Christa Lewis has narrated 81 audiobooks on Listento.it by 75 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 585 ratings. The most-rated is The Science of Getting Rich - Original Edition.
Changing Fate
Summary
Akila uses her wits and her shape-changing abilities to save her brother, Briam, when their home is besieged. But that leaves them both on the run, with Akila trying to keep them safe while Briam finds more trouble to get into. When he is chosen as year-king in the city of Diadem, Akila struggles to save his life, finding help in the most unexpected places.
©2008 Elisabeth Waters (P)2015 Elisabeth Waters
The Cosmopolitan Tradition
Summary
The cosmopolitan political tradition in Western thought begins with the Greek Cynic Diogenes, who, when asked where he came from, responded that he was a citizen of the world. Rather than declaring his lineage, city, social class, or gender, he defined himself as a human being, implicitly asserting the equal worth of all human beings. Nussbaum pursues this "noble but flawed" vision of world citizenship as it finds expression in figures of Greco-Roman antiquity, Hugo Grotius in the 17th century, Adam Smith during the 18th century, and various contemporary thinkers. She confronts its inherent tensions: the ideal suggests that moral personality is complete, and completely beautiful, without any external aids, while reality insists that basic material needs must be met if people are to realize fully their inherent dignity. The insight that politics ought to treat human beings both as equal to each other and as having a worth beyond price is responsible for much that is fine in the modern Western political imagination. The Cosmopolitan Tradition extends Nussbaum's work, urging us to focus on the humanity we share rather than all that divides us.
©2019 Martha C. Nussbaum (P)2019 Tantor
Emmy's Journey: A Novel
Summary
In the summer of 1865, Emmaline Gulledge is 11 years old and stubborn as a mule. Determined to do exactly what she sets her mind to, she explores the mountains and valleys around her home with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and a keen eye that misses nothing. When her mother dies, Emmaline, Emmy for short, is thrust into the mystical, spiritual world of her mother's native peoples, the Tsalagi, better known as the Cherokee. Given the power of observation and shape-shifting by her immortal great-great-grandfather Two Feathers, who is the keeper of the Sacred Fire's Ashes, Emmy is told that she must carry on her mother's duties and is charged with the task of becoming the family "Ka no he ha Ka no Ge sdi", the Storyteller. She is supposed to remember and pass down her family's history and tell about their ancestors. As Emmy grows older and matures, her explorations become more advanced. She discovers a hidden path that takes her beyond an ancient willow tree to a layer of the world that at first seems much like her own, but she soon discovers that it is quite different.... When she stays longer than allowed a mortal, she discovers that her grandfather can travel between space and time and communicate with all peoples between the layers of her world. Emmy's Journey is a voyage through time and into the mysterious spiritual and mystical realms of the Cherokees, and a world that most never know exists.
©2013 Susan C. Beck (P)2018 Tantor
When the Yellow Mocker Calls
Summary
In the South Carolina Hills, along the Savannah River Watershed, in the fall of 1829, 14-year-old, three-quarter Cherokee Sahani, whose Christian name is Charity, sets out on a journey with her 83-year-old maternal white grandfather to Fort Charlotte for what she thinks is a trip to trade the pelts he has accumulated in order to replenish their supplies. However, Charity soon discovers that her grandfather's objective in making this trip is to get her married off and settled somewhere. Since her beloved grandmother's passing several months earlier, her grandfather has worried about what would become of Charity should he, too, pass away. And, given his advanced age, he somehow senses that time is near; he does not want to die and leave young Charity alone and desolate. He and his wife reared Charity after her mother and father both died in a yellow fever epidemic when she was three years old. As they travel to Fort Charlotte, her grandfather tells her that before going to Fort Charlotte they will be making an overnight stop at his friend's house. And, that a year or so earlier, he and his long-time friend, Eli Gulledge, talked about what would happen to Charity should both he and his wife pass away and have arranged for Charity and Eli's son Henry to meet before that time comes to see if they will take a liking to one another. When Charity, who has never met Eli or his family, hears that, she threatens to act rude in order to make them not like her so that she can go back home with him, but her grandfather tells her that she cannot go back home with him and assures her that if young Henry doesn't take a liking to her, he is sure that some young buck down in Fort Charlotte will be looking for a wife. Faced with the stark realization that her life is changing and she has no control of that change, many thoughts run through young Charity's mind - she even contemplates running away, but doesn't want to leave her grandfather alone. When her grandfather suddenly passes away that night at Eli's house, that threat never comes to fruition. Young Charity is forced to abide by her grandfather's wishes and stay there with Eli's family.... Contains mature themes.
