Patricia Kalember has narrated 10 audiobooks on Listento.it by 8 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.8★ across 18 ratings. The most-rated is Kisscut.
Kisscut
Summary
Saturday night dates at the skating rink have been a tradition in the small southern town of Heartsdale for as long as anyone can remember; but when a teenage quarrel explodes into a deadly shoot-out, Sara Linton, the town's pediatrician and medical examiner, finds herself entangled in a terrible tragedy. What seemed at first to be a horrific individual catastrophe proves to have wider implications. The autopsy reveals evidence of long-term abuse, of ritualistic self-mutilation, but when Sara and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver start to investigate, they are frustrated at every turn. The children surrounding the victim close ranks. The families turn their backs. Then a young girl is abducted, and it becomes clear that the first death is linked to an even more brutal crime, one far more shocking than anyone could have imagined. Meanwhile, detective Lena Adams, still recovering from her sister's death and her own brutal attack, finds herself drawn to a young man who might hold the answers. But unless Lena, Sara, and Jeffrey can uncover the deadly secrets the children hide, it's going to happen again.
©2002 Karin Slaughter (P)2002 HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
The Photograph
Summary
Booker Prize¿winning novelist Penelope Lively's latest masterpiece opens with a snapshot: Kath, before her death, at an unknown gathering, holding hands with a man who is not her husband. The photograph is in an envelope marked "DON'T OPEN - DESTROY." But Kath's husband does not heed the warning, embarking on a journey of discovery that reveals a tight web of secrets within marriages, between sisters, and at the heart of an affair. Kath, with her mesmerizing looks and casual ways, moves like a ghost through the memories of everyone who knew her, and a portrait emerges of a woman whose life cannot be understood without plumbing the emotional depths of the people she touched. Propelled by the author's signature mastery of narrative and psychology, The Photograph is Lively at her very best, the dazzling climax to all she has written before.
©2003 Penelope Lively (P)2003 HighBridge Company
The Last American Man
Summary
In this rousing examination of contemporary American male identity, acclaimed author and journalist Elizabeth Gilbert explores the fascinating true story of Eustace Conway. In 1977, at the age of 17, Conway left his family's comfortable suburban home to move to the Appalachian Mountains. For more than two decades he has lived there, making fire with sticks, wearing skins from animals he trapped, and trying to convince Americans to give up their materialistic lifestyles and return with him back to nature. To Gilbert, Conway's mythical character challenges all our assumptions about what it is to be a modern man in America; he is a symbol of much we feel about how our men should be, but rarely are.
©2003 Elizabeth Gilbert (P)2009 Penguin
Protect and Defend
Summary
A compelling new novel from Richard North Patterson - a major departure, and that confirms his place among the most important popular novelists at work today. A newly elected president faces the unexpected chance to nominate a new chief justice of the Supreme Court. His first choice is a nationally respected Court of Appeals judge, a woman whose nomination faces two serious obstacles: a long-held personal secret; and the prospect that a volatile abortion case - a trial pitting a 15-year-old girl against her pro-life parents - will come before the court. And the Senate majority leader is determined to thwart the president's nomination for reasons that cross the boundary between the political and the personal. As these stories intertwine, building in complexity and suspense, Patterson gives us the resounding clash of competing ambitions between the president and the majority leader; the equally momentous collision of science and culture in the courtroom; and, in an unprecedented novelistic depiction of the legal process from the perspective of the judge rather than the lawyers, a revelation of both how the judicial system works and how it intersects with politics, for better or for worse. Protect and Defend is a triumph - the definitive novel of politics and law at the dawn of the 21st century.
©2000 Richard North Patterson (P)2000 Random House, Inc.
Balance of Power
Summary
President Kerry Kilcannon and his fiancie, television journalist Lara Costello, have at last decided to marry. But their wedding is followed by a massacre of innocents in a lethal burst of gunfire, challenging their marriage and his presidency in ways so shattering and indelibly personal that Kilcannon vows to eradicate gun violence and crush the most powerful lobby in Washington - the Sons of the Second Amendment (SSA). Allied with the President's most determined rival, the resourceful and relentless Senate Majority Leader Frank Fasano, the SSA declares all-out war on Kerry Kilcannon, deploying its arsenal of money, intimidation and secret dealings to eviscerate Kilcannon's crusade and, it hopes, destroy his presidency. This ignites a high-stakes game of politics and legal maneuvering in the Senate, the courtroom, and across the country, which the charismatic but untested young President is determined to win at any cost. But in the incendiary clash over gun violence and gun rights, the cost to both Kilcannons may be even higher than he imagined. And others in the crossfire may also pay the price: the idealistic lawyer who has taken on the gun industry; the embattled CEO of America's leading gun maker; the war-hero senator caught between conflicting ambitions; the female senator whose career is at risk; and the grief-stricken young woman fighting to emerge from the shadow of her sister, the First Lady. The insidious ways money corrodes democracy and corrupts elected officials...the visceral debate between gun-rights and gun-control advocates...the bitter legal conflict between gun companies and the victims of gun violence...a ratings-driven media that both manipulates and is manipulated...Richard North Patterson weaves these engrossing themes into an epic novel that moves us with its force, passion and authority.
