Kirsten Potter has narrated 196 audiobooks on Listento.it by 134 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 3,728 ratings. The most-rated is Station Eleven.
Clearing in the Wild
Summary
Young Emma Wagner chafes at the constraints of Bethel colony, an 1850s religious community in Missouri that is determined to remain untainted by the concerns of the world. A passionate and independent thinker, she resents the limitations placed on women, who are expected to serve in quiet submission. In a community where dissent of any form is discouraged, Emma finds it difficult to rein in her tongue - and often doesn't even try to do so, fueling the animosity between her and the colony's charismatic and increasingly autocratic leader, Wilhelm Keil. Eventually Emma and her husband, Christian, are sent along with eight other men to scout out a new location in the northwest where the Bethelites can prepare to await "the last days." Christian believes they've found the ideal situation in Washington territory, but when Keil arrives with the rest of the community, he rejects Christian's choice in favor of moving to Oregon. Emma pushes her husband to take this opportunity to break away from the group, but her longed-for influence brings unexpected consequences. As she seeks refuge for her wounded faith, she learns that her passionate nature can be her greatest strength - if she can harness it effectively.
©2006 Jane Kirkpatrick (P)2008 christianaudio.com
Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It
Summary
Award-winning writer Maile Meloy’s return to short stories explores complex lives in an austere landscape with the clear-sightedness that first endeared her to fans.p>Eleven unforgettable new stories demonstrate the emotional power and the clean, assured style that have earned Meloy praise from critics and devotion from readers and listeners. Propelled by a terrific instinct for storytelling, and concerned with the convolutions of modern love and the importance of place, this collection is about the battlefields—and fields of victory—that exist in seemingly harmless spaces, in kitchens and living rooms and cars. Set mostly in the American West, the stories feature small-town lawyers, ranchers, doctors, parents, and children and explore the moral quandaries of love, family, and friendship. A ranch hand falls for a recent law-school graduate who appears unexpectedly—and reluctantly—in his remote Montana town. A young father opens his door to find his dead grandmother standing on the front step. Two women weigh love and betrayal during an early snow. Throughout the book, Meloy examines the tensions between having and wanting, as her characters try to keep hold of opposing forces in their lives: innocence and experience, risk and stability, fidelity and desire. Knowing, sly, and bittersweet, Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It confirms Maile Meloy’s singular literary talent. Her lean, controlled prose, full of insight and unexpected poignancy, is the perfect complement to her powerfully moving storytelling.
©2009 Maile Meloy (P)2010 Blackstone Audio
The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr
Summary
Eugenie Bearhani (1760-1835) was born in Calcutta, raised in Haiti, and brought as a servant - a free woman of color - to America by an English officer on the eve of the American Revolution. Yet none of that prepared Eugenie for her next employer: Colonel Aaron Burr, a man some whispered had made a pact with the devil. The lines between master and servant soon tangle and blur, and first attraction becomes dangerous obsession. Many historians deny she even existed, but Eugenie and the children she bore to Burr were very real - and so was her little-known marriage to America's first true villain.
©2019 Susan Holloway Scott (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Lonestar Angel
Summary
Eden's hope is rekindled when Clay delivers astounding news: their daughter has been found. Five years ago, Eden and Clay Larson’s baby was stolen and never found. Eden blamed herself, Clay lost himself in work. Their young and rocky marriage ended. Or so Eden thought. Now Eden’s moved to a new town. She’s found faith and is trying to rebuild her life. She’s even dating again—a sweet guy who plans to marry her someday. But then Clay arrives out of the blue and delivers shocking news: they’re still married. What’s more, Clay has been searching for Brianna all this time. And he believes he’s found her: their daughter is in Bluebird, Texas, at a youth ranch. To uncover the truth, Eden and Clay sign on as counselors at Bluebird Ranch. Working together, they rediscover their love for each other. But danger is closing in—Eden, Clay, and their young charges are in jeopardy. As they fight to save their family, Eden realizes that God has been fighting for them all along. And His plans are for a more abundant life than they’ve dared to hope.
