Gabra Zackman has narrated 260 audiobooks on Listento.it by 221 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 6,882 ratings. The most-rated is I'll Be Gone in the Dark.
Final Vinyl Days
Summary
When Jill McCorkle feels a short story coming on, she goes right ahead and "wastes" wonderful ideas instead of hoarding them for a novel. The result is another extraordinary collection of stories and characters. In "It's a Funeral! RSVP," the storyteller is a woman who takes up self-styled "careers" that suit her circumstances. Now she's stumbled onto one that's so successful that she just can't quit. It's planning funerals, what she calls Going Out Parties, in which the clients are the soon-to-be-deceased themselves. In "Life Prerecorded," perhaps McCorkle's finest short piece to date, the pregnant narrator finds the real meaning of new life by visiting with a very old neighbor who's waiting, too, for his own new life. In these and the rest of the nine stories, Jill McCorkle acts on her penchant for taming the outrageous, humanizing the forbidden, and grounding the hilarious.
©1998 Jill McCorkle (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Spirits, Spells, and Wedding Bells
Summary
It's three weeks until Pyper Rayne and her fiancé Julius tie the knot. All she wants to do is enjoy her risqué bridal shower, complete the final details of her wedding, and find time to enjoy the holidays. But when Charlie, the manager of Wicked, is arrested for a murder she didn't commit, Pyper puts her medium skills to the test in order to find the real killer before Charlie takes the fall. With help from her friends, a couple of shih tzus, and more than a few ghosts, can Pyper save the day and get her happily-ever-after?
©2019 Deanna Chase (P)2019 Deanna Chase
A Soul for Chaos
Summary
Life is dull without a little chaos. Trouble is more than just a nickname for Arden Soulbearer. It seems to follow her wherever she goes. And no one knows this better than her protector, Devarius Tel'Brien. Dev thought that by moving Arden to Gravaria so she could learn how to control Loku, the chaos god whose soul inhabits her body, life would be simpler. Wrong. Not only is he continually torn between his duty and his growing feelings for the Soulbearer, but he also has to contend with the rival prince who wishes to claim her heart. Adding to his problems, a group of powerful mages have banded together to rid the world of the disembodied chaos god once and for all. Of course that means they have to destroy Arden in the process.
©2012 Crista McHugh (P)2015 Crista McHugh
Spirits, Beignets, and a Bayou Biker Gang
Summary
Medium Pyper Rayne and her witch boyfriend Julius are on an impromptu getaway in southern Louisiana. The quaint bayou town has everything: a Victorian inn, a famous brew pub, the best beignets this side of the Mississippi. Oh and an infamous bayou biker gang. When a ghost rider suddenly appears with clues to an unsolved kidnapping, Pyper and Julius find themselves smack in the middle of a crime ring. Only not everyone is who they seem. They'll need to untangle the web of secrets and figure out who to trust before they risk everything...including their own lives.
©2016 Deanna Chase (P)2016 Deanna Chase
St. Petersburg Noir
Summary
Launched with the summer '04 award-winning best-seller Brooklyn Noir, Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the geographical area of the book. Original stories by: Lena Eltang, Sergei Nosov, Alexander Kudriavstev, Andrei Kivinov, Julia Belomlinsky, Natalia Kurchatova, Ksenia Venglinskaya, Eugene Kogan, Anton Chizh, Vladimir Berezin, Andrei Rubanov, and others. St. Petersburg boasts to have the strongest spirit of all Russian cities, and indeed the dark metaphysics of this city captivate tourists and locals alike. When you think of St. Petersburg noir, some of the greatest literary names immediately spring to mind - Alexander Pushkin, Nikolay Gogol, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Modern day St. Petersburg lavishly offers the scenery and conditions for true noir stories, and the writers in St. Petersburg Noir succeed in concocting their own worlds within this city with stories ranging from mystical to outwardly grotesque. Within this collection, you'll meet characters who populate the narrow streets and unlit inner yards in the vast historical center winking at ghosts from pages of Dostoevsky's novels (Nutcracker); you'll hear of criminal activities settled behind the locked doors of magnificent palaces and museums (The Witch Hour and The Last Skinhead); and you'll follow the path of a police officer on his first day of duty maddeningly chasing a doppelganger... of a corpse (The First Duty).
