Kathleen Gati has narrated 39 audiobooks on Listento.it by 44 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.6★ across 1,420 ratings. The most-rated is A Christmas Carol.
A Severed Wasp
Summary
A retired musician returns to performing in this “soul-satisfying” novel from the award-winning author of A Wrinkle in Time (Norman Lear).
Now in her 70s, Katherine Vigneras, née Forrester, has returned to New York City after a successful career touring as a concert pianist in Europe. Much has changed for Katherine: She is widowed and retired, and has lived through the harrowing years of World War II.
But when she encounters an old face from her youth in Greenwich Village, Katherine finds herself agreeing to perform at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, an endeavor that proves to be unexpectedly rewarding - and challenging.
Touching and thought-provoking, A Severed Wasp explores the ebbs and flows in the life of an artist, and continues the story of the singular character who began Madeleine L’Engle’s accomplished career as a writer in her debut novel, The Small Rain.
©1982 Crosswicks, Ltd. (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved
Last Bullet Calls It
Summary
In this award-winning mystery by one of Israel's best-loved authors, a plot of vengeance reveals deeper truths about the complexity of being human. Coupon-clipping police superintendent Jonah Merlin thinks he has an open-and-shut case on his hands after the body of a beautiful woman is found discarded in a run-down building in Tel Aviv. All evidence points to two suspects, but finding them will require unorthodox methods to decode the cryptic words sprayed at every crime scene. As the body count rises, graffiti expert Rai Zitrin and precocious 17-year-old Zoe Navon agree to help Merlin uncover the connection between the killing spree and the words of Polish writer Bruno Schulz, who was murdered by Nazis 70 years ago. Why would a serial killer quote the famous author's poetic words of unrequited love? The search leads this unlikely trio on a race against the clock to solve the case before the killer has the last laugh...and the last bullet.
©2014 Amir Gutfreund. Translation © 2017 Yardenne Greenspan and Evan Fallenberg. (P)2017 2017 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
House of Bathory
Summary
In the early 1600s, Elizabeth Báthory, the infamous Blood Countess, ruled Cachtice Castle in the hinterlands of Slovakia. During bizarre nightly rites, she tortured and killed the young women she had taken on as servants. A devil, a demon, the terror of Royal Hungary — she bathed in their blood to preserve her own youth. 400 years later, echoes of the Countess’s legendary brutality reach Aspen, Colorado. Betsy Path, a psychoanalyst of uncommon intuition, has a breakthrough with sullen teenager Daisy Hart. Together, they are haunted by the past, as they struggle to understand its imprint upon the present. Betsy and her troubled but perceptive patient learn the truth: The curse of the House of Bathory lives still and has the power to do evil even now. The story, brimming with palace intrigue, memorable characters intimately realized, and a wealth of evocative detail, travels back and forth between the familiar, modern world and a seventeenth-century Eastern Europe brought startlingly to life.
©2013 Linda Lafferty (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
The Girl Who Fought Napoleon
Summary
In a sweeping story straight out of Russian history, Tsar Alexander I and a courageous girl named Nadezhda Durova join forces against Napoleon. It's 1803, and an adolescent Nadya is determined not to follow in her overbearing Ukrainian mother's footsteps. She's a horsewoman, not a housewife. When Tsar Paul is assassinated in St. Petersburg and a reluctant and naive Alexander is crowned emperor, Nadya runs away from home and joins the Russian cavalry in the war against Napoleon. Disguised as a boy and riding her spirited stallion, Alcides, Nadya rises in the ranks, even as her father begs the tsar to find his daughter and send her home. Both Nadya and Alexander defy expectations - she as a heroic fighter and he as a spiritual seeker - while the battles of Austerlitz, Friedland, Borodino, and Smolensk rage on. In a captivating tale that brings Durova's memoirs to life, from bloody battlefields to glittering palaces, two rebels dare to break free of their expected roles and discover themselves in the process.
