Heather O'Neill has narrated 21 audiobooks on Listento.it by 18 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.8★ across 749 ratings. The most-rated is Red Sister.
Red Sister
Summary
From the international best-selling author of the Broken Empire Trilogy comes the first in a brilliant new breakout fantasy series. A searing novel set in a brand-new world, this series follows a young girl who enters a convent where girls are selected to train in religion, combat, or magic. Nona is selected to learn combat and finds herself at the center of an epic battle for empire on the outer reaches of a dying universe.
©2017 Boblinga Ltd. (P)2017 Recorded Books
Grey Sister
Summary
The second novel in a brilliant fantasy series from the international best-selling author of Prince of Thorns. Behind its walls, the Convent of Sweet Mercy has trained young girls to hone their skills for centuries. In Mystic Class, Novice Nona Grey has begun to learn the secrets of the universe. But so often even the deepest truths just make our choices harder. Before she leaves the convent, Nona must choose which order to dedicate herself to - and whether her path will lead to a life of prayer and service or one of the blade and the fist. All that stands between her and these choices are the pride of a thwarted assassin, the designs of a would-be empress wielding the Inquisition like a knife, and the vengeance of the empire's richest lord. As the world narrows around her, and her enemies attack her through the system she is sworn to, Nona must find her own path despite the competing pulls of friendship, revenge, ambition, and loyalty. And in all this only one thing is certain: there will be blood.
©2018 Bobalinga Ltd. (P)2018 Recorded Books
Holy Sister
Summary
The third book in the thrilling and epic Book of the Ancestor trilogy from international best-selling author Mark Lawrence. Powerful novice Nona Grey must fight to survive in "a fantastic world in which religion and politics are dark and sharp as swords, with magic and might held in the hands of wonderful and dangerous women."
©2019 Boblinga, Ltd. (P)2019 Recorded Books
Night Watch
Summary
Truth! Justice! Freedom! And a hard-boiled egg! Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch had it all. But now he's back in his own rough, tough past, without even the clothes he was standing up in when the lightning struck. Living in the past is hard. Dying in the past is incredibly easy. But he must survive; he has a job to do. He must track down a murderer, teach his young self to be a good copper and change the outcome of a bloody rebellion. There's a problem, though: if he wins, he's got no wife, no child, no future. This is a Discworld Tale of One City, with a full chorus of street urchins, rebels, secret policemen and other children of the revolution. Please note: This is a vintage recording. The audio quality may not be up to modern day standards.
©1992 Terry Pratchett and Lynn Pratchett (P)1997 ISIS Publishing Ltd.
Lullabies for Little Criminals
Summary
A new deluxe edition of the international best seller by Heather O'Neill, the Giller-shortlisted author of Daydreams of Angels and The Girl Who Was Saturday Night. Featuring an original foreword from the author, this edition celebrates the 10th anniversary of the coming-of-age story that People describes as "a vivid portrait of life on skid row." Baby, all of 13 years old, is lost in the gangly, coltish moment between childhood and the strange pulls and temptations of the adult world. Her mother is dead; her father, Jules, is scarcely more than a child himself and is always on the lookout for his next score. Baby knows that "chocolate milk" is Jules' slang for heroin and sees a lot more of that in her house than the real article. But she takes vivid delight in the scrappy bits of happiness and beauty that find their way to her, and moves through the threat of the streets as if she's been choreographed in a dance. Soon, though, a hazard emerges that is bigger than even her hard-won survival skills can handle. Alphonse, the local pimp, has his eye on her for his new girl; he wants her body and soul - and what the johns don't take he covets for himself. At the same time, a tender and naively passionate friendship unfolds with a boy from her class at school, who has no notion of the dark claims on her - which even her father, lost on the nod, cannot totally ignore. Jules consigns her to a stint in juvie hall, and for the moment this perceived betrayal preserves Baby from terrible harm - but after that, her salvation has to be her own invention. Channeling the artlessly affecting voice of her 13-year-old heroine with extraordinary accuracy and power, Heather O'Neill's heartbreaking and wholly original debut novel blew readers away when it was first published 10 years ago. Now it is sure to capture its next decade of readers and listeners as Baby picks her pathway along the edge of the abyss to arrive at a place of redemption and of love.
