Contemporary Women Audiobooks | Fiction & Literature

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Abbie Fox hasn't seen her father or two younger sisters in almost two years, during which time she has jetted around the world and experienced life, if not love. But now Lily, the baby of the family, is sending Abbie urgent e-mails begging her to return home to Nantucket. Their middle sister, Emma, has taken to her bed, emotionally devastated after the loss of her high-powered stockbroker's job and a shockingly unexpected break-up with her fianc'. Also, Lily is deeply worried that Marina, the beautiful, enigmatic woman who is renting their guest house, has set her sights on the sisters' widowed father, Jim. The Fox girls closed ranks years ago after the haunting, untimely death of their mother, but seeing their dad move on with his life forces each of them to take stock. Over the course of the summer, the sisters' lives grow as turbulent as the unpredictable currents encircling Nantucket. When Abbie encounters an incredibly appealing married man, she breaks her own rules in the name of love, fearing all the while that she'll regret it. Meanwhile, type-A Emma learns a new definition of success, and strong-minded Lily must reconcile her dreams with reality. Even Marina, who has come to Nantucket to forget heartbreak and betrayal, faces an astonishing turn of events that will find her torn between fate and freedom. At summer's end, these unforgettable women will face profound choices and undergo personal transformations that will surprise even themselves.

Nancy Thayer (Author), Karen White (Narrator)

Audiobook

Anthropology of an American Girl

Anthropology of an American Girl is a semi-autobiographical novel. It is the story of a young woman and her culture that strives for a measure of narrative depth, detail, and objectivity. It follows its protagonist, Eveline Auerbach, as she moves through a pre-digital American landscape during the 1970s and 1980s. In the most basic respect, it is a coming of age story that prescribes a return to simplicity as the most rational and ethical response to the chaos and confusion of upward mobility.

Hilary Thayer Hamann, Hilary Thayer Harmann (Author), Rebecca Lowman (Narrator)

Audiobook

Weight of Shadows

In this unabridged audio download of The Weight of Shadows, by Alison Strobel, after a difficult childhood, Kim has built a successful life for herself ... but she'd leave it all if it meant being rid of the guilt she harbors over a tragic mistake she made years ago. When she meets Rick, she finds everything she needs---including a way to pay for her sins every time he hits her. Kim and Rick's new neighbor, Joshua, knows more than Kim realizes about Rick, but Joshua has battles of his own to fight. Soon to intersect Kim's and Rick's lives is Debbie, who has saved countless women from abuse through the shelter she runs, but Debbie might be as desperate for love as the women she serves. Meanwhile, as Rick's wrath extends to their baby, Kim must decide if her penance is more important than protecting that innocent life---and if she should dare leave Rick when he has the power to bring her hidden crime to light.

Alison Strobel, Emily Durante (Author), Emily Durante, Zondervan Publishing (Narrator)

Audiobook

Till You Hear From Me

Just when it appears that all her hard work on Barack Obama's presidential campaign is about to pay off with a White House job, thirty-five-year-old Ida B. Wells Dunbar finds herself on Washington, D.C.'s post-election sidelines even as her twenty something counterparts overrun the West Wing. Adding to her woes, her father, the Reverend Horace A. Dunbar, Atlanta civil rights icon, is notoriously featured on an endlessly replayed YouTube clip in which his pronouncements don't exactly jibe with the new era in American politics. The Rev's stinging words and myopic views don't sound anything like the man who raised Ida. When friends call to express their concern, Ida realizes it's time to head home and see for herself what's going on. Back in her old West End neighborhood, Ida runs into childhood friend and smooth political operator Wes Harper, also in town to pay a visit to the Reverend Dunbar, his mentor. While Ida and the Rev try to find the balance between personal loyalties and political realities, they must do some serious soul searching in order to get things back on track before Wes permanently derails their best laid plans.

Pearl Cleage (Author), Bahni Turpin, Mirron Willis (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Captive Queen

It is the year 1152 and a beautiful woman of thirty, attended by only a small armed escort, is riding like the wind southwards through what is now France, leaving behind her crown, her two young daughters and a shattered marriage to Louis of France, who had been more like a monk than a king, and certainly not much of a lover. This woman is Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, and her sole purpose now is to return to her vast duchy and marry the man she loves, Henry Plantagenet, a man destined for greatness as King of England. Theirs is a union founded on lust which will create a great empire stretching from the wilds of Scotland to the Pyrenees. It will also create the devil's brood of Plantagenets - including Richard Cur de Lion and King John - and the most notoriously vicious marriage in history. The Captive Queen is a novel on the grand scale, an epic subject for Alison Weir. It tells of the making of nations, and of passionate conflicts: between Henry II and Thomas Becket, his closest friend who is murdered in Canterbury Cathedral on his orders; between Eleanor and Henry's formidable mother Matilda; between father and sons, as Henry's children take up arms against him; and finally between Henry and Eleanor herself.

