Joyce Bean has narrated 224 audiobooks on Listento.it by 134 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 1,914 ratings. The most-rated is How to Talk to Anyone.

224 audiobooks
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How to Talk to Anyone

167 ratings

Summary

"You'll not only break the ice, you'll melt it away with your new skills." -Larry King "The lost art of verbal communication may be revitalized by Leil Lowndes." -Harvey McKay, author of How to Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive What is that magic quality that makes some people instantly loved and respected? Everyone wants to be their friend (or, if single, their lover). In business, they rise swiftly to the top of the corporate ladder. What is their “Midas touch?” What it boils down to is a more skillful way of dealing with people. The author has spent her career teaching people how to communicate for success. In her book How to Talk to Anyone, Lowndes offers 92 easy and effective sure-fire success techniques - she takes the listener from first meeting all the way up to sophisticated techniques used by the big winners in life. In this information-packed audiobook you’ll find: 9 ways to make a dynamite first impression 14 ways to master small talk, “big talk,” and body language 14 ways to walk and talk like a VIP or celebrity 6 ways to sound like an insider in any crowd 7 ways to establish deep subliminal rapport with anyone 9 ways to feed someone’s ego (and know when NOT to!) 11 ways to make your phone a powerful communications tool 15 ways to work a party like a politician works a room 7 ways to talk with tigers and not get eaten alive In her trademark entertaining and straight-shooting style, Leil gives the techniques catchy names so you’ll remember them when you really need them, including: “Rubberneck the Room,” “Be a Copyclass,” “Come Hither Hands,” “Bare Their Hot Button,” “The Great Scorecard in the Sky,” and “Play the Tombstone Game,” for big success in your social life, romance, and business. How to Talk to Anyone, which is an update of her popular book, Talking the Winner's Way (see the 5-star reviews of the latter) is based on solid research about techniques that work! By the way, don't confuse How to Talk to Anyone with one of Leil's previous books, How to Talk to Anybody About Anything. This one is completely different!

©2003 Leil Lowndes. (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Author: Leil Lowndes
Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
Available on Audible
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Rivals! Frenemies Who Changed the World

138 ratings

Summary

Exclusively on Audible, hilarious history for ages eight and up Did you know that most of our dinosaur fossils were discovered because two grown men absolutely hated each other? It’s true!  Rivals! Frenemies Who Changed the World is a riotous audio exclusive, like if Monty Python taught your history class. Each volume of four 30-minute histories will dig into the petty name-calling and grumbling grudges that led to many of the world’s greatest advancements, all delivered with a cheeky sense of humor.  Choose sides: Cope or Marsh, the jerks who discovered so many dinosaurs; Hamilton or Burr, whose rivalry fueled American politics; Queen Elizabeth or Mary Queen of Scots, who fought to rule England; Adidas or Puma, whose rivalry changed the world of sports and fashion.  Kidnappings, rock fights, duels, and explosions, Rivals! shows world leaders at their absolute best and their worst, often at the same time. 

©2018 Scott McCormick (P)2018 Audible Originals, LLC.

Available on Audible
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Switch on Your Brain

112 ratings

Summary

According to researchers, the vast majority - a whopping 75-98 percent - of the illnesses that plague us today are a direct result of our thought life. What we think about truly affects us both physically and emotionally. In fact, fear alone triggers more than 1,400 known physical and chemical responses in our bodies, activating more than 30 different hormones! Today our culture is undergoing an epidemic of toxic thoughts that, left unchecked, create ideal conditions for illnesses. Supported by current scientific and medical research, Dr. Caroline Leaf gives listeners a prescription for better health and wholeness through correct thinking patterns, declaring that we are not victims of our biology. She shares with listeners the "switch" in our brains that enables us to live happier, healthier, more enjoyable lives where we achieve our goals, maintain our weight, and even become more intelligent. She shows us how to choose life, get our minds under control, and reap the benefits of a detoxed thought life. Full production copyright: Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version. © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations labeled AMP are taken from the Amplified® Bible, © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. Scripture quotations labeled ESV are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2007. Scripture quotations labeled GW are from GOD’S WORD®. © 1995 God’s Word to the Nations. Used by permission of Baker Publishing Group. Scripture quotations labeled Message are taken from The Message by Eugene H. Peterson, © 1993, 1994, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations labeled NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.TM Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. Scripture quotations labeled NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations labeled KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

