Julia Whelan has narrated 233 audiobooks on Listento.it by 218 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 20,381 ratings. The most-rated is Educated.
Daddy-Long-Legs
Summary
First published in 1912, Daddy-Long-Legs is an epistolary novel that follows orphan Jerusha "Judy" Abbott through her college years through a series of letters written to her anonymous benefactor, whom she nicknames "Daddy-Long-Legs." As Judy learns to navigate the complex world of studies, social life, and romance, her letters convey her growth and address the increasingly complex questions that preoccupy her. A classic coming-of-age story featuring a clever, engaging, and altogether realistic heroine, Daddy-Long-Legs has been a beloved tale since its publication and continues to delight its audiences.
Public Domain (P)2011 Tantor
Driftwood Summer
Summary
In the small seaside town of Palmetto Beach, the Sheffield sisters – responsible Riley, vivacious Maisy, and fun-loving Adalee – reunite to celebrate their mother’s birthday and try to save the family bookstore, which has long been a beloved gathering place in their tight-knit community. But June also marks the return of Mack Logan, who 13 years ago was Riley’s best friend and Maisy’s teenage crush. His choice of Maisy over Riley during that pivotal summer destroyed the special closeness between the sisters, and sent their lives in very different directions. Now Riley, a single mom who doubts any man will ever live up to the ideal Mack Logan, must work with her sisters while hiding a shattering secret about their mother. Maisy, a California designer, still blames Riley for ruining her one true love. And Adalee, a college coed, resents the family’s intrusion into her summer plans. When Mack arrives, all three sisters are forced to confront their long-held beliefs about the conflicts that tore them apart and the bonds of love and loyalty that still draw them together. Will they allow the past to define the future?
©2010 Patti Callahan Henry (P)2010 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Wingspan
Summary
Originally produced as a one-act play starring Grace Experience and K.K. Glick, Wingspan is the story of a young flight attendant with a fear of flying who is about to work her first transatlantic trip. When a veteran coworker tries to help her through the turbulent crossing, she discovers that a fear of flying is the least of the young woman's secrets. The two actresses who starred in the play will also narrate this audio original.
©2019 Chris Bohjalian (P)2019 Random House Audio
Until I Die
Summary
I wish there was only today, just right now, and no forever. It seems fitting that I fell in love in Paris, the most beautiful city in the world. And if I pretend, I can almost believe that my life is normal and everyone I care about is safe. But as long as I’m with Vincent, “normal” doesn’t exist. Gorgeous, charming, and witty, he’s everything you could ask for in a boyfriend - but his destiny is so much more. Even more terrifying than his destiny are his dangerous enemies, enemies who will kill for immortality. How are Vincent and I supposed to be together forever if we’re always in danger? I know I’ll do whatever it takes - even if it means lying to the people I love - to fight against a fate that is trying to tear us apart.
©2012 Amy Plum (P)2013 HarperCollins Publishers
The Impossible Knife of Memory
Summary
Despite my best intentions, I was beginning to understand how my dad saw the world. The shadows haunting every living thing. The secrets inside the lies wrapped in bullshit. Even Gracie’s box of pills was beginning to make sense. For the past five years, Hayley Kincain and her father, Andy, have been on the road, trying to outrun the memories that haunt them both. They moved back to Andy’s hometown to try a “normal” life, but the horrors he saw in the war threaten to destroy their lives. Hayley watches, helpless, as her father turns to drugs and alcohol to silence his demons. And then her own past creeps up, and everything falls apart. How do you keep your father alive when death is stalking him? What are you supposed to do when your parent stops acting like an adult? And what happens if a sweet guy who can make you laugh barges his way into your world and for the first time, you find yourself thinking about the future? Timely, compelling, surprising — this is Laurie Halse Anderson at her finest.