©2012 Akashic Books (P)2014 Audible Inc.
The Heartland
Summary
A history of a quintessentially American place - the rural and small-town heartland - that uncovers deep yet hidden currents of connection with the world. When Kristin L. Hoganson arrived in Champaign, Illinois, after teaching at Harvard, studying at Yale, and living in the DC metro area with various stints overseas, she expected to find her new home, well, isolated. Even provincial. After all, she had landed in the American heartland, a place where the nation's identity exists in its pristine form. Or so we have been taught to believe. Struck by the gap between reputation and reality, she determined to get to the bottom of history and myth. The deeper she dug into the making of the modern heartland, the wider her story became as she realized that she'd uncovered an unheralded crossroads of people, commerce, and ideas. But the really interesting thing, Hoganson found, was that over the course of American history, even as the region's connections with the rest of the planet became increasingly dense and intricate, the idea of the rural Midwest as a steadfast heartland became a stronger and more stubbornly immovable myth. In enshrining a symbolic heart, the American people have repressed the kinds of stories that Hoganson tells, of sweeping breadth and depth and soul. In The Heartland, Kristin L. Hoganson drills deep into the center of the country, only to find a global story in the resulting core sample. Deftly navigating the disconnect between history and myth, she tracks both the backstory of this region and the evolution of the idea of an unalloyed heart at the center of the land. A provocative and highly original work of historical scholarship, The Heartland speaks volumes about pressing preoccupations, among them identity and community, immigration and trade, and security and global power. And food. To read it is to be inoculated against using the word heartland unironically ever again.
©2019 Kristin L. Hoganson (P)2019 Penguin Audio
A First-Class Catastrophe
Summary
The definitive account of the crash of 1987, a cautionary tale of how the US financial system nearly collapsed - from the best-selling author of The Wizard of Lies. Monday, October 19, 1987, was by far the worst day in Wall Street history. The market fell 22.6% - almost twice as bad as the worst day of 1929 - equal to a one-day loss of nearly 5,000 points today. Black Monday was more than seven years in the making and threatened nearly every US financial institution. Drawing on superlative archival research and dozens of original interviews, Diana B. Henriques weaves a tale of missed opportunities, market delusions, and destructive actions that stretched from the "silver crisis" of 1980 to turf battles in Washington, a poisonous rivalry between the New York Stock Exchange and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and the almost-fatal success of two California professors whose idea for reducing market risk spun terribly out of control. As the story hurtles forward, the players struggle to forestall a looming market meltdown, and unexpected heroes step in to avert total disaster. For 30 years, investors, regulators, and bankers have failed to heed the lessons of 1987, even as the same patterns have resurfaced, most spectacularly in the financial crisis of 2008. A First-Class Catastrophe offers a new way of looking not only at the past, but at our financial future as well.
©2017 Diana B. Henriques (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
At the Edge of the Haight
Summary
The winner of the 2019 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction Maddy Donaldo, homeless at 20, has made a family of sorts in the dangerous spaces of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. She knows whom to trust, where to eat, when to move locations, and how to take care of her dog. It’s the only home she has. When she unwittingly witnesses the murder of a young homeless boy and is seen by the perpetrator, her relatively stable life is upended. Suddenly, everyone from the police to the dead boys’ parents want to talk to Maddy about what she saw. As adults pressure her to give up her secrets and reunite with her own family before she meets a similar fate, Maddy must decide whether she wants to stay lost or be found. Against the backdrop of a radically changing San Francisco, a city that embraces a booming tech economy while struggling to maintain its culture of tolerance, At the Edge of the Haight follows the lives of those who depend on makeshift homes and communities. As judge Hillary Jordan says, “This book pulled me deep into a world I knew little about, bringing the struggles of its young, homeless inhabitants - the kind of people we avoid eye contact with on the street - to vivid, poignant life. The novel demands that you take a close look. If you knew, could you still ignore, fear, or condemn them? And knowing, how can you ever forget?”