©2016 Susan C. Beck writing as Lila M. Beckham (P)2018 Tantor
A Pocket History of Human Evolution
Summary
Why aren't we more like other apes? How did we win the evolutionary race? Find out how "wise" Homo sapiens really are. Prehistory has never been more exciting: New discoveries are overturning long-held theories left and right. Stone tools in Australia date back 65,000 years -a time when, we once thought, the first Sapiens had barely left Africa. DNA sequencing has unearthed a new hominid group - the Denisovans - and confirmed that crossbreeding with them (and Neanderthals) made Homo sapiens who we are today. A Pocket History of Human Evolution brings us up-to-date on the exploits of all our ancient relatives. Paleoanthropologist Silvana Condemi and science journalist François Savatier consider what accelerated our evolution: Was it tools, our "large" brains, language, empathy, or something else entirely? And why are we the sole survivors among many early bipedal humans? Their conclusions reveal the various ways ancient humans live on today - from gossip as modern "grooming" to our gendered division of labor - and what the future might hold for our strange and unique species.
©2019 Silvana Condemi and François Savatier (P)2019 Tantor
Reckonings
Summary
Mary Fulbrook's encompassing book explores the lives of individuals across a full spectrum of suffering and guilt, each one capturing one small part of the greater story. Using "reckoning" in the widest possible sense to evoke how the consequences of violence have expanded almost infinitely through time. Fulbrook exposes the disjuncture between official myths about "dealing with the past" and the extent to which the vast majority of Nazi perpetrators evaded responsibility. In the successor states to the Third Reich - East Germany, West Germany, and Austria - prosecution varied widely. Communist East Germany pursued Nazi criminals and handed down severe sentences; West Germany, caught between facing up to the past and seeking to draw a line under it, tended toward selective justice and reintegration of former Nazis; and Austria made nearly no reckoning at all until the mid-1980s, when news broke about Austrian presidential candidate Kurt Waldheim's past. The continuing battle with the legacies of Nazism in the private sphere was often at odds with public remembrance and memorials.
©2018 Mary Fulbrook (P)2020 Tantor
Cub Creek: A Virginia Country Roads Novel
Summary
In the heart of Virginia, where the forests hide secrets and the creeks run strong and deep... Libbie Havens is fine on her own. When she chances upon the secluded house on Cub Creek, she purchases it. She'll show her cousin Liz, and other doubters, that she can rise above her past and live happily and successfully on her own terms. Libbie has emotional problems born of a troubled childhood. Raised by a grandmother she could never please, Libbie is more comfortable not being comfortable with people. She knows she's different from most. She has special gifts, or curses, but are they real? Or are they products of her history and dysfunction? At Cub Creek, Libbie makes friends and attracts the romantic interest of two local men, Dan Wheeler and Jim Mitchell. Relationships with her cousin and other family members improve dramatically, and Libbie experiences true happiness - until tragedy occurs. Having lost the good things gained at Cub Creek, Libbie must find a way to overcome her troubles, to finally rise above them and seize control of her life and future, or risk losing everything, including herself.
©2014 Grace Greene (P)2018 Tantor
Marlene Dietrich
Summary
With intimate detail, author Maria Riva reveals the rich life of her mother, Marlene Dietrich, the charismatic star of stage and screen whose career spanned much of the 20th century. Opening with Dietrich's childhood in Schöneberg, Riva's biography introduces us to an energetic, disciplined, and ambitious young actress whose own mother equated show business with a world of vagabonds and thieves. Dietrich would quickly rise to stardom on the Berlin stage in the 1920s with her sharp wit and bisexual mystique, and wearing the top hat and tails that revolutionized our concept of beauty and femininity. She comes alive in these pages in all her incarnations: muse, collaborator, bona fide movie star, box-office poison, lover, wife, and mother. During World War II, Dietrich would stand up to the Nazis and galvanize American troops, eventually earning the Congressional Medal of Freedom. There were her artistic relationships with Josef von Sternberg (The Blue Angel, Morocco, Shanghai Express), Colette, Erich Maria Remarque, Noël Coward, and Cole Porter, as well as her heady romances. And in her final years, Dietrich would make herself visibly invisible, devoting herself to the immortality of her legend.
