Audiobooks narrated by Elizabeth Sastre

Dancing on Bones: History and Power in China, Russia and North Korea

History didn't end. Democracy didn't triumph. America’s leading role in the world is no longer assured. Instead, authoritarian rule is on the rise, and the global order established after 1945 is under attack. This is the phenomenon Katie Stallard tackles in Dancing on Bones as she examines how the leaders of China, Russia, and North Korea manipulate the past to serve the present and secure the future of authoritarian rule. Russia has annexed Crimea, started a war in eastern Ukraine, and repeatedly massed troops on its borders. China has stepped up war games near Taiwan and militarized the South China Sea, while North Korea has resumed missile testing and blood-curdling threats against the United States. These three states consistently top lists of threats to US and European security, and yet the leaders of all three insist that it is their country that is threatened, rewriting history and exploiting the memory of the wars of the last century to justify their actions and shore up popular support. Since coming to power, Xi Jinping has almost doubled the length of China’s World War II, Vladimir Putin has elevated the memory of the Great Patriotic War to the status of a national religion, and Kim Jong Un has invested vast sums in rebuilding war museums in his impoverished state, while those who try to challenge the official version of history are silenced and jailed. But this didn’t start with Putin, Xi, and Kim, and it won’t end with them. Drawing on first-hand, on-the-ground reporting, Dancing on Bones argues that if we want to understand where these three nuclear powers are heading, we must understand the stories they are telling their citizens about the past.

Katie Stallard (Author), Elizabeth Sastre (Narrator)

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Death in a Blackout

1940. Britain is at war. Rector’s daughter Wilhelmina Harkness longs to do her duty for her country, but when her strict mother forbids her to enlist, their bitter argument has devasting consequences. Unable to stay in the village she loves, Wilhelmina—reinventing herself as Billie—spends everything she has on a one-way ticket up north. Hull is a distant, dangerous city, but Billie is determined to leave her painful memories behind and start afresh, whatever the cost. The last thing she expects on her first night in Hull, however, is to be caught in the city’s first air raid—or to stumble across the body of a young woman, suspiciously untouched by debris. If the air raid didn’t kill the glamorous stranger, what did? Billie is determined to get justice, and her persistence earns her an invitation to the newly formed Women’s Police Constabulary. But as the case unfolds, putting her at odds with both high-ranking members of the force as well as the victim’s powerful family, Billie begins to wonder if she can trust her new friends and colleagues … or if someone amongst them is working for the enemy.

Jessica Ellicott (Author), Elizabeth Sastre (Narrator)

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Get Real: Embrace Your Strengths, Accept Your Limits, and Create and Authentically Happier, Healthy

Do you find yourself constantly saying yes even when you should be saying no? Are you paying too much attention to what other people think instead of focusing on what makes you feel good? To write a happier life story, you can take control and become the editor of your most important work-you! In Get Real, Dr. Sarah Ivens helps you identify the things that are truly important in your life, equipping you with the motivation, self-healing techniques, and actionable advice needed to improve your mental and physical well-being. Dr. Ivens draws on illuminating research about the benefits of living authentically, adopting healthy rituals to suit your daily routine, and minimizing the negative input of social media. She pairs the science with powerful stories from her own life, sharing lessons about moving on from family trauma and ending toxic friendships and revealing the ways she stopped comparing herself to others and learned to accept herself without judgment. This book is a gentle and inspiring reminder that it's okay to be yourself-because everyone else really is already taken! Know yourself: understand your goals, boundaries, and relationships Grow yourself: nurture your worth, confidence, and dreams Show yourself: dare to be real and trust your instincts Slow yourself: choose peace and joy over competition and drama

Sarah Ivens (Author), Elizabeth Sastre (Narrator)

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The Fugitive and the Vanishing Man

Finalist for the 2014 Phillip K. Dick Award Elizabeth Barnabus lives a double life - as herself and as her brother, the private detective. She is trying to solve the mystery of a disappearing aristocrat and a hoard of arcane machines. In her way stand the rogues, freaks and self-proclaimed alchemists of a travelling circus. But when she comes up against an agent of the all-powerful Patent Office, her life and the course of history will begin to change. And not necessarily for the better...