©2013 Dr. Caroline Leaf (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Length: 4 hrs and 58 mins
Available on Audible
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Angels Fall

80 ratings

Summary

Reece Gilmore has come a long way to see the stunning view below her. As the sole survivor of a brutal crime back East, she has been on the run, desperately fighting the nightmares and panic attacks that haunt her. She settles in Angel's Fist, Wyoming - temporarily, at least - and takes a job at a local diner. Now she's hiked this mountain all by herself. It was glorious, she thinks, as she peers through her binoculars at the Snake River churning below. And then she sees the man and woman on the opposite bank. Arguing. Fighting. Suddenly, he's on top of her, his hands around her throat.... Enjoying a moment of solitude a bit farther down the trail is a gruff loner named Brody. But by the time Reece reaches him and brings him to the scene, the pair is gone. And when authorities comb the area where she saw the attack, they find nothing - no signs of struggle. No freshly turned earth. Not even a tire track. No one in Angel's Fist seems to believe Reece. After all, she's a newcomer in town with a reputation for being jumpy and jittery - maybe even a little fragile. Maybe it's time to run again, to move on. But Reece knows there's a killer in Angel's Fist, even if Brody, despite his seeming impatience and desire to keep her at arm's length, is the only one willing to believe her. When a series of menacing events makes it clear that someone wants her out of the way, Reece must put her trust in Brody - and herself - to find out if there is a killer in Angel's Fist before it's too late.

©2006 Nora Roberts (P)2006 Brilliance Audio

Narrator: Joyce Bean
Author: Nora Roberts
Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
Available on Audible
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Blue Smoke

73 ratings

Summary

Incomparable #1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts delivers a tale of gut-level fear, human triumph, and the bonds that carry us through our darkest times… Reena Hale’s destiny was shaped in the destructive - yet fascinatingly beautiful - fire that leveled her family’s pizzeria when she was young. Now an arson investigator, she finds her strength and wits constantly tested, although sometimes the job seems like a snap compared to her love life. But she can’t always blame the men. After all, a soot-caked woman barking orders and smelling of smoke isn’t the biggest turn-on in the world. Then she meets Bo Goodnight, who seems different. He’s been trying to find Reena for years, and now that she’s close enough to touch, he has no intention of letting go.  Nor does the man who has begun to haunt Reena’s life - with taunting phone calls and a string of horrifying crimes. And as Reena tries desperately to trace the origins - of the calls, the fires, the hatred aimed in her direction - she will step into the worst inferno she has ever faced... 

©2005 Nora Roberts (P)2005 Brilliance Audio

Narrator: Joyce Bean
Author: Nora Roberts
Length: 15 hrs and 53 mins
Available on Audible
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Stop Saying You're Fine

54 ratings

Summary

Right now, over 100 million Americans secretly feel frustrated and bored with their lives. If you've come to regard yourself as your own worst enemy; if you constantly daydream and wonder, "Is this all there is?"; if you have a tendency, when asked how you're doing, to just say "Fine," you may be one of them. If this sounds familiar, there's clearly something missing from your life. This book will help you discover what it is, and how to win it back. Written by Mel Robbins, one of America's top relationship experts, this hands-on guide not only shows you how to put your finger on the problem, it reveals what to do about it. Mel Robbins has spent her career teaching people how to push past their self-imposed limits to get what they truly desire. She has an in-depth understanding of the psychological and social factors that repeatedly hold you back, and more importantly, a unique set of tools for getting you where you want to be. In Stop Saying You're Fine, she draws on the latest neuroscientific research, interviews with countless everyday people, and ideas she's tested in her own life to show what works and what doesn't. The key, she explains, is understanding how your own brain works against you. Because evolution has biased your mental gears against taking action, what you need are techniques to outsmart yourself. That may sound impossible, but Mel has created a remarkably effective method to help you do just that---and some of her discoveries will astonish you. By ignoring how you feel and seizing small amounts of rich possibility---a process she calls "leaning in"---you can make tiny course corrections add up to huge change. Among this book's other topics: how everything can depend on not hitting the snooze button; the science of connecting with other people; what children can teach us about getting things done; and why five seconds is the maximum time you should wait before acting on a great idea.

