Esther Wane has narrated 117 audiobooks on Listento.it by 75 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 5,013 ratings. The most-rated is The Power of Vulnerability.
Delphiniums and Deception
Summary
Locked in with a killer. Arranging flowers is the only way out. When Fergus tells Diana he's taking her on a flower-arranging retreat for her birthday, she should have been more suspicious. Especially when he announces that he's coming with her. After discovering the whole truth about the retreat, Diana is still considering how to murder Fergus...when one of their fellow flower arrangers is found dead - stabbed in the back with a mystery weapon. With the retreat on complete lockdown, Diana and Fergus have a mystery to solve that wasn't part of the itinerary. Will they find the killer before the clock runs out?
©2018 Ruby Loren (P)2019 Tantor
The Missing Marquess of Althorn
Summary
Betrothed to Marcus Balfour, Marquess Althorn since infancy, the entirety of Miss Jane Barrett's life has been planned for her by others. Through an overheard argument, Jane discovers at a tender age that her betrothed is opposed to the match. The knowledge wounds her deeply and sows the first seeds of rebellion in her. Rather than marry her, the Marquess joins the army but disappears in one of the war's bloodiest battles. Marcus's objections to the marriage were less about the bride than the immorally young age of the bride at which their greedy and meddling fathers wished to force the match. While fighting for king and country, Marcus is confronted with the knowledge that there is a traitor in their midst, a man far closer to him than he might wish to admit. But he is captured, imprisoned, tortured, and left to rot for years until he can make his way back home to take up his rightful place as the Elsingham heir...and as a husband to Jane Barrett. The years that have passed have eradicated any reservations about marriage to his betrothed, at least on his part. No man looking at her would ever mistake her for a child. More surprising is the attraction that he feels for her instantaneously and his determination to make her his, whatever the cost. It appears, however, that his bride to be will require some convincing.
©2018 Chasity Bowlin (P)2019 Tantor
Cognitive Gadgets
Summary
How did human minds become so different from those of other animals? What accounts for our capacity to understand the way the physical world works, to think ourselves into the minds of others, to gossip, read, tell stories about the past, and imagine the future? These questions are not new: they have been debated by philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, evolutionists, and neurobiologists over the course of centuries. One explanation widely accepted today is that humans have special cognitive instincts. Unlike other living animal species, we are born with complicated mechanisms for reasoning about causation, reading the minds of others, copying behaviors, and using language. Cecilia Heyes agrees that adult humans have impressive pieces of cognitive equipment. In her framing, however, these cognitive gadgets are not instincts programmed in the genes but are constructed in the course of childhood through social interaction. Cognitive gadgets are products of cultural evolution, rather than genetic evolution. At birth, the minds of human babies are only subtly different from the minds of newborn chimpanzees. We are friendlier, our attention is drawn to different things, and we have a capacity to learn and remember that outstrips the abilities of newborn chimpanzees. Yet when these subtle differences are exposed to culture-soaked human environments, they have enormous effects. They enable us to upload distinctively human ways of thinking from the social world around us. As Cognitive Gadgets makes clear, from birth our malleable human minds can learn through culture not only what to think but how to think it.
©2018 The President and Fellows of Harvard College (P)2018 Tantor
The Poppy and the Rose
Summary
Death can take many things, but it can't take your memories. 1912: Ava Knight, a young English aristocrat, boards the Titanic and meets a sailor, a soldier, and a woman with secret knowledge about a coming war that will change the course of history. 2010: Taylor Romano arrives in Oxford for a summer journalism program and is invited to tea at an old manor with a cursed history. When Taylor discovers that the lady of the house knows an uncanny amount about Taylor and her family's secrets, she knows something isn't right. But before she can find answers, the old woman dies suspiciously, leaving Taylor with a single clue: the story of a Titanic survivor named Ava. With the help of a brooding chauffeur and some historical sleuthing, Taylor must uncover the link between Ava's past and her own before her most cherished memories are tarnished forever.
