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Audiobooks Narrated by Anna Fields
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No one knows better than Sally Quinn how to make parties work. She has thrown some of the most talked-about parties and has attended most of the others. Here, she turns her trademark sharp wit on the Washington social scene and offers an irreverent look at what goes on at the parties you read about in the columns. From seating debacles to real-life scandals, she reveals her firsthand experiences as a member of the Washington power elite to illustrate how to entertain for any occasion.
The Party provides a checklist of ideas to help make the important decisions, from the invitations to the setting to the food and entertainment and, above all, the guests. Along the way, Quinn shares her own often hilarious anecdotes from a variety of different parties—from formal, elaborate dinners to impromptu get-togethers—which will strike a chord with anyone who has ever entertained.
“[Quinn’s] dry wit and sophistication are perfectly embodied in Anna Fields's expert reading.”—AudioFile
Fifty years after her death, Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe still beguiles the world, her image enthralling millions. Many books have attempted to explain her allure and tell her story, but none has succeeded as well as this work by acclaimed biographer Donald Spoto.
Spoto’s exhaustive research uncovers a conspiracy of silence, allowing him to present the facts, free from often-repeated myths and speculation. Granted access to more than thirty-five thousand pages of formerly sealed files containing letters, diaries, appointment books, and other intimate papers, he also interviewed nearly two hundred people who had never before spoken on record. From the papers of Marilyn’s psychiatrist and her medical files to recently declassified government documents, the truth emerges and provides a moving, often shocking picture of the real Marilyn Monroe—including her connection to the Kennedys and the bizarre, horrifying truth about how she really died.
“This is a book that wound up teaching me a great deal about Hollywood, the social history of California, the movie business, the trials of female actors in American show business, and the life of a woman who has been so mythologized that often the real woman is obscured from actual view.”—Washington Post Book World
Artist Faith Crowell is nearly forty and feels-with some relief, some regret-that she's now safely past the age of passion, obsessive love, and unsatisfied longings. Concentrating on contenting herself with a solitary life in Manhattan, complete with cat, comfy apartment, and a successful if hardly brilliant career, Faith is shocked when grande dame Frances Griffin drops in to her studio to ask her to paint murals for the ballroom of her legendary Long Island mansion. Flattered, Faith accepts. She eventually learns of the brutal, unsolved murder of Frances's daughter and begins to wonder why she was chosen for this project, why her employer seems intent on confiding all her secrets to her, and what, exactly, lies beneath the surface of Frances Griffin's public life.
"A tautly controlled narrative voice and a prose style that transcends genre key the action in this gothic thriller."-Publishers Weekly
A New York Times Notable Book.
No singer has been more mythologized and more misunderstood than jazz legend Billie Holiday, who helped to create much of the mystique herself with her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues. This authentic biography sets the record straight. Donald Clarke was given unrivaled access to a treasure trove of interviews from the 1970s with those who knew Lady Day in all stages of her short, tragic life'from her childhood in the streets and good-time houses of Baltimore, through the early days of success in New York and the years of fame, to her tragic decline and death at the age of forty-four. This biography separates fact from fiction to reveal the true Billie Holiday.
'May be the most thorough and valuable of the many books on Holiday.''New York Times Book Review
When a young girl from Earth falls in love with a handsome stranger, she becomes a pawn in an interstellar war.
In the distant future, the Skolian Empire rules one third of the human galaxy and is the most powerful of all empires. The ruling family has the power of telepathy, and through it, the ability to communicate faster than light across interstellar space. But their most determined enemy, the traders, who thrive on human pain, need to interbreed with a Skolian to gain their powers. And now they have her.
'Once again, Fields brings her formidable narration skills to a story of adventure and political intrigue'.Fields creates clear pictures of a variety of characters with a range of motives, including 'bionic' humans and computers whose artificial intelligence gives them more personality than some of the people.''AudioFile
The Kelso-McIvey rehabilitation center is a place of hope and healing for both its patients and dedicated staff. For its directors, it's a lifelong dream that's about to be destroyed, if David McIvey has his way. A brilliant surgeon whose ego rivals his skill with a scalpel, McIvey now has controlling shares in what has always been a non-profit clinic. His plan is to close the clinic and replace it with a massive new surgery center, with himself at the helm. Then somebody dares to stop him'in cold blood.
