Elizabeth Wiley has narrated 75 audiobooks on Listento.it by 61 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 154 ratings. The most-rated is Born Survivors.
Belle Cora
Summary
"Memorable at every turn and set against the backdrop of a 19th century America that was, like the novel's protagonist, many different things all at once." (Edward Rutherfurd, author of Paris) In the home where Arabella Godwin was raised it is forbidden to speak her name, and her picture is turned to the wall. But in the turbulent America of the 1850s, everyone knows her as "Belle Cora", madam of San Francisco's finest bordello. Judges and senators do her bidding; a vicious newspaper editor plots her downfall; a preacher looks at her from across his pulpit and tries to forget that once she was his wife. Merchant's daughter, farm girl, prostitute, mother, madam, murderess, avenger, protector - she has worn all these masks: the only thing that never changes is her tireless pursuit of the one man who can see her for who she really is. "An enthralling historical drama...told with sympathy, feeling, humor, and accuracy. Phillip Margulies is a superb writer." (Kevin Baker, author of The Big Crowd)
©2014 Phillip Margulies (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Strange Gods
Summary
In this original and riveting exploration, Susan Jacoby argues that conversion - especially in the free American "religious marketplace" - is too often viewed only within the conventional and simplistic narrative of personal reinvention and divine grace. Instead, the author places conversions within a secular social context that has, at various times, included the force of a unified church and state, desire for upward economic mobility, and interreligious marriage. Moving through time, continents, and cultures, Jacoby examines conversions to authoritarian secular ideologies. She also provides portraits of individual converts, including the Catholic Church father Augustine of Hippo; the German Jewish convert to Catholicism Edith Stein, murdered at Auschwitz and canonized by the church; boxing champion Muhammad Ali, who scandalized white Americans in the 1960s by becoming a Muslim; and even politicians such as George W. Bush. Finally, Jacoby takes on the question of why the freedom to choose a religion - or to reject religion altogether - is a fundamental human rights issue that remains a breeding ground for violence in areas of the world that never experienced an Enlightenment.
©2016 Susan Jacoby (P)2016 Tantor
The Salem Witch Trials
Summary
Based on 27 years of original archival research, including the discovery of previously unknown documents, this day-by-day narrative of the hysteria that swept through Salem Village in 1692 and 1693 reveals new connections behind the events and shows how rapidly a community can descend into bloodthirsty madness. Roach opens her work with chapters on the history of the Puritan colonies of New England and explains how these people regarded the metaphysical and the supernatural. The account of the days from January 1692 to March 1693 keeps in order the large cast of characters, places events in their correct contexts, and occasionally contradicts earlier assumptions about the gruesome events. The last chapter discusses the remarkable impact of the events, pointing out how the 300th anniversary of the trials made headlines in Japan and Australia.
©2002 Marilynne K. Roach (P)2020 Tantor
Christian Slavery
Summary
In Christian Slavery, Katharine Gerbner contends that religion was fundamental to the development of both slavery and race in the Protestant Atlantic world. Slave owners in the Caribbean and elsewhere established governments and legal codes based on an ideology of "Protestant Supremacy", which excluded the majority of enslaved men and women from Christian communities. For slaveholders, Christianity was a sign of freedom, and most believed that slaves should not be eligible for conversion. When Protestant missionaries arrived in the plantation colonies in the 1670s, they were appalled that most slave owners rejected the prospect of slave conversion. Slaveholders blamed the evangelizing newcomers for slave rebellions. In response, Quaker, Anglican, and Moravian missionaries articulated a vision of "Christian Slavery", arguing that Christianity would make slaves hardworking and loyal. Over time, missionaries increasingly used the language of race to support their arguments for slave conversion. Enslaved Christians, meanwhile, developed an alternate vision of Protestantism that linked religious conversion to literacy and freedom. Christian Slavery shows how the contentions between slave owners, enslaved people, and missionaries transformed the practice of Protestantism and the language of race in the early modern Atlantic world.
©2018 University of Pennsylvania Press (P)2021 Tantor
The Remains
Summary
It’s been 30 years since the terrifying abduction of twin sisters Rebecca and Molly Underhill by a deranged man who lived in a cabin behind their house. Fearful of retribution against their family, the girls kept the incident secret. Rebecca, now a painter and art teacher, suddenly begins getting mysterious text messages. Is Molly - long lost to cancer - trying to communicate? It couldn’t be their attacker from so many years ago; he was imprisoned for a similar crime at about that same time. Surely he’d still be in jail or dead by now - wouldn’t he? When one of Rebecca’s art students - an autistic savant - gives her a series of paintings, Rebecca realizes the paintings’ scenes match the nightmares she’s had every night since the horrific ordeal three decades earlier. Escape into a pulse-pounding story that poses the question: What if you were forced to relive the most horrifying moment of your life?