©2017 Maria Riva (P)2020 Tantor
Feuding Fan Dancers
Summary
Some women capture our attention like no others. Faith Bacon and Sally Rand were beautiful blondes from humble backgrounds who shot to fame behind a pair of oversize ostrich fans, but with very different outcomes. Sally Rand would go on to perform for the millions who attended the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago, becoming America's sweetheart. Faith Bacon, the Marilyn Monroe of her time - once anointed the "world's most beautiful woman" - would experience the dark side of fame and slip into drug use. It was the golden age of American entertainment, and Bacon and Rand fought their way through the competitive showgirl scene of New York with grit and perseverance. They played peek-a-boo with their lives, allowing their audiences to see only slivers of themselves. A hint of a breast? A forbidden love affair? They were both towering figures, goddesses, icons. Until the world started to change. Little is known about who they really were, until now. Feuding Fan Dancers tells the story of two remarkable women during a tumultuous time in entertainment history. Leslie Zemeckis has pieced together their story and - nearly 100 years later - both women come alive again.
©2018 Mistress, Inc. (P)2018 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Dark Turns
Summary
Nia Washington is an incredible ballerina. She fought her way up from the streets and was nearing the pinnacle of her profession when an injury and a broken heart derailed her career. Taking a temporary job at an elite boarding school in Connecticut was supposed to give her time to nurse both body and soul. It was supposed to be a safe place to launch a triumphant comeback. It is anything but. Shortly after she arrives at the beautiful lakeside campus, she discovers the body of a murdered student, and her life takes a truly dark turn. It's not long before she is drawn into a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with a ruthless killer. And Nia isn't the only target. She must use all of her street smarts to protect her dancers, save a wrongfully accused student, and rescue the man she loves. A stunning and suspenseful tale of passion and betrayal, Cate Holahan's Dark Turns will take listeners deep into the mind of a murderer and the woman who must put an end to the killing.
©2015 Cate Holahan (P)2017 Tantor
The Dark Dark
Summary
In these marvelously inventive stories, Samantha Hunt imagines numerous ways in which human lives might be altered by the otherworldly: an FBI agent falls in love with a robot built for a suicide mission; a young woman unintentionally cheats on her husband when she is transformed into a deer; two strangers become lovers and find themselves responsible for the resurrection of a dog; a woman tries to start her life anew after the loss of a child but riddles that new life with lies; 13 pregnant teenagers develop a strange relationship with the founding fathers of American history; a lonely woman's fertility treatments become the stuff of science fiction. With offbeat humor and an unguarded gaze, Hunt conjures stories that urge an understanding of youth and mortality, magnification and loss - and that hold out hope that we can come to know one another deeply as we stand side-by-side observing this mysterious universe we've found ourselves in.
©2017 Samantha Hunt (P)2017 Dreamworks Media, LLC
Memoirs of a Polar Bear
Summary
Memoirs of a Polar Bear has in spades what Rivka Galchen hailed in the New Yorker as "Yoko Tawada's magnificent strangeness". Three generations (grandmother, mother, son) of polar bears are famous as both circus performers and writers in East Germany. They are polar bears who move in human society, stars of the ring and of the literary world. In chapter one, the grandmother matriarch in the Soviet Union accidentally writes a best-selling autobiography. In chapter two, Tosca, her daughter (born in Canada, where her mother had emigrated) moves to the DDR and takes a job in the circus. Her son - the last of their line - is Knut, born in chapter three in a Leipzig zoo, but raised by a human keeper in relatively happy circumstances in the Berlin zoo, until his keeper, Matthias, is taken away. Happy or sad, each bear writes a story, enjoying both celebrity and "the intimacy of being alone with my pen."