©2016 Linda Lafferty (P)2016 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Dorothea Lange
Summary
Winner of the 2010 Bancroft Prize and finalist for the 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Biography: The definitive biography of a heroic chronicler of America's Depression and one of the 20th century's greatest photographers. We all know Dorothea Lange's iconic photos - the Migrant Mother holding her child, the shoeless children of the Dust Bowl - but now renowned American historian Linda Gordon brings them to three-dimensional life in this groundbreaking exploration of Lange's transformation into a documentarist. Using Lange's life to anchor a moving social history of 20th-century America, Gordon masterfully re-creates bohemian San Francisco, the Depression, and the Japanese-American internment camps. Gordon has written a sparkling, fast-moving story that testifies to her status as one of the most gifted historians of our time.
©2009 Linda Gordon (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The Red Daughter
Summary
Running from her father’s brutal legacy, Joseph Stalin’s daughter defects to the United States during the turbulence of the 1960s. For fans of We Were the Lucky Ones and A Gentleman in Moscow, this sweeping historical novel and unexpected love story is inspired by the remarkable life of Svetlana Alliluyeva. “The Red Daughter does exactly what good historical fiction should do: It sends you down the rabbit hole to read and learn more.” (The New York Times Book Review) In one of the most momentous events of the Cold War, Svetlana Alliluyeva, the only daughter of the Soviet despot Joseph Stalin, abruptly abandoned her life in Moscow in 1967, arriving in New York to throngs of reporters and a nation hungry to hear her story. By her side is Peter Horvath, a young lawyer sent by the CIA to smuggle Svetlana into America. She is a contradictory celebrity: charismatic and headstrong, lonely and haunted, excited and alienated by her adopted country’s radically different society. Persuading herself that all she yearns for is a simple American life, she attempts to settle into a suburban existence in Princeton, New Jersey. But one day an invitation from the widow of the architect Frank Lloyd Wright arrives, and Svetlana impulsively joins her cultlike community at Taliesin West. When this dream ends in disillusionment, Svetlana reaches out to Peter, the one person who understands how the chains of her past still hold her prisoner. Their relationship changes and deepens, moving from America to England to the Soviet Union and back again, unfolding under the eyes of her CIA minders, and Svetlana’s and Peter’s private lives are no longer their own. Novelist John Burnham Schwartz’s father was in fact the young lawyer who escorted Svetlana Alliluyeva to the United States. Drawing upon private papers and years of extensive research, Schwartz imaginatively re-creates the story of an extraordinary, troubled woman’s search for a new life and a place to belong, in the powerful, evocative prose that has made him an acclaimed author of literary and historical fiction. Praise for The Red Daughter “Svetlana Alliluyeva’s life was endlessly fascinating, often heartbreaking, and ultimately heroic. I don’t think any writer alive could have told her story more beautifully than John Burnham Schwartz.” (David Benioff, co-creator of HBO’s Game of Thrones and author of City of Thieves) “The Red Daughter is an intimate, intricate look at the collision of geopolitics with a private life: surprising and engaging from beginning to end.” (Jennifer Egan)
©2019 John Burnham Schwartz (P)2019 Random House Audio
The Photographer
Summary
From the bestselling author of The Glassblower Trilogy comes an inspiring historical saga of a female photographer who must defy convention to live her dreams in turn-of-the-century Germany. In 1905, on her twenty-sixth birthday, Mimi Reventlow receives a marriage proposal from the vicar of her family’s church. But a future of housework, childcare, and servicing a parish doesn’t appeal to the restless and unconventional Mimi. She has ambitions of her own--to follow in the footsteps of her beloved uncle Josef and become a traveling photographer. Leaving behind all that has been mapped out for her, Mimi dares to pursue her passion and sets out alone to make her own mark. A visit to her ailing uncle in the idyllic mountain town of Laichingen, Germany, pauses Mimi’s journey. Here, among provincialism and rejection, she struggles to find her place within a vibrant but wary community. But Mimi’s resilience is only strengthened by adversity. Her courage is indomitable. Maybe here, among surprising kindred spirits and longing hearts, in a place she never expected, Mimi’s dreams might be coming into focus.