©2012 Vincent Zandri (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
The White Rose: Munich, 1942-1943
Summary
The White Rose tells the story of Hans Scholl and Sophie Scholl, who in 1942 led a small underground organization of German students and professors to oppose the atrocities committed by Hitler and the Nazi Party. They named their group the White Rose, and they distributed leaflets denouncing the Nazi regime. Sophie, Hans, and a third student were caught and executed. Written by Inge Scholl (Han's and Sophie's sister), The White Rose features letters, diary excerpts, photographs of Hans and Sophie, transcriptions of the leaflets, and accounts of the trial and execution. This is a gripping account of courage and morality. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2012 Inge Aicher-Scholl (P)2020 Post Hypnotic Press Inc.
Plum Rains
Summary
In Tokyo, Angelica Navarro, a Filipina nurse who has been working in Japan for the last five years, is the caretaker for Sayoko Itou, an intensely private woman about to turn 100 years old. Angelica is a dedicated nurse, working night and day to keep her paperwork in order, obey the strict labor laws for foreign nationals, study for her ongoing proficiency exams, and most of all keep her demanding client happy. But one day Sayoko receives a present from her son: a cutting-edge robot caretaker that will educate itself to anticipate Sayoko's every need. Angelica wonders if she is about to be forced out of her much-needed job by an inanimate object - one with a preternatural ability to uncover the most deeply buried secrets of the humans around it. While Angelica is fighting back against the AI with all of her resources, Sayoko is becoming more and more attached to the machine. The old woman is hiding many secrets of her own - and maybe now she's too old to want to keep them anymore.
©2018 Andromeda Romano-Lax (P)2018 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Under the Mistletoe: Six Contemporary Romance Novellas
Summary
Six Award-Winning Authors have contributed new stories to A Timeless Romance Anthology: Under the Mistletoe Collection. Six contemporary novellas, all adding sweet romance to the Christmas season. In the novella Forgotten Kisses by Cindy Roland Anderson, costume designer Madison has no love lost when the male lead in a TV series is fired. She couldn't stand working with him anyway. But when she discovers who his replacement is, her heart nearly stops. Caleb is one of the hottest male actors ever...and not to mention Madison's former boyfriend. And now, Madison must play nice or lose her job. In The Last Christmas, a novella by Annette Lyon, Meredith only has to make it through Christmas pretending that she and her husband Eric aren't on the verge of divorce. She doesn't want to ruin the holiday for her two grown daughters and their boyfriends. The last thing Meredith wants to do it give Eric a second chance, but it seems that Eric is not willing to let her go without trying to win her back. In Julie Coulter Bellon's novella Truth or Dare, wounded war veteran Jonah Harrison comes home for Christmas. He just wants to be left alone, away from well-meaning friends and neighbors. But when a blizzard strands him with Cami Jackson - the girl who once knew him best - he can't hide anything from her, no matter how much he wants to. Cami has a wounded heart of her own, though, and it might take a Christmas miracle for them to find the courage to reach for a chance at love. In the novella Holiday Bucket List by Sarah M. Eden, Celeste has officially given up on Christmas. A single mother, with her children grown and unable to return for the holiday, Celeste determines to take a break from everything. When her single neighbor and almost-best-friend, Mike Durham, discovers her non-plans, they discuss things they've always wanted to do, but never had time. Mike and Celeste put together a friendly competition of checking off the things on their bucket list. In Christmas Every Day, a novella by Heather B. Moore, Monica is on the verge of buying her dream store, but when she tells her boyfriend, he turns it into an embarrassing public argument. Determined to follow her dream, she goes to her employer's Christmas party to play Mrs. Claus, only to be paired with someone unexpected. A young Mr. Claus who is the complete opposite of her ex-boyfriend in all the most important ways. In Jennifer Griffith's exciting novella First (and Last) Christmas Date, pilot Juliet has been in a holding pattern, dating the wrong guy, until she gets a holiday shake-up: old flame Tag e-mails her to ask for second date - after ten years. Their first date had been an unmitigated disaster. Still, Juliet would have gone out with Tag again the next day had he asked. So now that he's finally popping up in her in-box again, Juliet must decide whether to say yes to the date.