©2021 Katherine Seligman (P)2021 Workman Publishing
Spirits, Rock Stars, and a Midnight Chocolate Bar
Summary
It's date night! And medium Pyper Rayne is finally getting some alone time with her oh-so-sexy new boyfriend, Julius. But when a representative from the Witches' Council shows up during appetizers, the romance portion of the evening comes to a screeching halt. Julius is needed to deal with paranormal activity - on a cruise ship to the Caribbean. An all-expense paid cruise to the Caribbean sounds like the perfect second date until Pyper witnesses the death of a famous rock star. Suddenly Pyper and Julius are caught in the middle of a decade-old homicide. Now the race is on to solve the mystery or history is destined to repeat itself.
©2016 Deanna Chase (P)2016 Deanna Chase
Dare to Speak
Summary
"A must read." (Margaret Atwood) A vital, necessary playbook for navigating and defending free speech today by the CEO of PEN America, Dare to Speak provides a pathway for promoting free expression while also cultivating a more inclusive public culture. Online trolls and fascist chat groups. Controversies over campus lectures. Cancel culture versus censorship. The daily hazards and debates surrounding free speech dominate headlines and fuel social media storms. In an era where one tweet can launch - or end - your career, and where free speech is often invoked as a principle but rarely understood, learning to maneuver the fast-changing, treacherous landscape of public discourse has never been more urgent. In Dare to Speak, Suzanne Nossel, a leading voice in support of free expression, delivers a vital, necessary guide to maintaining democratic debate that is open, freewheeling, but at the same time respectful of the rich diversity of backgrounds and opinions in a changing country. Centered on practical principles, Nossel’s primer equips listeners with the tools needed to speak one’s mind in today’s diverse, digitized, and highly divided society without resorting to curbs on free expression. At a time when free speech is often pitted against other progressive axioms - namely diversity and equality - Dare to Speak presents a clear-eyed argument that the drive to create a more inclusive society need not, and must not, compromise robust protections for free speech. Nossel provides concrete guidance on how to reconcile these two sets of core values within universities, on social media, and in daily life. She advises listeners how to: Use language conscientiously without self-censoring ideas; Defend the right to express unpopular views; And protest without silencing speech. Nossel warns against the increasingly fashionable embrace of expanded government and corporate controls over speech, warning that such strictures can reinforce the marginalization of lesser-heard voices. She argues that creating an open market of ideas demands aggressive steps to remedy exclusion and ensure equal participation. Replete with insightful arguments, colorful examples, and salient advice, Dare to Speak brings much-needed clarity and guidance to this pressing - and often misunderstood - debate.
©2020 Suzanne Nossel (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
A Change in Altitude
Summary
Twenty-eight-year-old Geraldine travels to Kenya with her new husband James with the intent of staying a year. In a dizzying multicultural city, she struggles to maintain her balance as well as her sense of self. Her marriage, and her understanding of the world, are shaken to the core. Invited on a climbing expedition to Mt. Kenya, the newlyweds are caught up in a horrific accident. In its aftermath, Geraldine must try to understand exactly what happened on that mountain and what it has done to her and to her marriage. A major author in terms of critical acclaim and best seller status, Anita Shreve limns the secrets at the core of our closest relationships and the ways in which lives can turn on the axis of a single catastrophic event.
©2009 Anita Shreve (P)2009 Hachette
Risk Taker
Summary
A Navy SEAL fights the most important battle of his life - love - in New York Times best-selling author Lindsay McKenna's Shadow Warriors miniseries. In the mountains of Afghanistan, her daring rescues have made Medevac pilot Sarah Benson a legend. She loves taking her helicopter where others fear to fly - the danger, the adrenaline…and the distraction from thinking about her own hurt heart. U.S. Navy SEAL Ethan Quinn is man enough to prize Sarah's valor as well as her beauty. But his efforts to reach his beautiful colleague cannot pierce her armor. Can he prove that it's possible to find love in a war zone?
