Debra Monk has narrated 10 audiobooks on Listento.it by 6 authors, with an average listener rating of 4★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is A Good Hard Look.
A Good Hard Look
Summary
In Flannery O'Connor's hometown of Milledgeville, Georgia, reckless relationships lead to a tragedy that forever alters the town and the author herself. Crippled by lupus at 25, celebrated author Flannery O'Connor was forced to leave New York City and return home to Andalusia, her family farm in Milledgeville, Georgia. Years later, as Flannery is finishing a novel and tending to her menagerie of peacocks, her mother drags her to the wedding of a family friend. Cookie Himmel embodies every facet of Southern womanhood that Flannery lacks: she is revered for her beauty and grace; she is at the helm of every ladies' organization in town; and she has returned from her time in Manhattan with a rich fiancé, Melvin Whiteson. Melvin has come to Milledgeville to begin a new chapter in his life, but it is not until he meets Flannery that he starts to take a good hard look at the choices he has made. Despite the limitations of her disease, Flannery seems to be more alive than other people, and Melvin is drawn to her like a moth to a candle flame. Melvin is not the only person in Milledgeville who starts to feel that life is passing him by. Lona Waters, the dutiful wife of a local policeman, is hired by Cookie to help create a perfect home. As Lona spends her days sewing curtains, she is given an opportunity to remember what it feels like to be truly alive, and she seizes it with both hands. Heartbreakingly beautiful and inescapably human, these ordinary and extraordinary people chart their own courses through life. In the aftermath of one tragic afternoon, they are all forced to look at themselves and face up to Flannery's observation that "The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it."
©2011 Ann Napolitano (P)2011 Penguin
Nashville Chrome
Summary
The fiction of Rick Bass has been honored with O. Henry Awards, Pushcart Prizes, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Nashville Chrome presents Maxine, Bonnie, and Jim Ed Brown, a family act with a hit record sitting atop 1959’s country music charts. The world at their feet, lives of success seem to spread out before them like an unending highway. But celebrity has its price, and the times ahead will deliver more than their fair share of bumps in the road.
©2010 Rick Bass (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC
Vinegar Hill
Summary
It is 1972 when circumstance carries Ellen Grier and her family back to Holly's Field, Wisconsin. Dutifully accompanying her newly unemployed husband, Ellen has brought her two children into the home of her in-laws on Vinegar Hill - a loveless house suffused with the settling dust of bitterness and routine - where calculated cruelty is a way of life preserved and perpetuated in the service of a rigid, exacting and angry God. Behind the façade of false piety, there are sins and secrets in this place that could crush a vibrant woman's passionate spirit. And here Ellen must find the strength to endure, change, and grow in the all-pervading darkness that threatens to destroy everything she is and everyone she loves.
©1994 Text Copyright © A. Manette Ansay 1994. Recording Copyright HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. (P)2003 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger
Summary
Virginia native Lee Smith has won two O. Henry Awards, the Southern Book Critics Circle Award, and the Robert Penn Warren Prize for her engaging works. A collection of 14 tales - both new stories and previously published favorites - Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger is sure to delight listeners with its warm humor and unforgettable characters.
©2010 Lee Smith (P)2012 Recorded Books, LLC
Little Bitty Lies
Summary
In a suburban Atlanta neighborhood where divorce is as rampant as kudzu, Mary Bliss McGowan doesn't notice that her own marriage is in trouble until the summer night she finds a note from her husband, telling her he's gone. Stunned and humiliated, a desperate Mary Bliss, left behind with 17-year-old daughter Erin and a mountain of debt, decides to salvage what's left of her life by telling one little bitty lie. At first she simply tells friends and family that Parker is out of town on a consulting job. Then, the lies start to snowball, until Parker turns up dead. Or does he? Mary Bliss's formerly staid existence careens into overdrive as she copes with an oversexed teenager, an elderly mother-in-law with strange delusions, and the sudden but delicious shock of finding herself pursued by two men; the next-door neighbor who's looking for a suitable second wife, and a dangerously attractive ex-cop who's looking for the truth about Parker McGowan. Little Bitty Lies is a comic Southern novel about all the important things in life: marriage and divorce, mothers and daughters, friendship and betrayal, small-town secrets, and one woman's lifelong quest for home. And the perfect recipe for chicken salad.
