Donna Postel has narrated 109 audiobooks on Listento.it by 104 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.3★ across 476 ratings. The most-rated is Seth Speaks.
The Last Madam
Summary
1916: Norma Wallace, age 15, arrived in New Orleans. Sexy and shrewd, she quickly went from streetwalker to madam and by 1920 had opened what became a legendary house of prostitution. There she entertained a steady stream of governors, gangsters, and movie stars until she was arrested at last in 1962. Shortly before she died in 1974, she tape-recorded her memories - the scandalous stories of a powerful woman with the city's politicians in her pocket and whose lovers included the 25-year-old boy-next-door, whom she married at age 64. With those tapes and original research, Christine Wiltz chronicles Norma's rise and fall with the social history of New Orleans. Thick with the vice and corruption that flourished there, Wiltz resurrects a vanished secret world.
©2001 Christine Wiltz (P)2016 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Stop Anxiety from Stopping You
Summary
Breakthrough program - How to stop anxiety and how to stop panic attacks: Our pace of life has increased exponentially in the last few decades. We are often too busy or preoccupied to attend to our emotions until they hit with the strength of a tornado. When signs of anxiety and panic appear, they ravage our lives, our dreams, and our spirit. Stop Anxiety from Stopping You: The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Panic and Social Anxiety answers the questions: What are the signs of anxiety? What is a panic attack? What is social anxiety? What is anxiety disorder? How to overcome anxiety and how to stop a panic attack: It is now possible to stop anxiety from stopping us in our tracks. In her book, Dr. Odessky helps you understand the process of anxiety, and how to arm yourself with strategies that work. Dr. Odessky draws on her 15 years of clinical experience to guide you through the process of not only learning how to overcome anxiety, but also how to enrich your life. Stop Anxiety from Stopping You: The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Panic and Social Anxiety will show you how to stop anxiety and how to stop panic attacks in an easy to implement six-step framework. You will learn about: Signs of anxiety How to overcome anxiety How to stop panic attacks How to treat anxiety Dr. Odessky gives you the tools for learning how to overcome anxiety: Dr. Odessky draws on her experience and knowledge to develop a system that gives you the tools to learn how to overcome anxiety and how to stop panic attacks. She creates a sense of optimism and passion. Stop Anxiety from Stopping You: The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Panic and Social Anxiety is a compelling and optimistic guide to move you from a position of difficulty to hope.
©2018 Dr. Helen Odessky (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Dog Crazy
Summary
The USA Today best-selling author of How to Eat a Cupcake and All the Summer Girls returns with an unforgettably poignant and funny tale of love and loss, confronting our fears, and moving on... with the help of a poodle, a mutt, and a Basset retriever named Seymour. As a pet bereavement counselor, Maggie Brennan uses a combination of empathy, insight, and humor to help patients cope with the anguish of losing their beloved four-legged friends. Though she has a gift for guiding others through difficult situations, Maggie has major troubles of her own that threaten the success of her counseling practice and her volunteer work with a dog rescue organization. Everything changes when a distraught woman shows up at Maggie's office and claims that her dog has been stolen. Searching the streets of San Francisco for the missing pooch, Maggie finds herself entangled in a mystery that forces her to finally face her biggest fear - and to open her heart to new love. Packed with deep emotion and charming surprises, Dog Crazy is a bighearted and entertaining story that skillfully captures the bonds of love, the pain of separation, and the power of our dogs to heal us.
©2015 Meg Donohue Preuss, trustee of Preuss Family (P)2015 HarperCollins Publishers
Faultlines
Summary
It's the phone call every parent dreads: in the middle of the night, Sandy Cline learns that her twenty-year-old son, Jordan, has been in a car accident. Her nephew, Travis, was also in the car, along with Travis's girlfriend. All three are alive - but barely. The car was smashed against a tree along a remote and winding road, beautiful but deadly, in their rural Texas Hill Country town. In the wake of the car crash, the close-knit family is tested like never before. Jenna, Travis's mother, blames Jordan - as well as her sister, Sandy - after reports surface that Jordan had been driving. As the young adults struggle to survive, tension between their parents escalates. But when trust is broken and a shocking family secret is exposed, it creates a perfect storm of harrowing consequences. Rumors in the small town spread like wildfire. When details of the accident are questioned, Sandy and Jenna wonder if their family has been destroyed beyond repair. As always, there's much more to the story...if the family is to survive, they will have to come together to confront the terrible truth and overcome their pain. But are some betrayals unforgivable?
