Pete Simonelli has narrated 40 audiobooks on Listento.it by 41 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.3★ across 452 ratings. The most-rated is Dear Wife.
The Temporary Agent
Summary
Scarred by war, former Navy Seabee Tom Sexton vows to leave his violent past behind, only to be drawn back into that life when a deadly conspiracy forces him to face an agonizing choice no man should ever have to make. Five years after his life was saved in Afghanistan by Marine Force Recon Leader Charlie Cahill, Tom lives a bleak, nomadic existence, haunted by the debt he can never repay. Salvation appears in Stella - a woman as damaged, and resourceful, as he. But when a coded distress call from his former CO leads him to a shadowy NSA operative, Tom is recruited for a "black op" to bring back the now-rogue man who saved his life. As he searches for Cahill, Tom quickly uncovers a much larger web of treason and betrayal that calls his entire world into question - and forces him into the ultimate no-win scenario.
©2016 Daniel Judson. (P)2016 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
The Year of Dangerous Days
Summary
In the tradition of The Wire, the harrowing story of the cinematic transformation of Miami, one of America’s most bustling cities - rife with a drug epidemic, a burgeoning refugee crisis, and police brutality - from journalist and award-winning author Nicholas Griffin Miami, Florida, famed for its blue skies and sandy beaches, is one of the world’s most popular vacation destinations, with nearly 23 million tourists visiting annually. But few people have any idea how this unofficial capital of Latin America came to be. The Year of Dangerous Days is a fascinating chronicle of a pivotal but forgotten year in American history. With a cast that includes iconic characters such as Jimmy Carter, Fidel Castro, and Janet Reno, this slice of history is brought to life through intertwining personal stories. At the core, there’s Edna Buchanan, a reporter for the Miami Herald who breaks the story on the wrongful murder of a black man and the shocking police cover-up; Captain Marshall Frank, the hardboiled homicide detective tasked with investigating the murder; and Mayor Maurice Ferré, the charismatic politician who watches the case, and the city, fall apart. On a roller coaster of national politics and international diplomacy, these three figures cross paths as their city explodes in one of the worst race riots in American history as more than 120,000 Cuban refugees land south of Miami, and as drug cartels flood the city with cocaine and infiltrate all levels of law enforcement. In a battle of wills, Buchanan has to keep up with the 150 percent murder rate increase; Captain Frank has to scrub and rebuild his homicide bureau; and Mayor Ferré must find a way to reconstruct his smoldering city. Against all odds, they persevere, and a stronger, more vibrant Miami begins to emerge. But the foundation of this new Miami - partially built on corruption and drug money - will have severe ramifications for the rest of the country. Deeply researched and covering many timely issues including police brutality, immigration, and the drug crisis, The Year of Dangerous Days is both a clarion call and a re-creation story of one of America’s most iconic cities.
©2020 Nicholas Griffin. All rights reserved. (P)2020 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
Walden (AmazonClassics Edition)
Summary
At Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau reflected on simpler living in the natural world. By removing himself from the distractions of materialism, Thoreau hoped to not only improve his spiritual life but also gain a better understanding of society through solitary introspection. In Walden, Thoreau condenses his two-year, two-month, two-day stay into a single year, using the four seasons to symbolize human development - a cycle of life shared by both nature and man. A celebration of personal renewal through self-reliance, independence, and simplicity, composed for all of us living in “quiet desperation,” Walden is eternal. Revised edition: Previously published as Walden, this edition of Walden (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.
