Literary Audiobooks | Biography & Memoir

In an industry dominated by white men, Connie Chung stood alone, the first and only Asian woman to break into the television news industry. This is her extraordinary story, told with incisive wit and remarkable candor. Connie Chung is a pioneer. In 1969 at the age of 23, this once-shy daughter of Chinese parents took her first job at a local TV station in her hometown of Washington, D.C. and soon thereafter began working at CBS news as a correspondent. Profoundly influenced by her family's cultural traditions, yet growing up completely Americanized in the United States, Chung describes her career as an Asian woman in a white male-centered world. Overt sexism was a way of life, but Chung was tenacious in her pursuit of stories - battling rival reporters to secure scoops that ranged from interviewing Magic Johnson to covering the Watergate scandal - and quickly became a household name. She made history when she achieved her dream of being the first woman to co-anchor the CBS Evening News and the first Asian to anchor any news program in the U.S. Chung pulls no punches as she provides a behind-the-scenes tour of her singular life. From showdowns with powerful men in and out of the newsroom to the stories behind some of her career-defining reporting and the unwavering support of her husband, Maury Povich, nothing is off-limits - good, bad, or ugly. So be sure to tune in for an irreverent and inspiring exclusive: this is CONNIE like you've never seen her before.

Connie Chung (Author), Tbd (Narrator)

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The Sing Sing Files: One Journalist, Six Innocent Men, and a Twenty-Year Fight for Justice

Dan Slepian (Author), Daniel Slepian, TBD (Narrator)

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The Abandoners

‘The best kind of book: the one you didn’t know you were craving until it appeared . . . self-interrogative, intricately perceptive. I absolutely inhaled it’ JIA TOLENTINO ‘A very richly interesting exploration of a complex subject. Begoña Gómez Urzaiz tells the stories with such intelligence and wit and generosity’ TESSA HADLEY Ingrid Bergman, Muriel Spark, Maria Montessori . . . what do these women have in common? During the pandemic, trapped at home with young children and struggling to find creative space to write, journalist Begoña Gómez Urzaiz became fixated on artistic women who were able to overcome both society’s judgement and their own maternal instincts in order to leave their children. More than anything, she was fascinated by her own prejudice towards these women, so clearly tied up in a much wider cultural bias. Using famous examples including Doris Lessing, fictional ones such as Anna Karenina, and interrogating modern trends like Momfluencers, Begoña reveals what our judgement of these women tells us about our judgement of all women. ‘The best book I've read on the implications of motherhood and its opposites after Sheila Heti's Motherhood’ CLAUDIA DURASTANTI

Begoña Gómez Urzaiz (Author), To Be Announced (Narrator)

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The Dragon From Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany

For fans of unheralded women's stories, a captivating look at Sigrid Schultz-one of the earliest reporters to warn Americans of the rising threat of the Nazi regime-that draws striking parallels to the rise of fascism today "No other American correspondent in Berlin knew so much of what was going on behind the scene as did Sigrid Schultz." - William L. Shirer, author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich The Dragon from Chicago tells the gripping tale of American journalist Sigrid Schultz's fights on two fronts: to establish herself as a serious foreign correspondent in an era when her male colleagues saw a powerful unmarried woman as a "freak," and to keep the news flowing out of Nazi Germany despite the regime's tightening controls on the media. Schultz was the Chicago Tribune's Berlin bureau chief and primary foreign correspondent for Central Europe from 1925 to January 1941 and one of the first reporters-male or female-to warn American readers of the growing dangers of Nazism. Drawing on extensive archival research, Pamela D. Toler unearths the largely forgotten story of Schultz's years spent courageously reporting the news from Berlin, from the revolts of 1919 through Nazi atrocities and air raids over Berlin in 1941. At a time when women reporters rarely wrote front-page stories, Schultz pulled back the curtain on how the Nazis misreported the news to their own people, and how they attempted to control the foreign press through bribery and threats. Sharp and enlightening, Schultz's story provides a vital lesson for how we can reclaim truth in an era marked by the spread of disinformation and claims of "fake news."

Pamela D. Toler (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde

Alexis Pauline Gumbs (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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I Am on the Hit List: A Journalist's Murder and the Rise of Autocracy in India

A gripping true crime narrative of the mysterious assassination of a journalist in South India and the investigation that followed, uncovering a world of political extremists, fearless writers, and shadowy religious groups. When Gauri Lankesh, a prominent journalist in the South Indian city of Bangalore, was assassinated in September 2017 outside her home, it wasn't just a loss to her close-knit community of journalists, activists, and local leaders-the shock reverberated nationwide, making headlines and sparking protests. Why was she targeted, and who was behind it? In investigating these questions, Rollo Romig unpeels the complex layers of South India, a place of incredible religious diversity, a strong literary tradition, myriad languages, and a fascinating history stretching back millennia. To provide even broader cultural and historical context to the region, Romig explores two other murder investigations alongside Gauri's, introducing themes of martyrdom, mythmaking, and the legacy of colonial rule. I Am on the Hit List reveals a country that, just like the United States, has been in recent years deeply affected by dogma, dissent, and the decline of democracy. The people speaking up-like Gauri Lankesh-are uniquely vulnerable. In an epic narrative that moves between a historic booksellers' district and brand-new high rises funded by IT companies, to a mysterious ashram in Goa and the kitchens of an international vegetarian restaurant chain, Rollo Romig interrogates whether we can break the cycle of polarization and bloodshed inspiring political murder across the entire globe.