©2016 Barbara Taylor Sissel (P)2016 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Terrible Typhoid Mary
Summary
What happens when a person's reputation has been forever damaged? This riveting biography of Mary Mallon by the Sibert medalist and Newbery Honor winner Susan Bartoletti looks beyond the tabloid scandal of Mary's controversial life. How she was treated by medical and legal officials reveals a lesser-known story of human and constitutional rights, entangled with the science of pathology and enduring questions about who Mary Mallon really was. How did her name become synonymous with deadly disease? And who is really responsible for the lasting legacy of Typhoid Mary?
©2015 Susan Campbell Bartoletti (P)2015 Dreamscape Media, LLC
The Kingdom of God Has No Borders
Summary
The Kingdom of God Has No Borders offers a daring new perspective on conservative Christianity by shifting the lens to focus on the world outside US borders. Melani McAlister offers a sweeping narrative of the last 50 years of evangelical history, weaving a fascinating tale that upends much of what we know - or think we know - about American evangelicals. She takes us to the Congo in the 1960s, where Christians were enmeshed in a complicated interplay of missionary zeal, Cold War politics, racial hierarchy, and anti-colonial struggle. She shows us how evangelical efforts to convert non-Christians have placed them in direct conflict with Islam at flash points across the globe. And she examines how Christian leaders have fought to stem the tide of HIV/AIDS in Africa while at the same time supporting harsh repression of LGBTQ communities. Through these and other stories, McAlister focuses on the many ways in which looking at evangelicals abroad complicates conventional ideas about evangelicalism. We can't truly understand how conservative Christians see themselves and their place in the world unless we look beyond our shores.
©2018 Oxford University Press (P)2018 HighBridge Company
Teaching the Trees
Summary
In this collection of natural-history essays, biologist Joan Maloof embarks on a series of lively, fact-filled expeditions into forests of the eastern United States. Through Maloof's engaging, conversational style, each essay offers a lesson in stewardship as it explores the interwoven connections between a tree species and the animals and insects whose lives depend on it - and who, in turn, work to ensure the tree's survival. Never really at home in a laboratory, Maloof took to the woods early in her career. Her enthusiasm for firsthand observation in the wild spills over into her writing, whether the subject is the composition of forest air, the eagle's preference for nesting in loblolly pines, the growth rings of the bald cypress, or the gray squirrel's fondness for weevil-infested acorns. With a storyteller's instinct for intriguing particulars, Maloof expands our notions about what a tree "is" through her many asides - about the six species of leafhoppers who eat only sycamore leaves or the midges who live inside holly berries and somehow prevent them from turning red. As a scientist, Maloof accepts that trees have a spiritual dimension that cannot be quantified. As an unrepentant tree hugger, she finds support in the scientific case for biodiversity. As an activist, she can't help but wonder how much time is left for our forests.
©2005 The University of Georgia Press (P)2019 Tantor
All Alone in the World
Summary
One in 10 American children has a parent under criminal justice supervision - incarcerated, on probation, or on parole. One in 33 American children - and one in eight African American children - goes to sleep without access to a parent because that parent is in jail. Despite these staggering numbers, the children of prisoners remain largely invisible to society. Following in the tradition of the best seller Random Family, journalist Nell Bernstein shows, through the deeply moving stories of real families, how the children of the incarcerated are routinely punished for their parents' status: ignored, neglected, stigmatized, and endangered, with minimal effort made to help them cope. Topics range from children's experiences at the time of their parent's arrest, to laws and policies that force even low-level offenders to forfeit their parental rights, to alternative sanctions that take into account prisoners' status as mothers and fathers. All Alone in the World defines a crucial aspect of criminal justice and, in doing so, illuminates a critical new realm of human rights.
