Cassandra Campbell has narrated 565 audiobooks on Listento.it by 493 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.3★ across 19,477 ratings. The most-rated is Where the Crawdads Sing.
The Little Paris Bookshop
Summary
"There are books that are suitable for a million people, others for only a hundred. There are even remedies - I mean books - that were written for one person only.... A book is both medic and medicine at once. It makes a diagnosis as well as offering therapy. Putting the right novels to the appropriate ailments: That's how I sell books."
Monsieur Perdu calls himself a literary apothecary. From his floating bookstore in a barge on the Seine, he prescribes novels for the hardships of life. Using his intuitive feel for the exact book a reader needs, Perdu mends broken hearts and souls. The only person he can't seem to heal through literature is himself; he's still haunted by heartbreak after his great love disappeared. She left him with only a letter, which he has never opened.
After Perdu is finally tempted to read the letter, he hauls anchor and departs on a mission to the south of France, hoping to make peace with his loss and discover the end of the story. Joined by a best-selling but blocked author and a lovelorn Italian chef, Perdu travels along the country's rivers, dispensing his wisdom and his books, showing that the literary world can take the human soul on a journey to heal itself.
Internationally best selling and filled with warmth and adventure, The Little Paris Bookshop is a love letter to books, meant for anyone who believes in the power of stories to shape people's lives.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2015 Nina George (P)2015 Random House Audio
The Women in the Castle
Summary
Three women, haunted by the past and the secrets they hold Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society, a powerful and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become intertwined - an affecting, shocking, and ultimately redemptive novel from the author of the New York Times notable book The Hazards of Good Breeding. Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany's defeat, Marianne von Lingenfels returns to the once-grand castle of her husband's ancestors, an imposing stone fortress now fallen into ruin following years of war. The widow of a resister murdered in the failed July 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Marianne plans to uphold the promise she made to her husband's brave conspirators: to find and protect their wives, her fellow resistance widows. First Marianne rescues six-year-old Martin, the son of her dearest childhood friend, from a Nazi reeducation home. Together they make their way across the smoldering wreckage of their homeland to Berlin, where Martin's mother, the beautiful and naive Benita, has fallen into the hands of occupying Red Army soldiers. Then she locates Ania, another resister's wife, and her two boys, now refugees languishing in one of the many camps that house the millions displaced by the war. As Marianne assembles this makeshift family from the ruins of her husband's resistance movement, she is certain their shared pain and circumstances will hold them together. But she quickly discovers that the black-and-white, highly principled world of her privileged past has become infinitely more complicated, filled with secrets and dark passions that threaten to tear them apart. Eventually all three women must come to terms with the choices that have defined their lives before, during, and after the war - each with her own unique share of challenges. Written with the devastating emotional power of The Nightingale, Sarah's Key, and The Light Between Oceans, Jessica Shattuck's evocative and utterly enthralling novel offers a fresh perspective on one of the most tumultuous periods in history. Combining piercing social insight and vivid historical atmosphere, The Women in the Castle is a dramatic yet nuanced portrait of war and its repercussions that explores what it means to survive, love, and ultimately forgive in the wake of unimaginable hardship.
©2017 Jessica Shattuck (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
The Painted Girls
Summary
Paris, 1878: Following the death of their father from overwork, the three van Goethem sisters find their lives upended. Without their father’s wages, and with what little their mother earns as a laundress disappearing down the absinthe bottle, eviction from their single boarding room seems imminent. With few options for work available for a girl, bookish 14-year-old Marie and her younger sister Charlotte are dispatched to the Paris Opera, where for a scant seven francs a week, the girls will be trained to enter its famous ballet. Their older sister, stubborn and insolent 17-year-old Antoinette, dismissed from the ballet, finds herself launched into the orbit of Émile Zola and the influence of his notorious naturalist masterpiece L’Assommoir - and into the arms of a young man who may turn out to be a murderer. Marie throws herself into dance, hoping her natural gift and hard work will enable her to escape her circumstances, but the competition to become one of the famous étoiles at whose feet flowers are thrown nightly is fierce, and Marie is forced to turn elsewhere to make money. Cripplingly self-conscious about her low-class appearance, she nonetheless finds herself modeling in the studio of Edgar Degas, where her image will forever be immortalized in his controversial sculpture Little Dancer, Aged 14. Antoinette, meanwhile, descends lower and lower in society and must make the choice between honest labor as a laundress and the more profitable avenues available to a young woman in the Paris demimonde - that is unless her love for the dangerous Émile Abadie derails her completely. Set at a moment of profound artistic, cultural, and societal change, The Painted Girls is ultimately a tale of two remarkable girls rendered uniquely vulnerable to the darker impulses of "civilized society". In the end, each will come to realize that her individual salvation, if not survival, lies with the other.
