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.
The Orphan of Cemetery Hill
Summary
The dead won't bother you if you don’t give them permission. Boston, 1844. Tabby has a peculiar gift: She can communicate with the recently departed. It makes her special, but it also makes her dangerous. As an orphaned child, she fled with her sister, Alice, from their charlatan aunt Bellefonte, who wanted only to exploit Tabby's gift so she could profit from the recent craze for seances. Now a young woman and tragically separated from Alice, Tabby works with her adopted father, Eli, the kind caretaker of a large Boston cemetery. When a series of macabre grave robberies begins to plague the city, Tabby is ensnared in a deadly plot by the perpetrators, known only as the "Resurrection Men". In the end, Tabby's gift will either save both her and the cemetery - or bring about her own destruction.
©2020 Hester Fox (P)2020 Harlequin Enterprises, Limited
Homefront
Summary
The end of the world comes home. Emily Ristler is six weeks pregnant when the beginning of the end blows up her utopian dream. Moving out to a peaceful subdivision beyond the city limits should have put her beyond the reaches of life’s insanity; a waterfront paradise to start a family. But with Cole caught in the heart of the city during a mysterious phenomenon that has devolved man into a primal predator with a single urge - Kill! - Emily must hold the home front until he returns. She’s not alone, but there’s no one she can really count on except herself. It’s a good thing, then, that Emily is no ordinary suburban housewife. The world is spinning out of control, and Man has turned against one other. Then things start getting really bad. It’s kill or be killed, and Emily has everything to live for.
©2020 Sam Sisavath (P)2020 Sam Sisavath
I Really Want the Cake
Summary
This deliciously funny story chronicles the battle of one little girl who tries, with all her might, to resist her greatest temptation: cake. Listeners join our spunky, mischievous, and charming heroine and her devoted sidekick pup as the temptation mounts, and a little lick becomes a bite.
With bouncing rhyming text from Simon Philip, this story playfully tackles all-important themes of impulse control, truth telling, and making amends (or at least trying to), with humor, authenticity, and heart.
Including a recipe at the end of the story, I Really Want the Cake offers listeners a universally relatable and tasty tale.
©2020 Simon Philip (P)2020 Scholastic Inc.
Wings of Fury
Summary
From Emily R. King, author of the Hundredth Queen series, comes an epic novel of ancient Greece, Titans and treachery, and the women who dare to rise up against the tyranny of the Golden Age. My mother told me that men would speak about the Golden Age as a time of peace and happiness for all... However, the women of our age would tell a very different story... Cronus, God of Gods, whose inheritance is the world. Among his possessions: women, imprisoned and fated to serve. The strong-minded Althea Lambros controls her own fate and lives to honor her dying mother’s plea to protect her two sisters at all costs. Althea’s journey toward crushing the tyranny has begun. It is a destiny foretold by the Fates. And she is following their visions. On the southern isle of Crete, hidden among mortal women who have fled the Titans, is the Boy God, son of Cronus and believed dead. He shares Althea’s destiny to vanquish the Almighty - fate willing. Because Cronus has caught wind of the plot. He’s amassing his own forces against Althea’s righteous rebellion and all those who will no longer surrender or run. There will be war. If she’s to survive to write their history, the indomitable Althea must soar higher than any god.
©2021 Emily R. King. (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
What Remains True
Summary
In this mesmerizing drama, one life-altering event catapults a family into turmoil, revealing secrets that may leave them fractured forever...or bind them together tighter than ever before. From the outside, the Davenports look like any other family living a completely ordinary life - until that devastating day when five-year-old Jonah is killed, and the family is torn apart. As the fury of guilt engulfs them, the Davenports slowly start to unravel, one by one. Losing her son forces Rachel to withdraw into a frayed, fuzzy reality. Her husband, Sam, tries to remain stoic, but he's consumed by regret with the choices he's made. Eden mourns her brother, while desperately fighting to regain a sense of normalcy. And Aunt Ruth, Rachel's sister, works too hard to care for the family, even as her own personal issues haunt her. Told from multiple points of view - including Jonah's - the family struggles to cope with unthinkable loss. But as they face their own dark secrets about that terrible day, they have a choice: to be swallowed up in sadness forever, or begin the raw, arduous ascent back to living.
©2017 Janis Thomas (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
The Widow of Pale Harbor
Summary
A town gripped by fear. A woman accused of witchcraft. Who can save Pale Harbor from itself? Maine, 1846. Gabriel Stone is desperate to escape the ghosts that haunt him in Massachusetts after his wife’s death, so he moves to Maine, taking a position as a minister in the remote village of Pale Harbor. But not all is as it seems in the sleepy town. Strange, unsettling things have been happening, and the townspeople claim that only one person can be responsible: Sophronia Carver, a reclusive widow who lives with a spinster maid in the eerie Castle Carver. Sophronia must be a witch, and she almost certainly killed her husband. As the incidents escalate, one thing becomes clear: they are the work of a twisted person inspired by the wildly popular stories of Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. And Gabriel must find answers, or Pale Harbor will suffer a fate worthy of Poe’s darkest tales.
©2019 Hester Fox (P)2019 Harlequin Audio
Houses Under the Sea
Summary
Since H. P. Lovecraft first invited colleagues such as Frank Belknap Long and Robert Bloch (among others) to join in his creation of what has come to be known as “The Cthulhu Mythos” (over Lovecraft’s less invocative name of “Yog-Sothery”), dozens of authors have tried their hand at adding to this vast tapestry with varying degrees of success. Some, like the then-teenage Ramsey Campbell, used the Mythos as a starting point to his own career while still finding his own authorial voice. Others, like Stephen King and Neil Gaiman, did so at the height of their careers, paying homage to an author who had been such a tremendous inspiration to them. But no one, absolutely no one, has contributed such a body of brilliant and profoundly original work to the Mythos as has Caitlín R. Kiernan. In this remarkable collection the author has selected over two dozen of her best Lovecraftian tales ranging from 2000s “Valentia” to her more recent classic “A Mountain Walked” as well as including the complete Dandridge Cycle, as well as a new story, “M Is for Mars.” In short, this is a cornerstone volume for Kiernan fans and Mythos devotees alike.
©2018 Caitlín R. Kiernan (P)2021 Blackstone Publishing
Finding Elizabeth
Summary
One horrific crime. One missing suspect. When an officer is called to a house, he discovers a chilling and bizarre crime scene. Sitting at a dining room table, as if enjoying their evening meal, he finds the decomposing bodies of an entire family. Each one murdered and posed like mannequins. The only person missing from the disturbing scene is the family maid, Elizabeth. Detective Richard Crombie is assigned the case but after weeks of pressure and no results, he reluctantly requests the help of criminal psychiatrist, Doctor Killam, who once worked with Scotland Yard. But who did kill the family? Does Elizabeth hold the key to the violent mystery? While the detective and the doctor investigate the murders and hunt for the missing maid, it becomes apparent that they are up against a terrifying psychopath who has a thirst for death and no intention of stopping.... Contains mature themes.
©2020 Debra Meller (P)2021 Tantor
There's No Place Like Home
Summary
In a climate-ravaged future, it’s not easy to grow up. One girl is trying her best in a story about global catastrophe and personal chaos, by the New York Times bestselling author of California. Thirteen-year-old Vic is of the Youngest Generation, fixed in prepubescence after a catastrophic environmental degradation. She’s also her father’s favorite student. But when he takes his own life, the perennially ingenuous Vic wants to understand why. As she sets out on her quest, Vic begins to learn that family isn’t something you’re born with - it’s something you build. Edan Lepucki’s There’s No Place Like Home is part of Warmer, a collection of seven visions of a conceivable tomorrow by today’s most thought-provoking authors. Alarming, inventive, intimate, and frightening, each story can be read, or listened to, in a single breathtaking sitting.
©2018 Edan Lepucki (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Every Single Lie
Summary
Bloomsbury presents Every Single Lie by Rachel Vincent, read by Lauren Ezzo. In this gripping YA novel about social media bullying and half-truths, one girl’s shocking discovery of a dead baby in her high school locker room rocks an entire community. Nobody in 16-year-old Beckett’s life seems to be telling the whole story. Her boyfriend Jake keeps hiding texts, which could mean he’s cheating on her. Her father lied about losing his job and so much more before his shocking death. And everyone in school seems to be whispering about her and her family behind her back. But none of that compares to the day Beckett finds the body of a newborn baby in a gym bag - Jake’s gym bag - on the floor of her high school locker room. As word leaks out, rumours that Beckett’s the mother take off like wildfire in a town all too ready to believe the worst of her. Beckett soon finds herself facing threats and accusations both heartbreaking and dangerous. Nobody believes her side of the story, and as the police investigation unfolds, she discovers that everyone has a secret to hide and the truth could alter everything she thought she knew. A gripping thriller set in a small Southern community, Every Single Lie is a jaw-dropping, twisty must-listen for fans of Sadie.
©2020 Rachel Vincent (P)2020 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Portrait of Vengeance
Summary
An unsolved case. A tempest of memories. The future's at stake - and time is running out... Gwen Marcey has done a good job keeping the pain of her past boxed up. But as she investigates the case of a missing child in Lapwai, Idaho, details keep surfacing that are eerily similar to her childhood traumas. She doesn't believe in coincidences. So what's going on here? No one knows more about the impact of the past than the Nez Perce people of Lapwai. Gwen finds herself an unwelcome visitor to some, making her investigation even more difficult. The questions keep piling up, but answers are slow in coming - and the clock is ticking for a missing little girl. Meanwhile, Gwen's ex-husband is threatening to take sole custody of their daughter. As Gwen's past and present collide, she's in a desperate race for the truth. Because only the truth will ensure she still has a future.
©2017 Carrie Stuart Parks (P)2020 Tantor
Truth of the Matter
Summary
Starting over means looking back for a mother and daughter on the road to reinventing themselves in a moving novel about family secrets and second chances by Wall Street Journal best-selling author Jamie Beck. Seventeen years ago, two pink stripes on a pregnancy test changed Anne Sullivan’s life. She abandoned her artistic ambitions, married her college sweetheart before graduation, and - like the mother she lost in childhood - devoted herself to her family. To say she didn’t see the divorce coming is an understatement. Now, eager to distance herself from her ex and his lover, she moves with her troubled daughter, Katy, to the quaint bayside town of Potomac Point, where she spent her childhood summers. But her fresh start stalls when the contractor and onetime love interest renovating her grandparents’ old house discovers a vintage recipe box containing hints about her beloved grandmother’s hidden past. Anne is drawn into exploring the mysterious clues about the woman whose memory is fading, while also helping her daughter manage a rocky adjustment to a new school. When uncovered secrets shatter past beliefs, each woman must confront her deepest fears in order to learn it’s never too late to live her best life.
©2020 Write Ideas, LLC. (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Cardiff, by the Sea
Summary
Four brand-new novellas by the number one New York Times best-selling, National Book Award-winning "grand mistress of ghoulishness" (Publishers Weekly). An academic in Pennsylvania discovers a terrifying trauma from her past after inheriting a house in Cardiff, Maine, from someone she has never heard of. A pubescent girl, overcome with loneliness, befriends a feral cat that becomes her protector from the increasingly aggressive males that surround her. A brilliant but shy college sophomore is distraught to discover that she's pregnant, and the professor who takes her under his wing may not have innocent intentions. And a woman who marries into a family shattered by tragedy finds herself haunted by her predecessor's voice, an inexplicably befouled well, and a compulsive attraction to a garage that took two lives. In these psychologically daring, chillingly suspenseful pieces, the author of We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde writes about women facing threats past and present, once again cementing her reputation for "great intelligence and dead-on imaginative powers" (Los Angeles Times Book Review).
©2020 The Ontario Review (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
The Bengal Identity
Summary
With no ID for his pet, an agitated young man shows up at Cassie's Comfy Cats claiming his house has burned down and he needs to board his big brown cat, Ayesha. But after a bath washes dye out of the cat's coat and reveals beautiful spots, Cassie suspects the exotic-looking feline may, in fact, be a valuable Bengal show cat, possibly stolen. At the same time, there are rumored sightings of a wild cat in the hills of Chadwick, New Jersey. Could there be a connection? When Ayesha's alleged owner turns up dead, it looks like whoever wants the beautiful Bengal is not pussyfooting around. Working with the police, Cassie and her staff need to be careful not to reveal the purloined purebred's whereabouts while they discreetly make inquiries to cat breeders to find her real owners. But after a break-in attempt rattles Cassie's cage, it's clear someone let the cat out of the bag. And when a second body is found, it's up to Cassie to spot the killer, who may be grooming her to be the next victim.
©2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Girls Like Us
Summary
A 2015 Schneider Family Book Award Winner With gentle humor and unflinching realism, Gail Giles tells the gritty, ultimately hopeful story of two special ed teenagers entering the adult world. We understand stuff. We just learn it slow. And most of what we understand is that people what ain't Speddies think we too stupid to get out our own way. And that makes me mad. Quincy and Biddy are both graduates of their high school's special ed program, but they couldn't be more different: suspicious Quincy faces the world with her fists up, while gentle Biddy is frightened to step outside her front door. When they're thrown together as roommates in their first "real world" apartment, it initially seems to be an uneasy fit. But as Biddy's past resurfaces and Quincy faces a harrowing experience that no one should have to go through alone, the two of them realize that they might have more in common than they thought - and more important, that they might be able to help each other move forward. Hard-hitting and compassionate, Girls Like Us is a story about growing up in a world that can be cruel, and finding the strength - and the support - to carry on.
©2014 Gail Giles, original book published by Candlewick Press (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Waking Up in Charleston
Summary
The moment Amanda defied her rich and powerful father to marry Bobby O'Leary, Big Max disowned her. Even now, with Bobby dead and Amanda mired in debt, he refuses to forgive her. But Caleb, the new man in Amanda's life, is determined to mend fences between father and daughter. He also has a far more personal mission - to make Amanda and her family his own. But when she learns how close he is to Big Max and the secret Caleb's been hiding, there's every chance she could walk away. As a pastor, Caleb's used to calling on a higher power for help, and heaven knows it's going to take a miracle to fix this before it's too late.
©2006 Sherryl Woods (P)2020 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Before the Broken Star
Summary
A fierce young female adventurer battles time itself to claim her destiny in a sweeping new fantasy saga from the author of the Hundredth Queen series.
Everley Donovan is living on borrowed time. The lone survivor of her family’s unexplained assassination, she was saved by an ingeniously crafted clockwork heart. But the time she was given won’t last forever. Now, every tick-tock reminds her how fragile her existence is and hastens her quest to expose Killian Markham, the navy admiral who shattered her world and left her for dead. But Everley’s hunt for justice will be a long and hard-won voyage.
Her journey takes her to a penal colony on a cursed isle, where she will be married off and charged to build the new world. It is here, and beyond, that hidden realms hide, treasures are unearthed, her family secrets are buried, and young love will test the strength of her makeshift heart. When Everley discovers Markham may not be who he seems, her pursuit for truth is bound to his redemption, her tragic history, and her astonishing destiny.
©2019 by Emily R. King. (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Without Her Consent
Summary
She's been in a coma for years. How can she be pregnant? When a coma patient starts to have contractions and gives birth to a baby boy, the child's arrival triggers an investigation into serious sexual assault. Detectives McQuillan and Blalock are handed the case, while the internal hospital team collects data to help with the investigation. When Dr. Angela Crawford, who helped deliver the baby, learns that the child will be put in foster care, she and her husband agree to take the little boy in. Meanwhile, a young nurse, Jenny O'Hearn, helps compile data on the rapist and discovers several strange things. When Jenny is attacked, it forces the detectives to look at the case from a different perspective. Could a staff doctor, male nurse, or the chaplain be the rapist? Sometimes the truth isn't always obvious.
©2020 McGarvey Black (P)2020 Tantor
Feral Attraction
Summary
Cassie's good friend Dawn is part of an organization that's trying to protect a colony of stray cats on the property of a condo community in Chadwick, New Jersey. The residents have gotten their backs up over the cat invasion, and Dawn has come to Cassie's grooming and boarding shop, Cassie's Comfy Cats, to ask for her help in talking sense to them. Not everyone's against the cats. Eccentric Sabrina Ward feeds them and has even created makeshift shelters for them in the nearby woods, infuriating her neighbors. Following a heated community meeting - in which Cassie and Dawn come up with a proposal - Sabrina's body is found in the woods. The police are calling her death an accident, but Cassie smells a rat. Narrowing down the list of suspects may be tougher than herding cats, but Cassie is determined to collar the killer before another cat lover has a fatal accident.
©2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC
The Girlfriend Stage
Summary
In this stand-alone sequel to The Extra, Anna-Marie has never wanted to find love - but love’s about to find her. Anna-Marie Halsey loves her job as a regular on the soap opera Southern Heat almost as much as she loves living the LA lifestyle: clubbing and partying and casually dating gorgeous men - most recently powerhouse agent Josh Rios. When Anna-Marie starts feeling more-than-casual about Josh - her signature cue to break things off - she finds a much-needed excuse to get away: a family reunion in small-town Wyoming. In Wyoming, Anna-Marie remembers why she’s spent years avoiding her crazy family and claustrophobic hometown - and her ex-boyfriend, up-and-coming rock musician Shane Beckstrom, provides the perfect distraction. But when a Boy Scout troop films them nude in a hot spring, Anna-Marie finds Wyoming even more nerve-wracking than her paralyzing fear of commitment. To make matters worse, Josh Rios appears, and it’s clear that commitment is exactly what he’s hoping for. Anna-Marie isn’t sure what she wants, but being trapped in Everett, Wyoming, with Josh, Shane, and her crazy family when her impromptu sex-tape hits the internet sure isn’t it. The Girlfriend Stage is book two in The Extra series, but it stands alone, and can be listened to first, without missing anything except the backgrounds of the side characters. It features PG-13 rated sexual content, no cliff-hanger, and a swoon-worthy happily ever after.
©2019 Megan Walker and Janci Patterson (P)2019 Blackstone Publishing