©2003 Mary Kay Andrews (P)2004 HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Dead Wrong
Summary
Juggling a family and a career is never easy - and it's becoming a real challenge for Sheriff Joanna Brady. Coping with the impending delivery of her second child as well as a staff shortage, the last things Joanna needs are two serious crimes. First, the body of an unidentified man is found in the desert, all of his fingers savagely severed. Following the scant clues, Joanna learns that the victim was an ex-con who had served 20 years in prison after confessing to the murder of his pregnant wife. During his last days, he was seen following and photographing a young woman. Then one of Joanna's officers is brutally attacked while on an unauthorized stakeout. Because the officer is one of it's own, the department throws its resources into finding her attacker. But the murder haunts Joanna. Being a sheriff has become what she is, and she'll risk everything to see that justice is done.
©2009 J. A. Jance (P)2019 HarperAudio
Partner in Crime
Summary
For the first time, critically acclaimed, New York Times best-selling suspense master J.A. Jance brings together her two most beloved creations: Arizona sheriff Joanna Brady and Seattle investigator J.P. Beaumont. The dead woman on a cold slab in the Arizona morgue was a talented artist recently arrived from the West Coast. The Washington State Attorney General's office thinks this investigation is too big for a small-town female law officer to handle, so they're sending Sheriff Joanna Brady some unwanted help - a seasoned detective named Beaumont. Sheriff Brady resents his intrusion, and Bisbee, Arizona, with its ghosts and memories, is the last place J.P. Beaumont wants to be. But the twisting desert road they must reluctantly travel together is leading them into a very deadly nest of rattlers. And if they hope to survive, suddenly trust is the only option they have left....
©2002 J.A. Jance (P)2002 HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Exit Wounds
Summary
Sheriff Joanna Brady seeks an elusive and chillingly brutal killer whose crimes run deep into the past in the next New York Times best seller from the author of Partner in Crime.
©2003 J.A. Jance (P)2003 HarperCollinsPublishers, Inc.
Vinegar Hill
Summary
In a stark, troubling, yet ultimately triumphant celebration of self-determination, award-winning author A. Manette Ansay re-creates a stifling world of guilt and pain, and the tormented souls who inhabit it. It is 1972 when circumstance carries Ellen Grier and her family back to Holly's Field, Wisconsin. Dutifully accompanying her newly unemployed husband, Ellen brings her two children to Vinegar Hill, the home of her in-laws. It's a loveless house suffused with the settling dust of bitterness and routine. Calculated cruelty is a way of life there, preserved and perpetuated in the service of a rigid, exacting and angry God. Behind a facade of false piety, there are sins and secrets in this place that could crush a vibrant young woman's passionate spirit. Ellen must find the strength to endure, change, and grow in the all-pervading darkness that threatens to destroy everything she is and everyone she loves.
©2003 A. Manette Ansay (P)2003 HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Paradise Lost
Summary
For Sheriff Joanna Brady and her 12-year-old daughter Jenny, an innocent Girl Scout campout turns into a lethal game when Jenny and her tentmate, Dora Matthews, discover a murdered Phoenix woman. Back at home, Joanna's main concern is helping her daughter recover from this terrible trauma, even as she attends to the demands of a new marriage and a possible reelection campaign. But then Dora turns up dead, and instantly Joanna's concern turns to terror. For if the killer is murdering potential witnesses, Sheriff Brady's beloved daughter may be next.
©2001 J.A. Jance (P)2001 HarperCollins Publishers