©2013 Cathy Marie Buchanan (P)2013 Blackstone Audio, Inc
Little House on the Prairie
Summary
The adventures continue for Laura Ingalls and her family as they leave their little house in the Big Woods of Wisconsin and set out for Kansas. They travel for many days in their covered wagon until they find the best spot to build their little house on the prairie. Soon they are planting and plowing, hunting wild ducks and turkeys, and gathering grass for their cows. Sometimes pioneer life is hard, but Laura and her folks are always busy and happy in their new little house. Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts.
©1935 Little House Heritage Trust (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers
The Gilded Hour
Summary
The internationally best-selling author of Into the Wilderness makes her highly anticipated return with a remarkable epic about two female doctors in 19th-century New York and the transcendent power of courage and love. The year is 1883, and in New York City it's a time of dizzying splendor, crushing poverty, and tremendous change. With the gravity-defying Brooklyn Bridge nearly complete and New York in the grips of antivice crusader Anthony Comstock, Anna Savard and her cousin, Sophie - both graduates of the Woman's Medical School - treat the city's most vulnerable, even if doing so may put everything they've strived for in jeopardy. Anna's work has placed her in the path of four children who have lost everything, just as she herself once had. Faced with their helplessness, Anna must make an unexpected choice between holding on to the pain of her past and letting love into her life. For Sophie, an obstetrician and the orphaned daughter of free people of color, helping a desperate young mother forces her to grapple with the oath she took as a doctor - and thrusts her and Anna into the orbit of Comstock, a dangerous man who considers himself the enemy of everything indecent and of anyone who dares to defy him. With its vivid depictions of old New York and its enormously appealing characters, The Gilded Hour is a captivating, emotionally gripping novel that proves Sara Donati is an author at the height of her powers.
©2015 Sara Donati (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Bitter Harvest
Summary
This New York Times best seller and shocking “tour de force from America’s best true crime writer” (Kirkus Reviews) - which formed the basis for the Lifetime movie event A House on Fire - follows a woman whose seemingly perfect life hides a destructive madness. In this harrowing New York Times best seller, Ann Rule is at her masterful best as she winnows horrific truths from the ashes of what seemed like paradise in Prairie Village, Kansas. Rule probes the case of Debora Green, a doctor and a loving mother who seemed to epitomize the dreams of the American heartland. A small-town girl with a genius IQ, she achieved an enviable life: her own medical practice, a handsome physician husband, three perfect children, and an opulent home in an exclusive Kansas City suburb. But when a raging fire destroyed that home and took two lives, the trail of clues led investigators to a stunning conclusion. Piece by piece, Ann Rule digs beneath this placid Midwestern facade to unveil a disturbing portrait of strangely troubled marriages, infidelity, desperation, suicide, and escalating acts of revenge that forever changed dozens of lives.
©2000 Ann Rule. All rights reserved. (P)2020 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
Change of Fortune
Summary
Sinful, Louisiana, is always a hotbed of activity, and despite the steamy heat, August is no exception. Godzilla is terrorizing the town, looking for a home-cooked meal, and Gertie is worried someone will take the gator out before she can get him under control. Francine has a situation of her own at the café, where food is missing from inventory. And Celia is always up to no good. But summer is almost over, which could mean huge changes for Fortune Redding. Her undercover time in Sinful has always been limited to three months, and that time is almost up. With Ahmad still on the loose, Fortune is forced to remain in hiding, but soon she'll have to move to another town and start all over with a new identity. And that's the last thing she wants to do. Determined to get her life back, Fortune decides to draw Ahmad out and end this once and for all. Can Fortune take down one of the most dangerous men in the world? And if she can, does she have a future in Sinful?