©2018 Petra Durst-Benning; Translation © 2020 by Edwin Miles. (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved
When Marina Abramovic Dies
Summary
Marina Abramovic, the legendary performance artist, is legendary for a reason. She has spent four decades making traumatic and transcendent artworks using her own body as a material, breaking through the boundaries of the acceptable in visual art. In the early 1970s alone, she lost consciousness while lying in the center of a burning five-pointed star (symbol of the communism of her native Yugoslavia), took pills to induce hyperactivity and then catatonia, and remained determinedly passive as an audience member pushed a loaded gun to her neck. When Marina Abramovic Dies examines the extraordinary life and death-defying work of one of contemporary art's most important and pioneering performance artists. It chronicles the artist's formative and until now undocumented years in Yugoslavia and looks closely at Abramovic's partnership with the German artist Ulay - one of the twentieth century's great examples of the fusion of artistic and private life. In their final performance, Abramovic and Ulay walked toward each other from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China until, after ninety days, they met in the middle and said goodbye. In one of many performances of the renewed solo career that followed, Abramovic famously lived in a New York gallery for twelve days without eating or speaking, nourished only by eye contact with the audience. It was here, in 2002, that author James Westcott first encountered Abramovic, beginning an exceptionally close collaboration of biographer and subject. For When Marina Abramovic Dies, Westcott draws on his personal observations of Abramovic, his unprecedented access to her archive, and hundreds of hours of interviews with the artist and the people closest to her. The result is a unique and vivid portrait of the charismatic self-proclaimed "grandmother of performance art."
©2010 James Westcott (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Together
Summary
The only way they would survive, was if they stayed...together. Sala Schonwetter lived the perfect life. Married to the man of her dreams, mother to two beautiful children, and a member of one of the most respected families in town; she had it all. The year was 1939, and the world was about to change. In a heartbreaking instant, she had to trade her life of security, family, and simple pleasures - for one of unspeakable loneliness, hardship, and danger. Nothing more than hunted prey, she relied on her inner strength and indomitable will to keep her children alive. But would it be enough? How far would she have to go, and did she have the resolve to get there? One thing she knew for sure..she and her children would live or die one way...together. Manek was six years old when his world began to collapse. At first, his young eyes failed to see it, but reality came quickly into focus when his loving gentle mother was forced to beat him in order to save his life. That is when he realized the Nazis wanted to kill him. Suddenly thrust into a new role as man of the house, would he be able to help keep his family safe? Was he strong enough to protect them? He knew only one thing...they would survive if they could stay...together. In Together: A Journey for Survival, Ann Arnold shares her family's journey through Poland's countryside as a war of nations thunders around them. The story displays the magnificent strength of a mother's love and the incredible courage of good people during the worst of times. "An important work. Ann Arnold's effort to both tell their tale of her family's survival during the Holocaust while being a part of encouraging the next generation to embrace tolerance is inspiring." (Michael Cohen, The Simon Wiesenthal Center) "A fascinating story that takes a reader inside an already wounded family toiling through horrific difficulty in the pursuit of life itself...it forces readers to ask themselves if they could endure a struggle or whether they might support another person in a life or death battle. This angle makes the book valuable for teachers to use and beneficial for students to read at the high school level." (Lawrence M. Glaser, NJ Commission on Holocaust Education) "Incredible story" (Northern Valley Press) "Arnold’s perspective is colored not only by those non-Jews who saved her father’s family but also by her experience visiting Brzostek as an adult." (New Jersey Jewish News)
©2016 Ann Arnold (P)2019 Ann Arnold
Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots
Summary
This is a story about accepting the people we love - the people we have to love and the people we choose to love, the families we’re given and the families we make. It’s the story of two women adrift in New York, a widow and an almost-orphan, each searching for someone she’s lost. It’s the story of how, even in moments of grief and darkness, there are joys waiting nearby. Lorca spends her life poring over cookbooks, making croissants and chocolat chaud, seeking out rare ingredients, all to earn the love of her distracted chef of a mother, who is now packing her off to boarding school. In one last effort to prove herself indispensable, Lorca resolves to track down the recipe for her mother’s ideal meal, an obscure Middle Eastern dish called masgouf. Victoria, grappling with her husband’s death, has been dreaming of the daughter they gave up forty years ago. An Iraqi Jewish immigrant who used to run a restaurant, she starts teaching cooking lessons; Lorca signs up. Together, they make cardamom pistachio cookies, baklava, kubba with squash. They also begin to suspect they are connected by more than their love of food. Soon, though, they must reckon with the past, the future, and the truth - whatever it might be. Bukra fil mish mish, the Arabic saying goes. Tomorrow, apricots may bloom.
