Kate Reading has narrated 317 audiobooks on Listento.it by 161 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 30,572 ratings. The most-rated is The Way of Kings.
Jane and the Wandering Eye: Being the Third Jane Austen Mystery
Summary
As Christmas of 1804 approaches, Jane Austen finds herself "[I]nsupportably bored with Bath, and the littleness of a town". It is with relief that she accepts a peculiar commission from her Gentleman Rogue, Lord Harold Trowbridge - to shadow his niece, Lady Desdemona, who has fled to Bath to avoid the attentions of the unsavory earl of Swithin. But Jane's idle diversion turns deadly when a man is discovered stabbed to death in the Theatre Royal. Adding to the mystery is an unusual object found on the victim's body - a pendant that contains a portrait of an eye! As Jane's fascination with scandal leads her deeper into the investigation, it becomes clear that she will not uncover the truth without some dangerous playacting of her own....
©2009 Stephanie Barron (P)2020 Random House Audio
Taint of the Black Brigade
Summary
The last one alive takes the treasure...unless Abraxis Wren gets there first. When a woman from his past turns up looking for help in clearing her name, Abraxis Wren must set aside his memories of their past encounters to unravel the mystery of the Black Brigade. An elite and deadly squad from the Last War is being murdered one by one. The trail of blood leads to untold treasure - if Wren can only reach it before the murderer does! 2008 Scribe Award winner Paul Crilley returns to the world of Eberron with a dark adventure full of murder and mystery.
©2010 Wizards of the Coast LLC (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Death in Lovers' Lane
Summary
One of America's most highly acclaimed mystery writers brings us another installment in the career of Henrietta "Henrie O" Collins, an ex-reporter turned sleuth. These days, Henrie O is teaching journalism at Thorndyke University, where she encourages an ambitious student to pursue an investigative series about three unrelated and hitherto unsolved local crimes. But the student's study habits get her killed. Her body's discovered at the site of one of the three crimes she was investigating. The police and the powers-that-be at Thorndyke are rabidly against Henrie O's involvement in the case. But the stubborn, sixty-something investigator is committed to dredging up a past everyone wants to keep buried -- even if it means placing herself firmly in the killer's path.
©2009 Carolyn Hart (P)2012 Random House
Dead Man's Island
Summary
Dead Man's Island is the first installment of the Henrie O Mystery series. Chase Prescott, media magnate, is nearly killed by a box of cyanide candy. Fearing for his life, he calls his former lover, retired reporter Henrietta O'Dwyer Collins. His request is simple: He'll assemble all the suspects if she will kindly point out the would-be murderer. On Chase's private island off the South Carolina coast, Henrie O meets the players in this deadly drama: Prescott's unstable young wife, his sullen stepson, and his toady of a secretary. The field of suspects is wide, and Henrie O has her work cut out for her. As she unearths a will and new evidence, a killer hurricane sweeps up from Cuba, threatening to maroon them. But in this luxurious vacation spot, the storm's fury is less dangerous than the murderous greed of one of Prescott's guests.
©2009 Carolyn G. Hart (P)2012 Random House
Odd Numbers
Summary
On an early April afternoon, a bomb goes off in the Oslo offices of the National Council for Islam in Norway, killing 23 people. The police and security service suspect an extremist organization to be responsible for the attack, a suspicion that grows stronger when threats reach authorities of a bigger explosion planned for the celebration of the Norwegian constitution. As a special advisor on cold cases, Hanne Wilhelmsen has cut her official ties to the Security Service and lives contentedly - or at least as contentedly as she can manage - in solitude with her partner, Nefis, and their young daughter. A small computer monitor is Hanne's only window to the outside until the day of the attacks, when her closed-off world is broken open. Hanne is approached by her long-lost friend, Billy T., whose son, Linus, has recently undergone some disturbing changes. As the mood of the city darkens, Hanne tries to help Billy T. reach out to Linus and realizes that Oslo is up against forces far more terrible and menacing than ever before.
©2017 Anne Holt (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Walking on My Grave
Summary
In the latest Death on Demand Mystery from the New York Times best-selling author of Don't Go Home, book seller Annie Darling learns murder and money go hand in hand.... Annie's friend and fellow shop owner Ves Roundtree is a very wealthy woman. Her rich brother entrusted her with his estate, and upon her death, his fortune is to be divided. Several cash-strapped islanders are in line to collect life-changing inheritances. The problem is, Ves is very much alive. Ves hosts a dinner for the prospective beneficiaries and feels a chill in the air that has nothing to do with the wintry season. Not long after, she suffers a bad fall that is no accident. Everyone at the table has a motive, but not a shred of evidence is left behind. When one of the suspects is found floating in the harbor and Ves disappears, Annie and her husband, Max, spring into action to catch a calculating killer before greed takes another life.