©2020 Ashlee Cowles (P)2021 Tantor
Shadow and Thorn
Summary
A spellbinding romantic fantasy inspired by Beauty and the Beast... After more than 20 years in hiding, Alexei is returning home. His kingdom is destroyed, his people dead or enslaved, and the magic that once protected them lost to all but memory. His only hope to provide sanctuary for the few who remain is the uncertain word of a traitor, a broken man who claims to know the hiding place of Erath's greatest treasure. To find it, Alexei will have to return to the place where Erath fell, and brave the shadowed halls of a castle that echoes with the ghosts of his past. Zara is a woman without a future - a treasure hunter, and a thief who hates to steal. Trapped by fate in an abandoned castle, she encounters a destiny she could never have predicted, and uncovers a treasure far greater than she could ever have imagined. When their paths collide, Alexei and Zara may both have a chance to atone for past mistakes...unless they kill each other first. Brought together by enemies both expected and unexpected, they will plumb the depths of an unimaginable betrayal and forge the foundations of a love they would risk anything to keep.
©2017 Kenley Davidson (P)2020 Tantor
The Vanishing of Lord Vale
Summary
Elizabeth Masters has put her scandalous and painful past behind her. She's taken a position as companion to the tragic Lady Vale and her primary duty is to dissuade the woman from believing that everyone from the butcher's delivery boy to the ostler at an inn is her missing son. But a late-night visit to an alleged mystic in the city of Bath results in near-tragedy as Elizabeth is nearly abducted by ruffians waiting for them outside. They are rescued by a handsome and mysterious stranger who calls himself Benedict, the very name of Lady Vale's lost son. Benedict has his own reasons for being in Bath - to locate his missing sister and see her safe once more. Waylaid by a pistol ball from the men who attacked Miss Masters, he finds himself dependent upon the assistance of Lady Vale to rescue his Mary. In exchange, he must consent to her investigation of his past to determine if he is, in fact, her missing son, an unlikely scenario in his mind. Forced to work together, Benedict and Elizabeth cannot fight the attraction they feel for one another. Yet with every piece of evidence uncovered, the truth of Benedict's identity threatens their burgeoning relationship...and the danger that brought them together looms larger at every turn.
©2017 Chasity Bowlin (P)2019 Tantor
The Lost Lord of Castle Black
Summary
Graham, Lord Blakemore, was believed to be lost at sea as a boy. While his mother, Lady Agatha, has never given up hope of finding her son again, others - eager for the title and the wealth that accompanies it - have been conspiring to have him declared dead against Lady Agatha's wishes. Her only ally in the house is her late husband's ward, Miss Beatrice Marlowe. But when a dark-haired stranger arrives on their doorstep claiming to be the lost heir to Castle Black, the plots and schemes of those who would have the castle for themselves take a dark and even more sinister turn. An orphan when she came into the care of the late Lord Blakemore, Castle Black is the only home Beatrice has ever known. Its occupants are her family. This stranger, who claims to have lost his memory of his life there, threatens the order of all that she knows and holds dear. And yet, she is both drawn to him and strangely compelled to believe his claim. Beatrice finds herself torn between her desire for him and her belief that if he is the lost lord of Castle Black, he is far above her reach.
©2017 Chasity Bowlin (P)2019 Tantor
Beyond the Four Kingdoms Box Set 1
Summary
A Dance of Silver and Shadow: In this reimagining of the classic fairy tale The Twelve Dancing Princesses, there's a lot more at stake than worn out dancing slippers. A Tale of Beauty and Beast: In this reimagining of the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, Beauty will have to use all of her strength and intelligence if she is to outwit her enemies, break a curse, and find true love. A Crown of Snow and Ice: In this reimagining of the classic fairy tale The Snow Queen, one princess is ready to burn down everything in her path to save those she loves and their kingdom with them.