©2013 Jessica Soffer (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Benjamin's Crossing
Summary
The acclaimed and now-classic biographical novel of Walter Benjamin's last days - adapted into screenplay by Jay Parini. It is 1940. For the past decade, Walter Benjamin - the German-Jewish critic and philosopher - has been writing his masterpiece in a library in Paris, a city he loves. Now, Nazi tanks have overrun the suburbs, and Benjamin is forced to flee. With a battered briefcase that contains his precious manuscript of a thousand handwritten pages, he sets off for the border and is led by chance to a young anti-Nazi who is taking Jews and other refugees over the Pyrenees into Spain, where they may (with luck) make their way to freedom in Portugal or South America. Beloved biographical novelist Jay Parini's thrilling tale of escape is beautifully interwoven with vignettes of Benjamin's complex, cosmopolitan past: his privileged childhood in Berlin, his years with the German Youth Movement, his university days, his close friendship with Gershom Scholem, the eminent scholar of Jewish mysticism, and many other well-known artists and intellectuals who were part of Benjamin's intimate circle between the two World Wars. Part tragedy, part dark comedy, this sharply realized historical novel tells one of the great and most moving peripheral stories of the Holocaust.
©1996 Jay Parini (P)2021 Random House Audio
The Blackbird Girls
Summary
National Jewish Book Award Winner A Sydney Taylor Middle Grade Honor Book Like Ruta Sepetys for middle grade, Anne Blankman pens a poignant and timeless story of friendship that twines together moments in underexplored history. On a spring morning, neighbors Valentina Kaplan and Oksana Savchenko wake up to an angry red sky. A reactor at the nuclear power plant where their fathers work - Chernobyl - has exploded. Before they know it, the two girls, who've always been enemies, find themselves on a train bound for Leningrad to stay with Valentina's estranged grandmother, Rita Grigorievna. In their new lives in Leningrad, they begin to learn what it means to trust another person. Oksana must face the lies her parents told her all her life. Valentina must keep her grandmother's secret, one that could put all their lives in danger. And both of them discover something they've wished for: a best friend. But how far would you go to save your best friend's life? Would you risk your own? Told in alternating perspectives among three girls - Valentina and Oksana in 1986 and Rifka in 1941 - this story shows that hatred, intolerance, and oppression are no match for the power of true friendship.
