Biography & Memoir Audiobooks

Every Kind of People: A Journey into the Heart of Care Work

Brought to you by Penguin. A luminous, uplifting and deeply moving memoir by a care worker, told through her funny, heartbreaking, sometimes frustrating, and always eye-opening encounters with the often overlooked and marginalised people she cares for. 'Being as close as this to someone is a uniquely precious place to be. It is a place where secrets are revealed and fears are shared and outrageous jokes are made that could not be told to anyone else. It is a coal face of human experience' Kate never expected to become a home care worker. But when she left her senior role in the NHS, burnt-out and disheartened, she thought caring for people in their own homes would be a simpler job. But despite being determined not to become too involved with her 'customers', she soon found herself developing firm friendships, forging deep connections and bearing witness to the extraordinary drama to be found in ordinary lives. With energy, compassion and clarity her memoir gives an astonishing insight into this unsung - and often maligned - profession, and into the hidden lives of the housebound and infirm. From Beryl who screams like a banshee whenever Kate tries to wash her, but collapses in giggles when her toes are tickled, to bawdy Mr Radbert who 'promised to give me his car when he can remember where he left it'. Every Kind of People is clear-eyed about the challenges facing the NHS and the care system. But it is above all a celebration of humanity and of the life-changing impact of caring, on those who offer it and those who receive it. ©2024 Kathryn Faulke (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Kathryn Faulke (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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We Are Experiencing a Slight Delay

Gary Janetti (Author), Gary Janetti, TBD (Narrator)

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JFK Jr.: An Intimate Oral Biography

The first oral biography of John F. Kennedy Jr. is an extraordinarily intimate, comprehensive look at the real man behind the myth. Sharing never-before-told stories and insights, his closest friends, confidantes, lovers, classmates, teachers, and colleagues paint a vivid portrait of one of the most beloved figures of the 20th century, revealing how the boy who saluted became the man America came to know and love who still captures public imagination twenty-five years after his tragic death. Born into the spotlight, John F. Kennedy Jr. lived a short but remarkable life filled with expectation, ambition, family pressures, love, and tragedy. JFK Jr. dives deep into his complicated psyche and explores the what-ifs, illuminating both the cultural and political moment he inhabited and the way this son of a president, so full of promise and possibility, embodied America's most cherished hopes.

Liz Mcneil, Rosemarie Terenzio (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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The Widow's Guide to Dead Bastards

A widow's life is turned upside when she uncovers the truth about her late husband in this lyrical, witty, and deeply moving memoir of tragedy and betrayal. In the midst of mourning her husband's sudden death, writer Jessica Waite discovered shocking secrets that undermined everything she thought she knew about the man she'd loved and trusted. From uncovered affairs to drug use and a pornography addiction, Waite was overwhelmed reconciling this devastating information with her new reality as a widowed single mom. Then, to further complicate matters, strange, inexplicable coincidences forced her to consider whether her husband was reaching back from beyond the grave. With her signature candor and unflinching honesty, Waite details her tumultuous love story and the pain of adjusting to the new normal she built for herself and her son. A riveting, difficult, and surprisingly beautiful story, The Widow's Guide to Dead Bastards is also a lyrical exploration of grief, mental health, single parenthood, and betrayal that demonstrates that the most moving love stories aren't perfect—they're flawed and poignantly real.

Jessica Waite (Author), Cassandra Campbell, TBD (Narrator)

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Parole

Deciding if a prisoner should stay in prison or be released is no mean feat. Enter the fascinating world of the parole board with Rob McKeon of BBC's Parole. …You don't know what you don't know. How can you predict the future when you don't know what you don't know? Rob McKeon is a member of Britain's parole board, making tough, life-changing decisions about whether a prisoner is safe to return to society; impacting not only prisoners and their victims, but also the general public. This vital work has been the subject of a BBC television documentary, Parole. For 12 years, Rob has been handling sensitive and high-profile cases, dealing with the social, moral, and emotional pressures that come with this difficult job. This book provides unique insight into his work, with a compelling behind-the-scenes look at parole hearings.