©2014 Laurie Halse Anderson (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
High Crime Area
Summary
In the title story, a white aspiring professor is convinced she is being followed. No need to panic - she has a handgun stowed away in her purse, just in case. But when she turns to confront her black male shadow, the situation isn't what she expects. In "The Rescuer" a promising graduate student detours to inner-city Trenton, New Jersey, to save her brother from a downward spiral. But she soon finds out there may be more to his world than to hers. And in "The Last Man of Letters" the world-renowned author X embarks on a final grand tour of Europe. He has money, fame, but not a whole lot of manners. A little thing like etiquette couldn't bring a man like X down, could it? In these and five other biting and beautiful pieces, Oates confronts, one by one, the demons within us, demonstrating that sometimes, it's not the human side that wins out. Contents: "The Home at Craigmillnar", read by Ray Chase "High", read by Donna Postel "Toad-Baby", read by Luci Christian "Demon", read by Chris Patton "Lorelei", read by Tamara Marston "The Rescuer", read by Julia Whelan "The Last Man of Letters", read by Ray Chase "High Crime Area", read by Julia Whelan
©2014 Original material, The Ontario Review, Inc. Recorded by arrangement with John Hawkins and Associates, Inc. (P)2014 HighBridge Company
Girl Underwater
Summary
An adventurous debut novel that cross cuts between a competitive college swimmer's harrowing days in the Rocky Mountains after a major airline disaster and her recovery supported by the two men who love her - only one of whom knows what really happened in the wilderness. Nineteen-year-old Avery Delacorte loves the water. Growing up in Brookline, Massachusetts, she took swim lessons at her community pool and captained the local team; in high school she raced across bays and sprawling North American lakes. Now a sophomore on her university's nationally ranked team, she struggles under the weight of new expectations, but life is otherwise pretty good. Perfect, really. That all changes when Avery's red-eye home for Thanksgiving makes a ditch landing in a mountain lake in the Colorado Rockies. She is one of only five survivors, which includes three little boys and Colin Shea, who happens to be her teammate. Colin is also the only person in Avery's college life who challenged her to swim her own events, to be her own person - something she refused to do. Instead she's avoided him since the first day of freshman year. But now, faced with subzero temperatures, minimal supplies, and the dangers of a forbidding nowhere, Avery and Colin must rely on each other in ways they never could've imagined. In the wilderness the concept of survival is clear cut. Simple. In the real world, it's anything but.
©2015 Claire Kells (P)2015 Penguin Audio
Streams of Babel
Summary
Whatever you do, don’t drink the water. When Cora Holman’s mother dies, she assumes the inevitable: that her mother overdosed on the painkillers she’d been taking for years. So she’s shocked to learn that her mother and a neighbor both died of a brain aneurysm the same night. When Cora and other neighborhood teens become ill with a mysterious flu, and government-type strangers arrive in her small town, they all fear the unthinkable - a terrorist attack. Meanwhile, a world away in Pakistan, a 16-year-old computer genius named Shahzad is working as a virtual spy. He’s alarmed to see an influx of chatter about a sub-stance called Red Vinegar that will, as he reads, “lead to many deaths in Colony One.” Can Shahzad sift through the babble of the chat room, find the location of the attack, and warn the victims in time? And if so, at what cost to him? A Printz Honor Award winner and two-time Edgar Allan Poe Award finalist, Carol Plum-Ucci explores disturbing new terrain in this riveting novel that examines the heroes and victims involved in a terrifying act of bioterrorism. Carol Plum-Ucci is the author of numerous novels for teens, including The Body of Christopher Creed, a Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book that was also nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Young Adult Mystery. She lives in southern New Jersey.
