Fran Tunno has narrated 9 audiobooks on Listento.it by 8 authors, with an average listener rating of 3.9★ across 19 ratings. The most-rated is Veronika Decides to Die.
Veronika Decides to Die
Summary
Twenty-four-year-old Veronika seems to have everything -- youth and beauty, boyfriends and a loving family, a fulfilling job. But something is missing in her life. So, one cold November morning, she takes a handful of sleeping pills, expecting never to wake up. But she does -- at a mental hospital where she is told that she has only days to live. Inspired by events in Coelho's own life, Veronika Decides to Die questions the meaning of madness and celebrates individuals who do not fit into patterns society considers normal. Bold and illuminating, it is a dazzling portrait of a young woman at the crossroads of despair and liberation, and a poetic, exuberant appreciation of each day as a renewed opportunity.
©1998 Paulo Coelho (P)2009 HarperCollins Publishers
Amazons
Summary
Amazons - fierce warrior women dwelling on the fringes of the known world - were the mythic archenemies of the ancient Greeks. Heracles and Achilles displayed their valor in duels with Amazon queens, and the Athenians reveled in their victory over a powerful Amazon army. In historical times, Cyrus of Persia, Alexander the Great, and the Roman general Pompey tangled with Amazons. But just who were these bold barbarian archers on horseback who gloried in fighting, hunting, and sexual freedom? Were Amazons real? In this deeply researched, wide-ranging book, National Book Award finalist Adrienne Mayor presents the Amazons as they have never been seen before. This is the first comprehensive account of warrior women in myth and history across the ancient world, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Great Wall of China. Mayor tells how amazing new archaeological discoveries of battle-scarred female skeletons buried with their weapons prove that women warriors were not merely figments of the Greek imagination. Combining classical myth and art, nomad traditions, and scientific archaeology, she reveals intimate, surprising details and original insights about the lives and legends of the women known as Amazons. Provocatively arguing that a timeless search for a balance between the sexes explains the allure of the Amazons, Mayor reminds us that there were as many Amazon love stories as there were war stories. The Greeks were not the only people enchanted by Amazons - Mayor shows that warlike women of nomadic cultures inspired exciting tales in ancient Egypt, Persia, India, Central Asia, and China. Driven by a detective's curiosity, Mayor unearths long-buried evidence and sifts fact from fiction to show how flesh-and-blood women of the Eurasian steppes were mythologized as Amazons, the equals of men. The result is likely to become a classic.
©2014 Adrienne Mayor (P)2014 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Straight
Summary
It's surprising that the term "heterosexuality" is less than 150 years old and that heterosexuality's history has never before been written, given how obsessed we are with it. In Straight, independent scholar Hanne Blank delves deep into the contemporary psyche as well as the historical record to chronicle the realm of heterosexual relations - a subject that is anything but straight and narrow. Consider how Catholic monasticism, the reading of novels, the abolition of slavery, leisure time, divorce, and constipation of the bowels have all at some time been labeled enemies of the heterosexual state. With an extensive historical scope and plenty of juicy details and examples, Straight provides a fascinating look at the vagaries, schisms, and contradictions of what has so often been perceived as an irreducible fact of nature.
©2011 Hanne Blank (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The House of Medici: Seeds of Decline
Summary
The riveting sequel to The House of Medici: Inheritance of Power.Lucrezia Tornabuoni, brought up in the Palazzo Medici alongside Cosimo's children, always expected to marry his charismatic younger son, Giovanni. But now in later life, she finds herself imprisoned in a loveless marriage with the gout-ridden elder son, Piero. Like Cosimo, she sees the future salvation of the family in the hands of her own son, Lorenzo the Magnificent, but how can she be sure he inherits the mantle before Piero ruins everything? For years she has groomed her son to be a great prince, and in the process to ignore the Medici Bank - whose wealth has funded the City and Republic of Florence. But now the economy is faltering, the money is running out, the burdens of leadership are becoming more onerous for her son, and she begins to question whether she has led him astray. Her difficulty is that in the closed society of Florence, there is no-one she can confide in. Then, while on a journey away from the city, she is approached by a young priest, Girolamo Savonarola, recently appointed to a teaching post in Florence and asking for guidance about the workings of Florentine society. In confessing the secrets of her family to this benign outsider, she is able to unburden herself of the various worries that plague her. But Savonarola may not be the simple monk he appears, his objectives proving troublesome in compatibility with Lucrezia's as the two characters hurtle towards a thrilling and unexpected ending.
©2013 Edward Charles; First Skyhorse Publishing edition 2015 (P)2015 Audible, Inc.
