Shelley Atkinson has narrated 14 audiobooks on Listento.it by 13 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.3★ across 244 ratings. The most-rated is The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O..
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.
Summary
From best-selling author Neal Stephenson and critically acclaimed historical and contemporary commercial novelist Nicole Galland comes a captivating and complex near-future thriller combining history, science, magic, mystery, intrigue, and adventure that questions the very foundations of the modern world. When Melisande Stokes, an expert in linguistics and languages, accidently meets military intelligence operator Tristan Lyons in a hallway at Harvard University, it is the beginning of a chain of events that will alter their lives and human history itself. The young man from a shadowy government entity approaches Mel, a low-level faculty member, with an incredible offer. The only condition: She must sign a nondisclosure agreement in return for the rather large sum of money. Tristan needs Mel to translate some very old documents, which, if authentic, are earth-shattering. They prove that magic actually existed and was practiced for centuries. But the arrival of the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment weakened its power and endangered its practitioners. Magic stopped working altogether in 1851, at the time of the Great Exhibition at London's Crystal Palace - the world's fair celebrating the rise of industrial technology and commerce. Something about the modern world "jams" the "frequencies" used by magic, and it's up to Tristan to find out why. And so the Department of Diachronic Operations - D.O.D.O. - gets cracking on its real mission: to develop a device that can bring magic back and send Diachronic Operatives back in time to keep it alive...and meddle with a little history at the same time. But while Tristan and his expanding operation master the science and build the technology, they overlook the mercurial - and treacherous - nature of the human heart. Written with the genius, complexity, and innovation that characterize all of Neal Stephenson's work and steeped with the down-to-earth warmth and humor of Nicole Galland's storytelling style, this exciting and vividly realized work of science fiction will make you believe in the impossible and take you to places - and times - beyond imagining. Full cast of narrators includes Robert Fass, James Foster, Tavia Gilbert, Arthur Morey, David Stifel, Charlie Thurston, and Kate Udall.
©2017 Neal Stephenson (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
The Glorious Heresies
Summary
Winner of the Baileys' Women's Prize for Fiction 2016. Winner of the Desmond Elliot Prize 2016. Longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize 2016. Longlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year. He was definitely dead, whoever he was. He wore a once-black jumper and a pair of shiny tracksuit bottoms. The back of his head was cracked and his hair matted, but it had been foxy before that. A tall man, a skinny rake, another string of piss, now departed. She hadn't gotten a look at his face before she flaked him with the Holy Stone, and she couldn't bring herself to turn him over. One messy murder affects the lives of five misfits who exist on the fringes of Ireland's postcrash society. Ryan is a 15-year-old drug dealer desperate not to turn out like his alcoholic father, Tony, whose obsession with his unhinged next-door neighbour threatens to ruin him and his family. Georgie is a prostitute whose willingness to feign a religious conversion has dangerous repercussions while Maureen, the accidental murderer, has returned to Cork after 40 years in exile to discover that Jimmy, the son she was forced to give up years before, has grown into the most fearsome gangster in the city. In seeking atonement for the murder and a multitude of other perceived sins, Maureen threatens to destroy everything her son has worked so hard for while her actions risk bringing the intertwined lives of the Irish underworld into the spotlight.... Biting, moving and darkly funny, The Glorious Heresies explores salvation, shame and the legacy of Ireland's 20th-century attitudes towards sex and family.
©2015 Lisa McInerney (P)2016 John Murray Press
Foxfire, Wolfskin and Other Stories of Shapeshifting Women
Summary
Charged with drama and beauty, this memorable collection by a master storyteller weaves a magical world of possibility and power from female myths of physical renewal, creation and change. It is an extraordinary immersion into the bodies and voices, mindscapes and landscapes, of the shapeshifting women of our native folklore. Drawing on myth and fairy tales found across Europe from Croatia to Sweden, Ireland to Russia, Sharon Blackie brings to life women's remarkable ability to transform themselves in the face of seemingly impossible circumstances. These stories are about coming to terms with our animal natures, exploring the ways in which we might renegotiate our fractured relationship with the natural world and uncovering the wildness and wilderness within.
©2019 Dr Sharon Blackie (P)2019 Audible, Ltd
The Restaurant
Summary
The sparkling new novel from the best-selling Irish author Roisin Meaney. When Chef Emily is left at the altar in front of her family and friends, she swears off love and instead throws herself into her new business: a restaurant with a difference. There's only one communal table, designed with the single diner in mind. Now it's two years later, and with her business thriving with regular customers, romance is still the last thing on Emily's mind - until she receives a letter from her ex who is returning home from Canada with a burning question for her.... Will Emily give up her business for the life she used to want, or will she realise that happiness might be on the menu a little closer to home?
©2020 Roisin Meaney (P)2020 Hachette Books Ireland
If Only
Summary
Kate Eberlen, the best-selling author of Miss You, returns with a serendipitous and modern romance. For fans of David Nicholls and Jojo Moyes, If Only is the story of two people who fall in love and the secrets that tear them apart. How can you know someone until you learn to talk about the past? Letty and Alf are the only English speakers in an Italian class in Rome, where they discover that the language that really connects them is dance. Alf is 19, a former ballroom champion who seems reassuringly confident and at ease with himself. Letty, 22, is unusually reserved and studious, having been forced to give up her childhood dream of becoming a ballet dancer. They come from different worlds, but when they waltz around the Piazza Navona together, a passionate relationship begins. Can their decision to live in the moment in the Eternal City keep their histories from encroaching? Why is Alf living in a shared apartment, estranged from his family? And what has wrenched Letty away from the apparent security of her Oxford University degree? They each find themselves haunted by the fear that the secrets not yet shared will tear them apart. If Only is a novel about identity, secrets, passion, and dance - and the indefinable collision of physical, emotional, and intellectual excitement that we call falling in love.
©2020 Kate Eberlen (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
Her Sister's Bones: An Absolutely Gripping Crime Thriller
Summary
A baby is snatched from her pram in the garden. She’s never found. Thirty years later, her sister, now a mother herself, is brutally killed. When Anna Crowe is killed in her sleep alongside her children, the quiet local community of Corbally is shocked. It’s also a chilling reminder of when her sister, Janey, disappeared as a baby, 29 years ago, never to be seen again. Detective Iris Locke is assigned to the case, and, after a year undercover which ended in failure when her cover got blown, she’s desperate to make her mark - and to live up to the reputation of her ex-cop father, the former head of the Limerick Murder Squad. Jack Locke ran the investigation into the disappearance of baby Janey. But by reopening the old case, Iris is also reopening old wounds for the team. Can she untangle the dark secrets that lead to one sister vanishing and the other’s death - even if it means digging into the past of someone very close to her? Fans of Patricia Gibney, Angela Marsons, and L.J. Ross won’t want to miss this - the first book in a gripping new crime series.
©2019 Geraldine Hogan (P)2019 Bookouture
The Killer in Me
Summary
A deadly past refuses to stay buried in Olivia Kiernan’s masterful new novel. Death is no stranger to Detective Chief Superintendent Frankie Sheehan, but she isn’t the only one from her small, coastal suburb to be intimately acquainted with it. Years ago, teenager Seán Hennessey shocked the tight-knit community when he was convicted of the brutal murder of his parents and attempted slaying of his sister, though he always maintained his innocence. Now, Seán is finally being released from prison - but when his newfound freedom coincides with the discovery of two bodies, the alleged connection between the cases only serves to pull Frankie further from answers even as it draws her closer to her town’s hidden darkness. With a television documentary revisiting Seán’s sentence pushing the public’s sympathies into conflict on a weekly basis, a rabid media pressuring the police like never before, and a rising body count, Frankie will need all of her resources if she is not only to catch a killer, but put to rest what really happened all those years ago. A dark, irresistible cocktail of secrets, murder, and family, Olivia Kiernan’s latest is an impossible-to-pause triumph.
©2019 Olivia Kiernan (P)2019 Penguin Audio
A House Full of Secrets
Summary
One of us is lying. When Londoner Vikki receives an invitation from Niall Blake to join him for a weekend at his family home in a remote part of Ireland, she hopes it will be the perfect opportunity to turn their friendship into something more significant. But Niall has a different reason for his proposition. As the weekend takes a sinister turn and Vikki discovers more about Niall, his estranged older brother Alex and his over-compensating sister Lainey, it becomes clear that the family harbours a long-buried secret. But who is out to destroy them? Could it be one of their own? And why did Niall invite Vikki along for the weekend?
©2017 Zoë Miller (P)2019 W. F. Howes Ltd
Guest
Summary
When her adorable baby brother is replaced by an ugly, ill-tempered changeling, Mollie is determined to find the so-called Kinde Folke who took baby Thomas, return the changeling she calls Guest, and make them give Thomas back. Natural and magical obstacles and her own reckless temperament make her journey arduous and full of dangers, and a plot rich in surprises and twists makes this book a must-listen for Mary Downing Hahn’s fans.
©2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Beyond the Sea
Summary
On a lonely cliff beside the vast blue sea there is a house. In the house there lives a girl, and in the girl there lives a dream. Soon she'll be as free as the fishes that swim beneath the water. But until then she bides her time and lives quietly, her every move ruled over by an uncaring, heartless stepmother. The hope for freedom is all she has to hold onto. So close she can almost taste it. But when her stepmother’s estranged younger brother comes to stay, he presents a mystery that lures her in. The girl doesn’t understand that beneath the allure of the unknown sometimes all we find are horrors. And in searching for the truth, her heart is in danger of falling like a rock to the bottom of the deep dark sea. Beyond the Sea is a stand-alone gothic romance set in modern times.
©2020 L.H. Cosway (P)2020 L.H. Cosway
A Place to Belong
Summary
She lost everything in one night. Now she must fight for happiness. Dramatic, emotional and romantic, if you love Lorna Cook, Tracy Rees and Jenny Ashcroft, you'll love this gripping and heartwrenching novel from Cathy Mansell, set against the sweeping backdrop of Dublin and rural Ireland in the 1940s. It's 1943 and Ireland has escaped the worst of the war raging in Europe, but life is not without its hardships. When fire breaks out at the convent in Cavan where she has spent the past 10 years, orphan Eva Fallon barely escapes with her life. She's offered a bed for the night by Ma Scully, whilst her nephew Cathal, visiting from Dublin, helps battle the blaze. Seventeen-year-old Eva has never known such kindness, but she's too proud to take advantage and finds a job at Blackstock's farm, setting in motion a chain of events that will change her life forever. Amidst tragedy and hardship, the only ray of light is the friendship of Ma Scully and her growing, secret love for Cathal. And through it all Eva clings to her hope that one day she will find a place where she can truly belong.
©2019 Cathy Mansell (P)2019 Headline Publishing Group Ltd
The Reunion
Summary
It's their 20-year school reunion but the Plunkett sisters have their own reasons for not wanting to attend.... Caroline, now a successful knitwear designer, spends her time flying between her business in England and her lover in Italy. As far as she's concerned, her school days and what happened to her the year she left, should stay in the past. Eleanor, meanwhile, is unrecognisable from the fun-loving girl she was in school. With a son who is barely speaking to her, and a husband keeping a secret from her, revisiting the past is the last thing on her mind. But when an unexpected letter arrives for Caroline in the weeks before the reunion, memories are stirred. Will the sisters find the courage to return to the town where they grew up and face what they've been running from all these years? The Reunion is a moving story about secrets, sisters and finding a way to open your heart.
©2012 Roisin Meaney (P)2021 Hachette Books Ireland
The Blood Miracles
Summary
The second novel from the author of the Baileys Prize-winning The Glorious Heresies. Like all 20-year-olds, Ryan Cusack is trying to get his head around who he is. This is not a good time for his boss to exploit his dual heritage by opening a new black market route from Italy to Ireland. It is certainly not a good time for his adored girlfriend to decide he's irreparably corrupted. And he really wishes he hadn't accidentally caught the eye of an ornery grandmother who fancies herself his saviour. There may be a way clear of the chaos in the business proposals of music promoter Colm and in the attention of the charming, impulsive Natalie. But now that his boss' ambitions have rattled the city, Ryan is about to find out what he's made of, and it might be that chaos is in his blood.
©2017 Lisa McInerney (P)2017 John Murray Press
Miracles in Wild Rose Bay
Summary
A truly unforgettable Irish romance set on the shores of the Wild Atlantic Way. Arriving in Sandy Cove to views of the shimmering ocean, Tara O’Rourke is excited to get to work. She’s been sent from New York City to take photos of Ireland for a travel magazine, and she knows the perfect area to visit: the mysterious, picturesque Wild Rose Bay. Staying in her sister Kate’s sweet little cottage, the long nights and beach strolls inspire Tara. But Kate isn’t pleased with Tara’s assignment: She doesn’t want the untouched beauty of the area spoiled by tourists. And when Tara ignores Kate and heads out on her own, she encounters more opposition from Kate’s handsome friend Mick O’Dwyer. Despite their differences, Tara soon finds herself captivated by Mick, and as he helps her research the area, they uncover a tumbledown farmhouse that holds a secret about Tara’s family. Soon Tara is forced to make a choice: Should she give up her story and the career she’s always wanted or the man and the country she’s falling in love with? The ultimate escape to beautiful Ireland. Totally captivating, Miracles in Wild Rose Bay is perfect for fans of Sheila O’Flanagan, Debbie Macomber, and Mary Alice Monroe.
©2020 Susanne O'Leary (P)2020 Bookouture, an imprint of Storyfire Ltd.