©2006, 2016 Heather O’Neill (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers
Memorial Drive
Summary
An Instant New York Times Best Seller A New York Times Notable Book One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2020 Named One of the Best Books of the Year by: Washington Post, NPR, Shelf Awareness, Esquire, Electric Literature, Slate, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and InStyle A chillingly personal and exquisitely wrought memoir of a daughter reckoning with the brutal murder of her mother at the hands of her former stepfather, and the moving, intimate story of a poet coming into her own in the wake of a tragedy. At age 19, Natasha Trethewey had her world turned upside down when her former stepfather shot and killed her mother. Grieving and still new to adulthood, she confronted the twin pulls of life and death in the aftermath of unimaginable trauma and now explores the way this experience lastingly shaped the artist she became. With penetrating insight and a searing voice that moves from the wrenching to the elegiac, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey explores this profound experience of pain, loss, and grief as an entry point into understanding the tragic course of her mother’s life and the way her own life has been shaped by a legacy of fierce love and resilience. Moving through her mother’s history in the deeply segregated South and through her own girlhood as a “child of miscegenation” in Mississippi, Trethewey plumbs her sense of dislocation and displacement in the lead-up to the harrowing crime that took place on Memorial Drive in Atlanta in 1985. Memorial Drive is a compelling and searching look at a shared human experience of sudden loss and absence but also a piercing glimpse at the enduring ripple effects of white racism and domestic abuse. Animated by unforgettable prose and inflected by a poet’s attention to language, this is a luminous, urgent, and visceral memoir from one of our most important contemporary writers and thinkers.
©2020 Natasha Trethewey (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
Child of the Prophecy
Summary
Magic is fading... and the ways of Man are driving the Old Ones to the West, beyond the ken of humankind. The ancient groves are being destroyed, and if nothing is done, Ireland will lose its essential mystic core. The prophecies of long ago have foretold a way to prevent this horror, and it is the Sevenwaters clan that the spirits of Eire look to for salvation. They are a family bound into the lifeblood of the land, and their promise to preserve the magic has been the cause of great joy to them... as well as great sorrow. It is up to Fianne, daughter of Niamh, the lost sister of Sevenwaters, to solve the riddles of power. A shy child of a reclusive sorcerer, she finds that her way is hard: She is the granddaughter of the wicked sorceress Oonagh, who has emerged from the shadows and seeks to destroy all that Sevenwaters has striven for. Oonagh will use Fianne most cruelly to accomplish her ends, and stops at nothing to see her will done. Will Fianne be strong enough to battle this evil and save those she has come to love?
©2002 Juliet Marillier (P)2013 Audible Inc.
Wildwood Creek
Summary
Allie Kirkland has never been one to take wild risks. But when she's offered a costuming assistant's job on a docudrama in the hills near Moses Lake, she jumps at the chance. She's always dreamed of following in her director-father's footsteps, and the reenactment of the legendary frontier settlement of Wildwood is a first step. The family expectations will have to wait. But in 1861, the real Wildwood held dangerous realities. Town founder Harland Delevan held helpless residents, including young Irish schoolteacher Bonnie Rose, in an iron grip. Mysterious disappearances led to myths and legends still retold in the folk songs of Chinquapin Peaks. Eventually, the entire site was found abandoned. When strange connections surface between Allie and the teacher who disappeared over a century ago, everyone in Wildwood, including Allie's handsome neighbor on the film set, Blake Fulton, seems to be hiding secrets, and Allie doesn't know who she can trust. If she can't find the answers in time, history may repeat itself...with the most unthinkable results.
©2014 Wingate Media, LLC (P)2014 Recorded Books
Magdalen Rising
Summary
Young Magdalen and Jesus, brimming with youthful charm and arrogance, find each other and fall in love, forging a bond that is stronger than death. Their pleasure is overshadowed by a brilliant but unbalanced druid who knows a perilous secret about Maeve's past. The prequel to The Passion of Mary Magdalen.
©2007 Elizabeth Cunningham (P)2015 Audible, Inc.
