Literary Audiobooks | Biography & Memoir

Rosie: Scenes from a Vanished Life Audiobook

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Rosie: Scenes from a Vanished Life, written and read by Rose Tremain. Rose Tremain grew up in post-war London, a city of grey austerity, still partly in ruins, where both food and affection were fiercely rationed. The girl known then as 'Rosie' and her sister Jo spent their days longing for their grandparents' farm, buried deep in the Hampshire countryside, a green paradise of feasts and freedom, where they could at last roam and dream. But when Rosie is ten years old, everything changes. She and Jo lose their father, their London house, their school, their friends, and -- most agonisingly of all -- their beloved Nanny, Vera, the only adult to have shown them real love and affection. Briskly dispatched to a freezing boarding-school in Hertfordshire, they once again feel like imprisoned castaways. But slowly the teenage Rosie escapes from the cold world of the Fifties, into a place of inspiration and mischief, of loving friendships and dedicated teachers, where a young writer is suddenly ready to be born.

Rose Tremain (Author), Rose Tremain (Narrator)

Audiobook

Neruda: el llamado del poeta

Mark Eisner (Author), Ed Rulaes, Eduardo Ruales (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Art of the Wasted Day

A spirited inquiry into the lost value of leisure and daydream The Art of the Wasted Day is a picaresque travelogue of leisure written from a lifelong enchantment with solitude. Patricia Hampl visits the homes of historic exemplars of ease who made repose a goal, even an art form. She begins with two celebrated eighteenth-century Irish ladies who ran off to live a life of "retirement" in rural Wales. Her search then leads to Moravia to consider the monk-geneticist, Gregor Mendel, and finally to Bordeaux for Michel Montaigne--the hero of this book--who retreated from court life to sit in his chateau tower and write about whatever passed through his mind, thus inventing the personal essay. Hampl's own life winds through these pilgrimages, from childhood days lazing under a neighbor's beechnut tree, to a fascination with monastic life, and then to love--and the loss of that love which forms this book's silver thread of inquiry. Finally, a remembered journey down the Mississippi near home in an old cabin cruiser with her husband turns out, after all her international quests, to be the great adventure of her life. The real job of being human, Hampl finds, is getting lost in thought, something only leisure can provide. The Art of the Wasted Day is a compelling celebration of the purpose and appeal of letting go.

Patricia Hampl (Author), Patricia Hampl (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Times of My Life and My Life with The Times

Since 1949, when Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Max Frankel began to write for The New York Times, readers have looked to his work as a lens through which they could witness America's role in a rapidly changing world. In this vivid and unforgettable memoir, Frankel chronicles the times of his extraordinary life as he experienced them...within the context of the news stories that defined an era. A quintessentially American story, The Times of My Life traces Frankel's riveting personal relationship with history...his harrowing escape from Nazi Germany...his life as an immigrant on the streets of New York...and his extraordinary half-century-long career at The Times. In a rich first-person account that moves from Hitler's Berlin to Cold War Moscow, from Castro's Havana to the newsroom of America's most influential newspaper, this powerful, compelling work interweaves Frankel's personal and professional lives with the era's greatest stories, from Sputnik to the Pentagon Papers to the collapse of the Berlin Wall. And it reveals Frankel's fascinating off-the-record encounters with Nikita Khrushchev, Henry Kissinger, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and a host of other history-makers who shaped their times--and ours. Guiding readers through Hitler's Berlin, Khrushchev's Moscow, Castro's Havana, and the Washington of Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, THE TIMES OF MY LIFE reevaluates the Cold War, and interweaves Frankel's personal and professional life with the greatest stories of the era. -->

Max Frankel (Author), Max Frankel (Narrator)

Audiobook

Publishing Through Puberty: A Bestselling Teenage Author's Self Publishing Secrets Revealed

Writing a book is freakin' hard as crap. Brainstorming, outlining, writing, editing...it takes a chunk out of you. A piece of your soul. But unfortunately, that's not the hardest part of the process. Once you've given your book all you've got, you've still got to give a little bit more. Do you see where I'm going with this? Marketing. Marketing is a jerk. It's really hard. Especially as a teenager. If you're like me when I started out, you have very limited experience, no money, and a particularly crowded schedule. Oh, and you have to decide who you want to ask to Prom. Let me tell you, it's a lot to ask of anyone. But to ask this from someone struggling with severe acne? It's no wonder that very few teenagers have ever published a bestselling book. However, I just happen to be one of those few teenagers who HAVE published a bestselling book. And I want to teach you everything I know. I published my first book when I was 13. It sold 5 copies. I published dozens of books after that. And I want to show you how I did it. I'm going to take you through the entire process. A to Z. Sound like something you want in your life? Then don't hesitate. Let's do this thing. Scroll up and buy your copy of 'Publishing Through Puberty' today! About the Expert When Mark Messick was 10 years-old, he decided that he was going to become a bestselling author. Whatever it took, he didn’t care. He would do anything. Eventually, he did become a bestselling author in his teenage years! Over the next 6 years, Mark fought tooth-and-nail to fulfill that dream. He worked his butt off every single day. He never gave up on his dream, regardless of how insane it seemed. He was stubborn. He would work for 6, 8, even 10 hours a day. Writing, marketing, researching…day after day after day.And now, finally, all of his hard work has paid off. HowExpert publishes quick 'how to' guides on all topics from A to Z by everyday experts.

Howexpert, Mark Messick (Author), Eric Boozer (Narrator)

Audiobook

El amante uruguayo

El misterioso y camaleónico Enrique Amorim, mililonario y escritor uruguayo, sedujo a algunos de los personajes más fascinantes del siglo XX. Entre sus relaciones, la que tuvo con Federico García Lorca fue probablemente la más notable y su envolvimiento en la desaparición del cadáver del escritor español se queda envuelto en el misterio. A través de un brillante trabajo de investigación en Buenos Aires, París y la España de los años treinta y de la posguerra, Santiago Roncagliolo nos revela algunos de los trazos más privados e íntimos de los personajes más ilustres del siglo XX, sus celos, sus amores, sus ideologías políticas y sus secretos. Historias de las vidas de Picasso, Neruda, Chaplin, Borges y otros se entrelazan a través los ojos de Amorim. Grabado en español neutro (América Latina).

Santiago Roncagliolo (Author), Alexánder Muñoz (Narrator)

Audiobook

Time Pieces: A Dublin Memoir

From the internationally acclaimed and Man Booker prize-winning author of The Sea and the Benjamin Black mysteries-a vividly evocative memoir that unfolds around the author's recollections, experience, and imaginings of Dublin. As much about the life of the city as it is about a life lived, sometimes, in the city, John Banville's "quasi-memoir" is as layered, emotionally rich, witty, and unexpected as any of his novels. Born and bred in a small town a train ride away from Dublin, Banville saw the city as a place of enchantment when he was a child, a birthday treat, the place where his beloved, eccentric aunt lived. And though, when he came of age and took up residence there, and the city became a frequent backdrop for his dissatisfactions (not playing an identifiable role in his work until the Quirke mystery series, penned as Benjamin Black), it remained in some part of his memory as fascinating as it had been to his seven-year-old self. And as he guides us around the city, delighting in its cultural, architectural, political, and social history, he interweaves the memories that are attached to particular places and moments. The result is both a wonderfully idiosyncratic tour of Dublin, and a tender yet powerful ode to a formative time and place for the artist as a young man.

John Banville (Author), John Lee (Narrator)

Audiobook

Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poet's Journey with an Exceptional Labrador

In a lyrical love letter to guide dogs everywhere, a blind poet shares his delightful story of how a guide dog changed his life and helped him discover a newfound appreciation for travel and independence. Stephen Kuusisto was born legally blind-but he was also raised in the 1950s and taught to deny his blindness in order to "pass" as sighted. Stephen attended public school, rode a bike, and read books pressed right up against his nose. As an adult, he coped with his limited vision by becoming a professor in a small college town, memorizing routes for all of the places he needed to be. Then, at the age of 38, he was laid off. With no other job opportunities in his vicinity, he would have to travel to find work. This is how he found himself at Guiding Eyes paired with a Labrador named Corky. In this vivid and lyrical memoir, Stephen Kuusisto recounts how an incredible partnership with a guide dog changed his life and the heart-stopping, wondrous adventure that began for him in midlife. Profound and deeply moving, this is a spiritual journey, the story of discovering that life with a guide dog is both a method and a state of mind.

Stephen Kuusisto (Author), Fred Sanders (Narrator)

Audiobook

Packing My Library: An Elegy and Ten Digressions

In June 2015 Alberto Manguel prepared to leave his centuries-old village home in France's Loire Valley and reestablish himself in a one-bedroom apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Packing up his enormous, 35,000-volume personal library, choosing which books to keep, store, or cast out, Manguel found himself in deep reverie on the nature of relationships between books and readers, books and collectors, order and disorder, memory and reading. In this poignant and personal reevaluation of his life as a reader, the author illuminates the highly personal art of reading and affirms the vital role of public libraries. Manguel's musings range widely, from delightful reflections on the idiosyncrasies of book lovers to deeper analyses of historic and catastrophic book events, including the burning of ancient Alexandria's library and contemporary library lootings at the hands of ISIS. With insight and passion, the author underscores the universal centrality of books and their unique importance to a democratic, civilized, and engaged society.

Alberto Manguel (Author), James Cameron Stewart (Narrator)

Audiobook

La suma de los días

Una obra al tiempo emotiva y escrita en el tono irónico y apasionado que caracteriza a la autora, en la que nos entrega la suma de sus días como mujer y como escritora. En La suma de los días, Isabel Allende narra con franqueza la historia de su vida y la de su peculiar familia en California, en una casa abierta, llena de gente y de personajes literarios, y protegida por un espíritu; hijas perdidas, nietos y libros que nacen, éxitos y dolores, un viaje al mundo de las adicciones y otros a lugares remotos del mundo en busca de inspiración, junto a divorcios, encuentros, amores, separaciones, crisis de pareja y reconciliaciones. También es una historia de amor entre un hombre y una mujer maduros, que han salvado muchos escollos sin perder ni la pasión ni el humor, y de una familia moderna, desgarrada por conflictos y unida, a pesar de todo, por el cariño y la decisión de salir adelante.

Isabel Allende (Author), Javiera Gazitua (Narrator)

Audiobook

My Dead Parents: A Memoir

A haunting, unforgettable family story about hidden secrets and a daughter's journey to understand her parents Anya Yurchyshyn grew up in a narrow townhouse in Boston, every corner filled with the souvenirs of her parents' adventurous international travels. On their trips to Egypt, Italy, and Saudi Arabia, her mother, Anita, and her father, George, lived an entirely separate life from the one they led as the parents of Anya and her sister - one that Anya never saw. The parents she knew were a brittle, manipulative alcoholic and a short-tempered disciplinarian: people she imagined had never been in love. When she was sixteen, Anya's father was killed in a car accident in Ukraine. At thirty-two, she became an orphan when her mother drank herself to death. As she was cleaning out her childhood home, she suddenly discovered a trove of old letters, photographs, and journals hidden in the debris of her mother's life. These lost documents told a very different story than the one she'd believed to be true - of a forbidden romance; of a loving marriage, and the loss of a child. With these revelations in hand, Anya undertook an investigation, interviewing relatives and family friends, traveling to Wales and Ukraine, and delving deeply into her own difficult history in search of the truth, even uncovering the real circumstances of her father's death - not an accident, perhaps, but something more sinister. In this inspiring and unflinchingly honest debut memoir, Anya interrogates her memories of her family and examines what it means to be our parents' children. What do we inherit, and what can we choose to leave behind? How do we escape the ghosts of someone else's past? And can we learn to love our parents not as our parents, but simply as people? Universal and personal; heartbreaking and redemptive, My Dead Parents helps us to see why sometimes those who love us best hurt us most.

Anya Yurchyshyn (Author), Anya Yurchyshyn (Narrator)

Audiobook

Halfway: A Memoir

From a searing new literary voice, a raw, compulsively readable memoir about a young man seeking hope, community, and ultimately recovery from addiction in a series of halfway houses and boys' homes-the first book to so vividly capture this world. In his late teens Tom Macher rebelled against a world that seemed stacked against him. Raised in a broken family and estranged from an absentee father suffering with AIDS, Macher turned to alcohol to escape the painful loneliness of his reality. In quick succession, he is kicked out of school, and then his mother's house, sent to a boys' home in Montana, and later, a halfway house in a truck-stop town of Louisiana. It was there that Macher encounters a community of young men struggling to survive-outcasts and thieves, liars and ex-cons, men seeking redemption, men running from the past. As he moves further away from boyhood and embraces a hard-won sobriety, these men-the broken, the hardscrabble, the near gone-become his salvation. Macher captures the trials of sobriety-suicide, death, recovery-and the unusual beauty that forms in the bonds of those who suffer. In visceral, striking prose, he introduces the unforgettable characters he meets along the way, from a former child actor, a young teen struggling with schizophrenia, a tough-love addiction counselor, a sex-addicted social worker, to Matt O, who became Macher's loyal friend and wingman. Raw, disarming, frenetic, and subversive, Halfway is a brutally honest portrait of the world of down-and-out recovering alcoholics, and a story of how, in their darkest hour, these men create the bonds that form a family.

Tom Macher (Author), Corey Brill (Narrator)

Audiobook

Literary Audiobooks in Biography & Memoir