Alison Weir (Author), Adjoa Andoh (Narrator)

Audiobook

Lucky Baby: A Novel

Meg Lindsay has everything a woman could want except happiness. Can an adopted Chinese child bring her what she lacks? All her life, Meg Lindsay’s mother told her what a disappointment she was. Try as she might, Meg never measured up, and the emotional bruises still hurt as an adult. In Meg’s opinion, no one could be a worse mother than the woman who gave birth to her—that is, until Meg has a child of her own to care for. Two young girls lived in an orphanage in China. Unwanted because of a deformity and the lack of family registry, Little Zhen An was destined to spend her childhood in the orphanage. Her only friend was a slightly older blind girl, Wen Ming. After Meg and her husband, Lewis, adopt one of the girls, Meg’s love for her new daughter grows daily, but the tension, fear, and uncertainty of motherhood drive Meg to the brink of despair. Fearing that she is becoming the kind of mother she hates, she fights circumstance, rebellion, a loving but at times tense marriage, setbacks, and the native selfishness that lives in all of us. Meg’s journey is a magical one as East meets West and as imagination aligns with reality. Lucky Baby spans the world, bridges the gap between heart and soul, and shows that the greatest power on Earth is forgiveness.

Meredith Efken (Author), Cassandra Campbell (Narrator)

Audiobook

Take Three

Chase Ryan and Keith Ellison set out to change the world with their films---and they are finally seeing their dreams come true. The dedicated producers are deep in negotiations with America's top young movie star to play the lead in their next inspirational movie. But life takes a sudden turn for Chase, removing him from Jeremiah Productions permanently. In the process, Keith brings on one of the Baxter family members and the moviemaking continues. At the same time, a crisis hits Keith's daughter, Andi, and Keith feels helpless to respond. Devastated by the consequences of her wrong actions, Andi ventures out on her own and decides on a course of action that could destroy her. Meanwhile, Bailey Flanigan is caught up in her own drama with Cody Coleman. A Campus Crusade retreat gives them time alone along the shores of Lake Monroe and lets them face a possibility they've avoided for years. Will Keith keep the passion he had at the start of his filmmaking---and will there be enough passion left over for his hurting daughter? Or has their quest to change American culture become nothing more than a quest for fame?

Karen Kingsbury (Author), Don Leslie, Gabrielle De Cuir, Gabrielle/roxanne/don/stefan/judy/paul Cuir/hernandez/leslie/rudnicki/young/baymer, Judy Young, Paul Baymer, Roxanne Hernandez, Stefan Rudnicki, Zondervan Publishing (Narrator)

Audiobook

Big Girl

Victoria Dawson has always felt out of place in her family, especially in body-conscious L.A. Her father, Jim, is tall and slender, and her mother, Christina, is a fine-boned, dark-haired beauty. Both are self-centered, outspoken, and disappointed by their daughter's looks. While her parents and sister can eat anything and not gain an ounce, Victoria must watch everything she eats, as well as endure her father's belittling comments about her body and see her academic achievements go unacknowledged. Ice cream and oversized helpings of all the wrong foods give her comfort, but only briefly. The one thing she knows is that she has to get away from home, and after college in Chicago, she moves to New York City. Behind Victoria is a lifetime of hurt and neglect she has tried to forget, and even ice cream can no longer dull the pain. Ahead is a challenge and a risk: to accept herself as she is, celebrate it, and claim the victories she has fought so hard for and deserves. Big girl or not, she is terrific and discovers that herself.