©2017, 2018 Melanie Cellier (P)2021 Tantor
The Resurrection of Lady Ramsleigh
Summary
A shipwreck near Castle Black sees Dr. Nicholas Warner risking his life to save a woman from the churning sea. As he pulls her to the safety of the shore, the villagers are stunned by her presence. She is no stranger to them. They identify her as Viola Grantham, Lady Ramsleigh, wife of the recently deceased Lord Percival Ramsleigh...a woman who supposedly died nearly two years earlier. Viola, thanks to her cold, unfeeling father, her abusive husband, and his profligate nephew, has no trust for men and very little use for them. But there is something about Dr. Warner that she cannot so easily dismiss. Drawn to him seemingly against her will and better judgement, she confides in him about the son she bore in secret, the heir to her late husband and that she had only returned to secure his future and his place in society. As they spend more time together, their feelings for one another deepen. But their happiness and growing affection for one another are threatened by Viola's past. The late Lord Ramsleigh's nephew, Randall, will not willingly give up the title, even if his aunt has returned from the dead and is presenting a child as the true heir to the title. In fact, there is nothing he will not do and no depths to which he will not sink to ensure that never happens.
©2018 Chasity Bowlin (P)2019 Tantor
Burning Greed
Summary
The investigation into a warehouse fire turns into a murder inquiry when a woman’s body is found in the debris. Forensics quickly establish foul play is involved. Now fully in charge of her team, DI Tanya Miller investigates, but her efforts are thwarted by a family problem that demands immediate attention. Her niece has gone missing, and her distraught sister is adamant Tanya help find her. Juggling the two is difficult. Left to their own devices, her team are making little progress on understanding the cause of the warehouse fire. The building owner has proved elusive, and his wife is backing him up. There is some suggestion of shady dealings exporting luxury motors, but nothing substantial and nothing pointing to a motive for murder. Whilst her team tries to understand what happened to the dead woman, who it turns out worked on the streets and was involved in drugs, Tanya is trying to understand what has happened to her niece - hopefully still alive. The contrast in their backgrounds could not be starker, but is her sister’s daughter the angel that her parents believe her to be? One thing is certain: Tanya is under pressure to get results, and it will take all of her wits to come out on top. A killer is on the loose, but discovering who and why will take a lot of brainpower and womanpower, and a little bit of luck. Burning Greed is the second murder mystery to feature DI Tanya Miller. It can be enjoyed entirely on its own as a stand-alone, but listeners will also enjoy the first audiobook, Broken Angel.
©2018 Diane M. Dickson (P)2019 W. F. Howes Ltd
Daughter of Lies
Summary
A romantic fantasy inspired by Snow White.... Brenna Seagrave doesn't want to be a countess. She prefers her life of danger and disguise as a spy for the kingdom of Andar, but the Andari court isn't quite ready for a countess who engages in espionage. Feeling trapped, Brenna accepts an invitation to a mysterious estate, where she hopes to connect with the mother she's never had a chance to know. But nothing is quite as Brenna expects. Her mother is obsessively critical, the neighbor is a ridiculous flirt, and the handsome butler is undoubtedly up to something. Also, someone seems to be plotting her demise. Brenna can't go home until she finds out who wants to kill her, but her only allies are a bumbling nobleman and an old acquaintance who isn't exactly a team player. In this game of secrets and lies, no one is who they pretend to be - not even Brenna - but they must still work together to uncover the truth. If they fail, it's only a matter of time before Brenna's past catches up with her and either she or someone she loves ends up dead.
©2018 Kenley Davidson (P)2020 Tantor
Beyond the Four Kingdoms Box Set 2
Summary
A Dream of Ebony and White: In this reimagining of the classic fairy tale, Snow must find her inner strength to fight for her throne before it's too late. A Captive of Wing and Feather: In this reimagining of the classic tale Swan Lake, the trapped princess must find the courage to overcome her past if she has any hope of turning a tragedy into a happy ending. A Princess of Wind and Wave: In this reimagining of the classic fairy tale The Little Mermaid, the princess will have to grow beyond her dreams if she wants to save two kingdoms and her own heart.