What Comes After Crazy
Summary
What Comes After Crazy is a warm, funny, poignant, and extremely real story about a woman who fights to stay true to herself, and to her two young children, after her husband has an affair and moves to the desert to "find himself". Maz Lombard is a single mother with two high-strung daughters and an even more high-maintenance mom, the all-seeing, all-knowing, many-times-married Madame Lucille. Maz is struggling to put her life together after her unfaithful husband, Lenny, never managed to find his way back home after going off to Santa Fe to build condos two years ago. All she wants is a normal life with ordinary people around her. Once afraid of taking risks of any kind, Maz suddenly finds herself going overboard, even falling in love with a much younger man from the daycare center all to the dismay of her troubled, sad, adolescent daughter, who is beginning to believe she has inherited the family psychic gene and is terrorizing the kids on the playground. When Madame Lucille, her new husband, and Lenny all land on her doorstep one day, Maz decides it's time to stake out what she truly stands for, especially when Lucille and Lenny cook up a plan that throws all of their lives into turmoil, forcing Maz to face a new round of betrayals by the people she once trusted. In the process, Maz learns that it's not enough to simply reject your past and attempt to cut yourself off from it. The crazy, unhappy parts of our lives have much to teach us. By learning to forgive, Maz is able to define herself on her own terms, and finally live that authentic life she has always wanted.
©2005 Sandi Kahn Shelton (P)2005 Listen & Live Audio, Inc.
Virgin
Summary
Why has an indefinable state of being commanded the attention and fascination of the human race since the dawn of time? In Virgin, Hanne Blank brings us a revolutionary, rich and entertaining survey of an astonishing untouched history. From the simple task of determining what constitutes its loss to why it matters to us in the first place, Blank gets to the heart of why we even care about it in the first place. She tackles the reality of what we do and don't know about virginity and provides a sweeping tour of virgins in history - from virgin martyrs to Queen Elizabeth to billboards in downtown Baltimore telling young women it's not a "dirty word." Virgin proves, as well, how utterly contemporary the topic is - the butt of innumerable jokes, center of spiritual mysteries, locus of teenage angst, popular genre for pornography, and nucleus around which the world's most powerful government has created an unprecedented abstinence policy. In this fascinating work, Hanne Blank shows for the first time why this is, and why everything we think we know about virginity is wrong.
©2007 Hanne Blank (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Nobody Knows
Summary
Cassie Sheridan, KEY News justice correspondent, has all a television news reporter could want: talent, ambition, an important beat in Washington D.C., and a skyrocketing career. But then, she makes a critical mistake. Suddenly, her career is in shambles, her credibility is questioned, and her teenage daughter makes her realize just how much time she hasn't spent with her. Cassie is transferred to Miami to wait out the end of her contract - separated from her family, her friends, and Washington. But in an unsuspecting South Florida town, a killer is watching...and waiting. While covering a hurricane that's moving up the Florida west coast, Cassie meets eleven-year-old Vincent, who has just made a grisly discovery on the beach. Cassie traces the connection between Vincent's "treasure" and a secret operation in the dark shadows of sunny Sarasota - a story that has national significance and maybe, just maybe, will win back her reputation. But nobody knows how fierce the coming storm will be. Nobody knows how far a psychopath will go in pursuit of twisted pleasure. Nobody knows if a young woman's murderer will stop at nothing to keep the crime a secret. And nobody knows if Cassie will get out alive.
©2002 Mary Jane Clark (P)2002 Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC
Female Science Fiction Writer
Summary
These stories are like a disease - only one you wouldn't mind catching. Mint-addicted aliens. Talking horses. Little girls in wheelchairs who get the chance to pilot starships. Odd little jade carvers who save the last great Mayan city by magic. A sexy wolf girl who saves a teddy bear boy and her clown boyfriend's heart. A famous director who cloned herself and now is dying of cancer, only she's raised her clone like a normal child. Guys at the end of the world who discover they're not the world's greatest poet, they're about as bad as it gets. Fourteen stories by award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer Amy Sterling Casil.
©2012 Amy Sterling Casil (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
When Parents Part
Summary
From the author of the best-selling Your Baby and Child comes a book full of completely practical, comprehensively researched information and advice on how you can do what is best for your child when you are going through a separation or divorce. Using the latest scientific research in child development, Penelope Leach covers the various effects of divorce on children in five stages of life - infants, toddlers/preschoolers, primary school children, teenagers, college students/young adults - many of whom are far more deeply affected than previously thought. She explains recent studies that overturn many common assumptions and that show, for example, how many standard custody arrangements for very young children are harmful to children's attachment to their parents and therefore to their brain development. There is evidence to suggest that the practice of having infants and toddlers spend regular overnights with noncustodial parents may be damaging, and the practice of dividing children's time equally between the parents is seldom best for the children. Leach's advice is meticulously considered and exhaustive, covering everything from access, custody, and financial and legal considerations to managing separate sets of technology in two houses, and she includes the voices of both parents and children to illustrate her points. She explains why "mutual parenting" is the ideal way to co-parent after a divorce and delineates ways to carry this out. And throughout, she makes clear that, most importantly in any separation or divorce, both parents must put their relationship to their children and responsiveness to their needs ahead of their feelings about each other.
©2014, 2015 Penelope Leach (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.