Danielle Steel (Author), Kathleen McInerney (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Postmistress

Those who carry the truth sometimes bear a terrible burden... Filled with stunning parallels to today's world, The Postmistress is a sweeping novel about the loss of innocence of two extraordinary women-and of two countries torn apart by war. On the eve of the United States's entrance into World War II in 1940, Iris James, the postmistress of Franklin, a small town on Cape Cod, does the unthinkable: She doesn't deliver a letter. In London, American radio gal Frankie Bard is working with Edward R. Murrow, reporting on the Blitz. One night in a bomb shelter, she meets a doctor from Cape Cod with a letter in his pocket, a letter Frankie vows to deliver when she returns from Germany and France, where she is to record the stories of war refugees desperately trying to escape. The residents of Franklin think the war can't touch them- but as Frankie's radio broadcasts air, some know that the war is indeed coming. And when Frankie arrives at their doorstep, the two stories collide in a way no one could have foreseen. The Postmistress is an unforgettable tale of the secrets we must bear, or bury. It is about what happens to love during wartime, when those we cherish leave. And how every story-of love or war-is about looking left when we should have been looking right. Watch a Video

Sarah Blake (Author), Orlagh Cassidy (Narrator)

Audiobook

Winter Garden

Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her children and manage the family business; the other followed a dream and traveled the world to become a famous photojournalist. But when their beloved father falls ill, these two estranged sisters will find themselves together again, standing alongside their disapproving mother, Anya, who even now offers no comfort to her daughters. On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise: Anya will tell her daughters a story; it is one she began years ago and never finished. This time she will tell it all the way to the end. The tale their mother tells them is unlike anything they've heard before-a captivating, mysterious love story that spans more than sixty years and moves from frozen, war-torn Leningrad to modern-day Alaska. Nina's obsession to uncover the truth will send them all on an unexpected journey into their mother's past, where they will discover a secret so shocking, it shakes the foundation of their family and changes who they believe they are. Mesmerizing from beginning to end, Winter Garden is that rarest of novels - at once an epic love story and an intimate portrait of women poised at the crossroads of their lives. Evocative, lyrically written, and ultimately uplifting, it will haunt the listener long after the last word is spoken.

Kristin Hannah (Author), Susan Ericksen (Narrator)

Audiobook

Touching Stars

Gayle Fortman has built a good life for herself and her three sons as an innkeeper in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. She has even maintained a cordial relationship with her ex, charismatic broadcast journalist Eric Fortman, covering with the boys for his absences and broken promises. Luckily Travis Allen, her closest neighbor, has been a loving surrogate father to the boys and her own best friend. Then, on the eve of oldest son Jared's graduation, Eric returns, having nearly lost his life in Afghanistan. Worse, he has lost his way and his courage, and needs a place to recover. Gayle realizes this might be the last chance for her sons to establish a real bond with their father, and offers him a summer at the inn and a chance to put things right. Gayle and Eric are all too aware that their onetime love and attraction are still there. But can the pieces of their broken lives be mended, or are they better laid to rest?

Emilie Richards (Author), Isabel Keating (Narrator)

Audiobook

Saving Ceecee Honeycutt: A Novel

Read Beth Hoffman's blogs and other content on the Penguin Community. Steel Magnolias meets The Help in this Southern debut novel sparkling with humor, heart, and feminine wisdom Twelve-year-old CeeCee Honeycutt is in trouble. For years, she has been the caretaker of her psychotic mother, Camille-the tiara-toting, lipstick-smeared laughingstock of an entire town-a woman trapped in her long-ago moment of glory as the 1951 Vidalia Onion Queen. But when Camille is hit by a truck and killed, CeeCee is left to fend for herself. To the rescue comes her previously unknown great-aunt, Tootie Caldwell. In her vintage Packard convertible, Tootie whisks CeeCee away to Savannah's perfumed world of prosperity and Southern eccentricity, a world that seems to be run entirely by women. From the exotic Miz Thelma Rae Goodpepper, who bathes in her backyard bathtub and uses garden slugs as her secret weapons, to Tootie's all-knowing housekeeper, Oletta Jones, to Violene Hobbs, who entertains a local police officer in her canary-yellow peignoir, the women of Gaston Street keep CeeCee entertained and enthralled for an entire summer. Laugh-out-loud funny and deeply touching, Beth Hoffman's sparkling debut is, as Kristin Hannah says, 'packed full of Southern charm, strong women, wacky humor, and good old-fashioned heart. ' It is a novel that explores the indomitable strengths of female friendship and gives us the story of a young girl who loses one mother and finds many others. Watch a Video

Beth Hoffman (Author), Jenna Lamia (Narrator)

Audiobook

Contemporary Women Audiobooks in Fiction & Literature