Audiobooks by Ayelet Waldman

"A richly drawn, captivating, and endlessly amusing novel of love and subterfuge between a lady's maid and her clandestine lover, set in the country estates of nineteenth-century England. 'Ayelet Waldman's clever, fast-paced historical romp turned out to be not only great fun but also surprisingly stirring. This book is a pleasure.' -Meg Wolitzer, New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion Miss Alice Lockey, daughter of a tenant farmer, has by dint of hard work, innate intelligence, and a cunning ability to predict the moods of her betters, raised herself to the lofty status of lady's maid at Alderwick Park. Though her mother has advised Alice to work only until marriage, Alice has thus far resisted the temptations of matrimony among the neighboring widowers and pig farmers, more content to enjoy the fruits of her labor-or at least the portion of it her father will share after it is paid to him. Alice spends her days arranging Lady Jemima Alderwick's blond hair into the latest French styles, chignons and plaits, laundering her lady's surprisingly malodorous petticoats and drawers, and carefully sewing all manner of fripperies, ribbons, lace, and silk flowers, to her lady's bonnets and gowns. But when a visiting servant, a valet named Charlie Wells, catches her eye, Alice begins to understand the constraints of her position. In a ploy to spend time with the object of her affection, Alice attempts to arrange a romance between Lady Jemima Alderwick and Charlie's employer, one Baronet Sir Nigel Wynstowe. If only they would fall in love-then Alice and Charlie might live together as man and wife! Challenged by Lady Jemima's love for another and Sir Wynstowe's eccentric personality, Alice must use all of her cunning to bring about this unlikely romantic union. Will this low-born servant successfully manipulate the hearts of these lords and ladies? Will Charlie and Alice ever improve their stations? Or, as the beginning of women's suffrage begins to percolate in the drawing rooms and salons of London, will Alice discover a different sort of path for herself? A deliciously funny, gorgeously detailed, utter enthralling novel, A Perfect Hand is a glorious novel of class, gender, and England on the cusp of enormous change."

Ayelet Waldman (Author), Juliet Stevenson (Narrator)

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Fight of the Century: Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases

"The American Civil Liberties Union partners with award-winning authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman in this "forceful, beautifully written" (Associated Press) collection that brings together many of our greatest living writers, each contributing an original piece inspired by a historic ACLU case. On January 19, 1920, a small group of idealists and visionaries, including Helen Keller, Jane Addams, Roger Baldwin, and Crystal Eastman, founded the American Civil Liberties Union. A century after its creation, the ACLU remains the nation's premier defender of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. In collaboration with the ACLU, authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays "full of struggle, emotion, fear, resilience, hope, and triumph" (Los Angeles Review of Books) about landmark cases in the organization's one-hundred-year history. Fight of the Century takes you inside the trials and the stories that have shaped modern life. Some of the most prominent cases that the ACLU has been involved in—Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona—need little introduction. Others you may never even have heard of, yet their outcomes quietly defined the world we live in now. Familiar or little-known, each case springs to vivid life in the hands of the acclaimed writers who dive into the history, narrate their personal experiences, and debate the questions at the heart of each issue. Hector Tobar introduces us to Ernesto Miranda, the felon whose wrongful conviction inspired the now-iconic Miranda rights—which the police would later read to the man suspected of killing him. Yaa Gyasi confronts the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, in which the ACLU submitted a friend of- the-court brief questioning why a nation that has sent men to the moon still has public schools so unequal that they may as well be on different planets. True to the ACLU's spirit of principled dissent, Scott Turow offers a blistering critique of the ACLU's stance on campaign finance. These powerful stories, along with essays from Neil Gaiman, Meg Wolitzer, Salman Rushdie, Ann Patchett, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Louise Erdrich, George Saunders, and many more, remind us that the issues the ACLU has engaged over the past one hundred years remain as vital as ever today, and that we can never take our liberties for granted. Chabon and Waldman are donating their advance to the ACLU and the contributors are forgoing payment."

Ayelet Waldman, Michael Chabon (Author), An All Star Cast (Narrator)

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A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life

"The true story of how a renowned writer’s struggle with mood storms led her to try a remedy as drastic as it is forbidden: microdoses of LSD. Her fascinating journey provides a window into one family and the complex world of a onceinfamous drug seen through new eyes. When a small vial arrives in her mailbox from “Lewis Carroll,” Ayelet Waldman is ready to try anything. Her depression has become intolerable, severe and unmanageable; medication has failed to make a difference. Married with four children and a robust career, she “should” be happy, but instead her family and her work are suffering at the mercy of her mood disorder. So she opens the vial, places two drops on her tongue, and becomes part of a burgeoning underground group of scientists and civilians successfully using therapeutic microdoses of LSD. As Waldman charts her experience over the course of a month, during which she achieved a newfound feeling of serenity, she also explores the history and mythology of LSD, the cutting-edge research into the drug, and the byzantine policies that control it. Drawing on her experience as a federal public defender, and as the mother of teenagers, and her research into the therapeutic value of psychedelics, Waldman has produced a book that is candid, revealing and completely enthralling."

Ayelet Waldman (Author), Ayelet Waldman (Narrator)

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Love and Treasure

"The Hungarian Gold Train, loaded with Jewish treasure. A dazzling jewelled pendant in the form of a stylized peacock. And three men who find their carefully-wrought lives turned upside-down by three amazing and fierce women,each locked in a struggle against her own history and the history or our times... Maine, 2012. An old man id dying with the weight of a plundered necklace on his conscience. As an US Army Captain in 1946 Salburg, guarding the 'Hungarian Gold Train' full of looted Jewish treasure, he fell in love with camp survivor and helped her escape to Israel. Now, as his granddaughter sets out to repatriate the necklace, secrets buried in the past are uncoverd,stories of love and deceit linked to that beautiful, peacock-shaped pendant and to a priceless,long-lost painting. spanning a century of European and Jewish history, from 1913 Budapest to comtemporary Israel, and filled with a vivid supporting cast of art dealers,freedom fighters,psychoanalysts and suffragette dwarfs, LOVE AND TREASURE is a thrilling, moving and haunting novel, one that bears an ever elusive question at its core, nested like a photograph hidden in a locket: where does the worth of a people and its treasure truly lie?"

Ayelet Waldman (Author), Jonathan Davis, Paul Hecht (Narrator)

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Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace

Ayelet Waldman (Author), Mia Barron (Narrator)

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Audiobooks by Ayelet Waldman

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