©2011 Colleen Coble (P)2011 Oasis
What the Lady Wants
Summary
In late 19th-century Chicago, visionary retail tycoon Marshall Field made his fortune wooing women customers with his famous motto, "Give the lady what she wants." His legendary charm also won the heart of socialite Delia Spencer and led to an infamous love affair. The night of the Great Fire, as seventeen-year-old Delia watches the flames rise and consume what was the pioneer town of Chicago, she can't imagine how much her life, her city, and her whole world are about to change - nor can she guess that the agent of that change will not simply be the fire but more so the man she meets that night. Leading the way in rebuilding after the fire, Marshall Field reopens his well-known dry goods store and transforms it into something the world has never seen before: a glamorous palace of a department store. He and his powerhouse coterie - including Potter Palmer and George Pullman - usher in the age of robber barons, the American royalty of their generation. But behind the opulence, their private lives are riddled with scandal and heartbreak. Delia and Marshall first turn to each other out of loneliness, but as their love deepens, they will stand together despite disgrace and ostracism, through an age of devastation and opportunity, when an adolescent Chicago is transformed into the gleaming White City of Chicago's World's Fair of 1893.
©2014 Renée Rosen (P)2014 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Masters of Chaos
Summary
Special Forces soldiers are daring, seasoned troops from America's heartland, selected in a tough competition and trained in an extraordinary range of skills. They know foreign languages and cultures and unconventional warfare better than any US fighters, and while they prefer to stay out of the limelight, veteran war correspondent Linda Robinson gained access to their closed world. She traveled with them on the frontlines, interviewed them at length on their home bases, and studied their doctrine, methods, and history. In Masters of Chaos she tells their story through a select group of senior sergeants and field-grade officers, a band of unforgettable characters like Rawhide, Killer, Michael T, and Alan - led by the unflappable Lt. Col. Chris Conner and Col. Charlie Cleveland, a brilliant but self-effacing West Pointer who led the largest unconventional war campaign since Vietnam in northern Iraq. Robinson follows the Special Forces from their first post-Vietnam combat in Panama, El Salvador, Desert Storm, Somalia, and the Balkans to their recent trials and triumphs in Afghanistan and Iraq. She witnessed their secret sleuthing and unsung successes in southern Iraq and recounts here for the first time the dramatic firefights of the western desert. Her blow-by-blow story of the attack on Ansar al-Islam's international terrorist training camp has never been told before. The most comprehensive account ever of the modern-day Special Forces in action, Masters of Chaos is filled with riveting, intimate detail in the words of a close-knit band of soldiers who have done it all.
©2013 Linda Robinson (P)2013 Random House Audio
The Abolitionist's Daughter
Summary
On a Mississippi morning in 1859, Emily Matthews begs her father to save a slave, Nathan, about to be auctioned away from his family. Judge Matthews is an abolitionist who runs an illegal school for his slaves, hoping to eventually set them free. One, a woman named Ginny, has become Emily's companion and often her conscience - and understands all too well the hazards an educated slave must face. Yet even Ginny could not predict the tangled, tragic string of events set in motion as Nathan's family arrives at the Matthews farm. A young doctor, Charles Slate, tends to injured Nathan and begins to court Emily, finally persuading her to become his wife. But their union is disrupted by a fatal clash and a lie that will tear two families apart. As Civil War erupts, Emily, Ginny, and Emily's stoic mother-in-law, Adeline, each face devastating losses. Emily - sheltered all her life - is especially unprepared for the hardships to come. Struggling to survive in this raw, shifting new world, Emily will discover untapped inner strength, an unlikely love, and the courage to confront deep, painful truths. In the tradition of Cold Mountain, The Abolitionist's Daughter eschews stereotypes of the Civil War South, instead weaving an intricate and unforgettable story of survival, loyalty, hope, and redemption.
©2019 Diane C. McPhail (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
The Doll-Master
Summary
From one of our most important contemporary writers, The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror is a bold, haunting collection of six stories. In the title story, a young boy becomes obsessed with his cousin's doll after she tragically passes away from leukemia. As he grows older, he begins to collect "found dolls" from the surrounding neighborhoods and stores his treasures in the abandoned carriage house on his family's estate. But just what kind of dolls are they? In "Gun Accident", a teenage girl is thrilled when her favorite teacher asks her to house-sit, even on short notice. But when an intruder forces his way into the house while the girl is there, the fate of more than one life is changed forever. In "Equatorial", set in the exotic Galápagos, an affluent American wife experiences disorienting assaults on her sense of who her charismatic husband really is, and what his plans may be for her. In The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror, Joyce Carol Oates evokes the “fascination of the abomination” that is at the core of the most profound, the most unsettling, and the most memorable of dark mystery fiction.
©2016 The Ontario Review, Inc. (P)2019 Tantor
The Wonder of Your Love
Summary
Settling in to her new life in Canaan, Colorado, Katie Ann Stoltzfus gives birth to a beautiful baby boy. This child comes to her late in life following the death of her estranged husband. She resolves to play the role of both father and mother to the child. Ivan was her one true love and despite his infidelities, she mourns his loss and vows never to trust another man. But when a meddling - but good hearted - Englisch woman plays matchmaker for Katie Ann and Eli Detweiler who just arrived in Canaan, they both need to restructure their expectations of the future and step onto the new path God is paving for them.