©2017 Carolyn Hart (P)2017 Penguin Audio
Six Women of Salem
Summary
Six Women of Salem is the first work to use the lives of a select number of representative women as a microcosm to illuminate the larger crisis of the Salem witch trials. By the end of the trials, beyond the 20 who were executed and the five who perished in prison, 207 individuals had been accused, 74 had been "afflicted", 32 had officially accused their fellow neighbors, and 255 ordinary people had been inexorably drawn into that ruinous and murderous vortex, and this doesn't include the religious, judicial, and governmental leaders. All this adds up to what the Rev. Cotton Mather called "a desolation of names". The individuals involved are too often reduced to stock characters and stereotypes when accuracy is sacrificed to indignation. And although the flood of names and detail in the history of an extraordinary event like the Salem witch trials can swamp the individual lives involved, individuals still deserve to be remembered, and, in remembering specific lives, modern audiences can benefit from such historical intimacy. By examining the lives of six specific women, Marilynne Roach shows listeners what it was like to be present throughout this horrific time and how it was impossible to live through it unchanged.
©2013 Marilynne K. Roach (P)2014 Tantor
Dead Joker
Summary
From Anne Holt, the internationally best-selling author of 1222, comes the next installment in her Edgar Award-nominated mystery series. Chief Public Prosecutor Sigurd Halvorsrud's wife is found dead in front of the fireplace in the family living room. The cause of death: decapitation. Her husband, who witnessed the grisly murder and is himself covered in blood, immediately falls under suspicion, though he claims his wife's killer was Ståle Salvesen, a man he'd prosecuted years before. Detective Inspector Hanne Wilhelmsen is called in to lead the investigation with her old colleague, Billy T. Despite the circumstantial evidence, Hanne is unconvinced of Sigurd Halvorsrud's guilt - that is until a witness says he saw Ståle Salvesen commit suicide by jumping off a bridge days before the murder took place. Then a journalist at one of Oslo's largest newspapers is found beheaded. What links these two horrifically violent crimes? The demanding investigation soon clashes with a terrible crisis in Hanne's personal life. Cecilie, the woman she has lived with for almost 20 years, has fallen seriously ill and doesn't have much time to live. With a savage killer on the loose, Hanne must ask herself: Is the truth worth chasing at all costs?
©2016 Anne Holt (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Jane and His Lordship's Legacy
Summary
It's with a heavy heart that Jane Austen takes up a new residence at Chawton Cottage in Hampshire. Secretly mourning the lost love of her life, she's stunned to learn that the late Lord Harold Trowbridge has made her heir to an extraordinary bequest: a Bengal chest filled with his diaries, letters, and most intimate correspondence. From these, Jane is expected to write a memoir of the Gentleman Rogue for posterity. But before she can put pen to paper on this labor of love, she discovers a corpse in the cellar of her new home. The dead man was a common laborer, and a subsequent coroner's examination shows he was murdered elsewhere and transported to Chawton Cottage. Suddenly Jane and her family are thrust into the center of a brewing scandal in this provincial village that doesn't take kindly to outsiders in general - and to Austens in particular. And just as Jane glimpses a connection between the murder and the shattering truth concealed somewhere in Lord Harold's papers, violent death strikes yet another unsuspecting victim. Suddenly there are suspects and motives everywhere Jane looks - local burglaries, thwarted passions, would-be knights, and members of the royal family itself who want Lord Harold hushed...even in death. As the tale of one man's illustrious life unfolds - a life that runs a parallel course to the history of two continents - Jane races against time to catch a cunning killer before more innocent lives are taken. But her determination to protect Lord Harold's legacy could exact the costliest price of all: her own life. Jane and His Lordship's Legacy is historical suspense writing at its very finest, graced with insight, perception, and uncommon intelligence of its singular heroine in a mystery that will test the mettle of her mind and heart.
©2005 Stephanie Barron (P)2005 Books on Tape, Inc.
The Souvenir Museum
Summary
A Most Anticipated Book From: OprahMag.com * Refinery 29 * Seattle Times * LitHub * Houston Chronicle * The Millions * Buzzfeed One of the most treasured writers of our day, award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken is an undisputed virtuoso of the short story, and this new collection features her most vibrant and heartrending work to date In these stories, the mysterious bonds of family are tested, transformed, fractured, and fortified. A recent widower and his adult son ferry to a craggy Scottish island in search of puffins. An actress who plays a children’s game-show villainess ushers in the New Year with her deadbeat half brother. A mother, pining for her children, feasts on loaves of challah to fill the void. A new couple navigates a tightrope walk toward love. And on a trip to a Texas water park with their son, two fathers each confront a personal fear. With sentences that crackle and spark and showcase her trademark wit, McCracken traces how our closely held desires - for intimacy, atonement, comfort - bloom and wither against the indifferent passing of time. Her characters embark on journeys that leave them indelibly changed - and so do her fans. The Souvenir Museum showcases the talents of one of our finest contemporary writers as she tenderly takes the pulse of our collective and individual lives.
