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.
Tropic of Serpents
Summary
The thrilling adventure of Lady Trent continues in Marie Brennan's The Tropic of Serpents.… Attentive listeners of Lady Trent’s earlier memoir, A Natural History of Dragons, are already familiar with how a bookish and determined young woman named Isabella first set out on the historic course that would one day lead her to becoming the world’s premier dragon naturalist. Now, in this remarkably candid second volume, Lady Trent looks back at the next stage of her illustrious (and occasionally scandalous) career. Three years after her fateful journeys through the forbidding mountains of Vystrana, Mrs. Camherst defies family and convention to embark on an expedition to the war-torn continent of Eriga, home of such exotic draconian species as the grass-dwelling snakes of the savannah, arboreal tree snakes, and, most elusive of all, the legendary swamp wyrms of the tropics. The expedition is not an easy one. Accompanied by both an old associate and a runaway heiress, Isabella must brave oppressive heat, merciless fevers, palace intrigues, gossip, and other hazards in order to satisfy her boundless fascination with all things draconian, even if it means venturing deep into the forbidden jungle known as the Green Hell…where her courage, resourcefulness, and scientific curiosity will be tested as never before.
©2014 Bryn Neuenschwander (P)2014 Macmillan Audio
Paladin of Souls
Summary
Three years have passed since the widowed Dowager Royina Ista found release from the curse of madness that kept her imprisoned in her family's castle of Valenda. Her newfound freedom is costly, bittersweet with memories, regrets, and guilty secrets, for she knows the truth of what brought her land to the brink of destruction. And now the road, escape, beckons...A simple pilgrimage, perhaps. Quite fitting for the Dowager Royina of Chalion. Yet something else is free, too, something beyond deadly. To the north lies the vital border fortress of Porifors. Memories linger there as well, of wars and invasions and the mighty Golden General of Jokona. And someone, something, watches from across that border: humans, demons, gods. Ista thinks her little party of pilgrims wanders at will, but whose? When Ista's retinue is unexpectedly set upon not long into its travels, a mysterious ally appears, a warrior nobleman who fights like a berserker. The temporary safety of her enigmatic champion's castle cannot ease Ista's mounting dread, however, when she finds his dark secrets are entangled with hers in a net of the gods' own weaving. In her dreams, the threads are already drawing her to unforseen chances, fateful meetings, fearsome choices. What the inscrutable gods commanded of her in the past brought her land to the brink of devastation. Now, once again, they have chosen Ista as their instrument. And again, for good or for ill, she must comply.
©2003 Lois McMaster Bujold (P)2005 Blackstone Audiobooks
Summer Sisters
Summary
Number-one New York Times best seller In the summer of 1977, Victoria Leonard’s world changes forever when Caitlin Somers chooses her as a friend. Dazzling, reckless Caitlin welcomes Vix into the heart of her sprawling, eccentric family, opening doors to a world of unimaginable privilege, sweeping her away to vacations on Martha’s Vineyard, an enchanting place where the two friends become “summer sisters.” Now, years later, Vix is working in New York City. Caitlin is getting married on the Vineyard. And the early magic of their long, complicated friendship has faded. But Caitlin begs Vix to come to her wedding, to be her maid of honor. And Vix knows that she will go - because she wants to understand what happened during that last shattering summer. And, after all these years, she needs to know why her best friend - her summer sister - still has the power to break her heart. Praise for Summer Sisters “Compulsively readable... [Blume’s] powers are prodigious.” (The New York Times Book Review) “As warm as a summer breeze blowing through your hair, as nostalgic as James Taylor singing ‘How Sweet It Is.’ You remember. So does Judy Blume. How sweet it was.” (Chicago Tribune) “An exceptionally moving story that can leave the reader laughing and crying...sometimes at the same time... Blume creates a rich tapestry of characters.” (The Denver Post) “Blume’s characters still tend to hover after the book is set aside.... She catches perfectly the well-armored love between longtime female friends.” (The Seattle Times)
©2015 Judy Blume (P)2015 Random House Audio
The Smartest Kids in the World
Summary
How do other countries create "smarter" kids? In a handful of nations, virtually all children are learning to make complex arguments and solve problems they've never seen before. They are learning to think, in other words, and to thrive in the modern economy.What is it like to be a child in the world's new education superpowers? In a global quest to find answers for our own children, author and Time magazine journalist Amanda Ripley follows three Americans embedded in these countries for one year. Kim, 15, raises $10,000 so she can move from Oklahoma to Finland; Eric, 18, exchanges a high-achieving Minnesota suburb for a booming city in South Korea; and Tom, 17, leaves a historic Pennsylvania village for Poland. Through these young informants, Ripley meets battle-scarred reformers, sleep-deprived zombie students, and a teacher who earns $4 million a year. Their stories, along with groundbreaking research into learning in other cultures, reveal a pattern of startling transformation: none of these countries had many "smart" kids a few decades ago. Things had changed. Teaching had become more rigorous; parents had focused on things that mattered; and children had bought into the promise of education. A journalistic tour de force, The Smartest Kids in the World is a book about building resilience in a new world-as told by the young Americans who have the most at stake.