©2011 eChristian, Inc. (P)2011 eChristian, Inc.
Monique and the Mango Rains
Summary
What is it like to live and work in a remote corner of the world and befriend a courageous midwife who breaks traditional roles? Monique and the Mango Rains: Two Years with a Mali Midwife is the inspiring story of Monique Dembele, an accidental midwife who became a legend, and Kris Holloway, the young Peace Corps volunteer who became her closest confidante. In a small village in Mali, West Africa, Monique saved lives and dispensed hope every day in a place where childbirth is a life-and-death matter and where many children are buried before they cut a tooth. Kris worked side-by-side with her as they cared for each other through sickness and tragedy and shared their innermost secrets and hopes. Monique's life was representative of many women in one of the world's poorest nations, yet she faced her challenges in extraordinary ways. Despite her fiercely traditional society and her limited education she fought for her beliefs birth control, the end of female genital mutilation, the right to receive a salary, and the right to educate her daughters. And she struggled to be with the man she loved. Her story is one of tragedy joy, rebellion, and of an ancient culture in the midst of change. It is an uplifting tribute to indomitable spirits everywhere.
©2007 Kris Holloway (P)2018 Tantor
Treasuring Emma
Summary
Emma always puts the needs of others ahead of her own. When will it be her turn to be treasured? Adam was her first love and best friend. But then he went away. Determined to experience the freedom of living in the "Englisch" world, he left Emma heartbroken. How could he have chosen the world over her? Now Adam is back in Middlefield and Emma can't seem to keep him away from her family's farm. But this time she's determined to guard her heart. It might be love that keeps him there... or perhaps just guilt. When a newcomer arrives in town and shows an interest in Emma, she dismisses Adam's insistence that she be cautious. All this attention is new to her and she doesn't know quite how to accept it. Emma knows her Heavenly Father treasures her. But will her new beau? PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2011 Kathleen Fuller (P)2012 Oasis
Hattie Big Sky
Summary
For years, 16-year-old Hattie's been shuttled between relatives. Tired of being Hattie Here-and-There, she courageously leaves Iowa to prove up on her late uncle's homestead claim near Vida, Montana. With a stubborn stick-to-itiveness, Hattie faces frost, drought, and blizzards. Despite many hardships, Hattie forges ahead, sharing her adventures with her friends, especially Charlie, fighting in France, through letters and articles for her hometown paper. Her backbreaking quest for a home is lightened by her neighbors, the Muellers. But she feels threatened by pressure to be a "Loyal" American, forbidding friendships with folks of German descent. Despite everything, Hattie's determined to stay until a tragedy causes her to discover the true meaning of home.
©2007 Kirby Larson (P)2007 Random House, Inc. Listening Library, an imprint of the Random House Audio Publishing Group
The Trouble with Scotland
Summary
Life isn't going as planned, and Sadie Middleton is rethinking her whole future. Thankfully, one thing is staying the same: She's able to share her love of quilting with her grandmother, Gigi. The two of them enter a contest and win an all-expenses-paid trip to the Kilts and Quilts retreat in the Scottish Highlands. But their victory turns hollow when Gigi passes away before they can go. Sadie is grief stricken, but her brother convinces her to take the trip to Gandiegow anyway. There Sadie meets a charming circle of quilters who remind her of her grandmother and Ross Armstrong, a handsome fisherman who brings a smile to her face. Newly single, Ross intends to enjoy his freedom. That plan goes awry as he comes to know Sadie, and a surprising spark is lit. Unfortunately some well-meaning folks want to protect Ross from getting hurt again and are determined to keep him and the American lass apart.
©2016 Patience Jackson (P)2016 Tantor
A Good Scot Is Hard to Find
Summary
Aila Marshall wants nothing to do with Auld Donell and his endless schemes, but even she cannot deny the lure of a mystery 300 years in the making and a hunt for a lost treasure. When she's sent to the wrong time entirely, Aila knows she's been played. She knows she should return to her own time and give Donell a piece of her mind.... On the other hand, what's the rush when an undeniably handsome Scot crosses her path? Finn Keeley, Lord Rossmore, has no time for a new assistant. Especially one as sassy and bonny as the fiery redhead who'd come to fill the role. He's spent years waiting for the opportunity to avenge the death of his wife and not once has his determination wavered. He cannot let Aila divert him from his purpose now...even though she's the most passionate distraction he's ever known. As far as Aila Marshall was concerned, a good man was hard to find and love even harder. Fairy tales and white knights were nothing more than a myth. Despite her best friend finding a man in the past to steal her heart, Aila has no intention of following in Brontë's footsteps. She's content to indulge in the smoldering desire she shares with Finn while she solves her mystery. Nothing more. Until more is all Aila desires.