Murder in Galway
Summary
New Yorker Tara Meehan's first trip to Galway may be her last.... Tara never imagined her introduction to Ireland like this - carrying her mam's ashes to honor her final request: "Tell Johnny I'm sorry.... Take me home." She's never met her mam's estranged brother, Johnny Meehan, who owns an architectural salvage business in Galway. Although Tara is immediately charmed by the medieval city, the locals seem wary of strangers, and a gypsy warns her that death is all around. When Tara arrives at her uncle's stone cottage, the prophesy seems true. A dead man lies sprawled over the threshold in a pool of blood. The victim turns out to be Johnny's wealthiest client, and her missing uncle is the Garda's number one suspect. In trying to find Johnny and solve the crime, Tara uncovers her mam and uncle's troubled past. But with a desperate killer about, she had better mind herself, or they'll be tossing her ashes in Galway Bay....
©2019 Mary Carter (P)2020 Recorded Books
The Passion of Mary Magdalen
Summary
For the millions of listeners fascinated by Dan Brown's revelations about Mary Magdalen in The Da Vinci Code, here, at last, is their chance to meet the Gospel's most provocative woman face to face - on her own terms. Make way for a new Magdalen. Born on a Celtic isle to eight warrior-witch mothers, Maeve is raised to be as brave as any hero. In her stubborn, enchanting voice, she recounts her perilous quest for the young man, Esus, whose life she once saved from druid sacrifice. Captured and sold to a Roman Madam, Maeve is sustained by a fierce sense of identity, compassion for her sister whores, and her unquenchable love. When she wins her freedom and finds her lost lover, a stormy life begins for both as we follow the Passion story through the eyes of Jesus' partner - disciple to no man. Not even the one she loves. By turns feisty and funny, outrageous and tender, this Celtic Mary Magdalen challenges all stereotypes, both old and new age, and brings us to a transforming encounter with the divine feminine made flesh. Elizabeth Cunningham is the author of the novels The Return of the Goddess and The Wild Mother. She comes from nine generations of Episcopal priests. Though she managed to avoid becoming an Episcopal priest, she was ordained as an interfaith minister of spiritual counsel in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. She balances writing with a counseling practice.
©2007 Elizabeth Cunningham (P)2015 Audible, Inc.
Bright Dark Madonna
Summary
After playing an intimate role in the mystery of the Resurrection, what is left for Maeve, the Celtic Mary Magdalen? Never a follower, will she emerge as a leader of the early church? Will she retire quietly to mother a sacred bloodline? Will she set sail for France to proselytize and go spelunking? The answer: all and none of the above. No sooner does Maeve open her mouth to preach the gospel her way than a fierce debate begins about what to do with the child she is carrying. Maeve has her own ideas about where best to raise the savior's scion. When she returns to Temple Magdalen, the holy whorehouse she founded, a custody battle of biblical proportions ensues. Maeve, her infant daughter, Sara, and Jesus' mother flee to the remote Taurus Mountains where they live in hiding among the Galatians until a mysterious man is dumped on their doorstep more dead than alive. When Maeve discovers the identity of the man she has healed, she is appalled and determined to keep her family's secret. But Maeve has reckoned without the will of her brilliant, angry adolescent daughter, who resolves to find out the truth about her father - for herself. Required listening for fans and accessible to those new to The Maeve Chronicles, Bright Dark Madonna takes the listener on a breathtaking journey from the temple porticoes of Jerusalem, to the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, to the south of France, and, as always, to the treacherous, beautiful terrain of the human heart.
©2009 Elizabeth Cunningham (P)2015 Audible, Inc.