Rod Duncan (Author), Elizabeth Sastre (Narrator)

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The Cambridge Companion to Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is the most famous fictional detective in history, with a popularity that has never waned since catching the imagination of his late-Victorian readership. This Companion explores Holmes' popularity and his complex relationship to the late-Victorian and modernist periods; on one hand bearing the imprint of a range of Victorian anxieties and preoccupations, while on the other shaping popular conceptions of criminality, deviance, and the powers of the detective. This collection explores these questions in three parts. 'Contexts' explores late-Victorian culture, from the emergence of detective fiction to ideas of evolution, gender, and Englishness. 'Case Studies' reads selected Holmes adventures in the context of empire, visual culture, and the gothic. Finally, 'Holmesian Afterlives' investigates the relationship between Holmes and literary theory, film and theatre adaptations, new Holmesian novels, and the fandom that now surrounds him.

Janice M. Allan (Author), Elizabeth Sastre, John Keating (Narrator)

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The Outlaw and the Upstart King

Elizabeth Barnabus returns, to uncover the secrets and mysteries of the Gas-Lit Empire, in the startling sequel to The Queen of All Crows. As it is inked, so shall your oaths and bindings be. Tattoos are the only law on the Island of the Free, and there can never be a king. Every clan agrees on that. But a returning exile has smuggled something across the water that could send the old ways up in flames. Elias wants revenge on the men who severed his oaths and made him an outlaw. But, if his wealth and honour are to be restored, he'll need help from the most unlikely quarter - a mysterious woman, landed unwantedly on Newfoundland's rocky shore.

Rod Duncan (Author), Elizabeth Sastre (Narrator)

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The Fame of C.S. Lewis: A Controversialist's Reception in Britain and America

C. S. Lewis, long renowned for his children's books as well as his Christian apologetics, has been the subject of wide interest since he first stepped-up to the BBC's microphone during the Second World War. Until now, however, the reasons why this medievalist began writing books for a popular audience, and why these books have continued to be so popular, had not been fully explored. In fact Lewis, who once described himself as by nature an 'extreme anarchist', was a critical controversialist in his time-and not to everyone's liking. Yet, somehow, Lewis's books directed at children and middlebrow Christians have continued to resonate in the decades since his death in 1963. Stephanie L. Derrick considers why this is the case, and why it is more true in America than in Lewis's home-country of Britain. The story of C. S. Lewis's fame is one that takes us from his childhood in Edwardian Belfast, to the height of international conflict during the 1940s, to the rapid expansion of the paperback market, and on to readers' experiences in the 1980s and 1990s, and, finally, to London in November 2013, where Lewis was honoured with a stone in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. Derrick shows that, in fact, the author himself was only one actor among many shaping a multi-faceted image. The Fame of C. S. Lewis is the most comprehensive account of Lewis's popularity to date, drawing on a wealth of fresh material and with much to interest scholars and C. S. Lewis admirers alike.

Stephanie L. Derrick (Author), Elizabeth Sastre (Narrator)

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Creatures of Will and Temper

A Victorian urban fantasy featuring duelists, demons, and the dark arts, inspired by The Picture of Dorian Gray. Victorian London is a place of fluid social roles, vibrant arts culture, fin-de-siecle wonders . . . and dangerous underground diabolic cults. Fencer Evadne Gray cares for none of the former and knows nothing of the latter when she's sent to London to chaperone her younger sister, aspiring art critic Dorina. Unfortunately for Evadne, she soon learns too much about all of it when Dorina meets their uncle's friend, Lady Henrietta "Henry" Wotton. A semi-respectable aristocrat in public, in private she is secretly in the thrall of a demon obsessed with beauty and pleasure. When Lady Henry and Dorina immediately hit it off, Evadne abandons her chaperone duties and enrolls in a fencing school. There, she meets the fencing master she's always dreamed of. But soon, George reveals he is more than just a teacher. He has dedicated himself to eradicating demons and their servants, and he needs Evadne's help. As Evadne gets pulled further into this hidden world, she begins to suspect that Lady Henry might actually be a diabolist. Even worse, she believes Dorina may have joined her. Combining swordplay, demons, and high society, Creatures of Will and Temper shows a timeless world and adventure readers won't soon forget. Author bio: Molly Tanzer is the Sydney J. Bounds and Wonderland Book Award-nominated author of Vermilion (an NPR and io9 Best Book of 2015), A Pretty Mouth, the historical crime novel The Pleasure Merchant, and other works. She lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Molly Tanzer (Author), Elizabeth Sastre (Narrator)

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A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Vi

Male literary friendships are the stuff of legend; think Byron and Shelley, Fitzgerald and Hemingway. But the world's best-loved female authors are usually mythologized as solitary eccentrics or isolated geniuses. Coauthors and real-life friends Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney prove this wrong, thanks to their discovery of a wealth of surprising collaborations: the friendship between Jane Austen and one of the family servants, playwright Anne Sharp; the daring feminist author Mary Taylor, who shaped the work of Charlotte Bronte; the transatlantic friendship of the seemingly aloof George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe; and Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, most often portrayed as bitter foes, but who, in fact, enjoyed a complex friendship fired by an underlying erotic charge. Through letters and diaries that have never been published before, A Secret Sisterhood resurrects these forgotten stories of female friendships. They were sometimes scandalous and volatile, sometimes supportive and inspiring, but always-until now-tantalizingly consigned to the shadows.