Rob Mckeon (Author), Rob Mckeon (Narrator)

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Why We Were Right

Rosie Holt (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House

Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner: 'Of all the Kennedy books . . . this is the best.' -Time Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. served as special assistant to President John F. Kennedy throughout his presidency-from the long and grueling campaign to Kennedy's tragic and unexpected assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald. In A Thousand Days, Schlesinger combines intimate knowledge as one of President Kennedy's inner circle with sweeping research and historic context to provide a look at one of the most legendary presidential administrations in American history. From JFK's battle with Nixon during the 1960 election, to the seemingly charmed inaugural days, to international conflict and domestic unrest, Schlesinger takes a close and fond, but unsparing, look at Kennedy's tenure in the White House, covering well-known successes, like his involvement in the Civil Rights movement; infamous humiliations, like the Bay of Pigs; and often overlooked struggles, like the Skybolt missile mix-up, alike. Praised by the New York Times as 'at once a masterly literary achievement and a work of major historical significance,' A Thousand Days is not only a fascinating look at an American president, but a towering achievement in historical documentation.

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (Author), Adam Verner (Narrator)

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Madoff: The Final Word

Fifteen years after Bernie Madoff's arrest, renowned investigative journalist Richard Behar delivers the definitive account of history's largest—and longest-running—financial fraud. Some $65 billion evaporated during Bernie Madoff's epic confidence game. Two people were driven to suicide in the wake of the Ponzi Scheme's exposure. Others went to prison. But there has never been a satisfying accounting for how Bernie got away with so much, for so long. Until now. Richard Behar's relationship with Madoff began in 2011 with a simple email request from the inmate. By the time he died in 2021, he had sent Behar more than 300 emails and dozens of hand-written letters, participated in some fifty (recorded) phone conversations, and sat for three in-person jailhouse interviews—a level of access provided to no other reporter. Behar also established unique relationships with dozens of regulators, prosecutors, investors, Wall Street experts, ex-employees of Madoff's, and FBI agents. The result is the final word on the criminal behind history's most enduring fraud—and on those who believed him, covered for him, or locked him up. Behar reveals not only that the fraud traces back decades earlier than Madoff claimed in his confession, but also the complicity of investors (who unfairly blame the SEC), Wall Street insiders, family members, and some of the largest banks in the US and Europe. Shocking, infuriating, riveting (and at times absurdly funny), Madoff shows us how Bernie ensnared thousands of investors. As Behar's dogged reporting over the last fifteen years makes clear, however, there aren't many innocents left standing by the end of this tale. Just about everyone involved is guilty, at a minimum, of humanity's most consistent weakness: greed.

Richard Behar (Author), Michael David Axtell, TBD (Narrator)

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The Movement: How Women's Liberation Transformed America 1963-1973

A comprehensive and engaging oral history of the decade that defined the feminist movement, including interviews with living icons and unsung heroes—from former Newsweek reporter and author of the "powerful and moving" (New York Times) Witness to the Revolution. For lovers of both Barbie and Gloria Steinem, The Movement is the first oral history of the decade that built the modern feminist movement. Through the captivating individual voices of the people who lived it, The Movement tells the intimate inside story of what it felt like to be at the forefront of the modern feminist crusade, when women rejected thousands of years of custom and demanded the freedom to be who they wanted and needed to be. This engaging history traces women's awakening, organizing, and agitating between the years of 1963 and 1973, when a decentralized collection of people and events coalesced to create a spontaneous combustion. From Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, to the underground abortion network the Janes, to Shirley Chisolm's presidential campaign and Billie Jean King's 1973 battle of the sexes, Bingham artfully weaves together the fragments of that explosion person by person, bringing to life the emotions of this personal, cultural, and political revolution. Artists and politicians, athletes and lawyers, Black and white, The Movement brings readers into the rooms where these women insisted on being treated as first class citizens, and in the process, changed the fabric of American life.