©2018, 2019 Melanie Cellier (P)2021 Tantor
Broken Angel
Summary
A mutilated corpse dressed as a bride, a psychopathic killer hell-bent on furthering his macabre game and a woman detective who stands by her instincts. When a woman disappears from a motorway service station, DI Charlie Lambert struggles to make any headway finding her. Missing person specialist DI Tanya Miller is called in to take over the investigation, but when it becomes a murder inquiry, she too is threatened with replacement. With a suspected serial killer on the loose, DI Miller must quickly muster her ad hoc team into action. But suspicions about the outsider are rife, and any delay might end in disaster. Is the young detective, woman in a man’s world, up to the task? After the missing woman’s body is found, mutilated and dressed in a wedding gown, the investigation closes in on the missing woman’s partner. He was certainly present at the time of her disappearance and had a possible motive. But following her instincts, Miller is not so sure. And when another woman goes missing, she takes the matter personally. Will Miller find the perpetrator before he strikes again? Based in Oxfordshire and the Midlands, this detective murder mystery is set in the heart of England. If you enjoy crime fiction with plenty of twists and full of suspense, Broken Angel is for you.
©2018 Diane M. Dickson (P)2019 W. F. Hows Ltd
Psychopathy
Summary
Psychopathy is a personality disorder that has long captured the public imagination. Newspaper column inches have been devoted to murderers with psychopathic features, and we also encounter psychopaths in films and books. Individuals with psychopathy are characterized in particular by lack of empathy and guilt, manipulation of other people and, in the case of criminal psychopathy, premeditated violent behavior. They are dangerous and can incur immeasurable emotional, psychological, physical, and financial costs to their victims and their families. Despite the public fascination with psychopathy, there is often a very limited understanding of the condition, and several myths about psychopathy abound. For example, people commonly assume that all psychopaths are sadistic serial killers or that all violent and antisocial individuals are psychopaths. Yet, research shows that most psychopaths are not serial killers, and, equally, there are plenty of antisocial and violent offenders who are not psychopaths. Viding explores the latest genetic, neuroscience, and psychology evidence in order to illuminate why psychopaths behave and develop the way they do, and considers whether it is possible to prevent or even treat psychopathy.
©2019 Essi Viding (P)2020 Tantor
In the Forest of Forgetting
Summary
Theodora Goss's first major short story collection showcases such stories as "The Rose in Twelve Petals," "The Rapid Advance of Sorrow," "Lily, With Clouds," "In the Forest of Forgetting," "Sleeping With Bears," and many more.
©2014 Theodora Goss (P)2020 Tantor
The Fallen Angel
Summary
In the gripping conclusion to Tracy Borman’s Stuart-era trilogy, Frances Gorges must face a dangerous new enemy deep within the court of James I Life has never been quiet for Frances Gorges at the court of King James, but after finding herself at the center of plots and conspiracies for many years both as an accused witch and a secret Catholic, by 1614 Frances hopes to distance herself from the decadence and ruthlessness of the aging and venal monarch. However, when a handsome stranger appears at a courtier’s country estate, he immediately draws the wandering eyes of the King, throwing the established order of the court into upheaval. George Villiers is ambitious and violent, ready to take down whatever - and whoever - stands in his way, including Frances and her husband Sir Thomas Tyringham. New friends and old alliances - from Francis Bacon and Prince Charles to Sir Walter Raleigh - will offer Frances ways to resist the treachery of Villiers, but danger and Catholic plotting always lurks just around the corner, and sometimes from unexpected sources. With her meticulous eye for detail and evocative storytelling, Tracy Borman’s The Fallen Angel is a riveting conclusion to her trilogy set during the first Stuart monarch’s reign.