©2008 Carol Plum-Ucci (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Lady Be Good
Summary
Set in the 1950s, Lady Be Good marks Amber Brock's mesmerizing return, sweeping readers into the world of the mischievous, status-obsessed daughter of a hotel magnate and the electric nightlife of three iconic cities: New York, Miami, and Havana. Kitty Tessler is the winsome and clever only child of self-made hotel and nightclub tycoon Nicolas Tessler. Kitty may not have the same pedigree as the tennis club set she admires, but she still sees herself as every inch the socialite - spending her days perfecting her "look" and her nights charming all the blue-blooded boys who frequent her father's clubs. It seems like the fun will never end until Kitty's father issues a terrible ultimatum: she may no longer date the idle rich. Instead, Kitty must marry Andre, her father's second-in-command, and take her place as the First Lady of his hotel empire. Kitty is forced to come up with a wily and elaborate plan to protect her own lofty ideas for the future, as well as to save her best friend, Henrietta Bancroft, from a doomed engagement; Kitty will steal Henrietta's fiancé, a fabulously wealthy but terribly unkind man from a powerful family - thereby delivering the one-two punch of securing her now-fragile place on the social ladder and keeping her friend from a miserable marriage. Then Kitty meets Max, a member of a band visiting New York from her father's Miami club, and her plans take a turn. Smitten, but still eager to convince her father of her commitment to Andre, Kitty and Hen follow Max, Andre, and the rest of the band back down to Miami - and later to Cuba. As Kitty spends more time with Max, she begins waking up to the beauty - and the injustice - of the world beyond her small, privileged corner of Manhattan. And when her well-intended yet manipulative efforts backfire, Kitty is forced to reconsider her choices and her future before she loses everyone she loves.
©2018 Amber Brock (P)2018 Random House Audio
Strange Fire
Summary
For teens who grew up adoring The Giver and The City of Ember. The Oregon Trail meets Westworld in this epic new trilogy from the New York Times best-selling author of We All Looked Up, Tommy Wallach. Knowledge has always been the enemy of faith. They said that the first generation of man was brought low by its appetites: for knowledge, for power, for wealth. They said mankind's voracity was so great, the Lord sent his own Daughter to bring fire and devastation to the world. The survivors were few, but over the course of centuries they banded together to form a new civilization - the Descendancy - founded on the belief that the mistakes of the past must never be repeated. Brothers Clive and Clover Hamill, the sons of a well-respected Descendant minister, have spent their lives spreading that gospel. But when their traveling ministry discovers a community intent on rediscovering the blasphemous technologies of the past, a chain of events will be set in motion that will pit city against city...and brother against brother. Along with Gemma Poplin, Clive's childhood sweetheart, and Paz Dedios, a revolutionary who dreams of overthrowing the Descendancy, Clive and Clover will each play a pivotal role in determining the outcome of this holy war - and the fate of humanity itself.
©2017 Tommy Wallach (P)2017 Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Sex from Scratch
Summary
With nearly 50 percent of marriages ending in divorce, a growing percentage of women over age 40 choosing not to have children, and more than 3 percent of the population identifying as LGBT, modern life is clearly in need of some modern relationship advice. Sex from Scratch analyzes the facets of contemporary relationships through the struggles, opinions, and experiences of a diverse group of individuals living in nontraditional relationships. Rather than telling listeners how to snag partners and find true love, it gleans real-life knowledge from people of all sexualities and genders--from individuals trying to make open relationships work to those who have opted against having children--distilling their hard-earned wisdom. Contributions from Andi Zeisler, Stu Rasmussen, Betty Dodson, and others make this love and dating guidebook an essential, fun, and insightful resource for anyone in any type of relationship.
©2014 Sarah Mirk (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
O My Darling
Summary
The external lives of Clark, a high school guidance counselor, and Charlotte, a bookkeeper, are utterly ordinary, but their interior lives are as bold and complex as abstract paintings colored by imagined possibilities, childhood joys and, more darkly, by deeply buried fears. When Clark rescues a young boy from drowning, a chain of events - some comic, some harrowing - is set in motion, revealing the fault lines of the couple's marriage and individual psyches. Amity Gaige is a consummate stylist. Her every sentence contains a tiny world - marrying striking images to deep, soulful ideas in perfectly concise fashion.
