General Audiobooks | Fiction & Literature

Shoot Like a Girl: One Woman's Dramatic Fight in Afghanistan and on the Home Front

On June 29, 2009, Air National Guard major Mary Jennings "MJ" Hegar was shot down while on a Medevac mission on her third tour in Afghanistan. Despite being wounded, she fought the enemy and saved the lives of her crew and their patients. But soon she would face a new battle: to give women who serve on the front lines the credit they deserve. . . . After being commissioned into the U.S. Air Force, MJ Hegar was selected for pilot training by the Air National Guard, finished at the top of her class, then served three tours in Afghanistan flying combat search and rescue missions, culminating in a harrowing rescue attempt that would earn MJ the Purple Heart as well as the Distinguished Flying Cross with Valor Device. But it was on American soil that Hegar would embark on her greatest challenge-to eliminate the military's Ground Combat Exclusion Policy, which kept female armed service members from officially serving in combat roles despite their long-standing record of doing so with honor. In Shoot like A Girl, MJ takes the reader on a dramatic journey through her military career: an inspiring, humorous, and thrilling true story of a brave, high-spirited, and unforgettable woman who has spent much of her life ready to sacrifice everything for her country, her fellow man, and her sense of justice.

Major Mary Jennings Hegar, Mary Jennings Hegar (Author), Cynthia Farrell (Narrator)

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Strangers Tend to Tell Me Things: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Coming Home

In STRANGERS TEND TO TELL ME THINGS--her follow-up memoir to the NYT bestselling The Mighty Queens of Freeville--America's most popular advice columnist, "Ask Amy," shares her journey of family, second chances, and finding love. By peeling back the curtain of her syndicated advice column, Amy Dickinson reveals much of the inspiration and motivation that has fueled her calling. Through a series of linked essays, this moving narrative picks up where her earlier memoir left off. Exploring central themes of romance, death, parenting, self-care, and spiritual awakening, this touching and heartfelt homage speaks to all who have faced challenges in the wake of life's twists and turns. From finding love in middle-age to her storied experience with stepparenting to overcoming disordered eating to her final moments spent with her late mother, Dickinson's trademark humorous tone delivers punch and wit that will empower, entertain, and heal.

Amy Dickinson (Author), Amy Dickinson (Narrator)

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Bleaker House: Chasing My Novel to the End of the World

A whimsical blend of memoir and travelogue, laced with wry writing advice, Bleaker House is a story of creative struggle that brilliantly captures the self-torture of the writing life. Twenty-seven-year-old Nell Stevens was determined to write a novel, but life kept getting in the way. Then came a game-changing opportunity: she won a fellowship that would let her spend three months, all expenses paid, anywhere in the world to research and write a book. Would she choose a glittering metropolis, a romantic village, an exotic paradise? Not exactly. Nell chose Bleaker Island, a snowy, windswept pile of rock in the Falklands. There, in a guesthouse where she would be the only guest, she could finally rid herself of distractions and write. In three months, surely she’d have a novel. And sure enough, other than sheep, penguins, paranoia, and the weather, there aren’t many distractions on Bleaker. Nell gets to work on a delightful Dickensian fiction she calls Bleaker House—only to discover that total isolation and 1100 calories a day are far from ideal conditions for literary production. With deft humor, the memoir traces Nell’s island days and slowly reveals details of the life and people she has left behind in pursuit of her writing. They pop up in her novel, too, and in other fictional pieces that dot the book. It seems that there is nowhere Nell can run—an island or the pages of her notebook—to escape the big questions of love, art and ambition. As Nell races to finish her book, Bleaker House marks the arrival of a remarkable literary talent. From the Hardcover edition.

Nell Stevens (Author), Nell Stevens (Narrator)

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Born Both: An Intersex Life

A candid, provocative, and eye-opening memoir of gender identity, self-acceptance, and love from one of the world's foremost intersex activists. My name is Hida Viloria. I was raised as a girl but discovered at a young age that my body looked different. Having endured an often turbulent home life as a kid, there were many times when I felt scared and alone, especially given my attraction to girls. But unlike most people in the first world who are born intersex--meaning they have genitals, reproductive organs, hormones, and/or chromosomal patterns that do not fit standard definitions of male or female--I grew up in the body I was born with because my parents did not have my sex characteristics surgically altered at birth. It wasn't until I was twenty-six and encountered the term intersex in a San Francisco newspaper that I finally had a name for my difference. That's when I began to explore what it means to live in the space between genders--to be both and neither. I tried living as a feminine woman, an androgynous person, and even for a brief period of time as a man. Good friends would not recognize me, and gay men would hit on me. My gender fluidity was exciting, and in many ways freeing--but it could also be isolating. I had to know if there were other intersex people like me, but when I finally found an intersex community to connect with I was shocked, and then deeply upset, to learn that most of the people I met had been scarred, both physically and psychologically, by infant surgeries and hormone treatments meant to "correct" their bodies. Realizing that the invisibility of intersex people in society facilitated these practices, I made it my mission to bring an end to it--and became one of the first people to voluntarily come out as intersex at a national and then international level. Born Both is the story of my lifelong journey toward finding love and embracing my authentic identity in a world that insists on categorizing people into either/or, and of my decades-long fight for human rights and equality for intersex people everywhere.