©2014 Lindsay McKenna (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Creatures of Want and Ruin
Summary
Amityville baywoman Ellie West fishes by day and bootlegs moonshine by night. It's dangerous work under Prohibition - independent operators like her are despised by federal agents and mobsters alike - but Ellie's brother was accepted to college, and Ellie's desperate to see him go. So desperate that when wealthy strangers ask her to procure libations for an extravagant party, Ellie sells them everything she has, including some booze she acquired under unusual circumstances. What Ellie doesn't know is that this booze is special. Distilled from foul mushrooms by a cult of diabolists, those who drink it see terrible things - like the destruction of Long Island in fire and flood. The cult is masquerading as a church promising salvation through temperance and a return to "the good old days", so it's hard for Ellie to take a stand against them, especially when her father joins. But Ellie loves Long Island, and she loves her family, and she'll do whatever it takes to ensure neither is torn apart.
©2018 Molly Tanzer (P)2018 Recorded Books
Spies in the Family
Summary
A riveting true-life thriller and revealing memoir from the daughter of an American intelligence officer - the astonishing true story of two spies and their families on opposite sides of the Cold War. In the summer of 1975, 17-year-old Eva Dillon's family was living in New Delhi when her father was exposed as a CIA spy. Eva had long believed that her father was a US State Department employee. She had no idea that he was handling the CIA's highest ranking double agent - Dmitri Fedorovich Polyakov, a Soviet general whose code name was TOPHAT. Dillon's father and Polyakov had a close friendship that went back years, to their first meeting in Burma in the mid-1960s. At the height of the Cold War, the Russian offered the CIA an unfiltered view into the vault of Soviet intelligence. His collaboration helped ensure that tensions between the two nuclear superpowers did not escalate into a shooting war. Spanning 50 years and three continents, Spies in the Family is a deeply researched account of two families on opposite sides of the lethal espionage campaigns of the Cold War and two men whose devoted friendship lasted a lifetime, until the devastating final days of their lives. With impeccable insider access to both families as well as knowledgeable CIA and FBI officers, Dillon goes beyond the fog of secrecy to craft an unforgettable story of friendship and betrayal, double agents and clandestine lives, exposing the commonality between peoples of opposing political economic systems. Both a gripping tale of spy craft and a moving personal story, Spies in the Family is an invaluable and heart-rending work.
©2017 Eva Dillon (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
Going Away Shoes
Summary
The foibles of the people in Jill McCorkle’s world are so familiar that we want nothing so much as to watch them walk into - and then get out of - life's inevitable traps. Here, in her first collection in eight years, McCorkle collects 11 brand-new stories bristling with her characteristic combination of wit and weight. In honeymoon shoes, mud-covered hunting boots, or glass slippers, all of the women in these stories march to a place of new awareness, in one way or another, transforming their lives. They make mistakes, but they don’t waste time hiding behind them. They move on. They are strong. And they’re funny, even when they are sad.These stories are the work of a great storyteller who knows exactly how - and why - to pair pain with laughter.
©2009 Jill McCorkle (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Storm Warrior: Age of Magic - a Kurtherian Gambit Series
Summary
The greatest threat to the future comes from the secrets of the past. Abbey and her friends return home after their long journey west to find Holdgate threatened by both an enemy to the south and a hidden Barskall army to the east. Lucky for Holdgate, Abbey and the crew of The Foggy Day are more than ready to defend their home. But there’s an even greater threat to the city… one nobody sees coming. A man with a mysterious connection to Abbey’s past has arrived, and he wants to see the stormships burn. He’s about to learn why it’s never a good idea to mess with Abbey’s friends. Storm Warrior is a fun, swashbuckling romp filled with twists, adventure, and plenty of banter. Set on the foundation laid by the Kurtherian Gambit Series, Storm Warrior tells an entirely new story in the Age of Magic--and of the heroes and villains who battle for control of its destiny.