Red-Robed Priestess
Summary
After a life of passion and adventure that has brought her through slavery to the Resurrection garden, through the controversies of the early Church to a hermit cave in southern Gaul, Maeve, the Celtic Mary Magdalen, returns to the Holy Isles accompanied by Sarah, her daughter with Jesus. Their mission: to find Maeve's firstborn child, stolen from her by the druids more than 40 years ago. Since then Maeve's homeland has suffered its own trials - Roman invasion and occupation. The Celtic tribes to the east and south are under direct rule, and the Romans are determined to rout the resistance of the western tribes, resistance fueled by the druids of Mona. Just before she crosses the channel from Gaul to Britain, Maeve encounters a man she mistakes for Jesus' ghost. This familiar stranger is equally haunted, and the two are drawn into a moonstruck liaison that will entwine their lives in "an impossible Celtic knot". For, unbeknownst to Maeve at the time, he is none other than General Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, the newly appointed Roman governor of Britain. Maeve keeps this troubling tryst a secret even after she finds her long-lost daughter, Boudica, the fierce and charismatic queen of the Iceni tribe. Druid-trained in her youth, Boudica married the Iceni king, hoping to rally him to a rebellion for which he has no stomach. Now estranged from her husband, Boudica keeps the old ways, sustained by her pride in her descent from her father (and Maeve's!): the late, great druid Lovernios. Seeking to circumvent disaster, Maeve travels back and forth from Iceni country to Mona, from the heart of native resistance to a Roman fort on the western front, steadfast in her conviction: "Love is as strong as death".
©2011 Elizabeth Cunningham (P)2015 Audible, Inc.
My Heart Remembers
Summary
CBA best-selling author Kim Vogel Sawyer - ACF Book of the Year winner for Waiting for Summer's Return - delivers enthralling, historically rich tales whose unforgettable characters resonate with poignant intensity and compelling authenticity. After a New York tenement fire kills their immigrant parents in 1886, Maelle, Mattie, and Molly Gallagher soon find themselves aboard a crowded orphan train - hoping a family will adopt them in Missouri. Despite eight-year-old Maelle's best efforts to keep the young survivors together, they must split up. A traveling photographer adopts her, a grieving family takes Mattie, and a wealthy couple claims Molly. Keeping her parents' ribbon-wrapped love letters, Maelle entrusts the fading family picture to Mattie and the well-worn family Bible to Molly. And, in a tearful parting, Maelle vows to one day find her younger siblings.
©2008 Kim Vogel Sawyer (P)2008 Recorded Books, LLC
The Deepest Breath
Summary
An accessible and beautifully crafted middle-grade novel-in-verse by award-winning Irish author Meg Grehan about Stevie, a young girl reckoning with anxiety about the many things she has yet to understand - including her feelings about her friend Chloe. Perfect for fans of Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World, Star Crossed, and George. Eleven-year-old Stevie is an avid reader, and she knows a lot of things about a lot of things. But these are the things she'd like to know the most: 1. The ocean and all the things that live there, and why it's so scary 2. The stars and all the constellations 3. How phones work 4. What happened to Princess Anastasia 5. Knots Knowing things makes Stevie feel safe, powerful, and in control should anything bad happen. And with the help of her mom, she is finding the tools to manage her anxiety. But there’s one something Stevie doesn’t know, one thing she wants to understand above everything else, and one thing she isn't quite ready to share with her mom: the fizzy feeling she gets in her chest when she looks at her friend, Chloe. What does it mean, and why isn't she ready to talk about it? In this poetic exploration of identity and anxiety, Stevie must confront her fears to find inner freedom all while discovering it is our connections with others that make us stronger.
©2021 Meg Grehan (P)2021 Recorded Books Inc.
The Butchers' Blessing
Summary
A murder on the Irish border; an ancient folk tradition dying out. The Butchers’ Blessing is a novel about families and farmers; about mythic rituals and mad cows; about the stories we leave behind and the ones we cling to, no matter the cost. Every year, Úna prepares for her father to leave her. He will wave good-bye early one morning, then disappear with seven other men to traverse the Irish countryside. Together, these men form the Butchers, a group that roams from farm to farm, enacting ancient methods of cattle slaughter. The Butchers’ Blessing moves between the events of 1996 and the present, offering a simmering glimpse into the modern tensions that surround these eight fabled men. For Úna, being a Butcher’s daughter means a life of tangled ambition and incredible loneliness. For her mother, Grá, it’s a life of faith and longing, of performing a promise that she may or may not be able to keep. For nonbeliever Fionn, the Butchers represent a dated and complicated reality, though for his son, Davey, they represent an entirely new world - and potentially new love. For photographer Ronan, the Butchers are ideal subjects: representatives of an older, more folkloric Ireland whose survival is now being tested. As he moves through the countryside, Ronan captures this world image by image - a lake, a cottage, and his most striking photo: a single Butcher, hung upside down in a pose of unspeakable violence.