©2013 Amanda Ripley (P)2013 Tantor
A Duke in Shining Armor
Summary
Not all dukes are created equal. Most are upstanding members of society. And then there's the trio known as Their Dis-Graces. Hugh Philemon Ancaster, seventh Duke of Ripley, will never win prizes for virtue. But even he draws the line at running off with his best friend's bride. All he's trying to do is recapture the slightly inebriated Lady Olympia Hightower and return her to her intended bridegroom. For reasons that elude her, bookish, bespectacled Olympia is supposed to marry a gorgeous rake of a duke. The ton is flabbergasted. Her family's ecstatic. And Olympia? She's climbing out of a window, bent on a getaway. But tall, dark, and exasperating Ripley is hot on her trail, determined to bring her back to his friend. For once, the world-famous hellion is trying to do the honorable thing. So why does Olympia have to make it so deliciously difficult for him?
©2017 Loretta Chekani (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
Lord of Scoundrels
Summary
< i>They call him many names, but angelic isn't one of them. Sebastian Ballister, the notorious Marquess of Dain, is big, bad, and dangerous to know. No respectable woman would have anything to do with the "Bane and Blight of the Ballisters", and he wants nothing to do with respectable women. He's determined to continue doing what he does best - sin and sin again - and all's going swimmingly…until the day a shop door opens and she walks in. She's too intelligent to fall for the worst man in the world. Jessica Trent is a determined young woman, and she's going to drag her imbecile brother off the road to ruin, no matter what it takes. If saving him - and with him her family and future - means taking on the devil himself, she won't back down. The trouble is, the devil in question is so shockingly irresistible that the person who needs saving most is Jessica herself.
©1995 Loretta Chekani (P)2014 Blackstone Audio
Boneshaker
Summary
In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska’s ice. Thus was Dr. Blue’s Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born. But on its first test run the Boneshaker went terribly awry, destroying several blocks of downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas that turned anyone who breathed it into the living dead. Now it is 16 years later, and a wall has been built to enclose the devastated and toxic city. Just beyond it lives Blue’s widow, Briar Wilkes. Life is hard with a ruined reputation and a teenaged boy to support, but she and Ezekiel are managing. Until Ezekiel undertakes a secret crusade to rewrite history. His quest will take him under the wall and into a city teeming with ravenous undead, air pirates, criminal overlords, and heavily armed refugees. And only Briar can bring him out alive.
©2009 Cherie Priest (P)2010 Macmillan Audio
Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell
Summary
When the familiar and seemingly safe turns lethal, therein danger lies. Amid a forest where the shades of the dead linger all around, every homesteader knows to follow the Simple Rules: "Don't kindle flame, don't shed the blood of another, don't run at night. These things draw shades." Silence Montane has broken all three rules on more than one occasion. And to protect her family from a murderous gang with high bounties on their heads, Silence will break every rule again, at the risk of becoming a shade herself.
©2013 Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC (P)2015 Audible, Inc.