©2018 Jana DeLeon (P)2018 Audible, Inc.
The Hideaway
Summary
In the South, family is always more complicated than it seems. After her last remaining family member dies, Sara Jenkins goes home to The Hideaway, her grandmother Mags’s ramshackle B&B in Sweet Bay. She intends to quickly tie up loose ends then return to her busy life and thriving antique shop in New Orleans. Instead, she learns Mags has willed The Hideaway to her and charged her with renovating it — no small task considering her grandmother’s best friends, a motley crew of senior citizens, still live there. Rather than hurrying back to New Orleans, Sara stays in Sweet Bay and begins the biggest house-rehabbing project of her career. Amid drywall dust, old memories, and a charming contractor, she discovers that slipping back into life at The Hideaway is easier than she expected. Then she discovers a box Mags left in the attic with clues to a life Sara never imagined for her grandmother. With help from Mags’s friends, Sara begins to piece together the mysterious life of bravery, passion, and choices that changed her grandmother’s destiny in both marvelous and devastating ways. When an opportunistic land developer threatens to seize The Hideaway, Sara is forced to make a choice — stay in Sweet Bay and fight for the house and the people she’s grown to love or leave again and return to her successful but solitary life in New Orleans. “A story both powerful and enchanting: a don’t-miss novel in the greatest southern traditions of storytelling.” (Patti Callahan Henry, New York Times best selling author) “Two endearing heroines and their poignant storylines of love lost and found make this the perfect book for an afternoon on the back porch with a glass of sweet tea.” (Karen White, New York Times best-selling author) USA TODAY and Amazon Charts best seller Full-length Southern Women’s Fiction Includes Discussion Questions for Book Clubs
©2017 Lauren K. Denton (P)2018 Thomas Nelson
The Winter People
Summary
The New York Times best-selling author of Promise Not to Tell returns with a simmering literary thriller about ghostly secrets, dark choices, and the unbreakable bond between mothers and daughters...sometimes too unbreakable. West Hall, Vermont, has always been a town of strange disappearances and old legends. The most mysterious is that of Sara Harrison Shea, who, in 1908, was found dead in the field behind her house just months after the tragic death of her daughter, Gertie. Now, in present day, 19-year-old Ruthie lives in Sara's farmhouse with her mother, Alice, and her younger sister, Fawn. Alice has always insisted that they live off the grid, a decision that suddenly proves perilous when Ruthie wakes up one morning to find that Alice has vanished without a trace. Searching for clues, she is startled to find a copy of Sara Harrison Shea's diary hidden beneath the floorboards of her mother's bedroom. As Ruthie gets sucked deeper into the mystery of Sara's fate, she discovers that she's not the only person who's desperately looking for someone that they've lost. But she may be the only one who can stop history from repeating itself.
©2014 Jennifer McMahon (P)2014 Random House Audio
The Man from the Train
Summary
Using unprecedented, dramatically compelling sleuthing techniques, legendary statistician and baseball writer Bill James applies his analytical acumen to crack an unsolved century-old mystery surrounding one of the deadliest serial killers in American history. Between 1898 and 1912, families across the country were bludgeoned in their sleep with the blunt side of an axe. Jewelry and valuables were left in plain sight, bodies were piled together, faces covered with cloth. Some of these cases, like the infamous Villasca, Iowa, murders, received national attention. But few people believed the crimes were related. And fewer still would realize that all of these families lived within walking distance to a train station. When celebrated baseball statistician and true-crime expert Bill James first learned about these horrors, he began to investigate others that might fit the same pattern. Applying the same know-how he brings to his legendary baseball analysis, he empirically determined which crimes were committed by the same person. Then, after sifting through thousands of local newspapers, court transcripts, and public records, he and his daughter, Rachel, made an astonishing discovery: They learned the true identity of this monstrous criminal. In turn they uncovered one of the deadliest serial killers in America. Riveting and immersive, with writing as sharp as the cold side of an axe, The Man from the Train paints a vivid, psychologically perceptive portrait of America at the dawn of the 20th century, when crime was regarded as a local problem and opportunistic private detectives exploited a dysfunctional judicial system. James shows how these cultural factors enabled such an unspeakable series of crimes to occur, and his groundbreaking approach to true crime will convince skeptics, amaze aficionados, and change the way we view criminal history.