©2021 Elizabeth McCracken (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers
Don't Go Home
Summary
Annie Darling, owner of the Death on Demand mystery bookstore, is hosting a party to celebrate successful Southern literary icon - and former Broward's Rock resident - Alex Griffith and his best-selling new novel, Don't Go Home. But after the local paper announces that Griffith aims to reveal the real-life inspirations behind his characters, perhaps the author should take his own advice. Not everyone in town is ready to give him a glowing review. As Annie attempts damage control, her friend, Marian Kenyon, gets in a heated argument with Griffith. It's a fight Annie won't soon forget - especially after the author turns up dead. Despite an array of suspects to match Griffith's cast of characters - and a promise to her husband, Max, to steer clear of sleuthing - Annie's not about to let the police throw the book at her friend when the real killer remains at large.
©2015 Carolyn Hart (P)2015 Penguin Audio
Death Comes Silently
Summary
National best-selling author and winner of multiple Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Awards, Carolyn Hart continues to dazzle mystery fans with an all new Dead on Demand Mystery. Winter has arrived in Broward's Rock, South Carolina, and business has slowed for Annie Darling, owner of mystery bookstore Death on Demand. So when the island's resident writer publishes the latest in her popular mystery series, Annie jumps at the chance to host a book signing, even though it conflicts with her shift at the local charity shop, Better Tomorrow. Luckily, fellow volunteer Gretchen Burkholt agrees to sub for her. The signing goes well, but Gretchen interrupts the event multiple times, leaving voice mails about scandalous news she's dying to share. Even though Gretchen tends to be excitable, Annie heads over to Better Tomorrow, where she finds Gretchen dead on the floor, an axe by her side. Annie enlists the help of her husband, Max, to piece together a puzzle involving an overturned kayak, a stolen motorboat, a troubled love affair, and a reckless teenager. But she must tread carefully in her investigation, because a killer is on the loose, and that killer works well in the foggy days of winter....
©2012 Carolyn Hart (P)2012 Penguin
The Favored Queen
Summary
From the New York Times best-selling author of The Last Wife of Henry VIII comes a powerful and moving novel about Jane Seymour, third wife of Henry VIII, who married him only days after the execution of Anne Boleyn and ultimately lost her own life in giving him the son he badly needed to guarantee the Tudor succession. Born into an ambitious noble family, young Jane Seymour is sent to the court as a maid of honor to Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s aging queen. She is devoted to her mistress and watches with empathy as the calculating Anne Boleyn contrives to supplant her as queen. Anne’s singleminded intriguing threatens all who stand in her way; she does not hesitate to arrange the murder of a woman who knows a secret so dark that, if revealed, would make it impossible for the king to marry Anne. Once Anne becomes queen, no one at court is safe, and Jane herself becomes the victim of Anne’s venomous rage when she suspects Jane has become the object of the king’s lust. Henry, fearing that Anne’s inability to give him a son is a sign of divine wrath, asks Jane to become his next queen. Deeply reluctant to embark on such a dangerous course, Jane must choose between her heart and her loyalty to the king. Acclaimed biographer and best-selling novelist Carolly Erickson weaves another of her irresistible historical entertainments about the queen who finally gave Henry VIII his longed-for heir, set against the excitement and danger of the Tudor Court.
©2011 Carolly Erickson (P)2011 Macmillan Audio
Saranth Three
Summary
When the Star Nomad stops at the space station Saranth Three to drop off refugees, Captain Alisa Marchenko doesn’t expect any trouble. But not all is as it seems at the station, and she and her crew soon find themselves embroiled in a fight for their lives.
©2016 Lindsay Buroker (P)2021 Podium Audio
Dear Money
Summary
In this Pygmalion tale of a novelist turned bond trader, Martha McPhee brings to life the greed and riotous wealth of New York during the heady days of the second gilded age. India Palmer, living the cash-strapped existence of the writer, is visiting wealthy friends in Maine when a yellow biplane swoops down from the clear blue sky to bring a stranger into her life who will change everything. The stranger is Win Johns, a swaggering and intellectually bored trader of mortgage-backed securities. Charmed by India's intelligence, humor, and inquisitive nature, and aware of her near-desperate financial situation, Win poses a proposition: "Give me eighteen months and I'll make you a world-class bond trader." Shedding her artist's life with surprising ease, India embarks on a raucous ride to the top of the income chain, leveraging herself with crumbling real estate, never once looking back…or does she? With a light-handed irony that is by turns as measured as Claire Messud's and as biting as Tom Wolfe's, Martha McPhee tells the classic American story of people reinventing themselves, unaware of the price they must pay for their transformation.
