Lauren Ezzo has narrated 166 audiobooks on Listento.it by 120 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 1,423 ratings. The most-rated is Where the Forest Meets the Stars.
Where the Forest Meets the Stars
Summary
An Amazon Charts, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post bestseller, and a Goodreads Choice Award finalist. In this gorgeously stunning debut, a mysterious child teaches two strangers how to love and trust again. After the loss of her mother and her own battle with breast cancer, Joanna Teale returns to her graduate research on nesting birds in rural Illinois, determined to prove that her recent hardships have not broken her. She throws herself into her work from dusk to dawn, until her solitary routine is disrupted by the appearance of a mysterious child who shows up at her cabin barefoot and covered in bruises. The girl calls herself Ursa, and she claims to have been sent from the stars to witness five miracles. With concerns about the child’s home situation, Jo reluctantly agrees to let her stay - just until she learns more about Ursa’s past. Jo enlists the help of her reclusive neighbor, Gabriel Nash, to solve the mystery of the charming child. But the more time they spend together, the more questions they have. How does a young girl not only read but understand Shakespeare? Why do good things keep happening in her presence? And why aren’t Jo and Gabe checking the missing children’s website anymore? Though the three have formed an incredible bond, they know difficult choices must be made. As the summer nears an end and Ursa gets closer to her fifth miracle, her dangerous past closes in. When it finally catches up to them, all of their painful secrets will be forced into the open, and their fates will be left to the stars.
©2019 by Glendy Vanderah. (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
The Push
Summary
A Good Morning America Book Club Pick "An intense psychological drama that will be embraced by serious book clubs and fans of Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk about Kevin." (Kristin Hannah, number one New York Times best-selling author) "A poetic, propulsive read that set my nerves jangling." (Lisa Jewell, number one New York Times best-selling author of Then She Was Gone) A tense, pause-resisting psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family - and a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for - and everything she feared. Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby, Violet, that she herself never had. But in the thick of motherhood's exhausting early days, Blythe becomes convinced that something is wrong with her daughter - she doesn't behave like most children do. Or is it all in Blythe's head? Her husband, Fox, says she's imagining things. The more Fox dismisses her fears, the more Blythe begins to question her own sanity, and the more we begin to question what Blythe is telling us about her life as well. Then their son, Sam, is born - and with him, Blythe has the blissful connection she'd always imagined with her child. Even Violet seems to love her little brother. But when life as they know it is changed in an instant, the devastating fallout forces Blythe to face the truth. The Push is a tour de force you will listen to in a sitting, an utterly immersive novel that will challenge everything you think you know about motherhood, about what we owe our children, and what it feels like when women are not believed.
©2021 Ashley Audrain (P)2021 Penguin Audio
The Woman in the White Kimono
Summary
Oceans and decades apart, two women are inextricably bound by the secrets between them. Japan, 1957. Seventeen-year-old Naoko Nakamura’s prearranged marriage to the son of her father’s business associate would secure her family’s status in their traditional Japanese community, but Naoko has fallen for another man - an American sailor, a gaijin - and to marry him would bring great shame upon her entire family. When it’s learned Naoko carries the sailor’s child, she’s cast out in disgrace and forced to make unimaginable choices with consequences that will ripple across generations. America, present day. Tori Kovac, caring for her dying father, finds a letter containing a shocking revelation - one that calls into question everything she understood about him, her family and herself. Setting out to learn the truth behind the letter, Tori’s journey leads her halfway around the world to a remote seaside village in Japan, where she must confront the demons of the past to pave a way for redemption. In breathtaking prose and inspired by true stories from a devastating and little-known era in Japanese and American history, The Woman in the White Kimono illuminates a searing portrait of one woman torn between her culture and her heart, and another woman on a journey to discover the true meaning of home.
©2019 Ana Johns (P)2019 Harlequin Audio
The Butterfly Garden
Summary
An Amazon Charts bestseller. Near an isolated mansion lies a beautiful garden. In this garden grow luscious flowers, shady trees...and a collection of precious “butterflies” - young women who have been kidnapped and intricately tattooed to resemble their namesakes. Overseeing it all is the Gardener, a brutal, twisted man obsessed with capturing and preserving his lovely specimens. When the garden is discovered, a survivor is brought in for questioning. FBI agents Victor Hanoverian and Brandon Eddison are tasked with piecing together one of the most stomach-churning cases of their careers. But the girl, known only as Maya, proves to be a puzzle herself. As her story twists and turns, slowly shedding light on life in the Butterfly Garden, Maya reveals old grudges, new saviors, and horrific tales of a man who’d go to any length to hold beauty captive. But the more she shares, the more the agents have to wonder what she’s still hiding...