©2017 Bill James & Rachel McCarthy James. All rights reserved. (P)2017 Simon & Schuster Audio. All rights reserved.
Fall on Your Knees
Summary
The Piper family is steeped in secrets, lies, and unspoken truths. At the eye of the storm is one secret that threatens to shake their lives, even to destroy them. Set on stormy Cape Breton Island off Nova Scotia, Fall on Your Knees is an internationally acclaimed multigenerational saga that chronicles the lives of four unforgettable sisters. Theirs is a world filled with driving ambition, inescapable family bonds, and forbidden love.
©1996 Ann-Marie MacDonald (P)2016 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Reel of Fortune
Summary
Nothing says Welcome Home like a murder. It’s official. Fortune Redding is out of the CIA and a newly minted resident of Sinful, Louisiana. She never expected her homecoming to be all apple pie and hugs, but a murder wasn’t on her list of things to deal with before she’d even gotten her name stenciled on her mailbox. Boone Carre-Hooch, to the locals - was a drunk and a louse and had shafted pretty much everyone he’d ever done business with. So when someone kills him, there is no shortage of suspects. Unfortunately, Ally is at the top of the list. Fortune, Ida Belle, and Gertie know that Ally isn’t capable of murdering anyone, but with an ambitious ADA looking to make a name for himself, and the local gossip train intent on finding someone to blame, they know they have to find the killer and clear Ally’s name.
©2018 Jana DeLeon (P)2019 Audible, Inc.
Swamp Santa
Summary
It's Christmas in Sinful and Fortune is set to participate in all the local hoopla. A Christmas gala, caroling, and a sleigh ride are on the agenda. Murder is not. But when someone bumps off Santa, Fortune is aware a killer is lurking among the holiday cheer. But with no client and no reason to interfere with a police investigation, it looks as if Fortune, Ida Belle, and Gertie will have to sit this one out. Big and Little Hebert might be criminals, but they prefer no competition in their territory, especially someone brazen enough to kill a man at the Christmas gala. When they hire Fortune to investigate the man’s death, she gets her Christmas wish and Swamp Team 3 sets out to solve their final case of the year.
©2019 Jana DeLeon (P)2020 Audible, Inc.
Swamp Team 3
Summary
From New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Jana DeLeon, a new installment in her best-selling Miss Fortune series. What's a little arson between friends? Undercover CIA agent Fortune Redding spent her first three weeks in Sinful, Louisiana, dodging insults, makeup advice, guard dogs, bullets, and Deputy Carter Trahan, both professionally and personally. But just when she thinks things are going to settle down in the small bayou town, someone sets her friend Ally's house on fire. Carter, who'd just started pursuing Fortune on a personal basis, goes back into cop mode and admonishes her to stay out of his investigation. This time, he swears, he won't issue any warning before arresting her. But with her friend's safety hanging in the balance, Fortune can't resist taking matters into her own hands and calls on her partners in crime fighting, Ida Belle and Gertie, to help. This is a mission for Swamp Team 3.
©2014 Jana DeLeon (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
Hook, Line and Blinker
Summary
Nobody knows speed like Ida Belle. Behind the wheel of her hopped-up Blazer, she's the queen of the back roads. But when someone tries to kill Hot Rod and steals only black SUVs from his shop, Fortune worries that excessive horsepower is the least of the trouble that comes along with her friend's new ride. When it becomes clear that the car thieves didn't get what they were looking for the first time around and Ida Belle's vehicle becomes their next target, Fortune and Gertie are determined to protect their friend. Ida Belle is determined to protect the Blazer.