©2010 Martha McPhee (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Aftershock
Summary
Stranded amid the stars. Fighting for survival. Appointed by the Power in the wake of their planet’s destruction, Gredin struggles to lead her 900 grief-stricken countrymen, and provide food for their tables when the Vennans’ supplies were only meant to last for four short days on Tradepoint. How can she comfort them and win their trust, with Tetralanna contradicting and undermining her at every turn? The Vokastra, owners of Tradepoint, want the 900 Vennans gone. Now. And the Hesch, a tall, surly, bird-like race, are furious with Gredin for accidentally injuring their leader, Nitikikani. No apology will suffice. They ban the Vennans from their maartza, ignoring the Vennans’ desperate need for supplies. Something else is afoot, as well – a mysterious malady that threatens to rob the Vennans of the very gyftes that give their lives purpose and their hearts hope. And Gredin, exhausted and disheartened, fails to notice that she is being stalked by a more immediate danger, one determined to drag her down to ruin. Or to her death. The Vennans are back! Join them in Aftershock, Book 2 of The Tradepoint Saga, a space opera featuring high adventure, mortal stakes, and multiple sentient species. Perfect for fans of CJ Cherryh, Arkady Martine, Wen Spencer, and Star Trek: Picard.
©2021 Aethon Books (P)2021 Aethon Audio
To the River
Summary
Over 60 years after Virginia Woolf drowned in the River Ouse, Olivia Laing set out one midsummer morning to walk its banks, from source to sea. Along the way, she explores the roles that rivers play in human lives, tracing their intricate flow through literature, mythology, and folklore. Lyrical and stirring, To the River is a passionate investigation into how history resides in a landscape - and how ghosts never quite leave the places they love.
©2019 Olivia Laing (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry
Summary
The singular, enchanting debut story collection from Elizabeth McCracken, now back as part of Ecco’s “Art of the Story” series and with a new introduction from the author. Called “astonishingly assured” by The Guardian, the nine stories that make up Elizabeth McCracken’s debut story collection deal with oddball characters doing their very best to forge connections with those around them. In “It’s Bad Luck to Die”, a woman marries an older tattoo artist and finds comfort in agreeing to act as a canvas for his most elaborate work. “Some Have Entertained Angels, Unaware” follows a young girl as she comes face-to-face with a cast of eccentrics her recently widowed father has invited to live in their expansive but dilapidated home. And in the title story, a young man and his wife are perplexed when an outspoken old woman shows up on their doorstep for a visit, claiming to be a distant aunt, even though she can’t be traced on a family tree. At once captivating and offbeat, Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry is a dazzling showcase of the early years of Elizabeth McCracken’s prodigious talent.
©2019 Elizabeth McCracken (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers
Queen Victoria
Summary
“The girl, the wife, the aged woman, were the same: vitality, conscientiousness, pride, and simplicity were hers to the latest hour.” A remarkably fresh and engaging account of Britain’s long-reigning monarch, Queen Victoria, who ascended to the throne at 18, in 1837, and died in 1901. Lytton Strachey captures her essential spirit in concise and elegant prose, with an eye and an ear keenly attuned to human nature, and its foibles. The portraits he draws of Victoria’s husband, Albert, her family members, and the procession of Prime Ministers, beginning with her beloved Lord M, are vivid and trenchant. Written only 20 years after her death, this biography exemplifies the emergence of modern thought from the Victorian Era.
Public Domain (P)2020 Madison Productions, with Spoken Realms, all rights reserved
Nora, Nora
Summary
Peyton is not ready to share her widowed father with anyone, let alone a barely remembered cousin who just rolled into town. However, her father seems to like Nora well enough, and prim Aunt Augusta hates her, which raises Nora slightly in Peyton's esteem. Maybe Nora is just what quiet Lytton, Georgia, needs this summer. The whole household is revitalized by Nora's energy, and it looks like she might stay on forever. But soon it becomes clear that something is troubling Nora deeply. It has to be something from her past that's bothering her, something she is running away from. When the shocking truth comes to light, it stuns the residents of their small segregated town. It also teaches Peyton the enormous cost of loving - and the necessity of doing it anyway.
©2000 Anne Rivers Siddons (P)2000 Books on Tape, Inc.; HarperCollins Publishers Inc.