©2016 Dot Hutchison (P)2016 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Killman Creek
Summary
A #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller. Every time Gwen closed her eyes, she saw him in her nightmares. Now her eyes are open, and he’s not going away. Gwen Proctor won the battle to save her kids from her ex-husband, serial killer Melvin Royal, and his league of psychotic accomplices. But the war isn’t over. Not since Melvin broke out of prison. Not since she received a chilling text... You’re not safe anywhere now. Her refuge at Stillhouse Lake has become a trap. Gwen leaves her children in the protective custody of a fortified, well-armed neighbor. Now, with the help of Sam Cade, brother of one of Melvin’s victims, Gwen is going hunting. She’s learned how from one of the sickest killers alive. But what she’s up against is beyond anything she feared - a sophisticated and savage mind game calculated to destroy her. As trust beyond her small circle of friends begins to vanish, Gwen has only fury and vengeance to believe in as she closes in on her prey. And sure as the night, one of them will die.
©2018 Rachel Caine, LLC. (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
World War I: The Great War
Summary
Touched off by a terrorist act in Bosnia and spreading all too quickly beyond the expectations of those who were involved, World War I was an unprecedented catastrophe with a ghastly cost. After this first "total war" - the first conflict involving entire societies mobilized to wage unrestrained war, devoting all their wealth, industries, institutions, and the lives of their citizens to win victory at any price - the world itself would never be the same. These 36 riveting half-hour lectures cut through the tangle of historical data to uncover the patterns that make sense of complex events. Whereas most World War I narratives focus on the Western Front in France and Flanders, with its mazelike trenches, gas attacks, constant shelling, assaults "over the top" into withering machine gun fire, and duels of dog-fighting aviators in the sky, Professor Liulevicius also devotes great attention to other important arenas, including the Eastern Front, the Southern Fronts, the War at Sea, the Arab Revolt, the Communist Revolution, the Armenian Massacre, the Spanish Influenza, and more. Professor Liulevicius combines chronological and thematic approaches for a sweeping survey of World War I's many dimensions. He explores themes such as the surprising eagerness of all parties to plunge into mutual slaughter, the unexpected endurance of societies undergoing total war, the radically different hopes and hatreds that the war evoked, with remarkable contrasts between western and eastern Europe, the meanings that the different sides ascribed to the war, and the role of various ideologies in the war's course and conduct. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2006 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2006 The Great Courses
Wolfhunter River
Summary
An Amazon Charts, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today best seller She can’t ignore a cry for help. But in this remote hunting town, it’s open season. Gwen Proctor escaped her serial-killer husband and saved her family. What she can’t seem to outrun is his notoriety. Or the sick internet vigilantes still seeking to avenge his crimes. For Gwen, hiding isn’t an option. Not when her only mission is to create a normal life for her kids. But now, a threatened woman has reached out. Marlene Crockett, from the remote town of Wolfhunter, is panicked for herself and her daughter. When Gwen arrives in the small, isolated rural community, Marlene is already dead - her own daughter blamed for the murder. Except that’s not the person Marlene feared at all. And Gwen isn’t leaving until she finds out who that was. But it may already be too late. A trap has been set. And it’s poised to snap shut on everyone Gwen loves. Her stalkers are closing in. And in a town as dark as Wolfhunter, it’s so easy for them to hide....
©2019 Rachel Caine, LLC. (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Bone Music
Summary
An Amazon Charts bestseller. There’s more than one way to stoke the flames of revenge... Charlotte Rowe spent the first seven years of her life in the hands of the only parents she knew - a pair of serial killers who murdered her mother and tried to shape Charlotte in their own twisted image. If only the nightmare had ended when she was rescued. Instead, her real father exploited her tabloid-ready story for fame and profit - until Charlotte finally broke free from her ghoulish past and fled. Just when she thinks she has buried her personal hell forever, Charlotte is swept into a frightening new ordeal. Secretly dosed with an experimental drug, she’s endowed with a shocking new power - but pursued by a treacherous corporation desperate to control her. Except from now on, if anybody is going to control Charlotte, it’s going to be Charlotte herself. She’s determined to use the extraordinary ability she now possesses to fight the kind of evil that shattered her life - by drawing a serial killer out from the shadows to face the righteous fury of a victim turned avenger.