©2011 Advice for Living, Inc. (P)2011 Tantor

Narrator: Joyce Bean
Author: Mel Robbins
Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
Available on Audible
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Darkfever

52 ratings

Summary

MacKayla Lane's life is good. She has great friends, a decent job, and a car that breaks down only every other week or so. In other words, she's your perfectly ordinary 21st-century woman. Or so she thinks...until something extraordinary happens. When her sister is murdered, leaving a single clue to her death - a cryptic message on Mac's cell phone - Mac journeys to Ireland in search of answers. The quest to find her sister's killer draws her into a shadowy realm where nothing is as it seems, where good and evil wear the same treacherously seductive mask. She is soon faced with an even greater challenge: staying alive long enough to learn how to handle a power she had no idea she possessed - a gift that allows her to see beyond the world of man, into the dangerous realm of the Fae. As Mac delves deeper into the mystery of her sister's death, her every move is shadowed by the dark, mysterious Jericho, a man with no past and only mockery for a future. As she begins to close in on the truth, the ruthless Vlane - an alpha Fae who makes sex an addiction for human women - closes in on her. And as the boundary between worlds begins to crumble, Mac's true mission becomes clear: find the elusive Sinsar Dubh before someone else claims the all-powerful Dark Book - because whoever gets to it first holds nothing less than complete control of the very fabric of both worlds.

©2006 Karen Marie Moning (P)2006 Brilliance Audio

Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
Available on Audible
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Julian Fellowes's Belgravia

49 ratings

Summary

Julian Fellowes's Belgravia is the story of a secret. A secret that unravels behind the porticoed doors of London's grandest postcode. Set in the 1840s, when the upper echelons of society began to rub shoulders with the emerging industrial nouveau riche, Belgravia is peopled by a rich cast of characters. But the story begins on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. At the Duchess of Richmond's new legendary ball, one family's life will change forever.

©2016 Julian Fellowes (P)2016 Hachette Audio

Length: 15 hrs and 47 mins
Available on Audible
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Beyond Reach

48 ratings

Summary

In a stifling jail cell in a hardscrabble Georgia town, Detective Lena Adams sits in stubborn silence: bruised, angry, and the only suspect in a horrific murder that left a woman incinerated beyond recognition. One hundred miles away, Police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver has gotten the call that his young detective has been arrested. Jeffrey's wife, pediatrician and medical examiner Sara Linton, has little patience for Lena or her dramas. Fighting a heartbreaking malpractice suit, struggling to pick up the pieces of a shattered career, the last thing Sara needs is to see Jeffrey playing Lena's knight in shining armor. Sara cannot guess that within days she herself will be at the center of a bizarre and murderous case. Lena has fled back to the place where she grew up hard, careening back through the shadows of her past and into a shocking underground world of bigotry and rage. The man who raised her is slowly killing himself with drugs. The man who beguiled - and beat - her is reaching out from prison. And now only Jeffrey and Sara can free Lena from the web of lies, betrayal, and brutality that has trapped her - as this powerhouse of a novel races toward its shattering climax...and a final, unforgettable twist.

©2007 Karin Slaughter (P)2007 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Narrator: Joyce Bean
Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
Available on Audible
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The Real Book of Real Estate

48 ratings

Summary

In a world where too many financial advisors do not follow their own advice, here is a book written by experts who practice what they teach and who will teach you to thrive, not merely survive, during turbulent economic times. This is the real deal…The Real Book of Real Estate. The only thing better than one real estate expert teaching you how to invest and win is 20 real estate experts with that same mission. For the first time ever, Robert Kiyosaki, bestselling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, has assembled in one book an unrivaled cast of real estate wizards and trusted advisors with one purpose in mind: to share their knowledge and teach you to win in real estate. This is the ultimate real estate book you will come back to again and again. Read it cover to cover, or use it as a guide to help when you need it most. The Real Book of Real Estate will be your #1 source as you determine the real estate niche that is perfect for you and as you navigate the ups and downs of the real estate market and become the expert you know you can be. Whether you're a seasoned investor or buying your first property, this is the one book you can and will read over and over. Robert's team of real experts shows you how to: value a property, lease a property and keep it leased, get financing, title and protect entities, find hidden investment opportunities, minimize taxes, and establish your own team of advisors. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2013, 2016 Robert T. Kiyosaki (P)2016 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Length: 17 hrs and 53 mins
Available on Audible
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Bloodfever

35 ratings

Summary

MacKayla Lane's ordinary life underwent a complete makeover when she landed on Ireland's shores and was plunged into a world of deadly sorcery and ancient secrets. In her fight to stay alive, Mac must find the Sinsar Dubh - a million-year-old book of the blackest magic imaginable, which holds the key to power over both the world of the Fae and of Man. Pursued by Fae assassins, surrounded by mysterious figures she knows she cannot trust, Mac finds herself torn between two deadly and irresistible men: V'lane, the insatiable Fae who can turn sensual arousal into an obsession for any woman, and the ever-inscrutable Jericho Barrons, a man as alluring as he is mysterious. For centuries the shadowy realm of the Fae has coexisted with that of humans. Now the walls between the two are coming down, and Mac is the only thing that stands between them.