©2014 Yoko Tawada; translation copyright 2016 by Susan Bernofsky (P)2017 Tantor
Leaving Cub Creek: A Virginia Country Roads Novel
Summary
In the heart of Virginia, where the forests hide secrets and the creeks run strong and deep.... Libbie Havens never fit in. She bought the old Carson place on Cub Creek and moved to the Virginia countryside to prove she could live on her own terms. In the process, she learned some truths about herself and found love - but love, acceptance, and belonging can be easier to find than to keep. While on a trip to Sicily with Libbie, Jim Mitchell must leave suddenly because his son is injured in an accident in California. Now alone, Libbie is surprised by an old friend, Dr. Barry Raymond, but Dr. Raymond is a reminder of her troubled past, and she's glad to see the last of him when she leaves Sicily - until he shows up at her house on Cub Creek. Years before, Dr. Raymond told Libbie that if troubles weren't dealt with, they'd keep coming back. With Jim still away helping his son, Libbie's troubles are returning in force and wreaking havoc on her confidence and their relationship. Libbie would rather hide than risk rejection, but she must face down the past and fight for what she wants, or the troubles that haunt her past and present will forever doom her future.
©2015 Grace Greene (P)2018 Tantor
Children of Nazis
Summary
In 1940, the German sons and daughters of infamous Nazi dignitaries Himmler, Göring, Hess, Frank, Bormann, Speer, and Mengele were children of privilege at four, five, or 10 years old, surrounded by affectionate, all-powerful parents. Although innocent and unaware of what was happening at the time, they eventually discovered the extent of their fathers' occupations: These men - who were capable of loving their children and receiving love in return - were leaders of the Third Reich and would later be convicted as monstrous war criminals. For these children, the German defeat was an earth-shattering source of family rupture, the end of opulence, and the jarring discovery of Hitler's atrocities. How did the offspring of these leaders deal with the aftermath of the war and the skeletons that would haunt them forever? Some chose to disown their past. Others did not. Some condemned their fathers; others worshiped them unconditionally to the end. In this enlightening book, Tania Crasnianski examines the responsibility of eight descendants of Nazi notables, caught somewhere between stigmatization, worship, and amnesia. By tracing the unique experiences of these children, she probes at the relationship between them and their fathers and examines the idea of how responsibility for the fault is continually borne by the descendants.
©2016 Grasset & Fasquelle; English-language translation copyright 2018 by Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. (P)2020 Tantor
Oval
Summary
In the near future, Berlin’s real estate is being flipped in the name of “sustainability”, only to make the city even more unaffordable; artists are employed by corporations as consultants, and the weather is acting strange. When Anja and Louis are offered a rent-free home on an artificial mountain - yet another eco-friendly initiative run by a corporation - they seize the opportunity, but it isn’t long before the experimental house begins malfunctioning. After Louis’s mother dies, Anja is convinced he has changed. At work, Louis has become obsessed with a secret project: a pill called Oval that temporarily rewires the user’s brain to be more generous. While Anja is horrified, Louis believes he has found the solution to Berlin’s income inequality. Oval is a fascinating portrait of the unbalanced relationships that shape our world, as well as a prescient warning of what the future may hold.
©2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC
A Literary Offense
Summary
It's Gatsby Week at Castleton Manor, the elegant retreat for booklovers in Lighthouse Bay, Massachusetts, and the roaring '20s are in full swing. Charlotte Jaxon, owner of the manor, arrives to put on the ritz and oversee the festivities celebrating the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Faith Newberry is sitting pretty when she receives a brief respite from her duties in the library to assist Charlotte in organizing the events that have everyone jazzed up, including a fashion show, an antique car race, and a Gatsby Ball. But then something happens that’s not on the agenda: one of the guests starts receiving threatening letters. Avis Roth is a powerful - and ruthless - literary agent, so everyone around her quickly dismisses the intimidating letters, assuming they're from an author who was in a lather over being rejected. When Avis is involved in a frightening incident at the manor and then a freakish mishap at the country club, the plot thickens. Were they merely accidents, or is someone determined to put the big cheese agent out of commission? As Faith and her fellow Candle House Book Club members search for clues, they discover that not many people consider Avis to be the bee's knees. She and her associates are rarely on the same page, and some have a serious beef with her. It's past time to deliver the goods on the perpetrator, but will Faith - aided by her clever tuxedo cat, Watson - determine who's on the level and who's feeding her a line? Or will the culprit avoid getting caught and remain on the lam?