©2018 by Christopher Rice. (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Regretting You
Summary
The #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller that People Magazine calls "a poignant, addictive read." From #1 New York Times bestselling author of It Ends with Us comes a novel about family, first love, grief, and betrayal that will touch the hearts of both mothers and daughters. Morgan Grant and her sixteen-year-old daughter, Clara, would like nothing more than to be nothing alike. Morgan is determined to prevent her daughter from making the same mistakes she did. By getting pregnant and married way too young, Morgan put her own dreams on hold. Clara doesn't want to follow in her mother's footsteps. Her predictable mother doesn't have a spontaneous bone in her body. With warring personalities and conflicting goals, Morgan and Clara find it increasingly difficult to coexist. The only person who can bring peace to the household is Chris - Morgan's husband, Clara's father, and the family anchor. But that peace is shattered when Chris is involved in a tragic and questionable accident. The heartbreaking and long-lasting consequences will reach far beyond just Morgan and Clara. While struggling to rebuild everything that crashed around them, Morgan finds comfort in the last person she expects to, and Clara turns to the one boy she's been forbidden to see. With each passing day, new secrets, resentment, and misunderstandings make mother and daughter fall further apart. So far apart, it might be impossible for them to ever fall back together.
©2019 Colleen Hoover (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Bitter Falls
Summary
An Amazon Charts, #1 Wall Street Journal, and USA Today best-selling series. She’s investigating a cold case no one else could - by going places no else would dare. In spite of a harrowing past still haunting her, Gwen Proctor is trying to move forward. Until a new assignment gives her purpose: the cold-case disappearance of a young man in Tennessee. Three years missing, no clues. Just Ruth Landry, a tortured mother in limbo. Gwen understands what it’s like to worry about your children. Gwen’s investigation unearths new suspects...and victims. As she follows each sinister lead, the implications of the mystery grow more disturbing. Because the closer Gwen gets, the closer she is to a threat that looms back home. In a town that’s closed its ranks against Gwen; her partner, Sam; and her kids, there’s no bolder enemy than the Belldene family - paramilitary, criminal, powerful, and vengeful. As personal vendettas collide with Gwen’s investigation, she’s prepared to fight both battles. But is she prepared for the toll it could take on everyone she loves?
©2020 by Rachel Caine, LLC. (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
A Slice of Heaven
Summary
Ever since she discovered her ex-husband's affair, Dana Sue Sullivan decided to put down new roots and create the best restaurant in Serenity, South Carolina. After years of hard labor, her dream has become a reality. Sullivan's provides more than just Southern comfort food - it's become a haven for the whole town - and Dana Sue knows better than anyone that relying on friendship can get you through the toughest times. But when her teenage daughter Annie develops an eating disorder that lands her in the hospital, Dana Sue's perfect life comes crumbling down. On top of it all, her own health starts to deteriorate. Dana Sue knows she needs to change habits now to help them both get better - even if that means letting Ronnie Sullivan back into their lives. And who knows, his return might end up being a recipe for a new beginning....
©2015 Sherryl Woods (P)2020 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Where the Lost Wander
Summary
In this epic and haunting love story set on the Oregon Trail, a family and their unlikely protector find their way through peril, uncertainty, and loss. The Overland Trail, 1853: Naomi May never expected to be widowed at 20. Eager to leave her grief behind, she sets off with her family for a life out West. On the trail, she forms an instant connection with John Lowry, a half-Pawnee man straddling two worlds and a stranger in both. But life in a wagon train is fraught with hardship, fear, and death. Even as John and Naomi are drawn to each other, the trials of the journey and their disparate pasts work to keep them apart. John’s heritage gains them safe passage through hostile territory only to come between them as they seek to build a life together. When a horrific tragedy strikes, decimating Naomi’s family and separating her from John, the promises they made are all they have left. Ripped apart, they can’t turn back, they can’t go on, and they can’t let go. Both will have to make terrible sacrifices to find each other, save each other, and eventually...make peace with who they are.