©2020 Angeline Fortin (P)2020 Tantor
The Underground Girls of Kabul
Summary
An investigative journalist uncovers a hidden custom in Afghanistan that will transform your understanding of what it means to grow up as a girl. In Afghanistan, a culture ruled almost entirely by men, the birth of a son is cause for celebration and the arrival of a daughter is often mourned as misfortune. A bacha posh (literally translated from Dari as dressed up like a boy) is a third kind of child - a girl temporarily raised as a boy and presented as such to the outside world. Jenny Nordberg, the reporter who broke the story of this phenomenon for the New York Times, constructs a powerful and moving account of those secretly living on the other side of a deeply segregated society where women have almost no rights and little freedom. The Underground Girls of Kabul is anchored by vivid characters who bring this remarkable story to life: Azita, a female parliamentarian who sees no other choice but to turn her fourth daughter Mehran into a boy; Zahra, the tomboy teenager who struggles with puberty and refuses her parents’ attempts to turn her back into a girl; Shukria, now a married mother of three after living for 20 years as a man; and Nader, who prays with Shahed, the undercover female police officer, as they both remain in male disguise as adults. At the heart of this emotional narrative is a new perspective on the extreme sacrifices of Afghan women and girls against the violent backdrop of America’s longest war. Divided into four parts, the book follows those born as the unwanted sex in Afghanistan, but who live as the socially favored gender through childhood and puberty, only to later be forced into marriage and childbirth. The Underground Girls of Kabul charts their dramatic life cycles, while examining our own history and the parallels to subversive actions of people who live under oppression everywhere.
©2014 Jenny Nordberg (P)2014 Random House
That Darkness
Summary
In this tour de force of psychological suspense, best-selling author Lisa Black draws from her experience as a forensic investigator to create fascinating characters, including a woman in a lifelong relationship with death. Her latest case is an unidentified female in her early teens, discovered in a local cemetery. More shocking than the girl's injuries - for Maggie at least - is the fact that no one has reported her missing. She and the detectives assigned to the case (including her cop ex-husband) are determined to follow every lead, run down every scrap of evidence. But the monster they seek is watching every move, closer to them than they could possibly imagine.
©2016 Lisa Black (P)2016 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Mothers of Massive Resistance
Summary
Why do white supremacist politics in America remain so powerful? Elizabeth Gillespie McRae argues that the answer lies with white women. Examining racial segregation from 1920s to the 1970s, Mothers of Massive Resistance explores the grassroots workers who maintained the system of racial segregation and Jim Crow. For decades in rural communities, in university towns, and in New South cities, white women performed myriad duties that upheld white over black: censoring textbooks, denying marriage certificates, deciding on the racial identity of their neighbors, celebrating school choice, canvassing communities for votes, and lobbying elected officials. They instilled beliefs in racial hierarchies in their children, built national networks, and experimented with a color-blind political discourse. With white women at the center of the story, the rise of postwar conservatism looks very different than the male-dominated narratives of the resistance to Civil Rights. Women like Nell Battle Lewis, Florence Sillers Ogden, Mary Dawson Cain, and Cornelia Dabney Tucker publicized threats to their Jim Crow world through political organizing, private correspondence, and journalism. Their efforts began before World War II and the Brown decision and persisted past the 1964 Civil Rights Act and anti-busing protests.