©2005 Nell Bernstein (P)2020 Tantor
One Eyed Cat
Summary
Ned Wallis knows he's forbidden to touch the rifle in the attic. But he can't resist sneaking it out of the house just once. Before he realizes it, Ned takes a shot at a dark shadow. When Ned returns home, he's sure he sees a face looking down at him from the attic window. Who has seen and heard him? Ned's feelings of guilt and fear only get worse when one day, while helping an elderly neighbor, he spots a wild cat with one eye missing. Could this be the thing Ned shot at that night?
©2016 Paula Fox (P)2016 Dreamscape Media, LLC
A Lie Too Big to Fail
Summary
In A Lie Too Big to Fail, longtime Kennedy researcher (of both JFK and RFK) Lisa Pease lays out, in meticulous detail, how witnesses with evidence of conspiracy were silenced by the Los Angeles Police Department; how evidence was deliberately altered and, in some instances, destroyed; and how the justice system and the media failed to present the truth of the case to the public. Pease reveals how the trial was essentially a sham, and how the prosecution did not dare to follow where the evidence led. A Lie Too Big to Fail asserts the idea that a government can never investigate itself in a crime of this magnitude. Was the convicted Sirhan Sirhan a willing participant? Or was he a mind-controlled assassin? It has fallen to independent researchers like Pease to lay out the evidence in a clear and concise manner, allowing listeners to form their theories about this event. Pease places the history of this event in the context of the era and provides shocking overlaps between other high-profile murders and attempted murders of the time. Lisa Pease goes further than anyone else in proving who likely planned the assassination, who the assassination team members were, and why Kennedy was deemed such a threat that he had to be taken out before he became President of the United States.
©2018 Lisa Pease (P)2019 Tantor
What Lies Below
Summary
Everyone has nightmares. One woman is living hers… Gilly O’Connell’s nightmares aren’t just bad dreams; they’re glimpses of terrifying realities to come. Gilly has spent her entire life trying to suppress the foreboding visions. So when a dismissed premonition leads to her husband’s murder, she buries the guilt and pain of the unsolved crime in the only way she knows how - she runs from it. Three years later, after overcoming a battle with addiction and starting over in a small Texas town, Gilly dares to believe the worst is over. That is, until another crime rips her heart open: the abduction of a three-year-old girl. Gilly knows more about it than anyone… She’s dreaming again. Gilly is convinced that if she tells the police she dreamed of the kidnapping before it happened, there’s no way they’ll believe her. But when she finally gets the courage to come forward with what she saw, people don’t see her as crazy - they see her as a suspect. Now, in order to help a desperate single father save his child, Gilly must first clear her own name. But as the nightmares of the past catch up to her, Gilly’s only chance for salvation might be the dreams she’s spent so long trying to ignore.
©2018 Barbara Taylor Sissel (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
The Wedding War
Summary
Save the date for this funny and poignant novel of family, friendship, letting go, and moving on by the award-winning author of Room to Breathe. Once upon a time, Melanie Layton and Tennyson O'Rourke were inseparable - but their friends-4ever promises were shattered when an explosive secret was revealed at Mel's wedding, a secret that destroyed her family. The two haven't spoken for the past twenty-some-odd years, and they'd be happy if they never crossed paths again. But now Mel's daughter and Teeny's son have fallen in love - and announced their engagement. Which means the two women must tolerate one another and play nice long enough to plan their children’s dream wedding. From the beginning, they clash. Melanie imagines a classy, elegant event, in keeping with tradition. Teeny's vision is a bit more extravagant, and thanks to her habit of marrying well, she's got the cash to plan the flashiest wedding of the season. Complicating matters are the men in their lives: Tennyson is falling for the wrong guy, and Melanie is trying to hold on to a flailing marriage. Amid the flurry of cake tastings, dress fittings, seating charts, and bridal showers, Mel and Teeny confront their past mistakes - with twenty years of pent-up drama. When the day of the wedding finally arrives, their friendship might just be something old and something new.
