Jane Copland has narrated 10 audiobooks on Listento.it by 7 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 42 ratings. The most-rated is All the Ever Afters.
All the Ever Afters
Summary
In the vein of Wicked, The Woodcutter, and Boy, Snow, Bird, a luminous re-imagining of a classic tale, told from the perspective of Agnes, Cinderella’s "evil" stepmother. We all know the story of Cinderella. Or do we? As rumors about the cruel upbringing of beautiful newlywed Princess Cinderella roil the kingdom, her stepmother, Agnes, who knows all too well about hardship, privately records the true story.... A peasant born into serfdom, Agnes is separated from her family and forced into servitude as a laundress' apprentice when she is only 10 years old. Using her wits and ingenuity, she escapes her tyrannical matron and makes her way toward a hopeful future. When teenage Agnes is seduced by an older man and becomes pregnant, she is transformed by love for her child. Once again left penniless, Agnes has no choice but to return to servitude at the manor she thought she had left behind. Her new position is nursemaid to Ella, an otherworldly infant. She struggles to love the child who in time becomes her stepdaughter and, eventually, the celebrated princess who embodies everyone’s unattainable fantasies. The story of their relationship reveals that nothing is what it seems, that beauty is not always desirable, and that love can take on many guises. Lyrically told, emotionally evocative, and brilliantly perceptive, All the Ever Afters explores the hidden complexities that lie beneath classic tales of good and evil, all the while showing us that how we confront adversity reveals a more profound, and ultimately more important, truth than the ideal of "happily ever after".
©2018 Danielle Teller (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers
Moonlight over Paris
Summary
USA Today and international best-selling author Jennifer Robson takes listeners to 1920s Paris in an enthralling new historical novel that tells the riveting story of an English lady who trades in her staid aristocratic life for the mesmerizing salons and the heady world of the Lost Generation. It's the spring of 1924, and Lady Helena Montagu-Douglas-Parr has just arrived in France. On the mend after a near-fatal illness, she is ready to embrace the restless, heady allure of the City of Lights. Her parents have given her one year to live with her eccentric aunt in Paris, and Helena means to make the most of her time. She's quickly drawn into the world of the Lost Generation and its circle of American expatriates, and, with their encouragement, she finds the courage to pursue her dream of becoming an artist. One of those expats is Sam Howard, a journalist working for the Chicago Tribune. Irascible, plainspoken, and scarred by his experiences during the war, Sam is simply the most fascinating man she has ever met. He's also entirely unsuitable. As Paris is born anew, rising phoenixlike from the ashes of the Great War, Helena realizes that she, too, is changing. The good girl she once was, so dutiful and obedient, so aware of her place in the world, is gone forever. Yet now that she has shed her old self, who will she become, and where and with whom does she belong...?
©2016 Jennifer Robson (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers
Old Baggage
Summary
Number one UK best seller. “A thoughtful, funny, companionable novel...executed with verve.” (London Times) The author of the acclaimed Crooked Heart returns with a comic, charming, and surprisingly timely portrait of a once-pioneering suffragette trying to find her new passion in post-WWI-era London. It's 1928. Riffling through a cupboard, Matilda Simpkin comes across a small wooden club - an old possession that she hasn’t seen for more than a decade. Immediately, memories come flooding back to Mattie - memories of a thrilling past, which only further serve to remind her of her chafingly uneventful present. During the Women's Suffrage Campaign, she was a militant who was jailed five times and never missed an opportunity to return to the fray. Now in middle age, the closest she gets to the excitement of her old life is the occasional lecture on the legacy of the militant movement. After running into an old suffragette comrade who has committed herself to the wave of fascism, Mattie realizes there is a new cause she needs to fight for and turns her focus to a new generation of women. Thus the Amazons are formed, a group created to give girls a place to not only exercise their bodies, but their minds, and ignite in young women a much-needed interest in the world around them. But when a new girl joins the group, sending Mattie’s past crashing into her present, every principle Mattie has ever stood for is threatened. Old Baggage is a funny and bittersweet portrait of a woman who has never given up the fight and the young women who are just discovering it.