Public Domain (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Right after the Weather
Summary
The author of the “graceful and compassionate” (People) New York Times best seller Carry the One presents a new and long-awaited novel exploring what happens when untested people are put to a hard test and in its aftermath find themselves in a newly uncertain world. It’s the fall of 2016. Cate, a set designer in her early 40s, lives and works in Chicago’s theater community. She has stayed too long at the fair and knows it’s time to get past her prolonged adolescence and stop taking handouts from her parents. She has a firm plan to get solvent and settled in a serious relationship. She has tentatively started something new even as she’s haunted by an old, going-nowhere affair. Her ex-husband, recently booted from his most recent marriage, is currently camped out in Cate’s spare bedroom, in thrall to online conspiracy theories, and she’s not sure how to help him. Her best friend, Neale, a yoga instructor, lives nearby with her son and is Cate’s model for what serious adulthood looks like. Only a few blocks away but in a parallel universe, we find Nathan and Irene - casual sociopaths, drug addicts, and small-time criminals. Their world and Cate’s intersect the day she comes into Neale’s kitchen to find these strangers assaulting her friend. Forced to take fast, spontaneous action, Cate does something she’s never even considered. She now also knows the violence she is capable of, as does everyone else in her life, and overnight, their world has changed. Anshaw’s flawed, sympathetic, and uncannily familiar characters grapple with their altered relationships and identities against the backdrop of the new Trump presidency and a country waking to a different understanding of itself. Eloquent, moving, and beautifully observed, Right After the Weather is the work of a master of exquisite prose and a wry and compassionate student of the human condition writing at the height of her considerable powers.
©2019 Carol Anshaw (P)2019 Simon & Schuster
It Had to Be You
Summary
“The book-equivalent of a perfect first date.... Highly highly recommend.” (Elin Hilderbrand, number-one New York Times best-selling author of 28 Summers) The author of the “emotional, hilarious, and thought-provoking” (People) novel The Bucket List returns with a witty and heartfelt romantic comedy featuring a wedding planner, her unexpected business partner, and their coworkers in a series of linked love stories - perfect for fans of Christina Lauren and Casey McQuiston. For the past 20 years, Liv and Eliot Goldenhorn have run In Love in New York, Brooklyn’s beloved wedding-planning business. When Eliot dies unexpectedly, he even more unexpectedly leaves half of the business to his younger, blonder girlfriend, Savannah. Liv and Savannah are not a match made in heaven, to say the least. But what starts as a personal and professional nightmare transforms into something even savvy, cynical Liv Goldenhorn couldn’t begin to imagine. It Had to Be You cleverly unites Liv, Savannah, and couples as diverse and unique as New York City itself, in a joyous Love-Actually-style braided narrative. The result is a smart, modern love story that truly speaks to our times. Second chances, secret romance, and steamy soul mates are front and center in this sexy, tender, and utterly charming rom-com.
©2021 Georgia Clark (P)2021 Simon & Schuster Audio
North of Here
Summary
The sounds of unexpected tragedies - a roll of thunder, the crash of metal on metal - leave Miranda in shock amid the ruins of her broken family. As she searches for new meaning in her life, Miranda finds quiet refuge with her family's handyman, Dix, in his cabin in the dark forests of the Adirondack Mountains. Dix is kind, dependable, and good with an ax - the right man to help the sheltered Miranda heal - but ultimately, her sadness creates a void even Dix can't fill. When a man from her distant past turns up, the handsome idealist now known as Darius, he offers Miranda a chance to do meaningful work at The Source, a secluded property filled with his nature worshipers. Miranda feels this charismatic guru is the key to remaking her life, but her grief and desire for love also create an opportunity for his deception. And in her desperate quest to find herself after losing almost everything, Miranda and Dix could pay a higher price than they ever imagined.
©2016 Laurel Saville (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
The Greatest U.S. Marine Corps Stories Ever Told
Summary
On Friday, November 10, 1775, the Continental Congress approved a resolution for the organization of the Corps, creating what would become the hallowed few, the proud - the Marines. Since then, the men and women of the United States Marine Corps have created the finest traditions of service and honor, and supplied a pantheon of heroes who have upheld them. In The Greatest US Marine Stories Ever Told, editor Iain Martin has accumulated these marines' most amazing true tales of service and sacrifice, from the Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli, to the conflicts where they serve today.
©2007 Iain C. Martin (P)2017 Tantor
Badluck Way
Summary
"Mine might have been a simple, pretty story if not for the wolves. In late July they emerged from the foothills...." In this gripping memoir of a young man, a wolf, and their parallel lives and ultimate collision, Bryce Andrews describes life on the remote, windswept Sun Ranch in Southwest Montana. The Sun's 20,000 acres of rangeland occupy a still-wild corner of Southwest Montana - a high valley surrounded by mountain ranges and steep creeks with portentous names like Grizzly, Dead Man, and Bad Luck. Just over the border from Yellowstone National Park, the Sun holds giant herds of cattle and elk amid many predators - bears, mountain lions, and wolves. In lyrical, haunting language, Andrews recounts marathon days and nights of building fences, riding, roping, and otherwise learning the hard business of caring for cattle, an initiation that changes him from an idealistic city kid into a skilled ranch hand. But when wolves suddenly begin killing the ranch's cattle, Andrews has to shoulder a rifle, chase the pack, and do what he'd hoped he would never have to do. Badluck Way is about transformation and complications, about living with dirty hands every day. It is about the hard choices that wake us at night and take a lifetime to reconcile. Above all Badluck Way celebrates the breathtaking beauty of wilderness and the satisfaction of hard work on some of the harshest, most beautiful land in the world. Called "an important meditation on what it means to share space and breathe the same air as truly wild animals" (Tom Groneberg, author of The Secret Life of Cowboys), Badluck Way is the memorable story of one young man's rebirth in the crucible of the West's timeless landscape, a place at the center of the heart's geography, savage and gorgeous in equal measure.
©2014 Bryce Andrews. All rights reserved (P)2015 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
Multiple Listings
Summary
What would you do if your ex-con father suddenly came to visit...indefinitely? Family drama ensues when Nicki's dad unexpectedly moves in with her, her son, and her boyfriend in this comedic novel from successful TV writer Tracy McMillan. Nicki Daniels owns a home appraisal business, but real estate is her true passion: She lives for open houses and really knows her way around a floor plan. And especially at this juncture of her life, real estate has come to signify the stability she is trying to build with her teenage son, Cody, and her much younger boyfriend, Jake. She's finally ready to find the perfect house for the three of them and work on a new business venture with Jake that she thinks will jump-start their lives together. Meanwhile, Ronnie, a longtime inmate at a nearby correctional facility, is getting some good news for once - there was a mistake in his sentencing, and he's eligible to get out of prison. After a 60-day stay in a halfway house, Ronnie decides his best option to avoid homelessness is to move in with his estranged daughter: Nicki. Even though they haven't spoken in years, her door is always open to him, right? Inspired by the author's life and imbued with wit and profound insight into relationships, Multiple Listings speaks poignantly - and often hilariously - about the ties that bind families of all types together.
©2016 Eleven Thousand Lakes, Inc. (P)2016 Simon & Schuster
The Shadow Agent
Summary
A covert ops agent risks it all to take down the terrorist who wants him dead in a thriller from the author of The Temporary Agent. Hunted for more than twenty years by a mysterious terrorist known as the Benefactor, former Navy Seabee Tom Sexton is done running. Working with his girlfriend, Stella, for a private-sector spec ops team, Tom has a plan to eliminate the elusive stranger who murdered his family. But Tom didn’t just emerge from deep cover. He might have been lured. A former colleague gone rogue has warned Tom of a shadow agent hiding in plain sight. If Tom trusts the intel, that means he can’t trust anyone else. Over the next seventy-two hours, Tom will be fighting for his life - and Stella’s - and to expose the traitor. And he may be walking into more than one trap. It’s a collision course with a truth he never saw coming. One that may require a sacrifice he’s not willing to make.
©2019 Daniel Judson (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Other People's Children
Summary
A riveting debut novel about a couple whose dream of adopting a baby is shattered when the teenage mother reclaims her child. What makes a family? Gail and Jon Durbin moved to the Chicago suburbs to set up house as soon as Gail got pregnant. But then she miscarried - once, twice, three times. Determined to expand their family, the Durbins turn to adoption. When several adoptions fall through, Gail’s desire for a child overwhelms her. Carli is a pregnant teenager from a blue-collar town nearby, with dreams of going to college and getting out of her mother’s home. When she makes the gut-wrenching decision to give her baby up for adoption, she chooses the Durbins. But Carli’s mother, Marla, has other plans for her grandbaby. In Other People’s Children, three mothers make excruciating choices to protect their families and their dreams - choices that put them at decided odds against one another. You will root for each one of them and wonder just how far you’d go in the same situation. This riveting debut is a thoughtful exploration of love and family, and a heart-pounding pause-resister you’ll find impossible to put down.
©2021 Hoffmann Ventures LLC. All rights reserved. (P)2021 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
The Rogue Agent
Summary
Former covert ops agent Tom Sexton is living quietly in rural Vermont. Running a diner with his girlfriend, Stella, he thinks that the worst he's seen, done, and suffered is finally behind him. But when a long-hidden specter from his troubled past emerges, Tom is shaken out of his safe, furtive life. With no choice but to lock and load, Tom falls back into a world where valor and violence collide...and his isn't the only life in danger. Summoned into the ranks of top-secret intelligence, Tom is tasked with protecting a teenage girl targeted by agents of an infamous mercenary. It's a high-risk mission that will pit all his combat and espionage skills against ruthless paramilitary hit squads. Leading them is a legendary and mysterious killer for hire who's making Tom doubt everything, and everyone, he has come to believe in. Even himself. Surrounded by enemies he can't see and allies he can no longer trust, Tom will have to face alone the fatal fury of a madman - if only to save the woman he left behind.
©2017 Daniel Judson (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Mistletoe Mysteries
Summary
Have yourself a mysterious little Christmas with 15 whodunits from New York Times best-selling authors Sharyn McCrumb, Mary Higgins Clark, and more! Peace on Earth isn’t everyone’s cup of tea in Charlotte MacLeod’s “A Cozy for Christmas”. Peter Lovesey’s “The Haunted Crescent” delivers a holiday ghost story with a twist. A training session for department-store Santas turns up Saint Nicks who are anything but angels in Isaac Asimov’s “Ho, Ho, Ho”. Marcia Muller’s “Silent Night” finds a tough private investigator searching San Francisco’s Tenderloin district - and discovering something unexpected. A long-married couple’s ship finally comes in - only to spring a mysterious leak - in Mary Higgins Clark’s “That’s the Ticket”. Scottish superstition catches up with a cat burglar in Sharyn McCrumb’s “A Wee Doch and Doris”. These and many more stories will keep you enthralled and gathering evidence of yuletide mayhem. So when holiday shopping brings out your inner Grinch, hunker down with a hot toddy - and leave the murder to the experts. This festive collection includes stories by Charlotte MacLeod, Peter Lovesey, Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Eric Wright, John Lutz, Howard Engel, Mary Higgins Clark, Bill Pronzini, Sharyn McCrumb, Henry Slesar, Edward D. Hoch, Aaron Elkins, Susan Dunlap, Isaac Asimov, and Marcia Muller.
©1989 Charlotte MacLeod (P)2019 Audible, Inc.
Crash
Summary
What if you couldn't remember the worst thing you'd ever done? When Jed Allen wakes up at a desk in New York City, he has no idea who he is. The evidence around him shows he's a hotshot architect, and a photo in his wallet reveals he has a beautiful girlfriend named Cassie. But when he goes home to seek her help, Cassie is nowhere to be found. Self-penned notes remind Jed that he's been suffering bouts of amnesia since a car crash nine months ago. As he plays private detective with the facts of his own life, he discovers more and more about his character. But when he finds a bloodied dress in the trunk of his car, amid news reports of a serial killer abducting women from Central Park, Jed has to confront the possibility that his lost memories could contain the darkest secrets imaginable... Nobody around him has the answers to his questions. Who is the killer? And where has Cassie gone?
©2018 Keith Houghton (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved
The Hidden Things
Summary
A hair-raising, atmospheric thriller from the acclaimed author of the “ripping good” (The New York Times) novel Three Graves Full, inspired by the real-life unsolved theft of a 17th-century painting. Twenty-eight seconds. In less than half a minute, a home-security camera captures the hidden resolve in 14-year-old Carly Liddell as she fends off a vicious attack just inside her own front door. The video of her heroic escape appears Online and goes viral. As the view count climbs, the lives of four desperate people will be forever changed by what’s just barely visible in the corner of the shot. Carly’s stepfather is spurred to protect his darkest secret: how a stolen painting - 400 years old, by a master of the Dutch Golden Age - has come to hang in his suburban foyer. The art dealer, left for dead when the painting vanished, sees a chance to buy back her life. And the double-crossed enforcer renews the hunt to deliver the treasure to his billionaire patrons - even if he has to kill to succeed. But it’s Carly herself, hailed as a social-media hero, whose new perspective gives her the courage to uncover the truth as the secrets and lies tear her family apart.
©2019 Jamie Mason (P)2019 Simon & Schuster Audio
Something She's Not Telling Us
Summary
Named most anticipated book of 2020 by Cosmopolitan, Woman's Day, She Reads, and Sassy Sarah Reads. From the New York Times best-selling author of A Simple Favor comes an electrifying domestic thriller of how one woman’s life is turned upside down when her brother brings his new girlfriend to visit - and no one is telling the truth about who they really are. She’s on the verge of having it all.... But one woman stands in her way. Charlotte has everything in life that she ever could have hoped for: a doting, artistic husband, a small-but-thriving flower shop, and her sweet, smart five-year-old daughter, Daisy. Her relationship with her mother might be strained, but the distance between them helps. And her younger brother Rocco may have horrible taste in women, but when he introduces his new girlfriend to Charlotte and her family, they are cautiously optimistic that she could be The One. Daisy seems to love Ruth, and she can’t be any worse than the klepto Rocco brought home the last time. At least, that’s what Charlotte keeps telling herself. But as Rocco and Ruth’s relationship becomes more serious, Ruth’s apparent obsession with Daisy grows more obvious. Then Daisy is kidnapped, and Charlotte is convinced there’s only one person who could have taken her. Ruth has never had much, but now she’s finally on the verge of having everything she’s ever dreamed of. A stable job at a start-up company, a rakish, handsome boyfriend with whom she falls more in love with every day - and a chance at the happy family she’s always wanted, adorable niece included. The only obstacle standing in her way is her boyfriend’s sister Charlotte, whose attitude swerves between politely cold and outright hostile. Rebuffing Ruth’s every attempt to build a friendship with her and Daisy, Charlotte watches over her daughter with a desperate protectiveness that sends chills down Ruth’s spine. Ruth knows that Charlotte has a deeply-buried secret, the only question is: what? A surprise outing with Daisy could be the key to finding out, and Ruth knows she must take the chance while she has it - for everyone’s sake. As the two women follow each other down a chilling rabbit hole, unearthing winding paths of deceit, lies, and trauma, a family and a future will be completely - and irrevocably - shattered. From its very first minute, Something She’s Not Telling Us takes hold of listeners’ imagination in a harrowing, unforgettable thriller that dives deep into the domestic psyche and asks the question: Is anyone ever really who they say they are...?
©2020 Darcey Bell (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
Pack
Summary
Cherry, Nebraska, population 312, is just off the highway between the sticks and the boonies. It’s where Dave Rhodes and his friends have lived all their lives. They own businesses, raise families, pay taxes, deal with odd neighbors, and, once or twice a month - just like their fathers before them - transform into wolves. It’s not a bad life, but when one of the group members goes astray, it sets in motion a series of events that will threaten to destroy the delicate balance that has kept Dave and his clan off the radar. Between a son getting ready for his first transformation - called The Scratch - a wife with sordid secrets, a new sheriff who knows nothing of the creatures in his midst, and a mysterious man in a bow tie with a shady agenda, the middle of nowhere is about to get very dangerous.
