Jennifer Ikeda has narrated 70 audiobooks on Listento.it by 52 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.7★ across 5,307 ratings. The most-rated is A Discovery of Witches.
Bitter in the Mouth
Summary
Growing up in the small town of Boiling Springs, North Carolina, in the 70’s and 80’s, Linda believes that she is profoundly different from everyone else, including the members of her own family. “What I know about you, little girl, would break you in two” are the cruel, mysterious last words that Linda’s grandmother ever says to her. Now in her 30s, Linda looks back at her past when she navigated her way through life with the help of her great-uncle Harper, who loves her and loves to dance, and her best friend Kelly, with whom Linda exchanges almost daily letters. The truth about my family was that we disappointed one another. When I heard the word “disappoint,” I tasted toast, slightly burnt. For as long as she can remember, Linda has experienced a secret sense—she can “taste” words, which have the power to disrupt, dismay, or delight. She falls for names and what they evoke: Canned peaches. Dill. Orange sherbet. Parsnip (to her great regret). But with crushes comes awareness. As with all bodies, Linda’s is a mystery to her, in this and in other ways. Even as Linda makes her way north to Yale and New York City, she still does not know the truth about her past. Then, when a personal tragedy compels Linda to return to Boiling Springs, she gets to know a mother she never knew and uncovers a startling story of a life, a family. Revelation is when God tells us the truth. Confession is when we tell it to him.
©2010 Monique T.D. Truong (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC
Ninjas, Piranhas, and Galileo
Summary
Shohei, Honoria, and Elias are best friends, banding together to survive the halls of The Peshtigo School for the gifted. But some things are beginning to change. Unexpected feelings are developing, and dealing with the authority of parents and teachers is becoming more difficult. Luckily, through it all, they've got each other. Greg Leitich Smith's amusing and smart debut has received rave reviews from critics.
©2003 Greg H. Leitich (P)2004 Recorded Books
Just Listen
Summary
From the award-winning and New York Times best-selling author of The Rest of the Story comes a moving novel about the power of finding and speaking your truth. When she’s modeling, Annabel Greene is the picture of perfection - the girl who has everything. But her real life is far from perfect. Her best friend, Sophie, and she are no longer speaking; her older sister’s eating disorder is affecting everything at home. Then she meets Owen. He’s intense, music-obsessed, and dedicated to always telling the truth. And most of all, he’s determined to make Annabel happy.... “This is young adult fiction at its best.” (School Library Journal)
©2008 Sarah Dessen (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
Wabi Sabi
Summary
Hailed as “simply beautiful” by Kirkus Reviews, this is the poetic tale of Wabi Sabi, a Japanese cat who doesn’t understand her name. As she travels across the country searching for answers, she begins to understand the most wonderful things are often those that seem most ordinary. Author Mark Reibstein’s innovative use of haiku makes Wabi Sabi perfect for listening.
©2008 Mark Reibstein (P)2009 Recorded Books
A Place to Belong
Summary
Five starred reviews! “Another gift from Kadohata to her readers.” (Booklist, starred review) A Japanese American family, reeling from their ill treatment in the Japanese imprisonment camps, gives up their American citizenship to move back to Hiroshima, unaware of the devastation wreaked by the atomic bomb in this piercing and all too relevant look at the aftermath of World War II by Newbery Medalist Cynthia Kadohata. World War II has ended, but while America has won the war, 12-year-old Hanako feels lost. To her, the world, and her world, seems irrevocably broken. America, the only home she’s ever known, imprisoned and then rejected her and her family - and thousands of other innocent Americans - because of their Japanese heritage, because Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Japan, the country they’ve been forced to move to, the country they hope will be the family’s saving grace, where they were supposed to start new and better lives, is in shambles because America dropped bombs of their own - one on Hiroshima unlike any other in history. And Hanako’s grandparents live in a small village just outside the ravaged city. The country is starving, the black markets run rampant, and countless orphans beg for food on the streets, but how can Hanako help them when there is not even enough food for her own brother? Hanako feels she could crack under the pressure, but just because something is broken doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed. Cracks can make room for gold, her grandfather explains when he tells her about the tradition of kintsukuroi - fixing broken objects with gold lacquer, making them stronger and more beautiful than ever. As she struggles to adjust to find her place in a new world, Hanako will find that the gold can come in many forms, and family may be hers.