©2003 Richard North Patterson (P)2003 Random House Inc., Random House Audio, A Division of Random House, Inc.
Conviction
Summary
When the body of nine-year old Thuy Sen is found in the San Francisco Bay, the police quickly charge Rennell and Payton Price with her grisly murder. A 12-person jury, abetted by an incompetent defense lawyer, is nearly as quick to find the brothers guilty, and to sentence them both to die for their crimes. Fifteen years later, overworked pro bono laywer Teresa Peralta Paget, her husband Chris, and stepson Carlo, a recent Harvard law graduate, become convinced not only that Rennell didn't receive a fair trial but that he may well be innocent. Racing against the clock and facing enormous legal obstacles, Teresa, Chris, and Carlo desperately try to stay Rennell's execution, taking the case all the way to the Supreme Court, and to an enormously moving and powerful conclusion.
©2005 Richard North Patterson (P)2005 Random House, Inc.
The Same Sweet Girls
Summary
The new novel by the celebrated author of The Sunday Wife chronicles the lives of a tight-knit group of lifelong friends. None of the Same Sweet Girls are really girls anymore, and none of them have actually ever been that sweet. But the story of this spirited group of six Southern women, who have been holding biannual reunions ever since they were together in college, is nothing short of compelling. The story of the Same Sweet Girls is told by three of the women who suddenly face middle age and major life changes. First Lady Julia Stovall, the perfect political wife, is torn between loyalty to her husband, the governor of Alabama, and an unwelcome attraction to his bodyguard. The fun-loving former jock Lanier Sanders, who always finds a way to mess up her life, has done it yet again. And Corrine Cooper, a renowned gourd artist, battles her controlling ex-husband for the affection of her estranged son. On an island every summer and in the mountains every fall, the Same Sweet Girls come together to share their stories. When one of the group faces the most difficult challenge of her life, the novel builds to an almost unbearably powerful conclusion, one of the most memorable in current fiction. Without a touch of sentimentality, Cassandra King writes of the way close friends can help each other through even the most cataclysmic life events. Both heartbreaking and hilarious, The Same Sweet Girls will touch, move, and inspire listeners to cherish their own lifelong friendships.
©2005 Cassandra King (P)2005 Hyperion
Double Shot
Summary
New York Times best-selling author Diane Mott Davidson has taken readers by storm with clever mysteries filled with tantalizing plots and mouthwatering recipes. In her 12th novel, her tastiest tale yet, the ingenious storyteller whips up a rich souffle of murder and mischief. The governor of Colorado has commuted the prison sentence of Goldy Schulz's ultra-handsome, ultra-charming, ultra-venal ex-husband, Dr. John Richard Korman, otherwise known to Goldy as the Jerk. He's released, and soon afterward Goldy becomes the victim of threats, rumors, and violence. Then there's a murder and suspicion centers on Goldy. Suddenly, she is faced with the challenge of running her successful catering business while fending off two persistent detectives. Caught in a web of secrets and lies that can tear her family apart, Goldy must use all of her considerable powers of detection to find the real killer before she herself becomes a target.
©2004 Diane Mott Davidson (P)2004 HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Thalia Book Club: Claire Messud, The Woman Upstairs
Summary
The New York Times best-selling author of the literary page-turner The Emperor's Children discusses her richly drawn new novel, The Woman Upstairs, with Meghan O'Rourke (The Long Goodbye). Her latest release is a riveting compulsively readable (and listenable) confession of a 37-year-old elementary school teacher in Cambridge, Mass, drawn into the complex world of her new neighbors - a Lebanese scholar and professor of Ethical History, his glamorous Italian artist wife, and their son - who move in and change her life in ways she never expected. With a reading from the novel by Patricia Kalember (Don't Dress for Dinner).
©2013 Symphony Space (P)2013 Symphony Space
Chocolate for a Woman's Soul
Summary
Take a bite out of life and see how rich it can be! Treat yourself to true stories that celebrate life and capture the essence of what it means to be a woman. Like chocolate, these stories soothe, satisfy, and delight -- better yet, they're good for you! Written by and for women, here are heartfelt insights on commitment, compassion, work, marriage, friendship, motherhood, love, courage, spirituality, passion and dozens of other topics. Contributors share their most personal experiences -- funny, poignant, powerful, and uplifting -- as they inspire you to jump-start your own life, discover your talents and vocations, overcome old fears, find love, and let your dreams take flight. Like a box of chocolates, this audiobook can be enjoyed in one sitting, or you can pick out treats at random and savor them one at a time. Whether you want a good laugh or need a good cry, the perfect "chocolate story" is right here, waiting for you!
©1997 Kay Allenbaugh (P)2004 Simon & Schuster