©2018 Mike Bockoven (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved
The Atlantis Cipher
Summary
A lost world. An ancient code. A deadly chase. Five ancient statues have been unearthed in South America, each containing a mysterious coded message hinting at an origin many thought impossible: the mythical world of Atlantis. As word of their discovery spreads, the prized figurines become a treasure bounty hunters will kill for. CIA agent Heidi Moneymaker calls in the only team for the job: Guy Bodie and his posse of relic-hunting thieves. If they are to find the ancient civilization, Bodie and his team must decode a series of clues - starting with the cipher on the statues themselves - that will take them across the world and to the deepest depths of the ocean. But they are not alone in their mission. Pursued by mysterious forces intent on keeping the legendary empire hidden, hunted by Chinese special forces and the relic hunters’ lethal foe, the Bratva, the team races to find the lost land - and Bodie’s enemies will stop at nothing to be the first to discover Atlantis’s secrets.
©2018 David Leadbeater (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Butch Cassidy
Summary
Charles Leerhsen brings the notorious Butch Cassidy to vivid life in this surprising and entertaining biography that goes beyond the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to reveal a more fascinating and complicated man than legend provides. For more than a century the life and death of Butch Cassidy have been the subject of legend, spawning a small industry of mythmakers and a major Hollywood film. But who was Butch Cassidy, really? Charles Leerhsen, bestselling author of Ty Cobb, sorts out facts from folklore and paints a brilliant portrait of the celebrated outlaw of the American West. Born into a Mormon family in Utah, Robert Leroy Parker grew up dirt poor and soon discovered that stealing horses and cattle was a fact of life in a world where small ranchers were being squeezed by banks, railroads, and cattle barons. Sometimes you got caught, sometimes you got lucky. A charismatic and more than capable cowboy - even ranch owners who knew he was a rustler said they would hire him again - he adopted the alias “Butch Cassidy”, and moved on to a new moneymaking endeavor: bank robbery. By all accounts, Butch was a smart and considerate thief, refusing to take anything from customers and insisting that no one be injured during his heists. His “Wild Bunch” gang specialized in clever getaways, stationing horses at various points along their escape route so they could outrun any posse. Eventually Butch and his gang graduated to train robberies, which were more lucrative. But the railroad owners hired the Pinkerton Agency, whose detectives pursued Butch and his gang relentlessly, until he and his then partner Harry Longabaugh (The Sundance Kid) fled to South America, where they replicated the cycle of ranching, rustling, and robbery until they met their end in Bolivia. In Butch Cassidy, Charles Leerhsen shares his fascination with how criminals such as Butch deftly maneuvered between honest work and thievery, battling the corporate interests that were exploiting the settlers, and showing us in vibrant prose the Old West as it really was, in all its promise and heartbreak.
©2020 Charles Leerhsen. All rights reserved. (P)2020 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
The Amber Secret
Summary
A vanished relic. A deadly prize. The half-mad explorer Dante Caruso swears he’s found a fabled Russian relic called the Amber Room, and he’s attracting the wrong kind of attention. A ruthless team of Ukrainian relic hunters called R24 has kidnapped him and his family; they want to know where the Amber Room is - and they’ll spill blood to find it. Nobody knows treasure hunting like Guy Bodie and his crew. But abduction is the last thing they expect. The R24 forces Guy, his treasure hunters, and Caruso at gunpoint to traverse the vast, unforgiving Tatra Mountains and find the Amber Room. If they fail, the R24 will end them. And if they run, the hunters will become the hunted. Armed only with Caruso’s dubious instructions, Guy and his crew must find the Amber Room at all costs. Will they solve the deadly mystery of this long-lost relic, or will they die trying?
©2019 David Leadbeater (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.