©2017 PT Hylton, Michael Anderle (P)2017 LMBPN Publishing
Prairie Fever
Summary
"The most beautiful novel I have read in quite some time. The language is that graceful and original, the events and characters that spellbinding and funny and moving; and always the melancholy beauty and mysterious power of the open prairie shine through." (Tom Drury, author of Pacific) Set in the hardscrabble landscape of early 1900s Oklahoma, but timeless in its sensibility, Prairie Fever traces the dynamic between two sisters: the pragmatic Lorena and the chimerical Elise. Their connection to each other supersedes all else, until the arrival of a schoolteacher sunders the sisters' relationship as they both begin to fall for him. With poetic intensity and the deadpan humor of Paulette Jiles and Charles Portis, Parker reminds us of how our choices are often driven by our passions. Expansive and intimate, Prairie Fever tells the story of characters tested as much by life on the prairie as they are by their own churning hearts. "That a love story of this strangeness and rightness can come out of the event of a girl nearly dead in a storm is a testament to the wonder that is Michael Parker's talent." (Jane Hamilton, author of The Excellent Lombards)
©2019 Michael Parker (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Eddies
Summary
Hear why The New York Times Book Review called Cander “a smart, deft storyteller”. Eloise hasn't quite figured out how to move on after the death of her son, Eddie. She makes good money, buys a new apartment, learns the piano, engages in an office flirtation, but nothing seems to brighten her days quite like the occasional letter from one of her accounting clients, Ed B. When, after months of correspondence, Ed invites Eloise to his country home for a visit, she finds herself overwhelmed by the "Eddies" of her life - the one she lost, the one she writes to, and the one she's eternally searching for. "A powerful storyteller." (Lone Star Literary)
©2020 Chris Cander (P)2020 Audible Originals, LLC.
Forget You Know Me
Summary
The next “masterful” (Publishers Weekly) novel from "the gifted Jessica Strawser" (Adriana Trigiani), hailed as “immensely satisfying” (Kathleen Barber) and “that book you can’t put down” (Sally Hepworth). A video call between friends captures a shocking incident no one was supposed to see. The secrets it exposes threaten to change their lives forever. Molly and Liza have always been enviably close. Even after Molly married Daniel, the couple considered Liza an honorary family member. But after Liza moved away, things grew more strained than anyone wanted to admit - in the friendship and the marriage. When Daniel goes away on business, Molly and Liza plan to reconnect with a nice, long video chat after the kids are in bed. But then Molly leaves the room to check on a crying child. What Liza sees next will change everything. Only one thing is certain: Molly needs her. Liza drives all night to be at Molly’s side - but when she arrives, the reception is icy, leaving Liza baffled and hurt. She knows there’s no denying what she saw. Or is there? In disbelief that their friendship could really be over, Liza is unaware she’s about to have a near miss of her own. And Molly, refusing to deal with what’s happened, won’t turn to Daniel, either. But none of them can go on pretending. Not after this. Forget You Know Me is a “twisty, emotionally complex, powder keg of a tale” (best-selling author Emily Carpenter) about the wounds of people who’ve grown apart. Best friends, separated by miles. Spouses, hardened by neglect. A mother, isolated by pain. One moment will change things for them all.
©2019 Jessica Strawser (P)2019 Macmillan Audio
Going Om
Summary
With candid, witty, and compelling experiences of yoga from renowned memoirists, including Cheryl Strayed (author of the number one New York Times best-seller Wild), Claire Dederer (author of national best-seller Poser: My Life in 23 Yoga Poses), Dinty W. Moore (author of The Accidental Buddhist), Neal Pollack (author of Stretch: The Making of a Yoga Dude) and many others, Going Om shares a range of observations about this popular practice. Unlike books on yoga that provide instruction on technique, Going Om is a unique collection of personal narratives from celebrated authors. This anthology of original material values the quality of writing over the authors' flexibility. Ira Sukrungruang shares his heartbreaking struggle as a 375-pound yoga student discovering self-worth on his mat; Gloria Munoz explores the practice of stillness with lyrical elegance in the midst of her busy mind; Neal Pollack's signature sarcasm leads to surprising turns at yoga class with his dad; Elizabeth Kadetsky uses yogic wisdom while coping with her mother's devastating Alzheimer's.
©2014 Melissa Carroll (P)2014 Audible Inc.