©2020 Amy Harmon (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
The Beautiful
Summary
Instant New York Times and Indie best seller! New York Times best-selling author Renée Ahdieh returns with a sumptuous, sultry, and romantic new series set in 19th-century New Orleans where vampires hide in plain sight. In 1872, New Orleans is a city ruled by the dead. But to 17-year-old Celine Rousseau, New Orleans is a safe haven after she's forced to flee her life as a dressmaker in Paris. Taken in by the sisters of the Ursuline convent in the middle of the carnival season, Celine is quickly enraptured by the vibrant city, from its music to its fancy soirées and even its danger. She becomes embroiled in the city's glitzy underworld, known as La Cour des Lions, after catching the eye of the group's enigmatic leader, Sébastien Saint Germain. When the body of one of the girls from the convent is found in Sébastien's own lair - the second dead girl to turn up in recent weeks - Celine battles her attraction to Sébastien and suspicions about his guilt along with the shame of her own horrible secret. After a third murder, New Orleans becomes gripped by the terror of a serial killer on the loose - one who has now set Celine in his sights. As the murderer stalks her, Celine finally takes matters into her own hands, only to find herself caught in the midst of an age-old feud between the darkest creatures of the night, where the price of forbidden love is her life. At once a sultry romance and a decadent, thrilling mystery, master storyteller Renée Ahdieh embarks on her most potent fantasy series yet.
©2019 Renée Ahdieh (P)2019 Listening Library
Blood Echo
Summary
A conspiracy that promises bloodshed and the only woman who can stop it collide in the pause-resisting thriller by Christopher Rice, Amazon Charts bestselling author of Bone Music. Kidnapped and raised by serial killers, Charlotte Rowe suffered an ordeal that made her infamous. Everyone in the world knew who she was. But no one in the world has any idea what she’s become… Charlotte is an experiment. And a weapon. Enabled by a superpower drug, she’s partnered with a shadowy pharmaceutical company to hunt down and eliminate society’s most depraved human predators. But her latest mission goes off the rails in a horrifying way. Unsettled by her own capacity for violence, Charlotte wants some time to retreat so she can work on her new relationship with Luke, a sheriff’s deputy in the isolated Central California town she now calls home. If only the threats hadn’t followed Charlotte there. Something sinister is evolving in Altamira, California - a massive network of domestic terrorists with ties to Charlotte’s influential and corrupt employers. As a vast and explosive criminal conspiracy grows, the fate of Charlotte’s hometown hangs in the balance. With everyone she cares about in danger, Charlotte has no choice but to bring her powers home. Charlotte Rowe has been triggered, and now she’ll have to take matters into her own powerful hands.
©2019 Christopher Rice (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved
House of Leights
Summary
Maya has never had much to complain about. Sure, her parents are absent a lot, having important jobs in the government, but at the end of the day, she has all the material possessions a girl could want. Not to mention a great best friend and secure spot in the popular group at her school. Yet she can never shake the feeling of displacement. Constantly searching for something that’s missing from her life. Turns out Maya is part of something much bigger than her human existence, and after a mysterious stranger saves her from an ambush at a party, he brings her into his world. And turns her world completely upside down. Listening order of the Secret Keepers series: House of Darken House of Imperial House of Leights House of Royale
©2018 Jaymin Eve (P)2018 Jaymin Eve
This Is Where It Ends
Summary
10:00 a.m. The principal of Opportunity, Alabama's high school finishes her speech, welcoming the entire student body to a new semester and encouraging them to excel and achieve. 10:02 a.m. The students get up to leave the auditorium for their next class. 10:03 The auditorium doors won't open. 10:05 Someone starts shooting. Told over the span of 54 harrowing minutes from four different perspectives, terror reigns as one student's calculated revenge turns into the ultimate game of survival.
©2016 Marieke Nijkamp (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved. First published in print by Sourcebooks Fire.