©2020 Anne Blankman (P)2020 Listening Library
An Artificial Light
Summary
A defiant woman in pre-World War I Germany carves out her own unconventional destiny as the enthralling Photographer’s Saga continues. Germany, 1911. Certain things are expected of a woman. Defiant Mimi Reventlow has chosen to be the woman she wants to be. For now, that’s the resident, if temporary, photographer in Laichingen. Here, against the odds, in a vocation uncommon for her gender, she maintains a struggling studio. She cares for her aging uncle and mentor. She’s captured the affections of a roguish young local. And she dares to engage in a secret affair with Johann, the village’s prodigal son. But when tragedy strikes, Mimi’s world is thrown into a state of flux. Remain in a place she calls home? Stay loyal to the man she loves? Or follow her true calling, on the road, as a photographer of roving independence? Through dizzying betrayals, breathtaking new passions - both personal and professional - and the rumors of war, Mimi’s next choice could change her life once again. So could the risks. But as Mimi knows, taking risks is at the heart of all women who dream of a future. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2019 by Petra Durst-Benning. Translation © 2020 by Edwin Miles. (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
This Terrible Beauty
Summary
From the bestselling author of The Forgotten Hours comes an unforgettable story of one woman’s journey to reclaim what she lost in a country torn apart by the devastating legacy of WWII. On the windswept shores of an East German island, Bettina Heilstrom struggles to build a life from the ashes. World War II has ended, and her country is torn apart. Longing for a family, she marries Werner, an older bureaucrat who adores her. But after joining the fledgling secret police, he is drawn deep into its dark mission and becomes a dangerous man. When Bettina falls in love with an idealistic young renegade, Werner discovers her infidelity and forces her to make a terrible choice: spend her life in prison or leave her home forever. Either way she loses both her lover and child. Ten years later, Bettina has reinvented herself as a celebrated photographer in Chicago, but she’s never stopped yearning for the baby she left behind. Surprised by an unexpected visitor from her past, she resolves to return to her ravaged homeland to reclaim her daughter and uncover her beloved’s fate, whatever the cost.
©2020 Katrin Schumann (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
The Girl with the Golden Scissors
Summary
From the bestselling author of The Lioness of Morocco and The Elephant Keeper’s Daughter, the story of an ambitious young woman discovering friendship, love, and her own identity on the eve of World War I. Christmas 1889. A baby is born in the early hours at Vienna General Hospital, only to be abandoned by her unwed mother and entrusted to a foundling home and its loving caretaker. Fanny Schindler grows from a precocious girl into a strong-willed young woman. Undeterred by the rules of her station, she’s determined to rise above her humble origins and pursue her dreams at all costs, becoming an apprentice to one of the most glamorous fashion houses in Austria-Hungary. All the while, as Fanny searches for a sense of belonging, her path crosses with those of three people who will change her future. To one, she is a cherished friend. To another, a confidant. And to a handsome career soldier, something more. When hostilities in Europe burst into flame as a brutal world war, the future of the dual monarchy is at stake, friendships are strained, loyalties are tested, and everything is at risk. And when long-buried secrets about Fanny’s past come to light, she must decide what truly matters - and what is worth fighting for in a new world of infinite possibilities.
©2017 Julia Peczynsky and Horst Drosten (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Translation © 2019 by Deborah Langton
In Putin's Footsteps
Summary
In Putin’s Footsteps is Nina Khrushcheva and Jeffrey Tayler’s unique combination of travelogue, current affairs, and history, showing how Russia’s dimensions have shaped its identity and culture through the decades. With exclusive insider status as Nikita Khrushchev’s great grand-daughter, and an ex-pat living and reporting on Russia and the Soviet Union since 1993, Nina Khrushcheva and Jeffrey Tayler offer a poignant exploration of the largest country on Earth through their recreation of Vladimir Putin’s fabled New Year’s Eve speech planned across all 11 time zones. After taking over from Yeltsin in 1999, and then being elected president in a landslide, Putin traveled to almost two dozen countries and a quarter of Russia’s 89 regions to connect with ordinary Russians. His travels inspired the idea of a rousing New Year’s Eve address delivered every hour at midnight throughout Russia’s eleven time zones. The idea was beautiful, but quickly abandoned as an impossible feat. He correctly intuited, however, that the success of his presidency would rest on how the country’s outback citizens viewed their place on the world stage. Today more than ever, Putin is even more determined to present Russia as a formidable nation. We need to understand why Russia has for centuries been an adversary of the West. Its size, nuclear arsenal, arms industry, and scientific community (including cyber-experts), guarantees its influence.