©2020 by Amy R. Talley. (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Skies to Conquer: A Year Inside the Air Force Academy
Summary
A former New York Times reporter's year behind the scenes at the scandal-ridden Air Force Academy. Diana Jean Schemo covered the Air Force Academy's sexual assault scandal in 2003, one of a series of academy embarrassments that have included drug use, rape complaints, and charges of evangelical officers pushing Christianity on cadets of all faiths. Today, the institution is in flux - a fascinating time to look at the changes being made and the experience of today's cadets. Schemo followed a handful of academy cadets through the school year. From the admissions process and punishing weeks of basic training to graduation, she shares the triumphs and tribulations of the cadets and the struggle of the academy's leaders to set their embattled alma mater on a straighter path. Follows cadets in all grades, with insights on day-to-day academy life and training Written by a veteran reporter, two-time foreign correspondent and Pulitzer Prize nominee, with excellent contacts at the academy Like David Lipsky's successful Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point, this book offers a fascinating window on the training of our military today. But Schemo's book updates the story: the seniors were the first class to sign up after the attacks of 9/11, and the road to graduation, this time, leads to an America at war.
©2010 Diana Jean Schemo (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
The Hauntings of Playing God
Summary
Everyone is dead. All that remains is an old woman and a gymnasium full of unresponsive bodies. Each day another storm approaches, threatening to destroy the building they call home. Each night a series of nightmares leaves the woman screaming for help. Alone and overwhelmed, will the final member of the human race be thought of as a caretaker or as a monster? The Hauntings of Playing God is a story about the possibilities each life holds. It is also a lesson about the importance of believing in something greater than yourself.
©2014 Chris Dietzel (P)2016 Podium Publishing
The Truth We Bury
Summary
In this intense, multilayered domestic drama, two families become entangled in a web of lies, secrets, and betrayal that results in an act of violence so shocking their love may not survive. On the outside, Lily Isley's life seems perfect: a wealthy husband, a ritzy gated community in Dallas, and a handsome son, AJ - a decorated marine about to be married to his love, Shea. But when a bridesmaid is murdered in AJ's apartment and he can't be found, Lily's world collapses and a long-held family secret is at risk of exposure. Dru Gallagher's life took a different course. After her ex-husband, suffering from post-traumatic stress, threatened her and her daughter, Shea, with a shotgun, Dru was forced to leave her marriage and forge ahead as a working-class single mom. Now, the anger she sees in war veteran AJ's eyes is heartbreakingly familiar - and makes Dru deeply afraid for her daughter's safety...especially after Shea's best friend and maid of honor is found dead. With a killer on the loose and time running out, Lily and Dru, two very different women, unite in a single goal: to save their precious children from scandal, even from death. But will the mothers' protection be enough, or will the fateful secret they expose - and the truth it reveals - destroy every hope of love?
©2017 Barbara Taylor Sissel. (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Tell No One
Summary
Their desperate secret. Her desperate search. A shattering truth exposed.
Caroline Corbett wants nothing to do with her father, Hoff, a man who abandoned her as a young girl and then vanished from her life almost thirty years ago. But when her beloved aunt expresses a dying wish to see him once more, Caroline, despite her failing marriage and other personal troubles, drops everything to look for him.
Harris Fenton found the father figure he’d dreamed of when he turned eight and his mother married Hoff - but his disappearance four years later left Harris with scars he carries even now that he is a father himself. While he has a beautiful family and a great job, he’s hiding a shameful secret and a nightmare from his childhood.
Caroline’s search for Hoff soon uncovers a host of disturbing clues and draws a threat of violence. Her mind churns with memories of her troubled history, while Harris is losing the battle against his own demons. But for both of them, dredging up the past will be dangerous, and confronting the truth could prove life shattering.
©2019 by Barbara Taylor Sissel. (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Blood Will Tell
Summary
They Were The Perfect Family.... For twenty years, Ken and Kristine Fitzhugh and their two sons had lived lives of comfortable middle-class normality in the university town of Palo Alto, California. Then came the shocking news that Kristine Fitzhugh was dead, the victim of a terrible accident.... By the time the Palo Alto Police Department looked closer at the death of Kristine Fitzhugh, there could be only one conclusion. Someone had murdered Kristine in her own home, inflicting a series of horrific blows to the back of her head, and then cleaned up the mess to make it look like an accident. Who would do such a thing? Protesting his innocence, Kenneth Fitzhugh was arrested and tried for the murder of his wife. And as the case progressed, one by one, the hidden secrets of the Fitzhugh family came spilling out....