©2018 Oxford University Press (P)2018 Tantor
The Sky Is Yours
Summary
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2018 BY: Wall Street Journal • NPR • New York Public Library • LitHub • Mental Floss “Influenced by the likes of Jane Austen and Rick and Morty, Smith tackles timely issues while leaving room for some delicious reality TV references.” (Entertainment Weekly) In the burned-out, futuristic city of Empire Island, three young people navigate a crumbling metropolis constantly under threat from a pair of dragons that circle the skies. When violence strikes, reality star Duncan Humphrey Ripple V, the spoiled scion of the metropolis' last dynasty; Baroness Swan Lenore Dahlberg, his tempestuous, death-obsessed betrothed; and Abby, a feral beauty he discovered tossed out with the trash; are forced to flee everything they've ever known. As they wander toward the scalded heart of the city, they face fire, conspiracy, mayhem, unholy drugs, dragon-worshippers, and the monsters lurking inside themselves. In this bombshell of a novel, Chandler Klang Smith has imagined an unimaginable world: scathingly clever and gorgeously strange, The Sky Is Yours is at once faraway and disturbingly familiar, its singular chaos grounded in the universal realities of love, family, and the deeply human desire to survive at all costs. Praise for The Sky Is Yours: “It’s a mesmeric world, comic in the way teenage voyages of self-discovery inevitably are, but with an undertone of menace, horror, even hints of allegory. Satire, too . . . Smith’s imagination is inexhaustible. The Sky Is Yours is a great and disturbing debut, which colonizes a new realm of the magic city.” (The Wall Street Journal) “Smith’s gifts of imagination are staggering.... Much like Lev Grossman’s The Magicians and Charlie Jane Anders’s All the Birds in the Sky before it, The Sky is Yours filters youth through a warped yet poignantly canny speculative fiction lens. At the same time, it’s funny as hell, full of madcap detail, firecracker dialogue, and a healthy dose of absurdism in the face of darkness.” (NPR) “Readers who love ambitious literary genre fiction should be on the lookout for Smith’s first novel, a vibrantly uncanny dystopia set on an island metropolis, in the shadow of dragons that swoop overhead, where income inequality and mass incarceration have spun out of control.” (HuffPost)
©2018 Random House Audio; 2018 Chandler Klang Smith
The Wedding Planner Mysteries Box Set
Summary
Enjoy all three of the best-selling Wedding Planner mysteries in this box set. Diamond Rings Are Deadly Things: Adrielle Pyper knows how to plan a wedding, and she's especially good at pleasing bridezillas. But when her biggest client and best friend is murdered just three days before the wedding, Adri's world falls apart. She moves to the resort town of Sun Valley, Idaho, and starts from scratch. Thanks to Adri's impeccable taste and unique style, she lands two celebrity clients, and her business seems headed for success - until someone vandalizes the specialty wedding dresses she imported from overseas. Adri must race to uncover the secret hidden within the yards of satin and lace before she becomes the next victim. With a delightful blend of mystery, toe-curling kisses, humor, and spine-tingling thrills, Diamond Rings Are Deadly Things will keep you listening long into the night. Veils and Vengeance: When wedding planner Adrielle Pyper orchestrates a destination ceremony in Hawaii, she's prepared for anything - except murder. After the trauma of her last event, the beautiful isle of Kauai is the perfect place for Adri to unwind and do what she does best: plan. She even lets herself indulge in the attention of the groom's handsome brother. But just when everything seems to be perfect, an afternoon snorkeling trip turns deadly when Adri discovers the body of a young woman. Shaken, but unable to let go, Adri's sleuthing leads her into more danger than she bargained for. When a number of "accidents" threaten her own life, it soon becomes apparent that someone will do anything to keep Adri from interfering with their vengeance. Proposals and Poison: Love can be a very dangerous thing. At least it seems that way to Adri Pyper, the premier wedding planner in Sun Valley, Idaho. When one of her clients dies mysteriously, Adri takes the advice of the local detective and swears she will stay out of the investigation...this time. Luke Stetson's involvement in the case, along with the possibility of a kiss between the two, should be enough incentive to keep Adri out of trouble. But when a dog-themed wedding is almost ruined by a suspect, Adri and her assistant, Lorea, are thrust into private-eye mode. When poison enters the picture, even a reluctant sleuth can't steer clear of danger.
©2015, 2016 Rachelle J. Christensen (P)2015, 2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
A Scot to Remember
Summary
She wanted a love for all time. A life of love lost and heartbreak has cursed the women in Bronte Hughes' family for generations. When she discovers a device that allows her to slip through time, Bronte decides the key to obtaining true love for herself lies in mending the tragedies of the past and restoring a legacy of love fate has robbed from her family...beginning with saving her great-great grandfather from setting sail on the ill-fated voyage of the Titanic. He searched for a life with purpose. Good friends and a loving family provided Tris MacKintosh with ample duty and obligation, but none of the challenge and purpose he yearned for in life. When a mysterious young woman appears in a suspiciously timely fashion - not once, but twice - to save his closest friend from death, he's presented with more intrigue than he's experienced in years. Contributing to the war effort against Germany once seemed his best chance to live with purpose and make a mark.... However, with Bronte at his side, Tris soon realizes there is a greater opportunity awaiting him. A chance to be a part of a love to last forever, to change the future...and to save the world. Soon . . .
©2019 Angeline Fortin (P)2019 Tantor