Hida Viloria (Author), Hida Viloria (Narrator)

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Her Name Was Dolores:The Jenn I Knew

This book will take us behind the scenes of her stardom and inside the music business. Jenni Rivera, a gentle woman often filled with doubt. A spiritual woman who lived in faith. A woman who gave of herself deeply to the community. A woman who wanted nothing more than to be loved, but who could find it only onstage. Told through Pete Salgado's and Gabriel Vazquez's perspectives; both were Jenn's managers, and they share stories about the life of Dolores that no one knew and did not see onstage....

Gabriel Vazquez Aguayo, Pete Salgado (Author), Bob Borquez (Narrator)

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My Life to Live: How I Became the Queen of Soaps When Men Ruled the Airwaves

From the Emmy-winning writer and creator of All My Children, One Life to Live, and Loving, a memoir of her trailblazing rise to the top of the television industry, including behind-the-scenes stories from some of the most beloved soaps of all time Before there was Erica Kane, Adam Chandler, or Victoria Lord, there was Agnes Nixon, a young girl who dreamed up stories for paper dolls. Those tales she imagined--ones filled with ambitions, rivalries, and romances--would soon echo her own path to success. In a memoir filled with as much drama as the soaps she penned, Nixon shares her journey as daughter of a broken marriage, who fought back against her father's wish that she take over the family burial garments business, overcame the heartbreak of losing her fiancé in WWII, and later became one of the most successful names in the TV industry. Fans of Nixon's greatest creations, All My Children and One Life to Live, will delight at Nixon's own incredible life, as well as the behind-the-scenes insight she lends to daytime's most popular programs. Nixon will share the inspiration behind and casting of the iconic character Erica Kane, played by Susan Lucci; the story bible for All My Children, and how it became lost, and then locked away in a drawer for many years; and how Nixon positioned ABC to become the media giant it is today, despite pushback from her male counterparts. This candid glimpse behind the curtain of the soap opera industry will charm soap fans and story lovers alike. With a foreword written and read by Carol Burnett.

Agnes Nixon, Carol Burnett (Author), Carol Burnett, Judith Ivey (Narrator)

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Madame President

The harrowing, but triumphant story of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, leader of the Liberian women's movement, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and the first democratically elected female president in African history. When Ellen Johnson Sirleaf won the 2005 Liberian presidential election, she demolished a barrier few thought possible, obliterating centuries of patriarchal rule to become the first female elected head of state in Africa's history. Madame President is the inspiring, often heartbreaking story of Sirleaf's evolution from an ordinary Liberian mother of four boys to international banking executive, from a victim of domestic violence to a political icon, from a post-war president to a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Helene Cooper deftly weaves Sirleaf's personal story into the larger narrative of the coming of age of Liberian women. The highs and lows of Sirleaf's life are filled with indelible images; from imprisonment in a jail cell for standing up to Liberia's military government to addressing the United States Congress, from reeling under the onslaught of the Ebola pandemic to signing a deal with Hillary Clinton when she was still Secretary of State that enshrined American support for Liberia's future. Sirleaf's personality shines throughout this riveting biography. Ultimately, Madame President is the story of Liberia's greatest daughter, and the universal lessons we can all learn from this "Oracle" of African women.

Helene Cooper (Author), Marlene Cooper Vasilic (Narrator)

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Down City: A Daughter's Story of Love, Memory, and Murder

Like James Ellroy's, My Dark Places, DOWN CITY is a gripping narrative built of memory and reportage, and Leah Carroll's portrait of Rhode Island is sure to take a place next Mary Karr's portrayal of her childhood in East Texas and David Simon's gritty Baltimore. Leah Carroll's mother, a gifted amateur photographer, was murdered by two drug dealers with Mafia connections when Leah was four years old. Her father, a charming alcoholic who hurtled between depression and mania, was dead by the time she was eighteen. Why did her mother have to die? Why did the man who killed her receive such a light sentence? What darkness did Leah inherit from her parents? Leah was left to put together her own future and, now in her memoir, she explores the mystery of her parents' lives, through interviews, photos, and police records. DOWN CITY is a raw, wrenching memoir of a broken family and an indelible portrait of Rhode Island- a tiny state where the ghosts of mafia kingpins live alongside the feisty, stubborn people working hard just to get by. Heartbreaking, and mesmerizing, it's the story of a resilient young woman's determination to discover the truth about a mother she never knew and the deeply troubled father who raised her-a man who was, Leah writes, "both my greatest champion and biggest obstacle."