Elizabeth I
Summary
New York Times best-selling author Margaret George captures history's most enthralling queen as she confronts rivals to her throne and to her heart. One of today's premier historical novelists, George dazzles here as she tackles her most difficult subject yet: the legendary Elizabeth Tudor, queen of enigma - the Virgin Queen who had many suitors; the victor of the Armada who hated war; the gorgeously attired, jewel-bedecked woman who pinched pennies. England's greatest monarch has baffled and intrigued the world for centuries. What was she really like? In this novel, her flame-haired, lookalike cousin, Lettice Knollys, thinks she knows all too well. Elizabeth's rival for the love of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and mother to the Earl of Essex, the mercurial nobleman who challenged Elizabeth's throne, Lettice had been intertwined with Elizabeth since childhood. This is a story of two women of fierce intellect and desire, one trying to protect her country and throne, the other trying to regain power and position for her family - and each vying to convince the listener of her own private vision of the truth about Elizabeth's character. Their gripping drama is acted out at the height Elizabethan age's flowering. Shakespeare, Marlowe, Dudley, Raleigh, Drake - all of them swirl through this novel as they swirled through the court and on the high seas. This is a magnificent, stay-up-all-night listen that is George's finest and most compelling novel and one that is sure to please readers and listeners of Alison Weir, Philippa Gregory, and Hilary Mantel.
©2011 Margaret George (P)2011 Penguin
Madame Bovary
Summary
Set amid the stifling atmosphere of 19th-century bourgeois France, Madame Bovary is at once an unsparing depiction of a woman’s gradual corruption and a savagely ironic study of human shallowness and stupidity. Neither Emma, nor her lovers, nor Homais, the man of science, escapes the author’s searing castigation, and it is the book’s final profound irony that only Charles, Emma’s oxlike, eternally deceived husband, emerges with a measure of human grace through his stubborn and selfless love. With its rare formal perfection, Madame Bovary represents, as Frank O’Connor has declared, “possibly the most beautifully written book ever composed; undoubtedly the most beautifully written novel…a book that invites superlatives…the most important novel of the century.”
Public Domain (P)2010 Penguin Audio
Five Days Gone
Summary
Nominated for the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography One of NPR's Best Books of the Year Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize Longlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize The acclaimed New York Times best-selling author of The Vanishing Velazquez shares a riveting true story “with as many twists and turns as any mystery” (Los Angeles Times) describing her mother’s mysterious kidnapping as a toddler in a small English coastal village - “an incredible and incredibly unusual book about family secrets” (Nick Hornby, The Believer). In the fall of 1929, when Laura Cumming’s mother was three years old, she was kidnapped from a beach on the Lincolnshire coast of England. There were no screams when she was taken, suggesting the culprit was someone familiar to her, and when she turned up again in a nearby village several days later, she was happy and in perfect health. No one was ever accused of a crime. The incident quickly faded from her memory, and her parents never discussed it. To the contrary, they deliberately hid it from her, and she did not learn of it for half a century. This was not the only secret her parents kept from her. For many years, while raising her in draconian isolation and protectiveness, they also hid the fact that she’d been adopted and that shortly after the kidnapping, her name was changed from Grace to Betty. “Both page-turning and richly absorbing” (The Providence Journal), On Chapel Sands (originally titled Five Days Gone) unspools the tale of Cumming’s mother’s life and unravels the multiple mysteries at its core. Using photographs from the time, historical documents, and works of art, Cumming investigates this case of stolen identity with the toolset of a detective and the unique intimacy of a daughter trying to understand her family’s past and its legacies. “Brilliant” (The Guardian) and “a story told with such depth of feeling and observation and such lyrical writing I couldn’t put it down” (Anna Quindlen), On Chapel Sands is a masterful blend of memoir and history, an extraordinary personal narrative unlike any other.
©2019 Laura Cumming (P)2019 Simon & Schuster Audio
Longitude
Summary
An exciting scientific adventure from the days of wooden ships and iron men, Longitude is full of heroism and chicanery, brilliance and the absurd. It is also a captivating brief history of astronomy, navigation and clockmaking. During the great ages of exploration, "the longitude problem" was the gravest of all scientific challenges. Lacking the ability to determine their longitude, sailors were literally lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land. Ships ran aground on rocky shores; those traveling well-known routes were easy prey to pirates. In 1714, England's Parliament offered a huge reward to anyone whose method of measuring longitude could be proven successful. The scientific establishment--from Galileo to Sir Isaac Newton--had mapped the heavens in its certainty of a celestial answer. In stark contrast, one man, John Harrison, dared to imagine a mechanical solution--a clock that would keep precise time at sea, something no clock had been able to do on land. And the race was on....