©2020 Ruth Gilligan (P)2020 Recorded Books
The Serendipity of Flightless Things
Summary
This middle grade, magical-realism novel from the author of The Flourishing of Floralie Laurel is about an Irish girl who is sent to a mysterious town in Virginia to live with her long-lost mother, and is Alice Hoffman's Nightbird meets Claire Legrand's The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls! Amidst the 1971 Troubles between the Irish Republican Army and Northern Ireland, 12-year-old Finn lives in a world of her own of fairy tales. Raised by her grandmother, Nuala, who is the village storyteller, Finn spends her days playing make-believe in the forest, weaving tall tales to tell her friend Darcy, longing to go to the island of Inis Eala to meet the swans there, and waiting for her father to return from the war. She's long since stopped believing in happy endings and miracles, preferring to believe instead in serendipity, or "happy mistakes". While Nuala revels in the safety and routine of their quiet village life, spunky Finn craves adventure...something that comes to her more quickly than expected. When Darcy becomes lost at sea and Nuala suddenly passes away, Finn is shipped off to the affluent town of Starlight Valley, Virginia, to live with her long-lost mother, Aoife, and half-sister, Posy-Kate. Finn is initially excited to get to know her newfound family, but she can't help but notice that things are a bit unusual. The town is encircled by thorn trees, and even stranger is Aoife's house, where the walls are covered with swan feathers and decorated with swan heads - and Aoife's shoes appear to be made out of swan bills. Finn tries to ignore the sinking feeling that something isn't right, but she starts to believe that what's happening isn't random. Instead, it's taken directly from one of her grandmother's famous folktales, The Children of Lir, where a scorned mother turns all of her children into swans. But Finn stopped believing in those stories a long time ago...could they actually be true?
©2019 Rachel Moser-Hardy (P)2019 Recorded Books
A Message of Hope for the Holiday Season
Summary
Irish mystic and internationally best-selling author of A Message of Hope from the Angels, Lorna Byrne has been seeing angels her whole life. In this original, Byrne reveals a special type of angel, the blessing angel, that only appears during the holiday season. These angels offer us new beginnings and infuse us with faith that makes the connection among our soul, heart, and mind stronger - no matter what our religion. And when they touch us, they help us to realize how truly blessed we are. Lorna shares what she sees the angels doing at this time of the year to help us appreciate the important things in life and to infuse us with the angel's messages of hope.
©2012 Lorna Byrne (P)2021 Recorded Books
The Minister's Daughter
Summary
Conceived on a May morning, Nell is claimed by the piskies and faeries as a merrybegot, one of their own. She is a wild child: herb gatherer and healer, spell-weaver and midwife...and, some say, a witch. Grace is everything Nell is not. She is the Puritan minister's daughter: beautiful and refined, innocent and sweet-natured...to those who think they know her. But she is hiding a secret - a secret that will bring everlasting shame to her family should it ever come to light. A merrybegot and a minister's daughter - two girls who could not have less in common. Yet their fates collide when Grace and her younger sister, Patience, are suddenly spitting pins, struck with fits, and speaking in fevered tongues. The minister is convinced his daughters are the victims of witchcraft. And all signs point to Nell as the source of the trouble.... Set during the tumultuous era of the English Civil War, The Minister's Daughter is a spellbinding pause resister - stunning historical fiction that captures the superstition, passion, madness, and magic of a vanished age.
©2005 Julie Hearn (P)2005 Random House, Inc. Listening Library, an imprint of the Random House Audio Publishing Group
The Forgotten Waltz
Summary
Irish novelist Anne Enright won the coveted Man Booker Prize for her eloquent novel The Gathering. In The Forgotten Waltz, Enright crafts a stunning tale about a Dublin woman’s affair and its heartrending consequences. Gina Moynihan is already married when she meets Seán Vallely. But longing and desire soon overtake them - and their lives begin to crumble shortly after.
©2011 Anne Enright (P)2011 Recorded Books, LLC