©2007 Karen Marie Moning (P)2007 Brilliance Audio

Narrator: Joyce Bean
Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
Available on Audible
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Faefever

28 ratings

Summary

Karen Marie Moning's "Fever" series is a coast-to-coast hit! The first two titles in this national best-selling series, Darkfever and Bloodfever, appeared on the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly best-seller lists. In Faefever, Karen Marie Moning returns to the shadowy Dublin Otherworld in an undeniably sexy novel her fans are feverish for. Changed by the choices she made in order to survive, Mac no longer is the naïve, idealistic, and glamorous girl newly arrived in Dublin. Now, on a quest to find her sister's killer, she is a major player in a deadly game, but with one great advantage: she knows how to find the one thing Fae and human alike are willing to kill for - the Sinsar Dubh, an ancient book of magic so dark it corrupts anyone who touches it. What Mac soon discovers, however, is worse than she had imagined. Surrounded by treachery, her enemies indistinguishable from her allies, she can be certain of only one thing - as All Hallows' Eve approaches, her time is running out.

©2008 Karen Marie Moning (P)2008 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Narrator: Joyce Bean
Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
Available on Audible
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Undercover Sex Signals

27 ratings

Summary

More than 95% of guys don't pick up on a woman's sex signals. Here's how to make sure you're not one of them. You're in a crowded bar, and the hottie across the room breaks eye contact to put on lipstick. Do you assume she's: a. Vain b. Rude c. Totally into you? If you've answered with anything other than c, you're dead wrong. Women are always giving off signals, and men are always missing them. In Undercover Sex Signals, bestselling author and communications expert Leil Lowndes shows how to score on every pass, with everything from the best activity for a first date to how a guy should dress to increase his odds for sealing the deal. Learn the twenty-six undercover sex signals and the real tactics that will teach you to: Master step-by-step foreplay from across the room Use right opening phrases (not lines!) Never hear the word "no" again Look for sex in the right places Win in the online sex game Develop the never-fail pickup Understand the perfect timing for when to ask, when to kiss, when to call, and other follow-up strategies With invaluable advice, Undercover Sex Signals ensures that you'll never blow another opportunity again.

©2001 St. Paul Street Press, LLC; 2006 Leil Lowndes (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Narrator: Joyce Bean
Author: Leil Lowndes
Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
Available on Audible
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Genuine Lies

27 ratings

Summary

New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts weaves scandal, celebrity secrets, and murder into an explosive novel of Hollywood almost too wicked not to be true: the story of a legendary actress who knows too much - and the woman she’s chosen to reveal it all.... Eve Benedict is the kind of subject who could make any biographer’s career. Last of the movie goddesses, she has two Oscars, four ex-husbands, and a legion of lovers, both famous and infamous. Now she is ready to write a tell-all memoir that has even Hollywood’s richest and most powerful worried. Julia Summers never dreamed of being chosen to tell Eve’s story. But even if it means transplanting herself and her ten-year-old son from their quiet life in Connecticut to the withering limelight of Beverly Hills, it’s an opportunity too great to pass up. But Julia never imagined how far someone would go to keep Eve Benedict’s book from being published...until she discovers just how dark Eve’s secrets are. And the one man Julia hopes she can trust - Eve’s stepson, Paul Winthrop - may have the most to gain if his stepmother’s story is never told...and if Julia’s life ends before she can write a word of the truth.  “Roberts does a beautiful job weaving together the movie star’s titillating tales and the love story that develops.” - USA Today

©1991 Nora Roberts (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Narrator: Joyce Bean
Author: Nora Roberts
Length: 19 hrs and 32 mins
Available on Audible
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Being Ram Dass

