Audiobooks by Sheila Weller

Carrie Fisher: A Life on the Edge Audiobook

A remarkably candid biography of the remarkably candid-and brilliant-Carrie Fisher In her 2008 bestseller, Girls Like Us, Sheila Weller-with heart and a profound feeling for the times-gave us a surprisingly intimate portrait of three icons: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon. Now she turns her focus to one of the most loved, brilliant, and iconoclastic women of our time: the actress, writer, daughter, and mother Carrie Fisher. Weller traces Fisher's life from her Hollywood royalty roots to her untimely and shattering death after Christmas 2016. Her mother was the spunky and adorable Debbie Reynolds; her father, the heartthrob crooner Eddie Fisher. When Eddie ran off with Elizabeth Taylor, the scandal thrust little Carrie Frances into a bizarre spotlight, gifting her with an irony and an aplomb that would resonate throughout her life. We follow Fisher's acting career, from her debut in Shampoo, the hit movie that defined mid-1970s Hollywood, to her seizing of the plum female role in Star Wars, which catapulted her to instant fame. We explore her long, complex relationship with Paul Simon and her relatively peaceful years with the talent agent Bryan Lourd. We witness her startling leap-on the heels of a near-fatal overdose-from actress to highly praised, bestselling author, the Dorothy Parker of her place and time. Weller sympathetically reveals the conditions that Fisher lived with: serious bipolar disorder and an inherited drug addiction. Still, despite crises and overdoses, her life's work-as an actor, a novelist and memoirist, a script doctor, a hostess, and a friend-was prodigious and unique. As one of her best friends said, "I almost wish the expression 'one of a kind' didn't exist, because it applies to Carrie in a deeper way than it applies to others." Sourced by friends, colleagues, and witnesses to all stages of Fisher's life, Carrie Fisher: A Life on the Edge is an empathic and even-handed portrayal of a woman who-as Princess Leia, but mostly as herself-was a feminist heroine, one who died at a time when we need her blazing, healing honesty more than ever.

Sheila Weller (Author), Saskia Maarleveld (Narrator)

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The News Sorority: Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, Christiane Amanpour-and the (Ongoing, Imperfect, Comp

A provocative look at the three remarkable women who revolutionized television broadcast news For decades, women battered the walls of the male fortress of television journalism, until finally three-Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, and Christiane Amanpour-broke through, definitively remaking America's nightly news. Drawing on exclusive interviews with their colleagues and intimates from childhood on, bestselling author Sheila Weller crafts a lively and eye-opening narrative, revealing the combination of ambition, skill, and character that enabled these three singular women to infiltrate the once impenetrable "boys club" and become cultural icons. Raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Diane Sawyer was a driven, elegant young woman in a time of societal upheaval. Her fierce intellect, almost insuperable work ethic, and mysterious emotional intelligence would catapult Sawyer from being the first female on-air correspondent for 60 Minutes to presenting heartbreaking specials on child poverty in America while anchoring the network flagship, ABC World News Tonight. Katie Couric, always convenient l y underestimated because of her girl-next-door demeanor, brazened her way through a succession of regional TV news jobs until she finally hit it big in New York. In 1991, Couric became the Today show cohost, where over the next fifteen years she transformed the "female" slot from secondary to preeminent. Couric's greatest triumph-and most bedeviling challenge-was inheriting the mantle of Walter Cronkite at CBS Evening News, as the first woman ever to anchor a prestigious nighttime network news program. A glamorous but unorthodox cosmopolite- the daughter of a British Catholic mother and Iranian Muslim father-Christiane Amanpour made a virtue of her outsider status. She joined the fledgling CNN on the bottom rung and then became its "face," catalyzing its rise to global prominence. Her fearlessness in war zones and before presidents and despots would make her the world's witness to some of its most acute crises and television's chief advocate for international justice. The News Sorority takes us behind the scenes as never before to track Sawyer's, Couric's, and Amanpour's ascendance to the highest ranks of the media elite, showing that the compelling desire to report the news-a drive born of curiosity, empathy, and humanity-must be matched by guts, awesome competitive fervor, and rare strategic savvy.

Sheila Weller (Author), Morgan Hallet, Morgan Hallett (Narrator)

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Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon---and the Journey of a Generation

Joni Mitchell, Carole King, and Carly Simon remain among the most enduring and important women in popular music. Each woman is distinct: King is the product of outer-borough, middle-class New York City; Mitchell is a granddaughter of Canadian farmers; and Simon is a child of the Manhattan intellectual upper crust. They collectively represent, in their lives and their songs, a great swath of American girls who came of age in the late 1960s. Their stories trace the arc of the now-mythic generation known as "the sixties"—the female version—but in a bracingly specific and deeply recalled way, far from cliché. The history of the women of that generation had never been written—until now—and it is told through the resonant lives and emblematic songs of Mitchell, Simon, and King. Filled with the voices of many dozens of these women's intimates, this alternating biography reads like a novel—except it's all true, and the heroines are famous and beloved. Sheila Weller captures the character of each woman and gives a balanced portrayal enriched by a wealth of new information. Girls Like Us is an epic treatment of midcentury women who dared to break tradition and become what none had been before them—confessors in song, rock superstars, and adventurers of heart and soul.

Sheila Weller (Author), Susan Ericksen (Narrator)

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