©2020 Tracy Borman. Recorded by arrangement with Atlantic Monthly Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, Inc. (P)2020 Audible, Inc.
Whisked Away
Summary
At 27 years old, Emma Banks has big plans for her life. After graduating from the prestigious Culinary Institute of America, she's ready to take her place as head chef at one of her family's resort restaurants. Her first assignment is to serve Pierce Davenport, an infuriatingly arrogant writer with a palate that's about as adventurous as a plain boiled potato. Pierce Davenport is living every author's dream - his critically-acclaimed Clash of Crowns books have been turned into one of the world's most-watched television series. The only problem is, he has no idea how to end the epic fantasy tale. After two long years, his fans are turning on him, his publisher is panicking, and the network executives have announced they're hiring a team of scriptwriters to finish (aka ruin) his legacy for him. In dire need of solitude, he escapes to the Island of Eden for two distraction - free months so he can pull off the impossible - write an entire novel from start to finish. All he wants is peace and quiet, but when disaster strikes, he's forced to rely on irritating-but-beautiful Emma to deliver more than just three meals a day. Contains mature themes.
©2019 Gretz Corp. (P)2019 Tantor
Neuroscience for Leadership
Summary
Expert guide to the new science behind leadership, presented in a uniquely practical way Leadership can be learned: New evidence from neuroscience clearly points to ways that leaders can significantly improve how they engage with and motivate others. This book provides leaders and managers with an accessible guide to practical, effective actions, based on neuroscience.
©2015 Tara Swart, Kitty Chisholm, and Paul Brown (P)2020 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Gabby: The Little Dog That Had to Learn to Bark
Summary
A moving, heartfelt true story that celebrates the way animals and humans rescue one another... Baby seagulls, mischievous ferrets, strutting peacocks...in the decades that Barby Keel has run her animal sanctuary in the English countryside, she has seen all manner of creatures. Thousands of cats and dogs have come through her doors and, with the aid of Barby and her dedicated staff, found loving forever homes. But Gabby, a small terrier with solemn, terrified eyes, is like no case Barby has ever encountered before. Gabby has spent all eight years of her life indoors. She has no idea how to play with a toy or chew a treat. She has never dug in the dirt or rolled happily in the grass. Strangest of all, Gabby does not know how to bark. Barby can tell that the little golden-haired dog is bright and curious beneath her paralyzing fear, but coaxing out Gabby's true spirit will be a daunting task. Yet sometimes, a dog and a human fit together like two puzzle pieces, and so it is with Gabby and Barby. And Barby, who believes passionately in animals' ability to help and heal those they love, will find her faith in Gabby repaid just when she, and her sanctuary, need it most....
©2020 Barby Keel (P)2020 Tantor
The Mystery of Miss Mason
Summary
Abducted, held captive by unknown men for unknown reasons, Mary Mason had to use all of her resourcefulness to escape what would surely have been a terrible fate. But in the course of her escape, she encounters new dangers in the form of a mysterious man. Is he friend or foe? Can he be trusted, or will she prove to be just a pawn in whatever game he is playing? Alexander Carnahan, Lord Wolverton, is a pariah in society, a known murderer. But as he carries the unconscious Mary Mason back to his crumbling estate to care for her, he recognizes that she is far more than just the key to the mystery he's devoted himself to, the mystery of who murdered his late wife. She stirs something inside him he thought long dead...hope. As Mary recovers from her ordeal in his home, the truth slowly emerges. Their pasts are intermingled, the intrigues and mysteries of their lives are connected and hide unspeakable horrors committed by common enemies. As they work together to reunite Mary with her brother and to prove Alex's innocence, their feelings for one another only grow more complex and more undeniable. However, the course of true love never does run smooth, and there are more obstacles and dangers ahead of them than behind....
©2018 Chasity Bowlin (P)2019 Tantor