©2018 Elizabeth Penney (P)2020 Annies
Murder Wears White
Summary
Mallory Shepard hopes to unveil her new B&B just in time for her first ceremony as a wedding planner. The renovations to Thistle Park - the mansion she inherited in small-town Port Quincy, Pennsylvania - are almost complete. But what she didn’t plan on is the bride’s aunt being poisoned at the wedding tasting and her perfect venue becoming a crime scene. Adding to the mystery is the discovery that this is not the first murder in the bridal family, and, as Mallory becomes engaged in her own investigation, she learns that the man convicted of the crime may not be guilty. Now she has two crimes to solve before the bride walks down the aisle - but a killer has other plans to ensure that Mallory forever holds her peace.
©2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Forgotten Boxes
Summary
Named sole heir to her aunt's estate, Charity Gannon arrives in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, hoping to find a link to her past. She's not looking for lost treasures; she is searching for a connection to the aunt she barely knew. What she finds is a 30-something-year-old mystery and questions with no answers. A sad, secluded cottage, all but hidden amid the vines. A man's suit of clothes, tainted with dried blood and a bullet hole. Four forgotten boxes, stuffed into a large bag and buried in the far corners of the shed. These are not just any boxes. These are unopened, undelivered boxes, left behind by the now-defunct Kingdom Parcel. All four boxes are marked March 14, 1984 - the very day her uncle, president and driver for the delivery service, was said to have committed suicide. Four forgotten boxes, whose owners might still be out there, waiting for a delivery that never arrived. The undelivered boxes haunt Charity, tugging at her conscience. Hadn't someone noticed them missing? As Charity sets out to deliver the packages to their rightful owners, she discovers that the story behind one box is delightful. Another is heartbreaking. And one might very well be the death of her.
©2015 Becki Willis (P)2016 Tantor
Engaged in Death
Summary
After dumping her cheating fiancé and canceling the wedding, Mallory Shepard can't bear another disaster. So when the former bride-to-be unexpectedly inherits Thistle Park, a ramshackle mansion in her ex's hometown of Port Quincy, it's a problem she can't afford - literally. It’s full of stray cats, peeling wallpaper, and nosy neighbors, and Mallory is dying to sell it off - once she finally fixes up both the place and her messy life. Then it turns out that Thistle Park has its charms. But the honeymoon phase is abruptly cut short when an unwanted visitor is found dead on the front lawn. Enlisting the help of her sister Rachel, Mallory vows to unveil the killer before she herself becomes married to the suspect list.
©2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC
A Well-Read Woman
Summary
The inspiring true story of an indomitable librarian’s journey from Nazi Germany to Seattle to Vietnam - all for the love of books.
Growing up under Fascist censorship in Nazi Germany, Ruth Rappaport absorbed a forbidden community of ideas in banned books. After fleeing her home in Leipzig at fifteen and losing both parents to the Holocaust, Ruth drifted between vocations, relationships, and countries, searching for belonging and purpose. When she found her calling in librarianship, Ruth became not only a witness to history but an agent for change as well.
Culled from decades of diaries, letters, and photographs, this epic true story reveals a driven woman who survived persecution, political unrest, and personal trauma through a love of books. It traces her activism from the Zionist movement to the Red Scare to bibliotherapy in Vietnam and finally to the Library of Congress, where Ruth made an indelible mark and found a home. Connecting it all, one constant thread: Ruth’s passion for the printed word, and the haven it provides - a haven that, as this singularly compelling biography proves, Ruth would spend her life making accessible to others. This wasn’t just a career for Ruth Rappaport. It was her purpose.
©2019 by Kathryn Stewart. (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.