©2005 Dava Sobel (P)2009 Random House
Transit
Summary
The stunning second novel of a trilogy that began with Outline, one of The New York Times Book Review's 10 best books of 2015. In the wake of her family's collapse, a writer and her two young sons move to London. The process of this upheaval is the catalyst for a number of transitions - personal, moral, artistic, and practical - as she endeavors to construct a new reality for herself and her children. In the city, she is made to confront aspects of living that she has, until now, avoided, and to consider questions of vulnerability and power, death and renewal, in what becomes her struggle to reattach herself to, and believe in, life. Filtered through the impersonal gaze of its keenly intelligent protagonist, Transit sees Rachel Cusk delve deeper into the themes first raised in her critically acclaimed novel Outline and offers up a penetrating and moving reflection on childhood and fate, the value of suffering, the moral problems of personal responsibility, and the mystery of change. In this second book of a precise, short, yet epic, cycle, Cusk describes the most elemental experiences, the liminal qualities of life. She captures with unsettling restraint and honesty the longing to both inhabit and flee one's life, and the wrenching ambivalence animating our desire to feel real.
©2016 Rachel Cusk (P)2017 Audible, Inc.
The Onion Girl
Summary
In his stunning works of magic and danger in the modern world, Charles de Lint has brought an entire imaginary North American city to vivid life: Newford, where magic lights the dark streets, myths walk clothed in modern shapes, and a broad cast of extraordinary people work to keep the whole world turning. At the center of it all stands a young artist named Jilly Coppercorn, with her tangled hair and paint-splattered jeans, whose paintings capture the hidden beings that dwell in the city's shadows. Now, at last, de Lint tells Jilly's own story; for behind the painter's fey charm lies a dark secret that she's labored to forget. "I'm the onion girl," Jilly Coppercorn says. "Pull back the layers of my life, and you won't find anything at the core. Just a broken child. A hollow girl. She's very, very good at running - but the past has come to claim her now."
©2001 Charles de Lint (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Within the Sanctuary of Wings
Summary
Within the Sanctuary of Wings is the conclusion to Marie Brennan's thrilling Lady Trent Memoirs. After nearly five decades (and, indeed, the same number of volumes), one might think they were well acquainted with Lady Isabella Trent - dragon naturalist, scandalous explorer, and perhaps as infamous for her company and feats of daring as she is famous for her discoveries and additions to the scientific field. And yet - after her initial adventure in the mountains of Vystrana and her exploits in the depths of war-torn Eriga, to the high seas aboard the Basilisk and then to the inhospitable deserts of Akhia - Lady Trent has captivated hearts along with fierce minds. This concluding volume will finally reveal the truths behind her most notorious adventure - scaling the tallest peak in the world, buried behind the territory of Scirland's enemies - and what she discovered there, Within the Sanctuary of Wings.
©2017 Bryn Neuenschwander (P)2017 Macmillan Audio
Like Water for Chocolate
Summary
The #1 best seller in Mexico in 1990, Like Water for Chocolate is a romantic, poignant tale of family life in turn-of-the-century Mexico. Tita is the youngest daughter of Mama Elena, the tyrannical owner of the De la Garza ranch. As the youngest, she is expected to remain single and stay at home to care for her mother. So when Tita falls in love, Mama Elena arranges for Tita's older sister to marry Tita's young man. As punishment, Tita is forced to bake the wedding cake. The bitter tears Tita weeps while stirring the batter provoke a remarkable reaction among the guests who eat the cake. It's apparent then that Tita's culinary talents are unique.
©1989 Laura Esquivel (P)1994 Books on Tape, Inc.
And Only to Deceive
Summary
For Emily, accepting the proposal of Philip, the viscount Ashton, was an easy way to escape her overbearing mother, who was set on a grand society match. So when Emily's dashing husband died on safari soon after their wedding, she felt little grief. After all, she barely knew him. Now, nearly two years later, she discovers that Philip was a far different man from the one she had married so cavalierly. His journals reveal him to have been a gentleman scholar and antiquities collector who, to her surprise, was deeply in love with his wife. Emily's intellectual pursuits and her desire to learn more about Philip take her to the quiet corridors of the British Museum, one of her husband's favorite places. There she uncovers a dark, dangerous secret involving stolen artifacts from the Greco-Roman galleries. And to complicate matters, she's juggling two very prominent and wealthy suitors, one of whose intentions may go beyond the marrying kind. As she sets out to solve the crime, her search leads to more surprises about Philip and causes her to question the role in Victorian society to which she, as a woman, is relegated.