©2013 Amity Gaige (P)2013 Hachette Audio
The Visitant
Summary
After she nearly ruins her family with a terrible misstep, Elena Spira is sent to Venice to escape disgrace and to atone by caring for the ailing Samuel Farber. But the crumbling and decaying Ca' Basilio palazzo, where Samuel is ensconced, holds tragic secrets, and little does Elena know how profoundly they will impact her. Soon she begins to sense that she is being watched by something. And when Samuel begins to have hallucinations that make him violent and unpredictable, she can't deny she's in mortal danger. Then impoverished nobleman Nero Basilio, Samuel's closest friend and the owner of the palazzo, arrives. Elena finds herself entangled with both men in a world where the past seeps into the present and nothing is as it seems. As Elena struggles to discover the haunting truth before it destroys her, a dark force seems to hold Samuel and the Basilio in thrall - is it madness, or something more sinister?
©2015 Megan Chance (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Bubblegum
Summary
"Adam Levin is one of our wildest writers and our funniest, and Bubblegum is a dazzling accomplishment of wit and inventiveness." (George Saunders) "Levin's brains may have earned him a cult...but here he swells to a democratic reach. Give him a try sometime. His gate’s wide open." (Garth Risk Hallberg, The New York Times Book Review) The astonishing new novel by the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award-winning author of The Instructions. Bubblegum is set in an alternate present-day world in which the internet does not exist and has never existed. Rather, a wholly different species of interactive technology - a "flesh-and-bone robot" called the Curio - has dominated both the market and the cultural imagination since the late 1980s. Belt Magnet, who as a boy in greater Chicago became one of the lucky first adopters of a Curio, is now writing his memoir, and through it we follow a singular man out of sync with the harsh realities of a world he feels alien to but must find a way to live in. At age 38, still living at home with his widowed father, Belt insulates himself from the awful and terrifying world outside by spending most of his time with books, his beloved Curio, and the voices in his head, which he isn't entirely sure are in his head. After Belt's father goes on a fishing excursion, a simple trip to the bank escalates into an epic saga that eventually forces Belt to confront the world he fears as well as his estranged childhood friend, Jonboat, the celebrity astronaut and billionaire. In Bubblegum, Adam Levin has crafted a profoundly hilarious, resonant, and monumental narrative about heartbreak, longing, art, and the search for belonging in an incompatible world. Bubblegum is a rare masterwork of provocative social (and self-) awareness and intimate emotional power.
©2020 Adam Levin (P)2020 Random House Audio
With or Without You
Summary
After almost 20 years together, Stella and Simon are starting to run into problems. An up-and-coming rock musician when they first met, Simon has been clinging to dreams of fame even as the possibility of it has grown dimmer, and now that his band might finally be on the brink again, he wants to go on the road, leaving Stella behind. But when she falls into a coma on the eve of his departure, he has to make a choice between stardom and his wife - and when she awakes a different person, with an incredible artistic talent of her own, the two of them must examine what it is that they really want. Unapologetically honest and intimately written, With or Without You is a contemporary story of what happens to relationships as the people in them change, whether slowly or in one cataclysmic swoop.
©2020 Caroline Leavitt (P)2020 Dreamscape Media, LLC
The Princess in Black, Books 7-8
Summary
Books seven and eight in Shannon Hale and Dean Hale's New York Times best-selling series take the Princess in Black on two of her biggest adventures yet! The Princess in Black and the Bathtime Battle: The Princess in Black is in a very stinky situation. A foul cloud is plaguing the goat pasture, and it smells worse than a pile of dirty diapers or a trash can on a hot summer day. But every time the Princess in Black and her friend the Goat Avenger manage to get rid of the odor, they accidentally blow it to another kingdom! Other masked heroes and their trusty companions show up to help, but how do you battle a stench when your ninja moves fail? Fans with a nose for slapstick will be tickled to see the six stalwart friends join their wits to take on an impossibly beastly stink. The Princess in Black and the Giant Problem: The Princess in Black is ready for her snowy playdate with the Goat Avenger and the Princess in Blankets. It's a perfect day to build snow monsters and battle them for practice. But just when they're about to wage battle, a huge foot smashes their snow monster. "SQUASHY!" It's a giant, and it's smashing everything in its path! The giant is too strong for the three friends, so the Princess in Blankets has an idea: It's time to light the Sparkle Signal and summon help. With a rising crescendo of a plot and a delightfully surprising ending, book eight features all the Princess in Black's friends as heroes for the first time.