©2019 Cynthia Kadohata (P)2019 Simon & Schuster
Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life
Summary
In her first memoir, award-winning novelist Yiyun Li offers a journey of recovery through literature: a letter from a writer to like-minded readers. “A meditation on the fact that literature itself lives and gives life.” (Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead) “What a long way it is from one life to another, yet why write if not for that distance?” Startlingly original and shining with quiet wisdom, this is a luminous account of a life lived with books. Written over two years while the author battled suicidal depression, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life is a painful and yet richly affirming examination of what makes life worth living. Yiyun Li grew up in China and has spent her adult life as an immigrant in a country not her own. She has been a scientist, an author, a mother, a daughter - and through it all she has been sustained by a profound connection with the writers and books she loves. From William Trevor and Katherine Mansfield to Søren Kierkegaard and Philip Larkin, Dear Friend is a journey through the deepest themes that bind these writers together. Interweaving personal experiences with a wide-ranging homage to her most cherished literary influences, Yiyun Li confronts the two most essential questions of her identity: Why write? And why live? Praise for Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life: “Li has stared in the face of much that is beautiful and ugly and treacherous and illuminating - and from her experience she has produced a nourishing exploration of the will to live willfully.” (The Washington Post) “Li’s transformation into a writer...is nothing short of astonishing.’” (The New York Times Book Review) “An arrestingly lucid, intellectually vital series of contemplations on art, identity, and depression.” (The Boston Globe) “Li is an exemplary storyteller and this account of her journey back to equilibrium, assisted by her closest companion, literature, is as powerful as any of her award-winning fiction, with the dark fixture of her Beijing past at its centre.” (Financial Times) “Every writer is a reader first, and Dear Friend is Li’s haunted, luminous love letter to the words that shaped her.... Her own prose is both lovely and opaque, fitfully illuminating a radiant landscape of the personal and profound.” (Entertainment Weekly) “Yiyun Li’s prose is lean and intense, and her ideas about books and writing are wholly original.” (San Francisco Chronicle)
©2017 Yiyun Li (P)2019 Random House Audio
Farewell to Manzanar
Summary
During World War II a community called Manzanar was hastily created in the high mountain desert country of California, east of the Sierras. Its purpose was to house thousands of Japanese-American internees. One of the first families to arrive was the Wakatsukis, who were ordered to leave their fishing business in Long Beach and take with them only the belongings they could carry. For Jeanne Wakatsuki, a seven-year-old child, Manzanar became a way of life in which she struggled and adapted, observed and grew. For her father it was essentially the end of his life. At age 37, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston recalls life at Manzanar through the eyes of the child she was. She tells of her fear, confusion, and bewilderment as well as the dignity and great resourcefulness of people in oppressive and demeaning circumstances. Written with her husband, Jeanne delivers a powerful first-person account that reveals her search for the meaning of Manzanar. Farewell to Manzanar has become a staple of curriculum in schools and on campuses across the country. Last year the San Francisco Chronicle named it one of the 20th century’s 100 best nonfiction books from west of the Rockies.
©1973 James D. Houston. Afterword © 2002 by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston (P)2019 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company
Enchantress from the Stars
Summary
A Newbery Honor Book and a Book Sense 76 Selection, Enchantress from the Stars is a science-fiction classic. Three alien races meet on the small green world of Andrecia. The Imperial Exploration Corps wants to claim the planet for its own, but the Anthropological Service stands in the way. And when young Elana makes contact with native Georyn, a love story exploring the very depths of human emotion unfolds.
©1999 Jennifer Ikeda (P)2006 Recorded Books
![Cover art for La Biblia para principiantes [Beginner's Bible]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61-flnd6OKL._SL500_.jpg)
La Biblia para principiantes [Beginner's Bible]
Summary
El best seller de los libros de historias bíblicas con más de cinco millones de ejemplares vendidos, enseña a los niños las historias de la Biblia a través del texto cautivador, ¡está lleno de vida y diversión! Este libro es el ganador del Retailers Choice Awards 2006 en la categoría no ficción para niños. Este libro de historias bíblicas con más de cinco millones de ejemplares vendidos enseña a los niños las historias y los personajes de la Biblia. Ahora, las historias bíblicas favoritas cobran vida con historias cautivadoras, haciendo de este libro el punto de partida perfecto para que los niños aprendan de la Biblia. Disfrutarán de las historias divertidas de Noé ayudando al elefante a subir al arca, Jonás orando dentro del pez, y mucho más, a medida que descubran el tesoro contenido en estas páginas al igual que ya lo han hecho millones de niños. [The best-selling Bible storybook of our time, over five million sold! Introduce children to the stories of the Bible through compelling text - it’s full of life and fun! The Beginner's Bible is the 2006 Retailers Choice Award winner in Children's Nonfiction. Introduce children to the stories and characters of the Bible with this best-loved Bible storybook. With compelling text, more than 90 Bible stories come to life. Kids ages six and under will enjoy the fun tales of Noah helping the elephant onto the ark, Jonah praying inside the fish, and more, as they discover The Beginner's Bible just like millions of children before. The Beginner's Bible is the 2006 Retailers Choice Award winner in Children's Nonfiction.] Please note: This audiobook is in Spanish.
©2005, 2016 Vida (P)2018 Vida
Judge's Girls
Summary
Three very different women. Only one thing in common. But when their family patriarch dies and they must share his estate, the truths they discover will test them - and everything they think they know about each other. Beloved Georgia Judge Joseph Donaldson was known for his unshakable fairness, his hard-won fortune - and a scandalous second marriage to his much-younger White secretary. Now he's left a will with a stunning provision. In order to collect their inheritance, his lawyer daughter, Maya, her stepmother, Jeanie, and Jeanie's teen daughter, Ryder, must live together at the family lake house. Maya and Jeanie don't exactly get along, but they reluctantly agree to try an uneasy peace for as long as it takes.... But fragile ex-beauty queen Jeanie doesn't know who she is beyond being a judge's wife - and drinking away her insecurities has her in a dangerous downward spiral. Fed up with her mother's humiliating behavior, Ryder tries to become popular at school in all the wrong ways. And when Maya attempts to help, she puts her successful career and her shaky love life at risk. Now with trouble they didn't see coming - and secrets they can no longer hide - these women must somehow find the courage to admit their mistakes, see each other for who they really are - and slowly, perhaps even joyfully, discover everything they could be.
©2020 Sharina Harris (P)2020 Recorded Books