©2005 Tasha Tyska (P)2015 Tantor
End Game
Summary
Alisa Marchenko has reunited with her daughter, and even though she hasn't figured out how to get Jelena to accept Leonidas yet, she dreams of the three of them starting a new life together. They can return the Star Nomad to its original purpose of running freight and staying out of trouble (mostly). Before that can happen, Alisa must fulfill the promise she made to Jelena: that she and her crew will retrieve young Prince Thorian, the boy who has become Jelena's best friend. But Thorian was kidnapped by the rogue Starseer Tymoteusz, the man who wants to use the Staff of Lore to take over the entire system - and the man who may have the power to do it. Alisa doesn't know why he kidnapped Thorian, but Tymoteusz once promised to kill the prince, so she fears they don't have much time. Unfortunately, Tymoteusz hasn't left a trail of breadcrumbs. Finding him will be difficult, and even if they're successful, facing him could be suicidal. To have a chance of surviving, Alisa will have to come up with her greatest scheme yet.
©2018 Lindsay Buroker; 2016 Lindsay Buroker (P)2018 Podium Publishing
Book of the Dead
Summary
The "book of the dead" is the morgue log, a ledger in which all cases are entered by hand. For Kay Scarpetta, however, it is about to take on a new meaning. Fresh from her bruising battle with a psychopath in Florida, Scarpetta decides it's time for a change of pace. Moving to Charleston, South Carolina, she opens a unique private forensic pathology practice, one in which she and her colleagues, including Pete Marino and her niece, Lucy, offer expert crime-scene investigation and autopsy services to communities lacking local access to competent death investigation and modern technology. It seems like an ideal situation, until the new battles start: with local politicians, with entrenched interests, with someone whose covert attempts at sabotage are clearly meant to run her out of town. And that's before the murders and other violent deaths even begin. A 16-year-old tennis star, fresh from a tourament win in Charleston, is found nude and mutilated near Piazza Navona in Rome. The body of an abused young boy is discovered dumped in a desolate marsh. A woman is found ritualistically murdered in her multimillion-dollar beach home. Meanwhile, in distant New England, problems with a prominent patient at a Harvard-affiliated psychiatric hospital begin to hint at interconnections that are as hard to imagine as they are horrible. Scarpetta has dealt with many brutal and unusual crimes before, but never any as baffling, or as terrifying, as the ones confronting her now. Before she is through, that book of the dead will contain many names - and the pen may be poised to write in her own.
©2007 Cornwell Enterprises, Inc (P)2007 Penguin Audio, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
The Scarpetta Factor
Summary
It is the week before Christmas. A tanking economy has prompted Dr. Kay Scarpetta - despite her busy schedule and her continuing work as the senior forensic analyst for CNN - to offer her services pro bono to New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. In no time at all, her increased visibility seems to precipitate a string of unexpected and unsettling events. She is asked live on the air about the sensational case of Hannah Starr, who has vanished and is presumed dead. Moments later during the same telecast she receives a startling call-in from a former psychiatrist patient of Benton Wesley's. When she returns after the show to the apartment where she and Benton live, she finds an ominous package - possibly a bomb - waiting for her at the front desk. Soon the apparent threat on Scarpetta's life finds her embroiled in a surreal plot that includes a famous actor accused of an unthinkable sex crime and the disappearance of a beautiful millionaires with whom Lucy seems to have shared a secret past. Scarpetta's CNN producer wants her to launch a TV show called The Scarpetta Factor. Given the bizarre events already in play, she fears that her growing fame will generate the illusion that she has a "special factor", a mythical ability to solve all her cases. She wonders if she will end up like other TV personalities: her own stereotype. The Scarpetta Factor, the 17th in the series, finds the familiar cast of characters together again in New York. Marino is working for the NYPD; Benton Wesley uses his forensic psychological expertise at Kirby and Bellevue; and Lucy continues to dazzle with her expertise in forensic computer investigations as she works yet another case with New York prosecutor Jaime Berger.
©2009 Patricia Cornwell (P)2009 Penguin