©2017 Jana DeLeon (P)2017 Audible, Inc.
Gator Bait
Summary
From New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Jana DeLeon, the fifth book in the hilarious Miss Fortune series. Things are starting to look up for Fortune Redding. Even though her life was at stake, the CIA assassin had balked at taking on a new identity in Sinful, Louisiana. But instead of hating it like she'd thought she would, Fortune now has friends she cares about and just finished up an incredible first date with the sexiest deputy in the state. Sure, there's been a murder or two that she's gotten mixed up in since she arrived in town, but she's hoping all of that is behind her. But when someone almost kills Deputy Carter LeBlanc, Fortune tosses her dreams of peace and quiet into the muddy bayou and shifts back into being the deadly trained professional that she is. With the help of Ida Belle and Gertie, Fortune launches a manhunt, intending to find a killer before he tries again.
©2014 Jana DeLeon (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
Kings Lake Investigation Series #3, Roxanne
Summary
"And see if there's any news about the missing girl." Life, as Smith used to say, is just one thing after another - as one investigation ends, a new one begins. But for reasons unknown to the rest of her team, DCI Cara Freeman will be haunted by the next case for the Kings Lake Central murder squad. They find themselves delving into the seamy side of life in the town, and one of their number will have departed before this new investigation is over. Perhaps Detective Sergeant Chris Waters should have seen it coming, but he has a lot more than work on his mind these days.
©2020 Peter Grainger (P)2021 Tantor
Swamp Spook
Summary
When black cats roam, and spooks are seen, Come celebrate, it’s Halloween. Sinful, Louisiana, really knows how to throw a party, and it goes all out for Halloween. The weeklong celebration kicks off with a maze of horror in the park built of hay bales. And Fortune has the perfect assignment - the executioner. Her scene comes complete with a head block, a hatchet, and a fake body with removable head. It’s the perfect setup...for a crime. When Fortune returns from break and realizes the body in her scene is a real one and not the prop, she knows trouble is coming. Before she can shake a broomstick, Celia Arceneaux has raised the alarm and the state police show up to take over the investigation. With Carter on the sidelines and Fortune the prime suspect, Swamp Team 3 sets out to catch a real monster.
©2018 Jana DeLeon (P)2019 Audible, Inc.
Swamp Sniper
Summary
From New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Jana DeLeon, the third book in the Miss Fortune Mystery series. When only a crack shot will do.... In the two weeks CIA assassin Fortune Redding has been hiding in Sinful, Louisiana, she's been harassed, poisoned, and shot at...and that was the easy part. But now she's about to face her biggest challenge since setting foot in the tiny bayou town. When mayoral candidate Ted Williams is murdered, everyone is surprised. Ted was a blowhole and a Yankee, but those usually weren't good reasons to kill someone. When Sinful Ladies Society leader Ida Belle becomes the lead suspect in the crime, Fortune knows she's got to solve a murder and save one of the only friends she's ever had. But as the investigation begins, more and more secrets surface, and Fortune realizes that sometimes nothing is as it seems.
©2013 Jana DeLeon (P)2015 Audible, Inc.
Jesus Feminist
Summary
For centuries, the role of women in the Church has been a subdued one, with many limitations. The time has come, argues Sarah Bessey-who has been called an "accidental grassroots voice for postmodern and progressive evangelical women"- to take a new look at Scripture and challenge old assumptions.In Jesus Feminist, Bessey shares her spiritual journey, which ranges from growing up in a post–gender-debate home to learning about the worldwide struggles of women and the obstacles even a well-meaning church can pose. Through disarmingly intimate storytelling, she tells how she grew to understand the story of God and the vastness of his work through women. Never one to shy away from the hard questions, Bessey engages critically with Scripture and church practices that are often used against full equality and shares how following Jesus made a feminist out of her.Filled with beauty, hard truth, and brave vulnerability, Jesus Feminist urges the Church to stop asking "man or woman" as a qualification for ministry and to start helping everyone find freedom in the fullness, hope, glory, and work of Christ.
©2013 Sarah Bessey (P)2014 Tantor