Rollo Romig (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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A Wilder Shore: The Romantic Odyssey of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson

A portrait of the fascinating, unusual and fruitful creative partnership between Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson The romance between Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson was an unlikely Victorian love story: he was an ambitious but drifting college-educated writer from a prominent family in Scotland; she was a forceful and determined farm girl from Indiana with a high school education. She was married, with children, and 10 years his senior when they met in France in 1876. How could a union between them work? A Wilder Shore is a portrait of these two extraordinary people and a nuanced examination of the improbable union that stimulated, frustrated and ultimately sustained them. The book travels the world with the couple as they seek better health for him, a looser lifestyle and more creative freedom, beginning in an art colony outside Paris and ending in Samoa, where they lived and joined the native islanders' fight for independence from imperialist powers. Along the way, the ferment of the Stevensons' deeply loving but stormy marriage produced literary masterpieces by Robert such as Treasure Island, Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. This sweeping love story of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson and their search for freedom and self-discovery opens up new perspectives on both writers, as well as showing how astonishingly modern they were for their times.

Camille Peri (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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My Good Bright Wolf: A Memoir

Sarah Moss (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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Perfect Bound

Part memoir, part manifesto for living from the woman who redefined how-to titles for the 21st century Having suffered the unimaginable loss of her first husband and child, Lindsay Nicholson worked her way up to become the most successful lifestyle magazine editor in Britain. But when a would-be suicide ran in front of her car, the pages of her picture-perfect life fell apart once more. In just one year, Lindsay lost her marriage, job and home, and was even arrested. Suicidal and suffering from profound PTSD, she tried medication, therapy and New Age courses – until she found the answers she was looking for in the pages of her former magazine. Following the wisdom they dispensed, Lindsay came to realise that life isn’t about being perfect. It’s the mess of friendship, laughter and the little things that truly matter. By turns deeply moving, inspiring and sharply funny, Perfect Bound is an unforgettable story about resilience, recovery and remembering what really makes life worth living.

Lindsay Nicholson (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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Agatha Christie’s Marple: Expert on Wickedness

A new investigation from Dr Mark Aldridge, exploring a lifetime of Agatha Christie’s Miss Jane Marple. In Agatha Christie’s Marple: Expert on Wickedness,‘Agathologist’ Dr Mark Aldridge looks at nearly a century of St Mary Mead’s most famous resident and uses his own detective skills to uncover new information about Miss Jane Marple’s appearances on page, stage, screen and beyond. Drawing on a range of material, some of which is newly discovered and previously unpublished, this book explores everything about Miss Marple, from her origins in a series of short stories penned by Christie, to the recent bestselling HarperCollins collection Marple: Twelve New Stories. This accessible, entertaining and illustrated guide to the world of Miss Marple pieces together the evidence in order to tell you everything you need to know about the world’s favourite female detective.

Mark Aldridge (Author), Jane Slavin, To Be Announced (Narrator)

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Glad to the Brink of Fear: A Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson

The canonical nineteenth-century American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson is known for his many essays, such as “Self-Reliance,” “Nature,” “Individualism,” and “Experience,” and as a prominent figure in the New England literary and philosophical movement known as Transcendentalism, which also included Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Amos Bronson Alcott, and many others. In this book, the writer James Marcus offers a fresh, twenty-first-century perspective on Emerson’s life and work, and argues for Emerson’s continuing relevance. Across sixteen thematic chapters, each of which uses one of Emerson’s essays as a point of departure, Marcus draws on Emerson’s journals, correspondence, and biographical details to consider the writer’s views on such topics as religion, marriage, friendship, children, politics, grief and loss, slavery and freedom. He looks beyond Emerson’s image as a lofty and canonical figure to capture the flawed and very human essayist as a husband, a grieving parent, a literary celebrity, and more. In an engaging, personal style, Marcus explores Emerson’s literary and cultural legacy and reflects on how his ideas and insights speak to the challenges of contemporary life.

James Marcus (Author), Graham Winton, TBD (Narrator)

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World Class: Purpose, Passion, and the Pursuit of Greatness On and Off the Field

The definitive collection of beloved late journalist Grant Wahl's work-a masterclass in the art of sportswriting After Grant Wahl died of an aortic aneurysm at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, collapsing in his press seat during a quarterfinal match, tributes to Wahl poured in from around the globe. Wahl was beloved for good reason-he was kind, generous, and unflinching in the face of injustice. He was also one of the best sports journalists of his generation. Spanning four decades of storytelling, World Class collects for the first time the finest writing of Grant Wahl, from op-eds for his college newspaper to twenty-five years of reporting at Sports Illustrated to his deeply personal work for Fútbol with Grant Wahl on Substack. Wahl was the multi-tool modern sportswriter: clear and direct; able to write long, short, or in between; cosmopolitan; socially aware. Arranged thematically, World Class demonstrates how Wahl's career aligned with the evolution of sportswriting. Included are explorations of soccer subcultures from Buenos Aires and F.C. Barcelona to the dusty sandlots of Nacogdoches, Texas, as well as accounts of trophy lifts that have a first-draft-of-history definitiveness. Some pieces capture prodigies early in their careers, like LeBron James and Landon Donovan; others lift the voices of the women athletes to whom Wahl paid early attention-stars like Abby Wambach and Megan Rapinoe. The book showcases the daring and important positions Wahl took in Qatar in the weeks before he died, supporting migrant workers and LGBTQ+ people. More than a collection of Grant Wahl's best work, World Class is a portrait of a journalist at the height of his powers, always evolving with the times, revealed by the stories he found and the unflinching way he told them.

Grant Wahl (Author), Alexander Wolff, Céline Gounder, Eric Wahl, Mark Mravic, TBD (Narrator)

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Literary Audiobooks in Biography & Memoir