loved ones are hiding secrets from her.
©2012 Allison Winn Scotch (P)2012 Recorded Books, LLC
Curious Toys
Summary
An intrepid young woman stalks a murderer through turn-of-the-century Chicago in "this rich, spooky, and atmospheric thriller that will appeal to fans of Henry Darger and Erik Larson alike" (Sarah McCarry). In the sweltering summer of 1915, Pin, the 14-year-old daughter of a carnival fortune-teller, dresses as a boy and joins a teenage gang that roams the famous Riverview amusement park, looking for trouble. Unbeknownst to the well-heeled city-dwellers and visitors who come to enjoy the midway, the park is also host to a ruthless killer who uses the shadows of the dark carnival attractions to conduct his crimes. When Pin sees a man enter the Hell Gate ride with a young girl and emerge alone, she knows that something horrific has occurred. The crime will lead her to the iconic outsider artist Henry Darger, a brilliant but seemingly mad man. Together, the two navigate the seedy underbelly of a changing city to uncover a murderer few even know to look for.
©2019 Elizabeth Hand (P)2019 Mulholland Books
Saint's Gate
Summary
New York Times best-selling author Carla Neggers has amassed legions of fans for her engaging blend of romance and suspense. Saint’s Gate features Colin Donovan, a deep-cover FBI agent who usually works alone - and likes it that way. When he tackles a case involving art heists and a convent’s long-held secrets, however, he finds himself more and more interested in the beguiling Emma Sharpe.
©2011 Carla Neggers (P)2011 Recorded Books, LLC
The Last Conquistador
Summary
A series of child abductions in Peru leads an FBI agent and an archaeologist to uncover the ultimate secret of the Inca Empire. On a Peruvian Andes mountaintop, archaeology professor Nina Ramirez and her students make two stunning discoveries: The five-hundred-year-old mummy of an Inca girl, the victim of ritual sacrifice, and in another grave, the corpse of a recently kidnapped boy wearing the same ancient costume. Child abductions are being reported throughout Peru, and when an American boy is snatched in Lima, FBI agent Adam Palma is assigned to the case. At the home of a manic artist who was the sole survivor of similar kidnappings in 1962, Adam is shown a disturbing mural depicting the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro. In the painting, the conquistador’s face looks exactly like his own. Adam teams up with Nina, and with the help of a mysterious boy named Quiso, their investigation takes them deep into the Amazon jungle in a search of a lost city of the Incas, where the ancient sacrificial rituals may still be alive. As Quiso leads Nina and Adam closer to the city and its secrets, Adam realizes that the only way to save the kidnapped children is to make the past repeat itself. Adam, like his distant ancestor Pizarro, must square off against an Inca high priest.
©2013 Michael Elias (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The Mist
Summary
New York Times best-selling author Carla Neggers introduces Lizzie Rush in this gripping tale, in which nothing and no one is as they seem. Utilizing skills her ex-spy father taught her, Lizzie brings down an international crime kingpin. But now this outlaw has her targeted for revenge. Her only hope may be intelligence man Will Davenport - but can he be trusted?
©2009 Carla Neggers (P)2009 Recorded Books, LLC
Innocent as Sin
Summary
Kayla Shaw is a private banker in Arizona, smart and capable but underpaid and underappreciated. Rand McCree is a haunted man who paints landscapes in the Pacific Northwest, burning with a need for answers about the terrible event that shattered his world. They are two strangers with nothing in common, until their lives entwine and explode. On what at first appears to be an ordinary day, everything changes for Kayla, as she barely escapes a kidnapping attempt and finds herself accused of a shocking crime: the illegal laundering of hundreds of millions of dollars. Damned by lies and false "evidence", she is trapped with no place to run. After five agonizing years, Rand has finally been offered what he desires the most: the name of his twin brother's murderer. Hungry for vengeance, he accepts a job with St. Kilda Consulting that will place him in the killer's orbit, and tantalizingly close to Kayla Shaw. The cold-blooded international criminal responsible for Rand's brother's death has targeted Kayla as his next victim. Since she can't turn to the police, who believe she's guilty as sin, she must place her life in the hands of the shadowy, secretive man who has come out of nowhere to protect her. Suspicious of each other, needing each other, they are two against the world, with unknown enemies on all sides and even the government itself suspect, as the violence of the past erupts in the present. And now innocence alone will not be enough to keep Kayla Shaw alive.
©2007 Two of a Kind, Inc (P)2007 HarperCollins Publishers
Just in Time
Summary
When Grace Saunders vowed to take her husband for better or worse, she meant every word. She and Jamie are solid, mutually supportive, and certain of their future together. And then, on a hiking trip for their 15th anniversary, an accident leaves Jamie in a coma, unable to move or communicate. As months pass, Grace is in limbo - still married, yet utterly alone and burdened with responsibilities that threaten to sink her. Meeting Nan and Monica, unlikely friends who need Grace almost as much as she needs them, makes life bearable, if not quite happy. But a chance evening spent with a man she barely knows brings Grace a glimmer of joy she hasn't felt since the tragedy - joy that is, however, followed by feelings of turmoil and guilt. At work, she faces a different sort of crisis, as well as her need to keep the job that pays for Jamie's medical care. Grace has always assumed that bright, clear lines separate right from wrong. Now that idealism is blurred by dilemmas that test her beliefs about marriage and loyalty, and she must look to her new friends and inside herself for answers. This poignant novel explores the limits of responsibility - to others and to ourselves - and the breadth and wisdom of love.
©2018 Marie Bostwick (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Liar's Key
Summary
An FBI legend, a mysterious antiquities specialist and a brazen art thief draw top FBI agents Emma Sharpe and Colin Donovan into a complex web of blackmail, greed, and murder in the eagerly awaited new novel in the highly acclaimed Sharpe & Donovan series Emma Sharpe is suspicious when retired Special Agent Gordon Wheelock, a legend in FBI art crimes, drops by her Boston office for a visit. Gordy says he's heard rumors about stolen ancient mosaics. Emma, an art crimes specialist herself, won't discuss the rumors. Especially since they involve Oliver York, an unrepentant English art thief. Gordy and Emma's grandfather, a renowned private art detective, chased Oliver for a decade. Gordy knows Wendell Sharpe didn't give him everything he had on the thief. Even now, Oliver will never be prosecuted. When a shocking death occurs, Emma is drawn into the investigation. The evidence points to a deadly conspiracy between Wendell and Oliver, and Emma's fiancé, deep cover agent Colin Donovan, knows he can't stay out of this one. He also knows there will be questions about Emma's role and where her loyalties lie. From Boston to Maine to Ireland, Emma and Colin track a dangerous killer as the lives of their family and friends are at stake. With the help of their friend, Irish priest Finian Bracken, and Emma's brother, Lucas, the Sharpes and Donovans must band together to stop a killer. No one creates exciting, action-packed romantic suspense and international intrigue like New York Times bestselling author Carla Neggers.
©2016 Carla Neggers (P)2016 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.