Allie and Bea
Summary
Bea has barely been scraping by since her husband died. After falling for a telephone scam, she loses everything and is forced to abandon her trailer. With only two-thirds of a tank in her old van, she heads toward the Pacific Ocean with her cat - on a mission to reclaim what's rightfully hers, even if it means making others pay for what she lost. When fifteen-year-old Allie's parents are jailed for tax fraud, she's sent to a group home. But when her life is threatened by another resident, she knows she has to get out. She escapes only to find she has nowhere to go - until fate throws Allie in Bea's path. Reluctant to trust each other, much less become friends, the two warily make their way up the Pacific Coast. Yet as their hearts open to friendship and love from the strangers they meet on their journey, they find the courage to forge their own unique family - and begin to see an imperfect world with new eyes.
©2017 Catherine Ryan Hyde (P)2017 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
The Hundredth Queen
Summary
In Emily R. King's thrilling fantasy debut, an orphan girl blossoms into a warrior, summoning courage and confidence in her fearless quest to upend tradition, overthrow an empire, and reclaim her life as her own. As an orphan ward of the Sisterhood in the ancient Tarachand Empire, eighteen-year-old Kalinda is destined for nothing more than a life of seclusion and prayer. Plagued by fevers, she's an unlikely candidate for even a servant's position, let alone a courtesan or wife. Her sole dream is to continue living in peace in the Sisterhood's mountain temple. But a visit from the tyrant Rajah Tarek disrupts Kalinda's life. Within hours, she is ripped from the comfort of her home, set on a desert trek, and ordered to fight for her place among the rajah's ninety-nine wives and numerous courtesans. Her only solace comes in the company of her guard, the stoic but kind Captain Deven Naik. Faced with the danger of a tournament to the death - and her growing affection for Deven - Kalinda has only one hope for escape, and it lies in an arcane, forbidden power buried within her.
©2017 Emily R. King (P)2017 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Pretty Girls Dancing
Summary
Years ago, in the town of Saxon Falls, young Kelsey Willard disappeared and was presumed dead. The tragedy left her family with a fractured life - a mother out to numb the pain, a father losing a battle with his own private demons, and a sister desperate for closure. But now another teenage girl has gone missing. It's ripping open old wounds for the Willards, dragging them back into a painful past, and leaving them unprepared for where it will take them next. Bureau of Criminal Investigation agent Mark Foster has stumbled on uncanny parallels in the lives of the two missing girls that could unlock clues to a serial killer's identity. That means breaking down the walls of the Willards' long-guarded secrets and getting to a truth that is darker than he bargained for. Now, to rescue one missing girl, he must first solve the riddles that disappeared with another: Kelsey Willard herself. Dead or alive, she is his last hope.
©2018 Kimberly Bahnsen (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Ribbons of Scarlet
Summary
Six best-selling and award-winning authors bring to life a breathtaking epic novel illuminating the hopes, desires, and destinies of princesses and peasants, harlots and wives, fanatics and philosophers - six unforgettable women whose paths cross during one of the most tumultuous and transformative events in history: the French Revolution. Ribbons of Scarlet is a timely story of the power of women to start a revolution - and change the world. In late 18th-century France, women do not have a place in politics. But as the tide of revolution rises, women from gilded salons to the streets of Paris decide otherwise - upending a world order that has long oppressed them. Blue-blooded Sophie de Grouchy believes in democracy, education, and equal rights for women and marries the only man in Paris who agrees. Emboldened to fight the injustices of King Louis XVI, Sophie aims to prove that an educated populace can govern itself - but one of her students, fruit-seller Louise Audu, is hungrier for bread and vengeance than learning. When the Bastille falls and Louise leads a women’s march to Versailles, the monarchy is forced to bend, but not without a fight. The king’s pious sister, Princess Elisabeth, takes a stand to defend her brother, spirit her family to safety, and restore the old order, even at the risk of her head. But when fanatics use the newspapers to twist the revolution’s ideals into a new tyranny, even the women who toppled the monarchy are threatened by the guillotine. Putting her faith in the pen, brilliant political wife Manon Roland tries to write a way out of France’s blood-soaked Reign of Terror while pike-bearing Pauline Leon and steely Charlotte Corday embrace violence as the only way to save the nation. With justice corrupted by revenge, all the women must make impossible choices to survive - unless unlikely heroine and courtesan’s daughter Emilie de Sainte-Amaranthe can sway the man who controls France’s fate: the fearsome Robespierre.
©2019 Kate Quinn, Stephanie Dray, Laura Kamoie, E. Knight, Sophie Perinot, and Heather Webb (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers