Stephanie Belding has narrated 4 audiobooks on Listento.it by 4 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.2★ across 202 ratings. The most-rated is Fair Warning.
Fair Warning
Summary
The hero of The Poet and The Scarecrow is back in this thriller from number-one New York Times best-selling author Michael Connelly. Jack McEvoy, the journalist who never backs down, tracks a serial killer who has been operating completely under the radar - until now. Veteran reporter Jack McEvoy has taken down killers before, but when a woman he had a one-night stand with is murdered in a particularly brutal way, McEvoy realizes he might be facing a criminal mind unlike any he's ever encountered. Jack investigates - against the warnings of the police and his own editor - and makes a shocking discovery that connects the crime to other mysterious deaths across the country. Undetected by law enforcement, a vicious killer has been hunting women, using genetic data to select and stalk his targets. Uncovering the murkiest corners of the dark web, Jack races to find and protect the last source who can lead him to his quarry. But the killer has already chosen his next target, and he's ready to strike. Terrifying and unputdownable, Fair Warning shows once again why "Michael Connelly has earned his place in the pantheon of great crime fiction writers" (Chicago Sun-Times).
©2020 Michael Connelly (P)2020 Little, Brown & Company
Girl at the Edge of Sky
Summary
National Best Seller
Girl at the Edge of Sky is a unique, thrilling, sometimes terrifying novel based on the life and death of Lily Litvyak, a female Soviet flying ace and fighter pilot shot down behind German lines in the Second World War. From the best-selling author of Web of Angels and The River Midnight.
Lily Litvyak is no one's idea of a fighter pilot: a tiny, dimpled teenager with golden curls who lied about her age in order to fly. But in the crucible of the air war against the German invaders, she becomes that rare thing - a flying ace, glorified at home and around the world as the White Lily of Stalingrad. The real Lily disappeared in combat in August 1943, and the facts of her life are slim, but they have inspired Lilian Nattel's indelible portrait of a courageous young woman driven by family secrets to become an unlikely war hero. Even more powerfully, Nattel takes another big leap, asking the compelling question: what if Lily survived that last crash and became a prisoner of the Germans?
Lily lives in a world of horrifying risk, where the life and death stakes are high in the air, but also on the ground. In the Soviet system, everyone is an informer, even your best friend. Lily lives in constant fear that she will be found out, arrested and executed as the daughter of an "enemy of the people". When she ends up a German prisoner, as a Soviet officer and a Jew, the need for deception becomes even more desperate.
Girl at the Edge of Sky is a masterwork of the imagination, subtle and bold all at once, bringing us deep into the precarious life of a remarkable woman who lies to fight for the country that would disown her, and then lies to survive the enemy that would annihilate her.
©2019 Lilian Nattel (P)2019 Random House Canada
Songs for the End of the World
Summary
"In these dark days, Saleema Nawaz dares to write of hope. Songs for the End of the World is a loving, vivid, tenderly felt novel about men, women, and a possible apocalypse. I couldn't put it down." (Sean Michaels, author of Us Conductors and The Wagers) National Best Seller Named a Book of the Year by the Globe and Mail, Quill & Quire, 49th Shelf, and a Book You Should Read by Maclean's and Chatelaine. An immersive, deeply engaging, and hopeful novel about the power of human connection in a time of crisis, as the bonds of love, family, and duty are tested by an impending pandemic. How quickly he'd forgotten a fundamental truth: The closer you got to the heart of a calamity, the more resilience there was to be found. This is the story of a handful of people who find themselves living through an unfolding catastrophe. Elliot is a first responder in New York, a man running from past failures and struggling to do the right thing. Emma is a pregnant singer preparing to headline a benefit concert for victims of the outbreak - all while questioning what kind of world her child is coming into. Owen is the author of a best-selling plague novel with eerie similarities to the real-life pandemic. As fact and fiction begin to blur, he must decide whether his lifelong instinct for self-preservation has been worth the cost. As the novel moves back and forth in time, we discover these characters' ties to one another- and to those whose lives intersect with theirs - in an extraordinary web of connection and community that reveals none of us is ever truly alone. Linking them all is the mystery of the so-called ARAMIS Girl, a woman at the first infection site whose unknown identity and whereabouts cause a furor. Written and revised between 2013 and 2019, and brilliantly told by an unforgettable chorus of voices, Saleema Nawaz's glittering novel is a moving and hopeful meditation on what we owe to ourselves and to each other. It reminds us that disaster can bring out the best in people - and that coming together may be what saves us in the end.
©2020 Saleema Nawaz (P)2020 Penguin Random House Canada
Cascade
Summary
From the best-selling author of The Saturday Night Ghost Club and Canada Reads-finalist Precious Cargo comes this supremely satisfying collection of stories. Reminiscent of Stephen King's brilliantly cinematic short stories that went on to inspire films such as The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me, here's a collection crackling with Craig Davidson's superb craft and kinetic energy: in the visceral, crystalline, steel-tipped prose; in the psychological perspicacity; and in the endearing humor. Set in in the Niagara Falls of Davidson's imagination known as "Cataract City", the superb stories of Cascade shine a shimmering light on this slightly seedy, slightly magical, slightly haunted place. The six gems in this collection each illuminate familial relationships in a singular way: A mother and her infant son fight to survive a car crash in a remote wintry landscape outside of town. Fraternal twins at a juvenile detention center reach a dangerous crisis point in their entwined lives. A pregnant social worker grapples with the prospect of parenthood as a custody case takes a dire turn. A hard-boiled ex-firefighter goes after a serial arsonist with a flair for the theatrical even as his own troubled sister is drawn toward the flames. These are just some of the unforgettable characters animating this stellar collection of tales - Davidson's first in 15 years, since Rust and Bone, which inspired a Golden Globe-nominated film.
©2020 Craig Davidson (P)2020 Knopf Canada