Emily Midorikawa, Emma Claire Sweeney (Author), Elizabeth Sastre (Narrator)

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The Usual Santas: A Collection of Soho Crime Christmas Capers

Sixteen delightful holiday short stories by some of your favorite Soho Crime authors! Featuring short crime fiction by: Helene Tursten, Mick Herron, Martin Limon, Timothy Hallinan, Mette Ivie Harrison, Colin Cotterill, Ed Lin, Stuart Neville, Tod Goldberg, Henry Chang, James R. Benn, Lene Kaaberbol & Agnete Friis, Gary Corby, Cara Black, Stephanie Barron, and Peter Lovesey This captivating collection of short mysteries and crime capers-which features New York Times bestselling authors, Crime Writers Association Gold and Diamond Dagger winners, and Edgar Award nominees-contains laughs aplenty, the most hardboiled of holiday noir, and heartwarming reminders of the spirit of the season. Nine mall Santas must find the imposter among them. An elderly lady seeks peace from her murderously loud neighbors at Christmastime. A young woman receives a mysterious invitation to Christmas dinner with a stranger. Niccolo Machiavelli sets out to save an Italian city. Sherlock Holmes's one-time nemesis Irene Adler finds herself in an unexpected tangle in Paris while on a routine espionage assignment. Jane Austen searches for the Dowager Duchess of Wilborough's stolen diamonds. And other adventures will whisk readers away to Christmases around the globe, from a Korean War POW camp to a Copenhagen refugee squat to a Thai street child's quest for the perfect gift for her friend.

Cara Black, Helene Tursten, Mick Herron, Peter Lovesey (Author), Barbara Caruso, Carine Montbertrand, Elizabeth Sastre, John Keating, Jonathan Yen, Luis Moreno (Narrator)

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Spellbook of the Lost and Found

The highly anticipated new book from the acclaimed author of The Accident Season is a gorgeous, twisty story about things gone missing, things returned from the past, and a group of teenagers, connected in ways they could never have imagined. One stormy Irish summer night, Olive and her best friend, Rose, begin to lose things. It starts with simple items like hairclips and jewelry, but soon it's clear that Rose has lost something much bigger, something she won't talk about, and Olive thinks her best friend is slipping away. Then seductive diary pages written by a girl named Laurel begin to appear all over town. And Olive meets three mysterious strangers: Ivy, Hazel, and her twin brother, Rowan, secretly squatting in an abandoned housing estate. The trio are wild and alluring, but they seem lost too-and like Rose, they're holding tight to painful secrets. When they discover the spellbook, it changes everything. Damp, tattered and ancient, it's full of hand-inked charms to conjure back things that have been lost. And it just might be their chance to find what they each need to set everything back to rights. Unless it's leading them toward things that were never meant to be found...

Moira Fowley-Doyle, Moïra Fowley-Doyle (Author), Elizabeth Sastre, Marisa Calin, Saskia Maarleveld (Narrator)

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Humphry Clinker

Matthew Bramble, a gout-ridden misanthrope, travels Britain with his nephew, niece, spinster sister and man-servant, the trusty Humphry Clinker. In poor health, Bramble sees the world as one of degeneracy and raucous overcrowding, and will not hesitate to let his companions know his feelings on the matter. Peopled with pimps, drunkards, decadents and con-men, Humphrey Clinker displays Smollett's ferociously pessimistic view of mankind, and his belief that the luxury of eighteenth-century England existence was the enemy of sense and sobriety. Presented in the form of letters from six very different characters, and full of joyful puns and double entendres, Humphrey Clinker is now recognized as a boisterous and observant masterpiece of English satire.

Tobias Smollet (Author), Elizabeth Sastre, James Langton, Jill Tanner, John Keating, Liz Pearce, Steven Crossley, Tim Gerard Reynolds (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Elizabeth Sastre