When David McIvey is murdered outside the clinic's doors, lawyer Barbara Holloway must use her razor-sharp instincts and take-no-prisoners attitude to create a defense for the two members of the clinic accused of his murder.
'Unlike most writers of legal thrillers, Wilhelm cares as much about her characters as she does about her courtrooms'which is why her books are such genuine pleasures.''Chicago Tribune
This is the book Frank Sinatra failed to stop,the unauthorized biography of one of the mostelusive public figures of our time. Celebratedjournalist Kitty Kelley spent three years researchinggovernment documents (Mafia-related material, wiretapsand secret testimony) and interviewing more than800 people in Sinatra's life (family, colleagues,law-enforcement officers, personal friends). Fullydocumented, highly detailed and filled withrevealing anecdotes, here is the penetrating story ofthe explosively controversial and undeniablymulti-talented legend who ruled the entertainmentindustry for more than fiftyyears.From the Paperback edition.
The name of Florence Nightingale is a household word, but the exact nature and scope of her work, and the difficulties and discouragement under which it was accomplished, are unknown to many in the present generation. This story of that justly beloved woman's life is told by one whose father was in part responsible for Miss Nightingale's decision to devote her life to nursing. Written with a rare sympathy and beauty of style, this uplifting account of a noble life will inspire young and old alike.
John Laroche, an obsessed Florida plant dealer, willing to go to any lengths to steal rare and protected wild orchids and clone them, and all for a tidy profit. But the morality of Laroche's actions do not drive the narrative of Orlean's strange, compelling, and hilarious book. She is much more interested in the spectacle this unusual man creates through his actions, including one of the oddest legal controversies in recent memory, which brought together environmentalists, Native American activists, and devoted orchid collectors. She follows Laroche deep into Florida's swamps, tapping into not only the psyche of the deeply opinionated Laroche but also the wider subculture of orchid collectors, including aristocrats, fanatics, and smugglers whose obsession with plants is all-consuming. Orlean portrays the weirdness of it all in wonderful detail, but, ultimately, the book is primarily about passion itself and the amazing lengths to which people will go to gratify it.
This is the first of six Pulitzer Prize-winning volumes on the life and times of Thomas Jefferson written by distinguished historian Dumas Malone. It is based on vast sources, which cover Jefferson's ancestry, youth, education, and legal career; his marriage and the building of Monticello; the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and the Notes on Virginia; his rich, fruitful legislative career; his highly controversial governorship; and his early services to the development of the West.
"Jefferson and His Time is a masterly achievement of scholarship, the finest biography of Jefferson we have or are likely to have, and a monumental triumph of the senior American historian."-New York Times Book Review
That voice, those eyes, that hair, the cars, the girls. Elvis Presley revolutionized American pop culture when, at twenty-one, he became a modern superstar. He had a personal style that, like his music, had an immediate impact on his audience that continues to influence us today.
"Elvis Presley is the greatest cultural force in the twentieth century," proclaimed Leonard Bernstein. His appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show "ripped the 1950s in half," writes the author. By any measure, Presley's life was remarkable. From his modest beginnings to his meteoric rise to fame, everything about his life clamored for attention-and he got it. Keogh examines Elvis's life and style to reveal the generous, complex, spiritual man behind the sunglasses and answers the question, "Why does Elvis matter?"
"Not just another Elvis biography, this work explores why the shy young Southern singer won America's heart. Simply put, Elvis was cool before anyone knew what cool was. Anna Fields's energetic yet objective voice is an excellent fit."-AudioFile
Hailed by critics as "monumental" (Boston Globe) and "utterly romantic" (New York magazine), Véra, the story of Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov, brings to shimmering life one of the greatest literary love stories of our time. Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita, Pale Fire, and Speak, Memory, wrote his books first for himself and secondly for his wife.
Set in prewar Europe and postwar America and spanning much of the twentieth century, this telling of the Nabokov's fifty-two-year marriage reads as vividly as a novel. Véra, both beautiful and brilliant, is its outsized heroine, a woman who loves as deeply and intelligently as did the great romantic heroines of Austen and Tolstoy. Stacy Schiff's Véra is a triumph of the biographical form.
"[A] riveting portrait....Anna Fields' intelligent narration is necessary to convey the life of such a woman adequately. Highly recommended." -Library Journal