Leah Carroll (Author), Leah Carroll (Narrator)

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Four Mums in a Boat

Janette, Frances, Helen and Niki, though all from Yorkshire, were four very different women, all juggling full time jobs alongside being mothers to each of their 2 children. They could never be described as athletes, but they were determined to be busy and the local Saturday morning rowing club was the perfect place to go to have a laugh and a gossip, get the blood pumping in the open air, and feel invigorated. Brought together by their love of rowing, they quickly became firm friends, and it wasn't long before they cooked up a crazy idea over a few glasses of wine: together, they were going to do something that fewer people than had gone into space or climbed Everest had succeeded in doing. They were going to cross 3,000 miles of treacherous ocean in the toughest row in the world, The Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge.Yes, they had children and husbands that they would be leaving behind for two months, yes they had businesses to run, mortgages to pay, responsibilities. And there was that little thing of them all being in their 40s and 50s.But two years of planning, preparation, fundraising, training and difficult conversations later, and they found themselves standing on the edge of the San Sebastian harbour in the Canary Islands, petrified, exhilarated and ready to head up the race of their lives. This is the story of how four friends together had the audacity to go on a wild, terrifying and beautiful adventure, not to escape life, but for life not to escape them.

Frances Davies, Helen Butters, Janette Benaddi, Niki Doeg (Author), Helen Keeley (Narrator)

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Year of No Clutter: A Memoir

Eve has a problem with clutter. Too much stuff and too easily acquired, it confronts her in every corner and on every surface in her house. When she pledges to tackle the worst offender, her horror of a "Hell Room," she anticipates finally being able to throw away all of the unnecessary things she can't bring herself to part with: her fifth-grade report card, dried-up art supplies, an old vinyl raincoat. But what Eve discovers isn't just old CDs and outdated clothing, but a fierce desire within herself to hold on to her identity. Our things represent our memories, our history, a million tiny reference points in our lives. If we throw our stuff in the trash, where does that leave us? And if we don't . . . how do we know what's really important? Everyone has their own Hell Room, and Eve's battle with her clutter, along with her eventual self-clarity, encourages everyone to dig into their past to declutter their future. Year of No Clutter is a deeply inspiring-and frequently hilarious-examination of why we keep stuff in the first place, and how to let it all go.

Eve O. Schaub (Author), Callie Beaulieu (Narrator)

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The Lost Years: Surviving a Mother and Daughter's Worst Nightmare

Kristina, the second of four children, begins by telling how a little sip of vodka sipped secretly at a party her parents were giving started her on a pathway to addiction. In that instant, alcohol became her pathway to comfort. Over the next eight years she sinks further into addiction, moving on to cocaine and methamphetamines. In telling her story, she gives a brutally honest description of her addiction and crimes. Adding a heart-wrenching counterpart, to each chapter of the book, Kristina's mother, Connie, gives a parent's picture of what was happening throughout her child's experience. She describes her powerlessness to help her addicted daughter, the breakup of her unhappy marriage, and how she comes to terms with her own codependency. She also describes the worst decision a mother ever has to make: to turn her oldest daughter out of her house, sending her onto the streets, in order to protect herself and her other children. Then follows the remarkable story of Kristina's recovery, her mother's "tough love," and the years of acclimating herself to living a normal life. Ultimately, she reclaims herself, her place in her family, and a new and loving relationship with her mother.

Constance Curry, Kristina Wandzilak (Author), Donna Postel, Hillary Huber (Narrator)

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Fast into the Night: A Woman, Her Dogs, and Their Journey North on the Iditarod Trail

At age forty-seven, a mother of two, Debbie Moderow was not your average musher in the Iditarod, but that's where she found herself when, less than 200 miles from the finish line, her dogs decided they didn't want to run anymore. After all her preparation, after all the careful management of her team, and after their running so well for over a week, the huskies balked. But the sting of not completing the race after coming so far was nothing compared to the disappointment Moderow felt in having lost touch with her dogs. Fast into the Night is the gripping story of Moderow's journeys along the Iditarod trail with her team of spunky huskies: Taiga and Su, Piney and Creek, Nacho and Zeppy, Juliet and the headstrong leader, Kanga. The first failed attempt crushed Moderow's confidence, but after reconnecting with her dogs she returned and ventured again to Nome, pushing through injuries, hallucinations, epic storms, flipped sleds, and clashing personalities, both human and canine. And she prevailed.

Debbie Clarke Moderow (Author), Emily Durante (Narrator)

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General Audiobooks in Fiction & Literature