Clara Bingham (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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Flying Blind: Drug Smuggling, a Plane Crash, and a Daughter's Quest for the Truth

An exhilarating memoir by a daughter uncovering the secret of her father’s rags-to-riches story, from poor farm boy to international drug smuggler, and the many mysteries surrounding his sudden death by plane crash. Nothing seemed awry the morning that five-year-old Artis Chester climbed into her father’s plane: this was simply their usual Saturday bonding. But moments after they take off into the crystal blue sky, the plane plummets to the ground, leaving Artis with a broken body--and without a father. This tragedy would be enough to shape any young life, but Artis’s world is further turned upside down when, shortly thereafter, the IRS arrives to seize all her family’s possessions. Lamar Chester had always had an air of mystery about him, but now her mother won’t say a word. He’d been a dashing commercial pilot, settling his family in a palatial estate in Georgia, amassing a collection of boats, cars, a private plane and even a group of islands in the Bahamas. But Artis, as a young child, had thought little of it before the accident. It would take years for Artis to begin to uncover the truth: Lamar had made his multi-million-dollar fortune smuggling drugs between the Bahamas and Florida in the 70s and 80s, and many of his compatriots believed that he had been covertly working for the Feds. As more and more details emerge, it becomes clear that the plane crash that took Lamar’s life was not a simple pilot error but perhaps a plot by high-ranking government officials to cover up crimes that far exceeded Lamar’s drug smuggling. In the page-turning adventures of Flying Blind, this critically acclaimed memoirist vividly chronicles her father’s outsized life, including his rise from poor farm boy to one of America’s most prolific drug smugglers, probes for the first time the suspicious circumstances of his death, and ultimately offers a compassionate, clear-eyed look at the people left in his wake.

Artis Henderson (Author), Tbd (Narrator)

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More, Please: On Food, Fat, Bingeing, Longing, and the Lust for 'Enough'

An unflinching and deeply reported look at the realities of binge-eating disorder from a rising culture commentator and writer for Vogue. Millions of us use restrictive diets, intermittent fasting, IV therapies, and Ozempic abuse to shrink until we are sample-size acceptable. But for the 30 million Americans who live with eating disorders, it isn’t just about less. More, Please is a chronicle of a lifelong fixation with food—its power to soothe, to comfort, to offer a fleeting escape from the outside world—as well as an examination of the ways in which compulsory thinness, diet culture, and the seductive promise of “wellness” have resulted in warping countless Americans’ relationship with healthy eating. Melding memoir, reportage, and in-depth interviews with some of the most prominent and knowledgeable commentators currently writing about food, fatness, and disordered eating—Jennifer Weiner, Marisa Meltzer, Virgie Tovar, Leslie Jamison, and others—Emma Specter explores binge-eating disorder as both a personal problem and a societal one. In More, Please, she provides a context, a history, and a language for what it means to always want more than you’ll allow yourself to have.

Emma Specter (Author), Erin Deward, TBD (Narrator)

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Send Me: The Incredible True Story of a Mother at War

The extraordinary story of American special operator and trailblazer Shannon Kent, who was killed at the age of 35 by a suicide bomber while hunting high value targets on a classified mission in Syria in 2019. Of the 1.3 million active-duty service members in the U.S. military, only a tiny fraction are selected as “operators” in elite special mission units. Shannon Kent was one of the first women to serve at this level and was widely recognized as one of the best. Shannon served as a Cryptologic Warfare Technician, responsible for signals intelligence and electronic warfare, but her proficiency with language set her apart. She was assigned to the Joint Special Operations Command, where she worked clandestinely to hunt the most wanted terrorists in the world. Send Me is Shannon’s heroic life story, revealing the truth of both her work and her death. Shannon’s team wasn’t on a routine patrol the day she died, nor out for lunch as many news outlets reported. She was hunting ISIS cells. Joe, a retired Special Forces soldier, recalls how he and Shannon met in a war zone, their love forged during an elite special operations training course, their dedication spanning multiple combat deployments and the birth of their two boys. It is the legacy of an extraordinary woman who rose to the apex of the military, working with the most elite forces in the world, lifting the veil from the life of a Special Forces family to share their duty, sacrifice, and humanity.

Joe Kent, Marty Skovlund (Author), Joe Kent, Marty Skovlund, Tbd (Narrator)

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