22 ratings

Summary

Ram Dass tells here, for the first time, the full arc of his remarkable life. Perhaps no other teacher has sparked the fires of as many spiritual seekers in the West as Ram Dass. If you've ever embraced the phrase “be here now”, practiced meditation or yoga, tried psychedelics, or supported anyone in a hospice, prison, or homeless center - then the story of Ram Dass is also part of your story. From his birth in 1931 to his luminous later years, Ram Dass saw his life as just one incarnation of many. This memoir puts us in the passenger seat with the one-time Harvard psychologist and lifelong risk-taker Richard Alpert, who loved to take friends on wild rides on his Harley and test nearly every boundary - inner or outer - that came his way. Here, Ram Dass shares his life’s odyssey in intimate detail: how he struggled with issues of self-identity and sexuality in his youth, pioneered psychedelic research, and opened the doorways to Eastern spiritual practices. In 1967 he trekked to India and met his guru, Neem Karoli Baba. He returned with a perspective on spirituality and psychology that changed millions. Populated by a cast of luminaries ranging from Timothy Leary to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Allen Ginsberg to Sharon Salzberg, Aldous Huxley to Alan Watts - this intimate memoir chronicles the cultural and spiritual transformations Ram Dass experienced that resonate with us to this day, a journey from the mind to the heart, from the ego to the soul. Before, after, and along these waypoints, listeners will encounter many other adventures and revelations - each ringing with the potential to awaken the universal, loving divine that links us to this beloved teacher and all of us to each other.

©2021 Ram Dass and Rameshwar Das (P)2021 Sounds True

Available on Audible
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Dragons of the Dwarven Depths

16 ratings

Summary

The Companions are back in this first volume, which features an untold story from the War of the Lance. The beloved heroes return: Tanis, Raistlin and Caramon, Sturm Brightblade, Tasslehoff, and Flint Fireforge. Old friends, such as Riverwind and Goldmoon and Laurana, travel with them. Old enemies are here too, as the companions encounter new adventures and new dangers in the very beginning months of the War of the Lance.

This book starts with the celebration of a wedding. The companions believe they have slain the evil Dragon Highlord Verminaard. They have rescued the refugees from Pax Tharkas and taken them to a valley in the Kharolis mountains.

After they are attacked by the Dragon Armies, Tanis and Flint are sent to search for the long lost dwarven kingdom of Thorbardin, hoping to persuade the dwarves to give the refugees shelter for winter.

Each of the other companions face their own trials. Raistlin remembers that, according to tales of old, the key to Thorbardin lies in the haunted fortress known as Skullcap. The others want nothing to do with this accursed place, but Raistlin feels strangely drawn to the ruins, and he persuades a reluctant Caramon to accompany him there.

Sturm becomes obsessed with finding the legendary Hammer of Kharas, and his obsession nearly plunges the party into disaster. Riverwind, now chieftain of his tribe, is made the reluctant leader of the refugees and worries that he is not suited for the task. Tika Waylan must decide if she has the courage to undertake a perilous journey to save those she loves from certain death, while Tanis Half-Elven wrestles with his faith in the newly returned gods.

But it is the dwarf, Flint Fireforge, who faces the most crucial test.

©2006 Margaret Weis (P)2006 Brilliance Audio

Length: 15 hrs and 38 mins
Available on Audible
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Blood Memory

13 ratings

Summary

Catherine "Cat" Ferry is a forensic odontologist, a specialist in bite marks and the clues they provide. But while Cat's colleagues know her as a world-class scientist, she secretly attempts to manage her fragile psyche with alcohol, delving into the minds of rapists and murderers yet never allowing her own frightening past to creep into the foreground. Cat's latest case involves a disturbing murder in New Orleans. Banishing her personal demons, she focuses on the potential killer, until one morning she's paralyzed by a panic attack at a grisly murder scene. Praying the attack is a onetime event, she continues her job as a consultant to the New Orleans Police Department, but when another victim dies in the same shocking way - raising fears that a serial killer is at large - Cat blacks out over the victim's mutilated corpse. Suspended from the FBI task force, plagued by nightmares, and at odds with her married lover - a homicide detective - Cat finally reaches her breaking point. In a desperate effort to regain control over a life spiraling out of control, Cat retreats to her hometown of Natchez, Mississippi. But her family's secluded antebellum estate provides no sanctuary. When some of Cat's forensic chemicals are spilled in her childhood bedroom, two bloody footprints are revealed. This sight shocks her more than any corpse she has seen in her career. Cat's father was murdered when she was eight years old, but she always believed the crime occurred in the garden outside their home. The bloody footprints suggest otherwise. Driven by this fragment of her past, Cat attempts a forensic reconstruction of the decades-old crime, even as developments with the New Orleans task force pull her back into the case she left behind.