©2003 Carlton Smith (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
The Woman's Guide to Managing Migraine
Summary
Headache in women is truly a major health issue. Every year, over 22 million women in the United States suffer from migraine headache, often debilitating attacks that can leave the sufferer bedridden and that, in many cases, can undermine both one's career and even one's marriage. The Woman's Guide to Managing Migraine is a concise and practical handbook that gives female headache sufferers all the tools they need to work with their healthcare providers to properly diagnose types of headache and develop the best possible treatment plans. A headache specialist, family practice physician, and fellow migraine sufferer, Dr. Susan Hutchinson introduces the reader to seven women with different lives - ranging from a nineteen-year-old college student, to a 29-year-old attorney, to a 55-year-old mother of three grown children - different women with the common thread of suffering from disabling monthly migraines. As these women's lives unfold throughout the audiobook, the listener gains insight into their own headache experience. Listeners will learn about hormonal therapy, preventive strategies, and treatment options, ranging from the most promising new drugs to the most effective complementary and alternative therapies. Dr. Hutchinson answers common questions, such as how to plan for pregnancy and how to manage family and work life while coping with ongoing migraine attacks. She shows you how to carefully maintain your body and brain to minimize disruptions that can trigger a migraine, how to keep a migraine diary, how to find a headache-focused provider in your area, and how to make the most out of a visit to your doctor. The audiobook includes a "headache quiz" that will determine if you are having true migraines. The time in a woman's life when migraine is most common - her twenties through her early fifties - represents her peak earning-power and child-raising years. The Woman's Guide to Managing Migraine will empower women to take charge of their treatment and find the path to living well.
©2013 Oxford University Press (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Home of the Brave
Summary
Raine Stockton and her high-spirited, big-hearted golden retriever, Cisco, are accustomed to being heroes wherever they go. But there's a new dog in town, and Raine and Cisco find themselves unexpectedly upstaged by a flashy K-9 addition to the sheriff's department. Nike and her handler, Jolene, are part of a new government-funded program for law enforcement agencies, and though Raine admires Nike's talent almost as much as she resents Jolene's arrogance, she can't help wondering why the Department of Homeland Security would send such an expensive gift to their sleepy, little Smoky Mountain community. Sheriff Buck Lawson has his hands full with an upcoming election, a bizarre murder, and a special appearance by a celebrity politician at the Fourth of July parade, and he is not about to look a gift horse - or dog - in the mouth. But when things go horribly wrong at a children's camp just outside of town, where Raine and Cisco are spending the holiday weekend, the scattered puzzle pieces begin to form a terrifying picture. In a desperate battle against an enemy whose face they can't even see, Raine, Jolene, Cisco, Nike, and Buck must work together and reach for depths of courage they never knew they had to save the lives of those they love.
©2014 Donna Ball (P)2015 Donna Ball
Confidential Confidential
Summary
In the 1950s, Confidential magazine, America's first celebrity scandal magazine, revealed Hollywood stars' secrets, misdeeds, and transgressions in gritty, unvarnished detail. Deploying a vast network of tipsters to root out scandalous facts about the stars, including their sexual affairs, drug use, and sexuality, publisher Robert Harrison destroyed celebrities' carefully constructed images and built a media empire. Confidential became the best-selling magazine on American newsstands in the 1950s, surpassing Time, Life, and the Saturday Evening Post. Confidential's spectacular rise was followed by an equally spectacular fall. Stars filed multimillion dollar libel suits against the magazine, and the state of California, prodded by the film studios, prosecuted its publisher for obscenity, culminating in a famous, star-studded Los Angeles trial in 1957. The lawsuits forced Confidential to end its scandal-mongering, and stopped printing its sleazy gossip in 1958. However, the magazine's legacy lives on in our culture's obsession with gossip and celebrity scandal. This is Confidential's story, how the magazine revolutionized celebrity culture and American society in the 1950s and beyond.
©2018 Samantha Barbas (P)2018 Tantor