©2019 Nina Khrushcheva and Jeffrey Tayler (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Song lyrics from “Land of Bones and Ice” in chapter 11 © Vladimir Vysotsky, reprinted by permission of the Estate of V. Vysotsky (translated 2019 by Nina Khrushcheva).
Without a Country
Summary
From the international bestselling author of Last Train to Istanbul comes a novel based on true events that explores the depths of pride, devotion, and persistence as four generations of a family struggle to forge their destinies. As Hitler’s reign of terror begins to loom large over Germany, Gerhard and Elsa Schliemann - like other German Jews - must flee with their children in search of sanctuary. But life elsewhere in Europe offers few opportunities for medical professor Gerhard and his fellow scientists. Then they discover an unexpected haven in Turkey, where universities and hospitals welcome them as valuable assets. But despite embracing their adopted land, personal and political troubles persist. Military coups bring unrest and uncertainty to the country, intermarriage challenges the cultural identity of Gerhard and Elsa’s descendants, and anti-Semitism once again threatens their future in the place they call home. From World War II to the age of social media, one family’s generations find their way through love and loss, sacrifice and salvation, tragedy and triumph - with knowledge hard won and passion heartfelt.
©2018 Ayse Kulin (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Translation ©2018 by Kenneth Dakan.
Under a Gilded Moon
Summary
“Crawdads meets the Crawleys....Threaded through with a meticulously researched, well-crafted mystery, this is historical fiction at its best.” (Fiona Davis, nationally best-selling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue) From the best-selling author of A Tangled Mercy comes an enthralling novel of secrets, a tumultuous war of ideas, and murder as classes collide in the shadow of Biltmore House. Biltmore House, a palatial mansion being built by the Vanderbilts, American “royalty,” is in its final stages of construction in North Carolina. The country’s grandest example of privilege, it symbolizes the aspirations of its owner and the dreams of a girl, just as driven, who lives in its shadow. Kerry MacGregor’s future is derailed when, after two years in college in New York City, family obligations call her home to the beautiful Appalachians. She is determined to distance herself from the opulence she sees rising in the Blue Ridge Mountains, however close its reach. Her family’s land is among the last pieces required to complete the Biltmore Estate. But something more powerful than an ambitious Vanderbilt heir could change Kerry’s fate as, one by one, more outsiders descend on the changing landscape - a fugitive from Sicily, a reporter chasing a groundbreaking story, a debutante tainted by scandal, and a conservationist prepared to put anyone at risk to stoke the resentment of the locals. As Kerry finds herself caught in a war between wealth and poverty, innocence and corruption, she must navigate not only her own pride and desperation to survive but also the temptations of fortune and the men who control it.
©2020 by Joy Jordan-Lake (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Inspiring Islamic Stories for Boys and Girls Volume 1
Summary
Inspirational, simple Islamic stories and authentic Islamic facts for kids. The book Inspiring Islamic Stories contains three stories; one of them is the most inspiring and unforgettable story of all - Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). This book is filled with good Islamic morals and manners, teaching your child age three and above to understand the importance of good and bad actions. It has been created in recognition of the need for books that tell real, authentic Islamic stories for children. Most of the Islamic books for children available today lack authenticity or are written in a complicated language for young Muslims to understand. Inspiring Islamic Stories is written in a way that even very young kids can easily understand. The author made these stories as authentic as possible by taking stories and information from the Quran, Tafseer Ibn Katheer, Bukhari, Muslim, and other authentic Hadith books and simplifying the language and adding context children can understand, without changing the intended meaning. This simple language results from an interactive reading process between the author and her children. If you are looking for a good and inspiring Islamic book for children age three to 10, this audiobook is a great choice. Don't be surprised if it quickly becomes one of their favorite books they ask to listen to again and again. About the author Julia Hanke was born and raised in Germany. She converted to Islam at the age of 17 and took the name Hafsa to have a Muslim identity. Hafsa studied education and Islamic sciences at a famous German University and achieved her bachelor's degree. At the moment, she is homeschooling her three children.
©2020 Julia Hanke (P)2020 Julia Hanke