Renata Friedman has narrated 12 audiobooks on Listento.it by 15 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 1,580 ratings. The most-rated is The Evening and the Morning.
The Evening and the Morning
Summary
Number-One New York Times Best Seller An Amazon Best Book of 2020 A thrilling and addictive new novel - a prequel to The Pillars of the Earth - set in England at the dawn of a new era: the Middle Ages "Just as transporting as [The Pillars of the Earth].... A most welcome addition to the Kingsbridge series." (The Washington Post) It is 997 CE, the end of the Dark Ages. England is facing attacks from the Welsh in the west and the Vikings in the east. Those in power bend justice according to their will, regardless of ordinary people and often in conflict with the king. Without a clear rule of law, chaos reigns. In these turbulent times, three characters find their lives intertwined. A young boatbuilder's life is turned upside down when the only home he's ever known is raided by Vikings, forcing him and his family to move and start their lives anew in a small hamlet where he does not fit in.... A Norman noblewoman marries for love, following her husband across the sea to a new land, but the customs of her husband's homeland are shockingly different, and as she begins to realize that everyone around her is engaged in a constant, brutal battle for power, it becomes clear that a single misstep could be catastrophic.... A monk dreams of transforming his humble abbey into a center of learning that will be admired throughout Europe. And each in turn comes into dangerous conflict with a clever and ruthless bishop who will do anything to increase his wealth and power. Thirty years ago, Ken Follett published his most popular novel, The Pillars of the Earth. Now, Follett's masterful new prequel The Evening and the Morning takes us on an epic journey into a historical past rich with ambition and rivalry, death and birth, love and hate, that will end where The Pillars of the Earth begins.
©2020 Ken Follett (P)2020 Penguin Audio
Cry Wolf
Summary
Anna never knew werewolves existed until the night she survived a violent attack...and became one herself. After three years at the bottom of the pack, she'd learned to keep her head down and never, ever trust dominant males. But Anna is that rarest kind of werewolf: an Omega. And one of the most powerful werewolves in the country will recognize her value as a pack member - and as his mate.
©2008 Patricia Briggs (P)2008 Penguin
The Coast-to-Coast Murders
Summary
A detective and FBI agent join forces on what seems like an open-and-shut case - but a new rash of killings sends them on a pulse-pounding race against time in this intense thriller. Michael and Megan Fitzgerald are siblings who share a terrifying past. Both adopted, and now grown - Michael is a long-haul truck driver, Megan a college student majoring in psychology - they trust each other before anyone else. They've had to. Their parents are public intellectuals, an Ivy League clinical psychologist and a renowned psychiatrist, and they brought up their adopted children in a rarefied, experimental environment. It sheltered them from the world's harsh realities, but it also forced secrets upon them, secrets they keep at all costs. In Los Angeles, Detective Garrett Dobbs and FBI Agent Jessica Gimble have joined forces to work a murder that seems like a dead cinch. Their chief suspect is quickly identified and apprehended - but then there's another killing just like the one they've been investigating. And another. And not just in Los Angeles - the spree spreads across the country. The Fitzgerald family comes to the investigators' attention, but Dobbs and Gimble are at a loss - if one of the four is involved, which Fitzgerald might it be? From coastal California to upstate New York, Dobbs and Gimble race against time and across state lines to stop an ingenious and deeply deranged killer - one whose dark and twisted appetites put them outside the range of logic or experience.
©2020 James Patterson and J. D. Barker (P)2020 Hachette Audio
Detransition, Baby
Summary
New York Times Editors' Choice • “An unforgettable portrait of three women, trans and cis, who wrestle with questions of motherhood and family making...Detransition, Baby might destroy your book club, but in a good way.” (Andrea Lawlor, author of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl) “A tale of love, loss, and self-discovery as singular as it is universal, and all the sweeter for it.” (Entertainment Weekly) Longlisted for the Women’s Prize • Roxane Gay’s Audacious Book Club Pick • A Marie Claire Book Club Pick Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn't hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men. Ames isn't happy either. He thought detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese - and losing her meant losing his only family. Even though their romance is over, he longs to find a way back to her. When Ames's boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she's pregnant with his baby - and that she's not sure whether she wants to keep it - Ames wonders if this is the chance he's been waiting for. Could the three of them form some kind of unconventional family - and raise the baby together? This provocative debut is about what happens at the emotional, messy, vulnerable corners of womanhood that platitudes and good intentions can't reach. Torrey Peters brilliantly and fearlessly navigates the most dangerous taboos around gender, sex, and relationships, gifting us a thrillingly original, witty, and deeply moving novel.
©2021 Torrey Peters (P)2021 Random House Audio
Weird
Summary
In the tradition of Susan Cain's Quiet and Scott Stossel's My Age of Anxiety, Atlantic staff writer Olga Khazan reclaims the concept of "weird" and turns it into a badge of honor rather than a slur, showing how being different - culturally, socially, physically, or mentally - can actually be a person's greatest strength. Most of us have at some point in our lives felt like an outsider, sometimes considering ourselves "too weird" to fit in. Growing up as a Russian immigrant in West Texas, Olga Khazan always felt there was something different about her. This feeling has permeated her life, and as she embarked on a science writing career, she realized there were psychological connections between this feeling of being an outsider and both her struggles and successes later in life. She decided to reach out to other people who were unique in their environments to see if they had experienced similar feelings of alienation, and if so, to learn how they overcame them. Weird is based on in-person interviews with many of these individuals, such as a woman who is professionally surrounded by men, a liberal in a conservative area, and a Muslim in a predominantly Christian town. In addition, it provides actionable insights based on interviews with dozens of experts and a review of hundreds of scientific studies. Weird explores why it is that we crave conformity, how that affects people who are different, and what they can do about it. First, the audiobook dives into the history of social norms and why some people hew to them more strictly than others. Next, Khazan explores the causes behind - and the consequences of - social rejection. She then reveals the hidden upsides to being "weird", as well as the strategies that people who are different might use in order to achieve success in a society that values normalcy. Finally, the audiobook follows the trajectories of unique individuals who either decided to be among others just like them; to stay weird; or to dwell somewhere in between. Combining Khazan's own story with those of others and with fascinating takeaways from cutting-edge psychology research, Weird reveals how successful individuals learned to embrace their weirdness, using it to their advantage.
©2020 Olga Khazan (P)2020 Hachette Audio
We Play Ourselves
Summary
After a humiliating scandal, a young writer flees to the West Coast, where she is drawn into the morally ambiguous orbit of a charismatic filmmaker and the teenage girls who are her next subjects. “A blistering story about the costs of creating art.” (O: The Oprah Magazine - LGBTQ Books That Will Change the Literary Landscape) Not too long ago, Cass was a promising young playwright in New York, hailed as “a fierce new voice” and “queer, feminist, and ready to spill the tea”. But at the height of all this attention, Cass finds herself at the center of a searing public shaming and flees to Los Angeles to escape - and reinvent herself. There she meets her next-door neighbor Caroline, a magnetic filmmaker on the rise, as well as the pack of teenage girls who hang around her house. They are the subjects of Caroline’s next semi-documentary movie, which follows the girls' clandestine activity: a Fight Club inspired by the violent classic. As Cass is drawn into the film’s orbit, she is awed by Caroline’s ambition and confidence. But over time, she becomes troubled by how deeply Caroline is manipulating the teens in the name of art - especially as the consequences become increasingly disturbing. With her past proving hard to shake and her future one she’s no longer sure she wants, Cass is forced to reckon with her own ambitions and confront what she has come to believe about the steep price of success.
©2021 Jen Silverman (P)2021 Random House Audio
Verge
Summary
Longlisted for the Story Prize Named one of the Best Books of the Year by Bustle and Lit Hub A fiercely empathetic group portrait of the marginalized and outcast in moments of crisis, from one of the most galvanizing voices in American fiction. Lidia Yuknavitch is a writer of rare insight into the jagged boundaries between pain and survival. Her characters are scarred by the unchecked hungers of others and themselves, yet determined to find salvation within lives that can feel beyond their control. In novels such as The Small Backs of Children and The Book of Joan, she has captivated audiences with stories of visceral power. Now, in Verge, she offers a shard-sharp mosaic portrait of human resilience on the margins. The landscape of Verge is peopled with characters who are innocent and imperfect, wise and endangered: an eight-year-old black-market medical courier, a restless lover haunted by memories of his mother, a teenage girl gazing out her attic window at a nearby prison, all of them wounded but grasping toward transcendence. Clear-eyed yet inspiring, Verge challenges us with moments of uncomfortable truth, even as it urges us to place our faith not in the flimsy guardrails of society but in the memories held - and told - by our own individual bodies.
©2020 Lidia Yuknavitch (P)2020 Penguin Audio
A Mother's Choice
Summary
For 30 years, Nadine Kingsley has kept a heart-wrenching secret. When a letter arrives threatening to reveal the truth that could destroy her tight-knit family, Nadine embarks on a difficult journey to explain her painful decision, especially to her youngest daughter, Autumn. Meanwhile, Autumn Anderson, speech pathologist and mother of two, is struggling in her marriage. The discovery of a troubling letter addressed to her mother disrupts her already complicated life, leading Autumn to question what she's always believed. When the unthinkable happens, Autumn digs deeper into her family's past and unravels a tangled web of lies and deception surrounding her own birth. Meeting the one person her mother entrusted with her secret brings Autumn face-to-face with an unexpected and shocking revelation. A Mother's Choice is a fast-paced, uplifting, emotional book, full of family drama, love, hope, and forgiveness.
©2014 Kristin Noel Fischer (P)2016 Kristin Noel Fischer
White Elephant
Summary
A crackling Christmas mystery that combines murder and blackmail at a holiday office party, in a mashup reminiscent of Big Little Lies and Clue. There are only a few rules in a white elephant gift exchange: Everyone brings a wrapped, unmarked gift. Numbers are drawn to decide who picks first. Gifts don’t need to be pricey - and often, they’re downright tacky. But things are a little different in Aspen, Colorado, at the office holiday party for the real estate firm owned by Henry Calhoun and his wife, Claudine. Each Christmas sparks a contest among the already competitive staff to see who can buy the most coveted gift: the one that will get stolen the most times, the one that will prove just how many more commissions they earned that year than their colleagues. Designer sunglasses, deluxe spa treatments, front-row concert tickets - nothing is off the table. And the staff is even more competitive this year as Zara, the hottest young pop star out of Hollywood, is in town, and Claudine is determined to sell her the getaway home of her dreams. Everyone is puzzled when a strange gift shows up in the mix: an antique cowboy statue. At least the sales agents are guessing it’s an antique - otherwise, it’d be a terrible present. It’s certainly not very pretty or expensive-looking. In fact, the gift makes sense only to Henry and Claudine. The statue is the weapon Henry used to commit a murder years ago, a murder that helped start his company and a murder that Claudine helped cover up. She swore that no one would ever be able to find the statue or trace it to their crime. So which of their employees did? And why did they place it in the white elephant? What could possibly be their endgame? Over the course of the evening, Henry and Claudine race to figure out who could have planted the weapon and just what the night means for the secrets they’ve been harboring. Further adding to the drama is a snowstorm that closes nearby roads - preventing anyone from leaving, as well as keeping law enforcement from the scene. And by the end of this crazy night, the police will most definitely be required....
©2019 Trish Harnetiaux (P)2019 Simon & Schuster
A Midsummer's Nightmare
Summary
Whitley Johnson's dream summer with her divorced dad has turned into a nightmare. She's just met his new fiancee and her kids. The fiancee's son? Whitley's one-night stand from graduation night. Just freakin' great. Worse, she totally doesn't fit in with her dad's perfect new country-club family. So Whitley acts out. She parties. Hard. So hard she doesn't even notice the good things right under her nose: a sweet little future stepsister who is just about the only person she's ever liked, a best friend (even though Whitley swears she doesn't "do" friends), and a smoking-hot guy who isn't her stepbrother...at least not yet. It will take all three of them to help Whitley get through her anger and begin to put the pieces of her family together. Filled with authenticity and raw emotion, Whitley is Kody Keplinger's most compelling character to date: a cynical Holden Caulfield-esque girl you will wholly care about.
©2012 Kody Keplinger (P)2015 Audible Inc.
When Luck Runs Out
Summary
After years of battle, Kelsey Bandar and Jared Mertz are finally ready to face the master AI enslaving the Terran Empire. With just a bit of luck, this nightmare will finally be over. Only luck can run out just when you need it the most. Outnumbered and outgunned, they must salvage victory from certain defeat. Failure means extermination, invasion, and the loss of everyone they love. Can they beat the odds just one more time? If you love military science fiction and grand adventure on a galaxy-spanning scale, grab When Luck Runs Out and the rest of The Empire of Bones Saga today!
©2020 Terry Mixon (P)2021 Terry Mixon
The Talk
Summary
This powerful collection of short stories, essays, and poems is a call-to-action that invites all families to be anti-racist and advocates for change. Thirty diverse, award-winning authors and illustrators - including Renee Watson (Piecing Me Together), Grace Lin (Where the Mountain Meets the Moon), Meg Medina (Merci Suarez Changes Gears), and Adam Gidwitz (The Inquisitor's Tale) - engage young people in frank discussions about racism, identity, and self-esteem. Featuring stories filled with love, acceptance, truth, peace, and an assurance that there can be hope for a better tomorrow, The Talk is an inspiring anthology and must-have resource published in partnership with Just Us Books, a black-owned children's publishing company that's been in operation for over 30 years. Just Us Books continues its mission grounded in the same belief that helped launch the company: Good books make a difference. So, let's talk. Featured contributors: Selina Alko, Tracey Baptiste, Derrick Barnes, Natacha Bustos, Cozbi A. Cabrera, Raúl Colón, Adam Gidwitz, Nikki Grimes, Rudy Gutierrez, April Harrison, Wade Hudson, Gordon C. James, Minh Lê, E. B. Lewis, Grace Lin, Torrey Maldonado, Meg Medina, Christopher Myers, Daniel Nayeri, Zeke Peña, Peter H. Reynolds, Erin K. Robinson, Traci Sorell, Shadra Strickland, Don Tate, MaryBeth Timothy, Duncan Tonatiuh, Renée Watson, Valerie Wilson Wesley, Sharon Dennis Wyeth Features original music by Curtis Hudson. This audiobook includes a downloadable PDF of sources and notes from the authors. "The go-to book for talking to kids about race and privilege. Thoughtful. Thought-provoking. A must-read for every family." (Ellen Oh, editor of Flying Lessons & Other Stories and cofounder of We Need Diverse Books) "The ingredients are all here. May this magnificent collection inspire us to move from dialogue to deep action." (Kirkus starred review) PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 Wade Hudson and Cheryl Willis Hudson (P)2020 Listening Library