©2015 Mirror Press, LLC (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
The Power of Forgiveness
Summary
Eva Mozes Kor experienced the horrors of the Nazi regime firsthand in Auschwitz, but what is even more remarkable is how she has come to terms with this. Forgive and Heal are the words of advice that she has passed on at every opportunity. She was just 10 years old when she was sent to Auschwitz. While her parents and two older sisters were murdered there, she and her sister Miriam were subjected to medical experiments at the hands of Dr. Joseph Mengele. Later on, when Miriam fell ill due to the long-term effects of the experiments she had endured, Eva embarks on a search for their torturers. But what she discovered was the remedy for her troubled soul; she was able to forgive them. This kind of forgiveness is not an act of self-denial. It actively releases people from trauma, allowing them to escape from the grip of their former tormentors, cast off the role of victim, and begin the struggle against forgetting in earnest.
©2016 Benevento Publishing (P)2021 Tantor
October Fest
Summary
Beer and polka music reign supreme at Octoberfest, Battle Lake's premier fall festival. To kick off the celebrations, the town hosts a public debate between congressional candidates Arnold Swydecker and the slippery incumbent, Sarah Glokkmann. But the festive mood sours as soon as a well-known Glokkmann-bashing blogger is found dead. When Mira's best friend's fiancé becomes a top suspect, she wades through mudslinging and murderous threats to find the political party crasher.
©2011 Jess Lourey (P)2012 Levine Greenberg Literary Agency, Inc.
What Stars Are Made Of
Summary
It was not easy being a woman of ambition in early 20th-century England, much less one who wished to be a scientist. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin overcame prodigious obstacles to become a woman of many firsts: the first to receive a PhD in astronomy from Radcliffe College, the first promoted to full professor at Harvard, the first to head a department there. And, in what has been called "the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in astronomy", she was the first to describe what stars are made of. Payne-Gaposchkin lived in a society that did not know what to make of a determined schoolgirl who wanted to know everything. She was derided in college and refused a degree. As a graduate student, she faced formidable skepticism. Revolutionary ideas rarely enjoy instantaneous acceptance, but the learned men of the astronomical community found hers especially hard to take seriously. Though welcomed at the Harvard College Observatory, she worked for years without recognition or status. Still, she accomplished what every scientist yearns for: discovery. She revealed the atomic composition of stars - only to be told that her conclusions were wrong by the very man who would later show her to be correct.
©2020 Donovan Moore (P)2020 Tantor
The Last Ballad
Summary
The New York Times best-selling author of the celebrated A Land More Kind Than Home and This Dark Road to Mercy returns with this eagerly awaited new novel set in the Appalachian foothills of North Carolina in 1929 and inspired by actual events. The chronicle of an ordinary woman's struggle for dignity and her rights in a textile mill, The Last Ballad is a moving tale of courage in the face of oppression and injustice, with the emotional power of Ron Rash's Serena, Dennis Lehane's The Given Day, and the unforgettable films Norma Rae and Silkwood. Twelve times a week, 28-year-old Ella May Wiggins makes the two-mile trek to and from her job on the night shift at American Mill No. Two in Bessemer City, North Carolina. The insular community considers the mill's owners - the newly arrived Goldberg brothers - white but not American and expects them to pay Ella May and other workers less because they toil alongside African Americans like Violet, Ella May's best friend. While the dirty, hazardous job at the mill earns Ella May a paltry nine dollars for 72 hours of work each week, it's the only opportunity she has. Her no-good husband, John, has run off again, and she must keep her four young children alive with whatever work she can find. When the union leaflets begin circulating, Ella May has a taste of hope, a yearning for the better life the organizers promise. But the mill owners, backed by other nefarious forces, claim the union is nothing but a front for the Bolshevik menace sweeping across Europe. To maintain their control, the owners will use every means in their power, including bloodshed, to prevent workers from banding together. On the night of the county's biggest rally, Ella May, weighing the costs of her choice, makes up her mind to join the movement - a decision that will have lasting consequences for her children, her friends, her town - indeed all that she loves. Seventy-five years later, Ella May's daughter Lilly, now an elderly woman, tells her nephew about his grandmother and the events that transformed their family. Illuminating the most painful corners of their history, she reveals, for the first time, the tragedy that befell Ella May after that fateful union meeting in 1929. Intertwining myriad voices, Wiley Cash brings to life the heartbreak and bravery of the now forgotten struggle of the labor movement in early 20th-century America - and pays tribute to the thousands of heroic women and men who risked their lives to win basic rights for all workers. Lyrical, heartbreaking, and haunting, this eloquent novel confirms Wiley Cash's place among our nation's finest writers.
