Women Audiobooks | Biography & Memoir

I Am Hutterite: The Fascinating True Story of a Young Woman's Journey to reclaim Her Heritage

"In 1969, Ann-Marie's parents did the unthinkable, leaving a Hutterite colony with their seven children to start a new life. Overnight, the family was thrust into a society they did not understand and did not understand them in this powerful story of understanding how our beginnings often define us. "Your mother and father are running away,' said a voice piercing the warm air. I froze and turned toward home. To a Hutterite, nothing is more shameful than that word." When Ann-Marie's parents decided to leave their Hutterite colony in Canada with their seven children in tow, it was a complete shock. Overnight, the family was thrust into a society they did not understand, and which knew little of their unique culture. The transition was overwhelming. Desperate to be accepted, ten-year-old Ann-Marie was forced to deny her heritage in order to fit in with her peers. I Am Hutterite chronicles Ann-Marie's quest to reinvent herself as she comes to terms with the painful circumstances that led her family to leave community life. Before she left the colony, Ann-Marie had never tasted macaroni and cheese or ridden a bike. She had never heard of Walt Disney or rock-and-roll. With great humor, she describes how she adapted to popular culture, and with raw honesty, her family's deep sense of loss for their community. - Winner of the 2007 Saskatchewan Book Award for Non-fiction - Unveils the rich history and traditions of the Hutterite people's extraordinary way of life - Includes a glossary of Hutterite words and phrases, family photos, and a family tree In this insightful memoir, venture into the hidden heart of the little-known Hutterite colony. Rich with memorable characters and vivid descriptions, this ground-breaking narrative shines a light on intolerance, illuminating the simple truth that beneath every human exterior beats a heart longing for understanding and acceptance."

Mary-Ann Kirkby (Author), Mary-Ann Kirkby (Narrator)

Audiobook

Walk Like You Have Somewhere to Go: My Journey from Mental Welfare to Mental Health

""In Walk Like You Have Somewhere to Go Lucille will take you on a 40-year journey from 'mental welfare to mental wealth.' You will laugh-you may cry-and in the process you will be encouraged, enlightened, and empowered." -Paula White, author of Dare to Dream: See Yourself as God Sees You As the mother of one of the greatest athletes of all time, her journey is exceptional; but her story reveals that she is more than just "Shaquille O'Neal's mom." Lucille O'Neal is a woman you know, a woman you understand. Perhaps your own journey resembles hers. O'Neal has been a rebellious teen, a single mother, a wife, a college student, a divorcée, and, above all, a woman of unique courage. Acquainted early in life with turmoil, O'Neal's circumstances shaped her perspective and strengthened her resolve to overcome the challenges she would encounter later in life. She has endured poverty, rejection, abuse, addiction, and the illness of a child, yet today her faith and compassion for others are stronger than ever. O'Neal writes candidly-and often humorously-about her years of spiritual unrest and mental warfare, and her return to the God of her childhood. In Walk Like You Have Somewhere to Go, O'Neal shares her struggles and disappointments against the backdrop of her sweetest memories and proudest accomplishments. After fifty-five years, O'Neal has gained the wisdom to recognize her wrongs and guide others down a different path. Her story is proof that it's never too late for a new beginning. "

Lucille O'Neal (Author), LaTasha Ezell (Narrator)

Audiobook

Lives of Extraordinary Women

"Not all governments have been run by men. Lives of Extraordinary Women turns the spotlight on the women who have wielded power, revealing their feats—and flaws—for all the world to see. Here you'll find twenty of the most influential women in history: queens, warriors, prime ministers, first ladies, revolutionary leaders. Some are revered. Others are notorious. But they were all real people with private interests and personalities. What were they really like? What did they do for fun? Did their neighbors gossip about them? What were their tragedies and their triumphs? In this grand addition to their highly praised series, Kathleen Krull and Kathryn Hewitt celebrate some of the world's most noteworthy women—rulers and rebels who refused to stay in the wings and let others run the show. Wild or mild, hated or beloved, each of these women dared to stand up and be a leader."

Kathleen Krull (Author), John C. Brown, Melissa Hughes (Narrator)

Audiobook

Betsy Ross and the Making of America

"Legend has it that as the American colonies hurtled toward independence, representatives of the Continental Congress, including George Washington, walked into Betsy Ross's Philadelphia upholstery shop and commissioned the first flag of the Revolutionary nation. Although this story has long made Betsy Ross one of America's most celebrated patriots, little had been known until now about the woman behind the flag. Drawing on new sources and bringing a fresh, keen eye to the fabled creator of "the first flag," Marla R. Miller thoroughly reconstructs the life behind the legend. This authoritative and thoughtful work provides a close look at the famous seamstress, and along the way delivers an epic depiction of the tensions that animated life in Revolutionary Philadelphia. At the same time, Miller casts new light on the lives of the hardworking artisan families who peopled the young nation and crafted its furniture, clothing, ships, and homes. This history of the ordinary craftspeople of the Revolutionary War and their most famous representative will be the definitive volume for years to come."

Marla R. Miller (Author), Dana Green (Narrator)

Audiobook

I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced

""I'm a simple village girl who has always obeyed the orders of my father and brothers. Since forever, I have learned to say yes to everything. Today I have decided to say no." Nujood Ali's childhood came to an abrupt end in 2008 when her father arranged for her to be married to a man three times her age. With harrowing directness, Nujood tells of abuse at her husband's hands and of her daring escape. With the help of local advocates and the press, Nujood obtained her freedom-an extraordinary achievement in Yemen, where almost half of all girls are married under the legal age. Nujood's courageous defiance of both Yemeni customs and her own family has inspired other young girls in the Middle East to challenge their marriages. Hers is an unforgettable story of tragedy, triumph, and courage."

Nujood Ali (Author), Meera Simhan (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire

"The Mongol queens of the thirteenth century ruled the greatest empire the world has ever known. Yet sometime near the end of the century, censors cut a section from The Secret History of the Mongols, leaving a single tantalizing quote from Genghis Khan: "Let us reward our female offspring." Only this hint of a father's legacy for his daughters remained of a much larger story. The queens of the Silk Route turned their father's conquests into the world's first truly international empire, fostering trade, education, and religion throughout their territories and creating an economic system that stretched from the Pacific to the Mediterranean. Outlandish stories of these powerful queens trickled out of the empire, shocking the citizens of Europe and the Islamic world. At the conclusion of his magnificently researched and groundbreaking narrative, Jack Weatherford notes that the deeds of these Mongol queens inspired great artists from Chaucer and Milton to Goethe and Puccini, and so their stories live on today. With The Secret History of the Mongol Queens, Weatherford restores the queens' missing chapter to the annals of history."

Jack Weatherford (Author), Robertson Dean (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Spy Wore Red: My Adventures as an Undercover Agent in World War II

"When Aline Griffith was born in Pearl River, New York, in 1923, one might have guessed from her exceptional beauty that a career as an actress or a model would be in her future. Few would have imagined that twenty-one years later she would find herself in Spain as a deep-cover OSS agent, infiltrating the highest levels of Spanish society to uncover secret links to the Nazis; or that five years later still, she would marry a Spanish grandee and become one of the most watched, most admired, most fascinating women of international society. Under the code name “Tiger,” this remarkable woman probed the depths of the Nazi underground, risking her life—and her love—in a glittering world of high intrigue far more exciting than any fictionalized thriller.The Spy Wore Redis a harrowing first-hand account of the dangers and adventures she experienced as an undercover agent."

Aline Countess Of Romanones (Author), Grace Conlin (Narrator)

Audiobook

Why I Stayed: The Choices I Made in My Darkest Hour

"On November 2, 2006, Gayle Haggard’s life changed forever. That was the day that her husband, Ted Haggard, founder of the 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs and the President of the NAE, confessed to her the truth. In Why I Stayed, Gayle walks us through the choices she made in her darkest hours. On the day and in the months ahead, everything in her life was at stake—what she believed, the husband she thought she knew, and the church community she had worked tirelessly to establish with her husband and friends in the basement of their home more than two decades ago. Out of this crucible in her life, Gayle has discovered a newfound passion for the central message of the Bible—the liberating message of forgiveness and love. Why I Stayed is a must-read. It paints a picture of what less-than-perfect people, across this nation and all over the world, desperately need—a community of family and faith that offers healing love and a path to restoration."

Gayle Haggard (Author), Gayle Haggard (Narrator)

Audiobook

Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women

"Louisa May Alcott portrays a writer as worthy of interest in her own right as her most famous character, Jo March, and addresses all aspects of Alcott's life: the effect of her father's self-indulgent utopian schemes; her family's chronic economic difficulties and frequent uprootings; her experience as a nurse in the Civil War; and the loss of her health and frequent recourse to opiates in search of relief from migraines, insomnia, and symptomatic pain. Stories and details culled from Alcott's journals; her equally rich letters to family, friends, publishers, and admiring readers; and the correspondence, journals, and recollections of her family, friends, and famous contemporaries provide the basis for this lively account of the author's classic rags-to-riches tale. Alcott would become the equivalent of a multimillionaire in her lifetime based on the astounding sales of her books, leaving contemporaries like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Henry James in the dust. This biography explores Alcott's life in the context of her works, all of which are to some extent autobiographical. A fresh, modern take on this remarkable and prolific writer, who secretly authored pulp fiction, harbored radical abolitionist views, and completed heroic service as a Civil War nurse, Louisa May Alcott is also the story of how the all-time beloved American classic Little Women came to be. This revelatory portrait will present the popular author as she was and as she has never been seen before."

Harriet Reisen (Author), Harriet Reisen (Narrator)

Audiobook

Abigail Adams

"Abigail Adams offers a fresh perspective on the famous events of Adams's life, and along the way, Woody Holton, a renowned historian of the American Revolution, takes on numerous myths about the men and women of the founding era. But the book also demonstrates that domestic dramas—from unplanned pregnancies to untimely deaths—could be just as heartbreaking, significant, and inspiring as the actions of statesmen and soldiers. A special focus of the book is Adams's complex relationships: with her mother, sisters, and children; with her husband's famous contemporaries; and with Phoebe, one of her father's slaves. At the same time that John exhibited his own diplomatic skills on a better-known canvas, Abigail struggled to prevent the charitable gifts she gave her sisters from coming between them. In a departure from the persistently upbeat tone of most Adams biographies, Holton's work shows how frequently her life was marred by tragedy, making this the deepest, most humanistic portrayal ever published. Using the matchless trove of Adams family manuscripts, the author steps back to allow Abigail to respond to her many losses in her own words. Holton reveals that Abigail Adams sharply disagreed with her husband's financial decisions and assumed control of the family's money herself—earning them a tidy fortune through her shrewd speculations (this during a time when married women were not permitted to own property). And he shows that her commitment to women's equality and education was intense and explicitly expressed and practical, from the more than two thousand letters she wrote over her lifetime to her final will (written in defiance of legislation prohibiting married women from bequeathing property). Alternately witty, poignant, and uplifting, Holton's narrative sheds new light on one of America's best-loved but least-understood icons."

Woody Holton (Author), Cassandra Campbell (Narrator)

Audiobook

Véra: Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov

"Winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and hailed by critics as both 'monumental' (Boston Globe) and 'utterly romantic' (New York magazine), Stacy Schiff's V├®ra, the story of Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov, brings to shimmering life one of the greatest literary love stories of our time. Vladimir Nabokov—the ├®migr├® author of Lolita, Pale Fire, and Speak, Memory—wrote his books first for himself, second for his wifeV├®ra, and third for no one at all. Set in prewar Europe and postwar America, spanning much of the twentieth century, the story of the Nabokov's fifty-two-year marriage reads as vividly as a novel. V├®ra, both beautiful and brilliant, is its outsized heroine—a woman who loves as deeply and intelligently as did the great romantic heroines of Austen and Tolstoy. Stacy Schiff's V├®ra is a triumph of the biographical form."

Stacy Schiff (Author), Anna Fields (Narrator)

Audiobook

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home

"A hilarious and moving memoir in the spirit of Anne Lamott and Nora Ephron about a woman who returns home to her Mennonite family after a personal crisis. The same week her husband of 15 years ditches her for a guy he met on Gay.com, a partially inebriated teenage driver smacks her VW Beetle head-on. Marriage over, body bruised, life upside-down, Rhoda does what any sensible 43-year-old would do: She goes home. But hers is not just any home. It’s a Mennonite home, the scene of her painfully uncool childhood and the bosom of her family: handsome but grouchy Dad, plain but cheerful Mom. Drinking, smoking, and slumber parties are nixed; potlucks, prune soup, and public prayer are embraced. Having long ago left the faith behind, Rhoda is surprised when the conservative community welcomes her back with open arms—and offbeat advice. She discovers that this safe, sheltered world is the perfect place to come to terms with her failed marriage and the choices that both freed and entrapped her."

Rhonda Janzen (Author), Hillary Huber (Narrator)

Audiobook

Women Audiobooks in Biography & Memoir

Join Our Community