©2020 Shannon Hale and Dean Hale (P)2020 Listening Library
Muse
Summary
American Royals meets The Winner’s Curse in the first book of a dazzling duology from New York Times best-selling author Brittany Cavallaro about revolution, love, and friendship in a reimagined American monarchy. The year is 1893, and war is brewing in the First American Kingdom. But Claire Emerson has a bigger problem. Claire’s father is a sought-after inventor, but he believes his genius is a gift granted to him by his daughter’s touch, so he keeps Claire under his control. As their province prepares for war, Claire plans to escape, even as her best friend, Beatrix, tries to convince her to stay and help with the growing resistance movement that wants to see a woman on the throne. When her father’s weapon fails to fire on the World’s Fair’s opening day, Claire is taken captive by Governor Remy Duchamp, St. Cloud’s young, untried ruler. Remy believes that Claire’s touch bestows graces he’s never had, and with political rivals planning his demise, Claire might be his only ally. The last thing that Claire has ever wanted is to be someone else’s muse, but she finally has a choice: Will she quietly remake her world from the shadows - or bring it down in flames?
©2021 Brittany Cavallaro (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers
The Princess in Black and the Mysterious Playdate
Summary
Noseholes and elephants! A pet-eating monster interrupts a perfect playdate with Princess Sneezewort...but who is that new masked avenger? Princess Magnolia and Princess Sneezewort have plans...mysterious plans, like a princess playdate! They dress-up slam! They karaoke jam! They playhouse romp and snack-time stomp! But then a shout from outside Princess Sneezewort's castle interrupts their fun. It's a monster trying to eat someone's kitty! This is a job for the Princess in Black. Yet when the Princess in Black gets there, she finds only a masked stranger and no monster in sight...or is there? Action and humor abound in this ode to friendship that proves that when shape-shifting monsters intrude on your plans, two heroes are better than one.
©2017 Shannon Hale and Dean Hale (P)2017 Listening Library
Super Host
Summary
"Get ready to smile.... [A] sweet story and the perfect antidote to the chaos that’s been 2021." (the Skimm) A deeply funny and shrewdly observed debut novel about being lost in the very place you know by heart. Bennett Driscoll is a Turner Prize-nominated artist who was once a rising star. Now, at age 55, his wife has left him, he hasn't sold a painting in two years, and his gallery wants to stop selling his work, claiming they'll have more value retrospectively...when he's dead. So, left with a large West London home and no income, he's forced to move into his artist's studio in the back garden and list his house on the popular vacation rental site, AirBed. A stranger now in his own home, with his daughter, Mia, off at art school, and any new relationships fizzling out at best, Bennett struggles to find purpose in his day-to-day. That all changes when three different guests - lonely American Alicia; tortured artist Emma; and cautiously optimistic divorcée Kirstie - unwittingly unlock the pieces of himself that have been lost to him for too long. Warm, witty, and utterly humane, Super Host offers a captivating portrait of middle age, relationships, and what it truly means to take a new chance at life.
©2020 Kate Russo (P)2020 Penguin Audio
A Sliver of Light
Summary
Three young Americans captured by Iranian forces and held in captivity for two years tell their story.
In summer 2009 Shane Bauer, Josh Fattal, and Sarah Shourdwere hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan when they unknowingly crossed into Iran and were captured by a border patrol. Accused of espionage, the three Americans ultimately found themselves in Tehran's infamous Evin Prison, where they discovered that pooling their strength of will and relying on each other were the only ways they could survive.
In this poignant memoir, "the hikers" finally tell their side of the story. They recount the deception that lured them into Iran in the first place and describe the psychological torment of interrogation and solitary confinement. We follow them as they make surprising alliances with their fellow prisoners and even some of their captors, while their own bonds with one another are tested and deepened. Told through a bold and innovative interweaving of the authors' three voices, here is a rare glimpse inside Iran and a timeless portrayal of hardship and hope.
©2014 Shane Bauer, Joshua Fattal, and Sarah Shourd (P)2014 Blackstone Audio