©2019 Lissa Evans (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers
#MeToo in the Corporate World
Summary
Economist and award-winning author Sylvia Ann Hewlett blends vivid stories with powerful new data in assessing the impact of the #MeToo movement in corporate America and provides concrete action to help executives and companies create more inclusive and safe work environments for women, people of color, and LGBTQ employees. While the #MeToo movement has exposed the enormous harm done by sexual misconduct in the workplace, the movement’s full promise has not been fulfilled, Sylvia Ann Hewlett argues. Showcasing new data on the incidence of sexual harassment and assault at work, she reveals how the movement has focused almost exclusively on white women and failed to support other vulnerable groups who are also targets of abuse. Black men, gay men and women, and Latinas experience particularly high rates of sexual harassment and assault. In addition to exploring the movement’s limitations, Hewlett examines the collateral damage inflicted by #MeToo. She looks at hits to the bottom line (lawsuits and settlements, tarnished brands, and stock devaluations) and hits to the talent pipeline. In particular she shows how male leaders, fearful of gossip and legal action, are increasingly skittish about sponsoring young women, no matter how high performing they are. This makes it much more likely that women will stall out mid-career and will deprive companies of diversity in the C-Suite and “gender smarts” around decision-making tables. Digging deep into examples that range from Fox News, Nike, and Google to CBS, Michigan State University, and the Catholic Church, Hewlett lays bare the financial losses associated with sexual misconduct scandals. No wonder corporate chief risk officers newly have #MeToo in their line of sight! A third of this book is devoted to solutions and Hewlett offers a three-pronged strategy, combining legal remedies with individual and corporate action steps that can be used to protect employees and businesses they work for. Drawing from companies as different as IBM and IPG she discusses “experiments at the edge” as well as more evolved initiatives that can help any corporation create a more equitable and safer environment. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 Sylvia Ann Hewlett (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
The Sacrament
Summary
The haunting, vivid story of a nun whose past returns to her in unexpected ways, all while investigating a mysterious death and a series of harrowing abuse claims. A young nun is sent by the Vatican to investigate allegations of misconduct at a Catholic school in Iceland. During her time there, on a gray winter’s day, a young student at the school watches the school’s headmaster, Father August Franz, fall to his death from the church tower. Two decades later, the child - now a grown man, haunted by the past - calls the nun back to the scene of the crime. Seeking peace and calm in her twilight years at a convent in France, she has no choice to make a trip to Iceland again, a trip that brings her former visit, as well as her years as a young woman in Paris, powerfully and sometimes painfully to life. In Paris, she met an Icelandic girl whom she has not seen since, but whose acquaintance changed her life, a relationship she relives all while reckoning with the mystery of August Franz’s death and the abuses of power that may have brought it on. In The Sacrament, critically acclaimed novelist Olaf Olafsson looks deeply at the complexity of our past lives and selves; the faulty nature of memory; and the indelible mark left by the joys and traumas of youth. Affecting and beautifully observed, The Sacrament is both propulsively told and poignantly written - tinged with the tragedy of life’s regrets but also moved by the possibilities of redemption, a new work from a novelist who consistently surprises and challenges.
©2019 Olaf Olafsson (P)2019 HarperAudio
The Dark Blood of Poppies
Summary
The ballerina Violette Lenoir has fallen victim to the bite of the vampire Charlotte. Her fire and energy have fuelled a terrifying change and a dreadful realisation; that Violette has become Lilith, the demon mother of all vampires. Haunted both by what she has done and by Violette's dark sensuality, Charlotte and her immortal lover Karl are drawn towards the dancer and the terrible destiny that has fallen on her shoulders.But other, far more dangerous shadows are gathering around Violette. To the vampire Sebastian and to the dark heirs of Kristian, she threatens to wreak havoc with their plans to bring all of mankind under their dark wings.Innocently embroiled in the endgame, courtesan extraordinaire Robyn Stafford finally meets her match as she is torn between the two ultimate lovers: Sebastian, and Violette...