©2005 Greg Iles (P)2005 Brilliance Audio

Narrator: Joyce Bean
Author: Greg Iles
Length: 18 hrs and 49 mins
Available on Audible
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Cry Wolf

13 ratings

Summary

In the rural parishes of Louisiana's French Triangle, young women are disappearing one by one, only to turn up on the banks of the bayou, strangled and cast aside where they are sure to be found. But there is one trophy the killer prizes above all others, one woman who must be silenced forever.... Attorney Laurel Chandler did not come back to Bayou Breaux to seek justice. That once-burning obsession had destroyed her credibility, her career, her marriage - and nearly her sanity. But when a ruthless predator strikes too close to home, she's lured into a perverse game from which there may be no escape. Once before, Laurel's cries against a monstrous evil went unanswered. Who will listen now?

©2003 Tami Hoag (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Narrator: Joyce Bean
Author: Tami Hoag
Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
Available on Audible
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The Valley of Amazement

13 ratings

Summary

New York Times best-selling author of The Joy Luck Club Amy Tan brings us her latest novel: a sweeping, evocative epic of two women's intertwined fates and their search for identity - from the lavish parlors of Shanghai courtesans to the fog-shrouded mountains of a remote Chinese village Shanghai, 1912. Violet Minturn is the privileged daughter of the American madam of the city's most exclusive courtesan house. But when the Ching dynasty is overturned, Violet is separated from her mother in a cruel act of chicanery and forced to become a "virgin courtesan." Half-Chinese and half-American, Violet grapples with her place in the worlds of East and West - until she is able to merge her two halves, empowering her to become a shrewd courtesan who excels in the business of seduction and illusion, though she still struggles to understand who she is. Back in 1897 San Francisco, Violet's mother, Lucia, chooses a disastrous course as a sixteen-year-old, when her infatuation with a Chinese painter compels her to leave her home for Shanghai. Shocked by her lover's adherence to Chinese traditions, she is unable to change him, despite her unending American ingenuity. Fueled by betrayals, both women refuse to submit to fate and societal expectations, persisting in their quests to recover what was taken from them: respect; a secure future; and, most poignantly, love from their parents, lovers, and children. To reclaim their lives, they take separate journeys - to a backwater hamlet in China, the wealthy environs of the Hudson River Valley, and, ultimately, the unknown areas of their hearts, where they discover what remains after their many failings to love and be loved. Spanning more than forty years and two continents, The Valley of Amazement transports listeners from the collapse of China's last imperial dynasty to the beginning of the Republic and recaptures the lost world of old Shanghai through the inner workings of courtesan houses and the lives of the foreigners living in the International Settlement, both erased by World War II. A deeply evocative narrative of the profound connections between mothers and daughters, imbued with Tan's characteristic insight and humor, The Valley of Amazement conjures a story of inherited trauma, desire and deception, and the power and obstinacy of love.

©2013 Amy Tan (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Author: Amy Tan
Length: 24 hrs and 51 mins
Available on Audible
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Slow Burn

11 ratings

Summary

Living a successful life in Charleston, South Carolina, Kate MacKenna has always been able to turn her challenges into triumphs. But now the fates seem to be lining up against her in a lethal fashion. While attending a reception at a friend's estate for a controversial artist, Kate is nearly killed by an explosion. Once home, Kate is hit with the news that the prosperous fragrance company she has nurtured from the ground up is in jeopardy: It turns out that her late mother used the business as collateral for a huge loan, and full payment is due in three weeks. Kate's still reeling from this devastating news when her younger sister's volatile ex-boyfriend shows up and threatens her. Then Kate receives a call from her best friend, Jordan Buchanan, who is hospitalized and scheduled for surgery in Boston. Though stretched to the limit, Kate immediately rushes to her side. Once she knows that Jordan is going to be fine, Kate abandons her calm façade and allows herself a major meltdown, doing something that is totally uncharacteristic: She has a one-night stand with Jordan's brother Dylan. Coming to her senses, Kate returns home determined to get back on track and save her business. But the mishaps keep coming. At Jordan's insistence, Dylan checks up on Kate. He's convinced that she's merely having a spell of bad luck - until he discovers how many people want Kate MacKenna dead.

©2005 Julie Garwood (P)2005 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Narrator: Joyce Bean
Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
Available on Audible