©2017 Wiley Cash (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
The Human Condition (Second Edition)
Summary
The past year has seen a resurgence of interest in the political thinker Hannah Arendt, "the theorist of beginnings", whose work probes the logics underlying unexpected transformations - from totalitarianism to revolution. A work of striking originality, The Human Condition is in many respects more relevant now than when it first appeared in 1958. In her study of the state of modern humanity, Hannah Arendt considers humankind from the perspective of the actions of which it is capable. The problems Arendt identified then - diminishing human agency and political freedom, the paradox that as human powers increase through technological and humanistic inquiry, we are less equipped to control the consequences of our actions - continue to confront us today. This new edition, published to coincide with the 60th anniversary of its original publication, contains Margaret Canovan's 1998 introduction and a new foreword by Danielle Allen. A classic in political and social theory, The Human Condition is a work that has proved both timeless and perpetually timely.
©1958, 1998 The University of Chicago Press (P)2020 Tantor
From a Paris Balcony
Summary
The small green chest was concealed at the back of her father’s wardrobe. Its hinges were made of brass that must once have shone, but now the surface was roughened and dull. As she opened the lock, there was only thing inside: a letter, postmarked 1895, Paris. England, 1895. Louisa West, a young beauty from Boston, looks like she has it all: a handsome husband in Henry, she is lady of Ashworth Manor, and one day she’ll be a duchess. But in truth, her life is falling apart. Louisa’s honeymoon is barely over when her husband deserts her, leaving her devastated and alone. She flees to Paris, longing to escape her grief, but finds only tragedy.... Boston, 2015. Life hasn’t been kind to Sarah West. In one year, she has lost both her parents and her marriage. After her father’s death, Sarah is sorting through his belongings when she finds a letter about her mysterious ancestor, Louisa. There have always been whispers in the family about Louisa’s suicide - from a high balcony in Paris - but as Sarah reads, she starts to question everything she was told. Desperate to leave her broken heart behind, she books a trip to Paris to find out more.... When Sarah arrives in the city of lights, the cobbled streets of Montmartre and the river Seine at twilight make her heart sing. Then, on the bookshelf of a beautiful Paris apartment, hidden inside the yellowing pages of an old novel, she finds a note about Louisa that shatters Sarah’s understanding of her family’s past. Did Louisa really throw herself from a Paris balcony? And when Sarah uncovers the truth, will it change everything about her future? An utterly captivating and emotional historical novel from best-selling author Ella Carey that will transport you to Paris at its most glamorous. From a Paris Balcony will have fans of Rhys Bowen, Fiona Valpy, and My Name iI Eva totally gripped!
©2020 Ella Carey (P)2020 Bookouture, an imprint of Storyfire Ltd.
American Princess
Summary
“As juicy and enlightening as a page in Meghan Markle's diary.” (InStyle) “Presidential darling, America’s sweetheart, national rebel: Teddy Roosevelt’s swashbuckling daughter Alice springs to life in this raucous anthem to a remarkable woman.” (Kate Quinn, New York Times best-selling author of The Alice Network and The Huntress) A sweeping novel from renowned author Stephanie Marie Thornton.... Alice may be the president's daughter, but she's nobody's darling. As bold as her signature color Alice Blue, the gum-chewing, cigarette-smoking, poker-playing first daughter discovers that the only way for a woman to stand out in Washington is to make waves - oceans of them. With the canny sophistication of the savviest politician on the Hill, Alice uses her celebrity to her advantage, testing the limits of her power and the seductive thrill of political entanglements. But Washington, DC, is rife with heartaches and betrayals, and when Alice falls hard for a smooth-talking congressman, it will take everything this rebel has to emerge triumphant and claim her place as an American icon. As Alice soldiers through the devastation of two world wars and brazens out a cutting feud with her famous Roosevelt cousins, it's no wonder everyone in the capital refers to her as the Other Washington Monument - and Alice intends to outlast them all.
©2019 Stephanie Marie Thornton (P)2019 Penguin Audio