©1995 Freda Warrington (P)2014 Audible Studios
The Dark Arts of Blood
Summary
In 1920s Switzerland, vampire lovers Charlotte and Karl are drawn into turmoil as Godric Reiniger, a local filmmaker and activist with sinister ambitions, begins his rise to power. Meanwhile, fiery dancer Emil achieves his dream to partner the legendary ballerina and vampire Violette Lenoir until his forbidden desire for her becomes an obsession. Rejected, spiralling towards madness, he seeks solace with a mysterious beauty, Fadiya. But she, too, is a vampire, with a hidden agenda. When Karl and Charlotte undertake the perilous journey to rescue Emil, they unearth secrets that threaten the very existence of vampire-kind.
©2015 Freda Warrington (P)2016 Audible, Ltd
A Dance in Blood Velvet
Summary
For the love of her vampire suitor, Karl, Charlotte has forsaken her human life. Now her only contact with people is when she hunts them down to feed. Her thirst for blood repulses her but its fulfilment brings ecstasy. The one light in the shadows is the passion that burns between her and Karl. A love that it seems will last for eternity - until Karl's former lover, the seductively beautiful Katerina, is rescued from the Crystal Ring.For nearly fifty years she has lain, as dead, in the icy depths of the Weisskalt. Now she wants to reclaim her life...and Karl. In despair, Charlotte turns to the prima ballerina Violette Lenoir, an ice maiden who only thaws when she dances. Charlotte is fascinated as she has been by no other human, longing to bring joy to the dancer. But her obsession opens the floodgates to a far darker threat than the vampires could ever have imagined. For Violette is more than human and if she succumbs to the vampire's kiss it could unleash a new terror...
©1994 Freda Warrington (P)2014 Audible Studios
A Taste of Blood Wine
Summary
1918: A First World War battlefield becomes the cosmic battleground for two vampires, as Karl von Wultendorf struggles to free himself from his domineering maker, Kristian. 1923: Charlotte Neville watches as her father, a Cambridge professor, fills Parkland Hall with guests for her sister Madeleine's 18th birthday party. Among them is his handsome new research assistant Karl - the man Madeleine has instantly decided will be her husband. Charlotte, shy and retiring, is happy to devote her life to her father and her dull fiance Henry - until she sees Karl.... For Charlotte, it is the beginning of a deadly obsession that sunders her from her sisters, her father and even her dearest friend. As their feverish passion grows, Karl faces the dilemma he fears the most. Only by deserting Charlotte can his passion for her blood be conquered. Only by betraying her can he protect her from the terrifying attentions of Kristian - for Kristian has decided to teach Karl a lesson in power, by devouring Charlotte.
©1992 Freda Warrington (P)2014 Audible Ltd
The Windsor Knot
Summary
“[A] pitch-perfect murder mystery... If The Crown were crossed with Miss Marple..., the result would probably be something like this charming whodunnit.” (Ruth Ware, author of One by One) The first book in a highly original and delightfully clever crime series in which Queen Elizabeth II secretly solves crimes while carrying out her royal duties. It is the early spring of 2016, and Queen Elizabeth is at Windsor Castle in advance of her 90th birthday celebrations. But the preparations are interrupted when a guest is found dead in one of the Castle bedrooms. The scene suggests the young Russian pianist strangled himself, but a badly tied knot leads MI5 to suspect foul play was involved. The queen leaves the investigation to the professionals - until their suspicions point them in the wrong direction. Unhappy at the mishandling of the case and concerned for her staff's morale, the monarch decides to discreetly take matters into her own hands. With help from her assistant private secretary, Rozie Oshodi, a British Nigerian and recent officer in the Royal Horse Artillery, the queen secretly begins making inquiries. As she carries out her royal duties with her usual aplomb, no one in the Royal Household, the government, or the public knows that the resolute Elizabeth will use her keen eye, quick mind, and steady nerve to bring a murderer to justice. SJ Bennett captures Queen Elizabeth's voice with skill, nuance, wit, and genuine charm in this imaginative and engaging mystery that portrays Her Majesty as she's rarely seen: kind yet worldly, decisive, shrewd, and most importantly a great judge of character.
©2021 S J. Bennett (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers