Mozhan Marno has narrated 48 audiobooks on Listento.it by 54 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.2★ across 2,169 ratings. The most-rated is The Book of Longings.
The Social Climber's Bible
Summary
Welcome fledging Social Climbers! Allow us to show you the way. Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it. So what’s the big deal? You shouldn’t be punished for wanting to improve your lot in life! This is America, after all. In the grand tradition of True Prep and The Hipster Handbook, The Social Climber’s Bible will teach you everything you need to know to become a pro Mountaineer: The Art of Social Climbing at gallery openings, cocktail parties, and funerals Social Climbing as a family How to handle sex, dating, marriage, and love Your social climbing IQ and how to improve it How to spot a Big Fish, Whale, Turtle or Unicorn, and what they can do for you. Johnson & Johnson heiress Jazz Johnson is a lifelong insider in that rarefied world that fans of both Downton Abbey and Gossip Girl dream about. Raconteur Dirk Wittenborn is old enough to remember when sex was safe and cocaine wasn’t addictive. In short, Jazz belongs to some of the most exclusive clubs in the world, whereas Dirk has been kicked out of them. Who better to guide you?
©2014 Dirk Wittenborn and Jazz Johnson (P)2014 Recorded Books
The Rumi Prescription
Summary
A powerful personal journey to find meaning and life lessons in the words of a wildly popular 13th century poet. Rumi's inspiring and deceptively simple poems have been called ecstatic, mystical, and devotional. To writer and activist Melody Moezzi, they became a lifeline. In The Rumi Prescription, we follow her path of discovery as she translates Rumi's works for herself - to gain wisdom and insight in the face of a creative and spiritual roadblock. With the help of her father, who is a lifelong fan of Rumi's poetry, she immerses herself in this rich body of work, and discovers a 13th-century prescription for modern life. Addressing isolation, distraction, depression, fear, and other everyday challenges we face, the book offers a roadmap for living with intention and ease, and embracing love at every turn - despite our deeply divided and chaotic times. Most of all, it presents a vivid reminder that we already have the answers we seek, if we can just slow down to honor them. You went out in search of gold far and wide, but all along you were gold on the inside. Become the sky and the clouds that create the rain, not the gutter that carries it to the drain. You already own all the sustenance you seek. If only you'd wake up and take a peek. Quit being a drop. Make yourself an ocean.
©2020 Melody Moezzi (P)2020 Penguin Audio
The Boy at the Door
Summary
Set against a stunning Scandinavian backdrop, a gritty novel of psychological suspense that asks the question how far would you go to hold onto what you have? Cecilia Wilborg has it all - a loving husband, two beautiful daughters and a gorgeous home in the affluent Norwegian town of Sandefjord. And she works hard to keep it all together. Too hard. Because one mistake from her past could bring it all crashing down around her. Annika Lucasson lives a dark life with her abusive, drug-dealing boyfriend. She's lost everything one too many times and now she's got one last chance to save herself, thanks to Cecilia. Annika knows her secret - and just how much she's willing to do to make it all go away... When someone forgets to pick up their little boy at the local pool, Cecilia agrees to take him home, only to find an abandoned, empty house. It's the first step in the unraveling of her meticulously crafted life, as her and Annika's worlds collide...
©2018 Alex Dahl (P)2018 Penguin Audio
Gracie's Secret
Summary
My dearest daughter, I will never forget the day I nearly lost you. The day you learned the secrets that would tear our lives apart.... Time stops for Jen when her beloved daughter, Gracie, is involved in a terrible car crash. Pronounced dead at the scene, it's a miracle when paramedics manage to then resuscitate the little girl. The relief Jen feels at Gracie's recovery is matched only by her fury at the driver of the car - her ex-husband's new girlfriend, Ella. Jen has never trusted Ella, and now her worst fears have been confirmed. But then Gracie begins to tell strange stories about what she heard in the car that day and what she saw in those moments near death. It's clear that there's something shocking hidden in Ella's past, but exposing it could tear all their lives apart. An emotional pause resister that will take your breath away. Perfect for fans of Jodi Picoult, Lisa Wingate, and Kerry Fisher.
©2018 Jill Childs (P)2018 Bookouture
The Stationery Shop of Tehran
Summary
1953, Tehran. Roya loves nothing better than to while away the hours in the local stationery shop run by Mr. Fakhri. The store, stocked with fountain pens, shiny ink bottles and thick pads of writing paper also carries translations of literature from all over the world. And when Mr. Fakhri introduces her to his other favorite customer - handsome Bahman, with his burning passion for justice and a shared love for Rumi's poetry - Roya loses her heart at once. But around them, life in Tehran is changing. On the eve of their marriage, Roya heads to the town square to meet with Bahman. Suddenly, shockingly, violence erupts: a coup d'etat that forever changes their country's future. Bahman never arrives. Roya must piece her life back together. Her parents, wanting her to be safe, enroll her in college in California, where she meets and marries another man. But, nearly 60 years later, an accident of fate finally brings her the answer she has always wanted to know - Why did you leave? Where did you go? How is it that you were able to forget me? Marjan Kamali's beautiful novel, set in a country poised for democracy but destroyed by political upheaval, explores issues that have never been more timely, of immigration and cultural assimilation, of the quirks of fate. And its ending will break listeners' hearts.
©2019 Marjan Kamali (P)2019 Simon & Schuster UK
The Bitter Taste of Dying
Summary
In his first book, author Jason Smith explores the depravity and desperation required to maintain an opiate addiction so fierce, he finds himself jumping continents to avoid jail time and learns the hard way that some demons cannot be outrun. While teaching in Europe, he meets a prostitute who secures drugs for him at the dangerous price of helping out the Russian Mafia; in China he gets his Percocet and Xanax fixes but terrifies a crowd of children and parents at his job in the process; and in Mexico Smith thought a Tijuana jail cell would be the perfect place to kick his Fentanyl habit but soon realizes that the power of addiction is stronger than his desire to escape it. The Bitter Taste of Dying paints a portrait of the modern-day drug addict with clarity and refreshing honesty. With a gritty mixture of self-deprecation and lighthearted confessional, Smith's memoir deftly describes the journey into the harrowing depths of addiction and demonstrates the experience of finally being released from it.
©2015 Jason Smith (P)2015 Audible, Inc.
Mastering the Art of French Eating
Summary
The memoir of a young diplomat's wife who must reinvent her dream of living in Paris - one dish at a time.
When journalist Ann Mah's diplomat husband is given a three-year assignment in Paris, Ann is overjoyed. A lifelong foodie and Francophile, she immediately begins plotting gastronomic adventures à deux. Then her husband is called away to Iraq on a year-long post - alone. Suddenly, Ann's vision of a romantic sojourn in the City of Light is turned upside down.
So, not unlike another diplomatic wife, Julia Child, Ann must find a life for herself in a new city. Journeying through Paris and the surrounding regions of France, Ann combats her loneliness by seeking out the perfect pain au chocolat and learning the way the andouillette sausage is really made. She explores the history and taste of everything from boeuf Bourguignon to soupe au pistou to the crispiest of buckwheat crepes. And somewhere between Paris and the south of France, she uncovers a few of life's truths.
Like Sarah Turnbull's Almost French and Julie Powell's New York Times best seller Julie and Julia, Mastering the Art of French Eating is interwoven with the lively characters Ann meets and the traditional recipes she samples. Both funny and intelligent, this is a story about love - of food, family, and France.
©2013 Ann Mah (P)2013 Random House Audio
American Daughter
Summary
"Gut-wrenching and absorbing...in the vein of Educated and The Glass Castle" (Booklist) "A story of redemption and forgiveness" (New York Times Book Review) "Impressive...Readers will find themselves recalibrating their judgments about villains and victims" (BookPage, starred review) "Vital" (Library Journal) "Staggeringly candid" (Shelf Awareness) The sharp and surprising true story of a woman who finally sets out to understand her past, and the abusive mother she hoped to forget. Full of unexpected twists and unbelievable revelations, American Daughter is an immersive experience that will have you on the edge of your seat to the very last word. For 50 years, Stephanie Plymale kept her past a fiercely guarded secret. No one outside her immediate family would have guessed that her childhood was fraught with every imaginable hardship: a mentally ill mother who was in and out of jails and psych wards throughout Stephanie's formative years, neglect, hunger, poverty, homelessness, truancy, foster homes, a harrowing lack of medical care, and worse. Stephanie, in turn, knew very little about the past of her mother, from whom she remained estranged during most of her adult life. All this changed with a phone call that set a journey of discovery in motion, leading to a series of shocking revelations that forced Stephanie to revise the meaning of almost every aspect of her very compromised childhood. American Daughter is at once the deeply moving account of a troubled mother-daughter relationship and a meditation on resilience, transcendence, and ultimately, redemption.
©2021 Stephanie Thornton Plymale (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers
Sea Change
Summary
Karen White' s New York Times best-selling novels keep audiences up well into the night with their compelling plots and engaging characters. Sea Change is a riveting tale of second chances, forgiveness, and leaps of faith. Plagued by feelings of loneliness and not belonging, 35-year-old Ava Whalen is as shocked as anyone when she falls for child psychologist Matthew Frazier, elopes with him, and settles down on St. Simons Island, Georgia. But her newfound happiness is threatened when her past proves difficult to escape.
©2012 Harley House Books, LLC (P)2012 Recorded Books
I Always Loved You
Summary
The young Mary Cassatt never thought moving to Paris after the Civil War to be an artist was going to be easy, but when, after a decade of work, her submission to the Paris Salon is rejected, Mary’s fierce determination wavers. Her father is begging her to return to Philadelphia to find a husband before it is too late, her sister Lydia is falling mysteriously ill, and worse, Mary is beginning to doubt herself. Then one evening a friend introduces her to Edgar Degas and her life changes forever. Years later she will learn that he had begged for the introduction, but in that moment their meeting seems a miracle. So begins the defining period of her life and the most tempestuous of relationships. In I Always Loved You, Robin Oliveira brilliantly re-creates the irresistible world of Belle Époque Paris, writing with grace and uncommon insight into the passion and foibles of the human heart.
©2013 Robin Oliveira (P)2014 Penguin Audio
Honor
Summary
An honor killing shatters and transforms the lives of Turkish immigrants in 1970s London. Internationally best-selling Turkish author Elif Shafak’s new novel is a dramatic tale of families, love, and misunderstandings that follows the destinies of twin sisters born in a Kurdish village. While Jamila stays to become a midwife, Pembe follows her Turkish husband, Adem, to London, where they hope to make new lives for themselves and their children. In London, they face a choice: stay loyal to the old traditions or try their best to fit in. After Adem abandons his family, Iskender, the eldest son, must step in and become the one who will not let any shame come to the family name. And when Pembe begins a chaste affair with a man named Elias, Iskender will discover that you could love someone with all your heart and yet be ready to hurt them. Just published to great acclaim in England, Honor is a powerful, gripping exploration of guilt and innocence, loyalty and betrayal, and the trials of the immigrant, as well as the love and heartbreak that too often tear families apart.
©2012 Elif Shafak (P)2013 Recorded Books
The Guest Room
Summary
From the New York Times best-selling author of Midwives and The Sandcastle Girls comes the spellbinding tale of a party gone horribly wrong: Two men lie dead in a suburban living room, two women are on the run from police, and a marriage is ripping apart at the seams. When Kristin Chapman agrees to let her husband, Richard, host his brother's bachelor party, she expects a certain amount of debauchery. She brings their young daughter to Manhattan for the evening, leaving her Westchester home to the men and their hired entertainment. What she does not expect is this: bacchanalian drunkenness, her husband sharing a dangerously intimate moment in the guest room, and two women stabbing and killing their Russian bodyguards before driving off into the night. In the aftermath, Kristin and Richard's life rapidly spirals into nightmare. The police throw them out of their home, now a crime scene; Richard's investment banking firm puts him on indefinite leave; and Kristin is unsure if she can forgive her husband for the moment he shared with a dark-haired girl in the guest room. But the dark-haired girl, Alexandra, faces a much graver danger. In one breathless, violent night, she is free, running to escape the police who will arrest her and the gangsters who will kill her in a heartbeat. A captivating, chilling story about shame and scandal, The Guest Room is a riveting novel from one of our greatest storytellers.
©2016 Chris Bohjalian (P)2016 Random House Audio
The President Is Missing
Summary
The White House is the home of the president of the United States, the most guarded, monitored, closely watched person in the world. So how could a US president vanish without a trace? And why would he choose to do so? An unprecedented collaboration between President Bill Clinton and the world's best-selling novelist, James Patterson, The President Is Missing is a breathtaking story from the pinnacle of power. Full of what it truly feels like to be the person in the Oval Office - the mind-boggling pressure, the heartbreaking decisions, the exhilarating opportunities, the soul-wrenching power - this is the thriller of the decade, confronting the darkest threats that face the world today, with the highest stakes conceivable.
©2018 Bill Clinton and James Patterson (P)2018 Hachette Audio
A Cup of Friendship
Summary
From the author of the “bighearted . . . inspiring” (Vogue) memoir Kabul Beauty School comes a fiction debut as compelling as real life: the story of a remarkable coffee shop in the heart of Afghanistan, and the men and women who meet there - thrown together by circumstance, bonded by secrets, and united in an extraordinary friendship. After hard luck and some bad choices, Sunny has finally found a place to call home - it just happens to be in the middle of a war zone. The thirty-eight-year-old American’s pride and joy is the Kabul Coffee House, where she brings hospitality to the expatriates, misfits, missionaries, and mercenaries who stroll through its doors. She’s especially grateful that the busy days allow her to forget Tommy, the love of her life, who left her in pursuit of money and adventure. Working alongside Sunny is the maternal Halajan, who vividly recalls the days before the Taliban and now must hide a modern romance from her ultratraditional son - who, unbeknownst to her, is facing his own religious doubts. Into the café come Isabel, a British journalist on the trail of a risky story; Jack, who left his family back home in Michigan to earn “danger pay” as a consultant; and Candace, a wealthy and well-connected American whose desire to help threatens to cloud her judgment. When Yazmina, a young Afghan from a remote village, is kidnapped and left on a city street pregnant and alone, Sunny welcomes her into the café and gives her a home - but Yazmina hides a secret that could put all their lives in jeopardy. As this group of men and women discover that there’s more to one another than meets the eye, they’ll form an unlikely friendship that will change not only their own lives but the lives of an entire country. Brimming with Deborah Rodriguez’s remarkable gift for depicting the nuances of life in Kabul, and filled with vibrant characters that readers will truly care about, A Cup of Friendship is the best kind of fiction - full of heart yet smart and thought-provoking.
©2011 Deborah Rodriguez (P)2011 Random House Audio
Beneath a Marble Sky
Summary
In 1632, the Emperor of Hindustan, Shah Jahan, overwhelmed with grief over the death of his beloved wife, Mumatz Mahal, commissioned the building of a grand mausoleum to symbolize the greatness of their love. The story surrounding the construction of the Taj Mahal occurs, however, against a scrim of fratricidal war, murderous rebellion, unimaginable wealth, and, not least of all, religious fundamentalism ruthlessly opposing tolerance and coexistence between the disparate peoples in the empire. At that time, Hindustan comprised all of modern Pakistan and Kashmir, most of eastern Afghanistan, and two-thirds of the Indian subcontinent (roughly north of Bombay to the Himalayas). Beneath a Marble Sky, narrated by Princess Jahanara, eldest daughter of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal, recounts their story, and her own as well, a parallel tale of forbidden love enduring censure and extreme deprivations. Beneath a Marble Sky brims with action and intrigue befitting an epic era when, alongside continuous war, architecture and its attendant arts reached a pinnacle of perfection. In a splendid debut, John Shors has crafted an immensely listenable and well-researched historical novel of surprisingly contemporary relevance.
©2004 John Shors (P)2012 Recorded Books
Lipstick in Afghanistan
Summary
Booklist calls this powerful debut by Roberta Gately an “utterly engrossing read.” In the months after 9/11, Boston nurse Elsa Murphy volunteers to go to Afghanistan to work in a small clinic. Although her new surroundings take some adjusting to, Elsa soon finds friendship with a young Afghani woman and potential romance with a U.S. soldier. But Elsa’s newfound happiness is threatened when Taliban forces move in.
©2010 Roberta Gately (P)2011 Recorded Books
The Mirror of My Heart
Summary
An anthology of verse by women poets writing in Persian, most of whom have never been translated into English before, from acclaimed scholar and translator Dick Davis. The Mirror of My Heart is a unique and captivating collection of 83 Persian women poets, many of whom wrote anonymously or were punished for their outspokenness. One of the very first Persian poets was a woman (Rabe'eh, who lived more than 1,000 years ago), and there have been women poets writing in Persian in virtually every generation since that time until the present. Before the 20th century, they tended to come from society's social extremes - many were princesses, some were entertainers, but many were wives and daughters who wrote simply for their own entertainment, and they were active in many different countries - Iran, India, Afghanistan, and areas of Central Asia that are now Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. From Rabe'eh in the 10th century to Fatemeh Ekhtesari in the 21st, the women poets found in The Mirror of My Heart write across the millennium on such universal topics as marriage, children, political climate, death, and emancipation, recreating life from hundreds of years ago that is strikingly similar to our own today and giving insight into their experiences as women throughout different points of Persian history. The volume is introduced and translated by Dick Davis, a scholar and translator of Persian literature as well as a gifted poet in his own right. This audiobook includes a PDF that contains notes from the book. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2019 Dick Davis (P)2021 Penguin Audio
The Paris Diversion
Summary
"The most clever plot twist of the year." (Washington Post) "I nominate Kate Moore, the protagonist of Chris Pavone’s sizzling new thriller The Paris Diversion, for patron saint of working wives and mothers everywhere." (Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review) "The Paris Diversion is the best espionage novel I’ve read this year. Smart, sophisticated and suspenseful, this is Pavone’s finest novel to date - and that’s saying something." (Harlan Coben, number one New York Times best-selling author of Fool Me Once) "Deliciously twisty.... This involving work has been skillfully engineered for maximum reader enjoyment." (The Wall Street Journal) From the New York Times best-selling author of The Expats. Kate Moore is back in a pulse-pounding thriller to discover that a massive terror attack across Paris is not what it seems - and that it involves her family. American expat Kate Moore drops her kids at the international school, makes her rounds of chores, and meets her husband Dexter at their regular café: a leisurely start to a normal day, St-Germain-des-Prés. Across the Seine, tech CEO Hunter Forsyth stands on his balcony, wondering why his police escort just departed, and frustrated that his cell service has cut out; Hunter has important calls to make, not all of them technically legal. And on the nearby rue de Rivoli, Mahmoud Khalid climbs out of an electrician’s van and elbows his way into the crowded courtyard of the world’s largest museum. He sets down his metal briefcase, and removes his windbreaker. That’s when people start to scream. Everyone has big plans for the day. Dexter is going to make a small fortune, finally digging himself out of a deep financial hole, via an extremely risky investment. Hunter is going to make a huge fortune, with a major corporate acquisition that will send his company’s stock soaring. Kate has less ambitious plans: preparations for tonight’s dinner party - one of those homemaker obligations she still hasn’t embraced, even after a half-decade of this life - and an uneventful workday at the Paris Substation, the clandestine cadre of operatives that she’s been running, not entirely successfully, increasingly convinced that every day could be the last of her career. But every day is also a fresh chance to prove her own relevance, never more so than during today’s momentous events. And Mahmoud? He is planning to die today. And he won’t be the only one.
©2019 Chris Pavone (P)2019 Random House Audio
Sparks Like Stars
Summary
“Suspenseful...emotionally compelling. I found myself eagerly following in a way I hadn’t remembered for a long time, impatient for the next twist and turn of the story." (NPR) An Afghan American woman returns to Kabul to learn the truth about her family and the tragedy that destroyed their lives in this brilliant and compelling novel from the best-selling author of The Pearl That Broke Its Shell, The House Without Windows, and When the Moon Is Low. Kabul, 1978: The daughter of a prominent family, Sitara Zamani lives a privileged life in Afghanistan’s thriving cosmopolitan capital. The 1970s are a time of remarkable promise under the leadership of people like Sardar Daoud, Afghanistan’s progressive president, and Sitara’s beloved father, his right-hand man. But the 10-year-old Sitara’s world is shattered when communists stage a coup, assassinating the president and Sitara’s entire family. Only she survives. Smuggled out of the palace by a guard named Shair, Sitara finds her way to the home of a female American diplomat, who adopts her and raises her in America. In her new country, Sitara takes on a new name - Aryana Shepherd - and throws herself into her studies, eventually becoming a renowned surgeon. A survivor, Aryana has refused to look back, choosing instead to bury the trauma and devastating loss she endured. New York, 2008: Thirty years after that fatal night in Kabul, Aryana’s world is rocked again when an elderly patient appears in her examination room - a man she never expected to see again. It is Shair, the soldier who saved her, yet may have murdered her entire family. Seeing him awakens Aryana’s fury and desire for answers - and, perhaps, revenge. Realizing that she cannot go on without finding the truth, Aryana embarks on a quest that takes her back to Kabul - a battleground between the corrupt government and the fundamentalist Taliban - and through shadowy memories of the world she loved and lost. Bold, illuminating, heartbreaking, yet hopeful, Sparks Like Stars is a story of home - of America and Afghanistan, tragedy and survival, reinvention and remembrance, told in Nadia Hashimi’s singular voice.
©2021 Nadia Hashimi (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers
The Accident
Summary
From the author of the New York Times best-selling and Edgar Award-winning The Expats As dawn approaches in New York, literary agent Isabel Reed is turning the final pages of a mysterious, anonymous manuscript, racing through the explosive revelations about powerful people, as well as long-hidden secrets about her own past. In Copenhagen, veteran CIA operative Hayden Gray, determined that this sweeping story be buried, is suddenly staring down the barrel of an unexpected gun. And in Zurich, the author himself is hiding in a shadowy expat life, trying to atone for a lifetime’s worth of lies and betrayals with publication of The Accident, while always looking over his shoulder. Over the course of one long, desperate, increasingly perilous day, these lives collide as the book begins its dangerous march toward publication, toward saving or ruining careers and companies, placing everything at risk - and everyone in mortal peril. The rich cast of characters - in publishing and film, politics and espionage - are all forced to confront the consequences of their ambitions, the schisms between their ideal selves and the people they actually became. The action rockets around Europe and across America, with an intricate web of duplicities stretching back a quarter-century to a dark winding road in upstate New York, where the shocking truth about the accident itself is buried. Gripping, sophisticated, layered, and impossible to put down, The Accident proves once again that Chris Pavone is a true master of suspense.
©2014 Chris Pavone (P)2014 Random House Audio