Audiobooks narrated by Kirsten Potter

Political Masculinity: How Incels, Fundamentalists and Authoritarians Mobilise for Patriarchy

Men with assault rifles, balaclavas, and Hawaiian shirts pulled over bulletproof vests. Horned warriors with painted faces and fur headdresses draped over their naked torsos. The storming of the Capitol brought together men who had previously come across one another only online in the Manosphere. These were men with a common interest, followers of a male-supremacist ideology, who rioted in order to fight for their privilege. Before then, the world had looked on as devastating attacks were carried out by incels: those who seek to gain unfettered access to women's bodies by redrawing the hierarchy of the sexes in order to ensure the subjugation of women. For all of these men, masculinity is a political project, and the events at the Capitol were one episode in a growing movement. From the US and Canada to New Zealand, from Poland to Brazil, right-wing extremists, religious fundamentalists, and male supremacists are coming together in order to translate their reactionary dreams of male domination into politics, underscoring the masculine roots of the authoritarian backlash.

Susanne Kaiser (Author), Kirsten Potter (Narrator)

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Lady Violet Investigates

Lady Violet Belmaine emerges from two years of mourning less than enthusiastic about resuming her place in Polite Society. She’s talked into attending a country house party by her French physician friend, Hugh St. Sevier, only to find that the house party guests are preyed upon by a mysterious thief. Among the guests is Sebastian MacHeath, Marquess of Dunkeld. Violet once considered Sebastian her closest confidant, but war and the passing years have changed him. Nonetheless, when Sebastian’s valet, another veteran, comes under suspicion, Violet, St. Sevier, and Sebastian must work together to discover the true culprit, lest an innocent man be sent to the gallows for crimes he did not commit.

Grace Burrowes (Author), Kirsten Potter (Narrator)

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The Desperate Hours: One Hospital's Fight to Save a City on the Pandemic's Front Lines

A remarkable depiction of a city in crisis – based on new, behind-the-scenes reporting – that captures the resilience, peril, and compassion of the early days of the Covid pandemic In the spring of 2020, COVID-19 arrived in New York City. Before long, America’s largest metropolis was at war against a virus that mercilessly swept through its five boroughs. It became apparent that if Covid wasn’t somehow halted, the death count in New York alone would be in the hundreds of thousands. And if New York’s hospitals failed, what chance did the rest of the country have? In The Desperate Hours, award-winning journalist Marie Brenner, having been granted unprecedented 18-month access to the entire New York-Presbyterian hospital system, tells the story of the doctors, nurses, residents, researchers, and suppliers who tried to save lives across Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn and the northern periphery of the city. Drawing on more than 200 interviews, Brenner takes us inside secure ICU units, sealed operating rooms, locked executive suites, unknown basement workshops, and makeshift clinics to provide extraordinary witness to the war as it was waged on the front line. But The Desperate Hours is more than a thrilling account of medicine under extreme pressure. It is an intimate portrait of courageous men and women coming together in their devotion to duty, their families, each other, and the city they loved more than any other. A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books.

Marie Brenner (Author), Kirsten Potter (Narrator)

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Sickening: Anti-Black Racism and Health Disparities in the United States

A crucial component of anti-Black racism is the unconscionable disparity in health outcomes between Black and white Americans. Sickening examines this institutionalized inequality through dramatic, concrete events from the past two decades, revealing how unequal living conditions and inadequate medical care have become routine. From the spike in chronic disease after Hurricane Katrina to the lack of protection for Black residents during the Flint water crisis-and even the life-threatening childbirth experience for tennis star Serena Williams-author Anne Pollock takes listeners on a journey through the diversity of anti-Black racism operating in healthcare. She goes beneath the surface to deconstruct the structures that make these events possible, including mass incarceration, police brutality, and the hypervisibility of Black athletes' bodies. Ultimately, Sickening shows what these shocking events reveal about the everyday racialization of health in the United States. Concluding with an examination of racialized healthcare during the COVID pandemic and the Black Lives Matter rebellions of 2020, Sickening cuts through the mind-numbing statistics to vividly portray healthcare inequalities. In a gripping style, Pollock shows the devastating reality and consequences of systemic racism on the lives and health of Black Americans.

Anne Pollock (Author), Kirsten Potter (Narrator)

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Vigil Harbor: A Novel

When two unexpected visitors arrive in an insular coastal village, they threaten the equilibrium of a community already confronting climate instability, political violence, and domestic upheavals-a cast of unforgettable characters from the rich imagination of the National Book Award-winning, best-selling author of Three Junes. A decade from now, in the historic town of Vigil Harbor, there is a rash of divorces among the yacht-club set, a marine biologist despairs at the state of the world, a spurned wife is bent on revenge, and the renowned architect Austin Kepner pursues a passion for building homes designed to withstand the escalating fury of relentless storms. Austin's stepson, Brecht, has dropped out of college in New York and returned home after narrowly escaping one of the terrorist acts that, like hurricanes, have become increasingly common. Then two strangers arrive: a stranded traveler with subversive charms and a widow seeking clues about a past lover with ties to Austin-a woman who may have been more than merely human. These strangers and their hidden motives come together unexpectedly in an incident that endangers lives-including Brecht's-with dramatic repercussions for the entire town. Vigil Harbor reveals Julia Glass in all her virtuosity, braiding multiple voices and dazzling strands of plot into a story where mortal longings and fears intersect with immortal mysteries of the deep as well as of the heart.

Julia Glass (Author), Alec Glass, Cassandra Campbell, Hillary Huber, January Lavoy, Jeremy Davidson, Kimberly Farr, Kirsten Potter, Mark Deakins, Michael Crouch (Narrator)

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Shadow in the Glass

Librarian Greer Hogan is on hand to celebrate her old friend Sarah Whitaker's nuptials at the Whitaker summer home on beautiful Mirror Lake, just outside the upstate New York village of Lake Placid. But Greer has an ulterior motive-to gather information that could reopen the investigation into her husband's murder, a crime for which she believes an innocent man went to prison. Her plans come to a shuddering halt when a wedding guest goes missing and turns up dead in the lake. The guest, Brittany Miles, was an employee of the Whitaker family whom Sarah had long suspected was up to no good at work. The police have no leads, but Greer-an avid reader of crime fiction who possesses an uncanny knack for deduction-begins her own investigation. She learns that the victim was seen with a mystery man right before she disappeared. Then the autopsy reveals that she didn't drown in the lake after all, but in the reflecting pool in the Whitaker garden. The suspect list is as long as the guest list itself, with no apparent motive. Now, Greer must rely on the wisdom of her favorite fictional detectives to tease out truth from lies-and keep herself out of the killer's sights.

M. E. Hilliard (Author), Kirsten Potter (Narrator)

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Sea of Tranquility

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'So wise, so graceful, so rich' - Naomi Alderman, author of The Power 'Ingenious' - Guardian 'One of her finest novels' - New York Times 'Transcendent' - Wall Street Journal The award-winning author of Station Eleven returns with a story of time travel that precisely captures the reality of our current moment . . . In 1912, eighteen-year-old Edwin St. Andrew crosses the Atlantic, exiled from English polite society. In British Columbia, he enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and for a split second all is darkness, the notes of a violin echoing unnaturally through the air. The experience shocks him to his core. Two centuries later Olive Llewelyn, a famous writer, is traveling all over Earth, far away from her home in the second moon colony. Within the text of Olive’s bestselling novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him. When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in time, he uncovers a series of lives upended: the exiled son of an aristocrat driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe. Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel is a novel that investigates the idea of parallel worlds and possibilities, that plays with the very line along which time should run. Perceptive and poignant about art, and love, and what we must do to survive, it is incredibly compelling.

Emily St. John Mandel (Author), Arthur Morey, Dylan Moore, John Lee, Kirsten Potter (Narrator)

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The Anatomy Murders: Being the True and Spectacular History of Edinburgh's Notorious Burke and Hare

On Halloween night 1828, in the West Port district of Edinburgh, Scotland, a woman sometimes known as Madgy Docherty was last seen in the company of William Burke and William Hare. Days later, police discovered her remains in the surgery of the prominent anatomist Dr. Robert Knox. Docherty was the final victim of the most atrocious murder spree of the century, outflanking even Jack the Ripper's. Together with their accomplices, Burke and Hare would be accused of killing sixteen people over the course of twelve months in order to sell the corpses as 'subjects' for dissection. The ensuing criminal investigation into the 'Anatomy Murders' raised troubling questions about the common practices by which medical men obtained cadavers, the lives of the poor in Edinburgh's back alleys, and the ability of the police to protect the public from cold-blooded murder. Famous among true crime aficionados, Burke and Hare were the first serial killers to capture media attention, yet The Anatomy Murders is the first book to situate their story against the social and cultural forces that were bringing early nineteenth-century Britain into modernity. In Lisa Rosner's deft treatment, each of the murder victims, from the beautiful, doomed Mary Paterson to the unfortunate 'Daft Jamie,' opens a window on a different aspect of this world in transition.

Lisa Rosner (Author), Kirsten Potter (Narrator)

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The Book of Cold Cases

A Most Anticipated Novel by PopSugar * Crime Reads * Goodreads * A true crime blogger gets more than she bargained for while interviewing the woman acquitted of two cold case slayings in this chilling new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Sun Down Motel. In 1977, Claire Lake, Oregon, was shaken by the Lady Killer Murders: Two men, seemingly randomly, were murdered with the same gun, with strange notes left behind. Beth Greer was the perfect suspect-a rich, eccentric twenty-three-year-old woman, seen fleeing one of the crimes. But she was acquitted, and she retreated to the isolation of her mansion. Oregon, 2017. Shea Collins is a receptionist, but by night, she runs a true crime website, the Book of Cold Cases-a passion fueled by the attempted abduction she escaped as a child. When she meets Beth by chance, Shea asks her for an interview. To Shea's surprise, Beth says yes. They meet regularly at Beth's mansion, though Shea is never comfortable there. Items move when she's not looking, and she could swear she's seen a girl outside the window. The allure of learning the truth about the case from the smart, charming Beth is too much to resist, but even as they grow closer, Shea senses something isn't right. Is she making friends with a manipulative murderer, or are there other dangers lurking in the darkness of the Greer house?

Simone St. James (Author), Brittany Pressley, Kirsten Potter, Robert Petkoff (Narrator)

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Just an Ordinary Day: Stories

"Jackson at her best: plumbing the extraordinary from the depths of mid-twentieth-century common. [Just an Ordinary Day] is a gift to a new generation."-San Francisco Chronicle Acclaimed in her own time for her short story "The Lottery" and her novel The Haunting of Hill House-classics ranking with the work of Edgar Allan Poe-Shirley Jackson blazed a path for contemporary writers with her explorations of evil, madness, and cruelty. Soon after her untimely death in 1965, Jackson's children discovered a treasure trove of previously unpublished and uncollected stories, many of which are brought together in this remarkable collection. Here are tales of torment, psychological aberration, and the macabre, as well as those that display her lighter touch with humorous scenes of domestic life. Reflecting the range and complexity of Jackson's talent, Just an Ordinary Day reaffirms her enduring influence and celebrates her singular voice, rich with magic and resonance. Praise for Shirley Jackson "[Jackson's] work exerts an enduring spell."-Joyce Carol Oates "Shirley Jackson's stories are among the most terrifying ever written."-Donna Tartt "An amazing writer . . . If you haven't read [Jackson] you have missed out on something marvelous."-Neil Gaiman "Shirley Jackson is unparalleled as a leader in the field of beautifully written, quiet, cumulative shudders."-Dorothy Parker "An author who not only writes beautifully but who knows what there is, in this world, to be scared of."-Francine Prose "The world of Shirley Jackson is eerie and unforgettable."-A. M. Homes "Jackson enjoyed notoriety and commercial success within her lifetime, and yet it still hardly seems like enough for a writer so singular. When I meet readers and other writers of my generation, I find that mentioning her is like uttering a holy name."-Victor LaValle

Shirley Jackson (Author), Gary Bennett, Karissa Vacker, Kimberly Farr, Kirsten Potter, Linda Jones, Mark Deakins (Narrator)

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An Immortal Guardians Companion

Hello, all! Your favorite character, Sheldon, here. If you're an Immortal Guardians fan, I think you're really going to enjoy this companion. Dianne has packed it with over a dozen deleted scenes that feature many of the characters you've come to know and love plus a bonus scene from Cliff's Descent that you won't want to miss. You'll also find every character interview Dianne has ever written inside these pages. (Those of you who've encountered a few in the past know the ones I conduct are the best.) If you've never read one or you missed a few, then pick up a copy, sit back, and laugh while I interview Immortal Guardians and the loves of their lives for the network. Even Chris Reordon and Todd down at network headquarters get in on the action. I also interview Dianne and ply her with questions I thought you'd like to ask her. Throw in a couple of short stories, what inspired the Immortal Guardians series, and a brief Who Does What Now? list, and you're bound to enjoy it. Your friend, Sheldon (Immortal Guardian Richart's immensely competent Second) And the most beloved character in the Immortal Guardians series (at least in his mind) Contains mature themes.

Dianne Duvall (Author), Kirsten Potter (Narrator)

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Transmutation: Stories

Transgressive, transformative short stories that explore the margins of trans lives. Building on the success of All City, here is a wry, and at the same time dark and risk-taking, story collection from author (and baker) Alex DiFrancesco that pushes the boundaries of transgender awareness and filial bonds. Here is the hate between sixteen-year-old Junie, who is transitioning, and their mom's boyfriend Chad when the family moves into Chad's house on Lake Erie. And here is the love being tested between Sawyer and his dad, who named his boat after his child and resists changing it from Sara to Sawyer now. There is DiFrancesco's willingness to enter lands that are violent and comfortless in some of these stories, testing the limits of what it means to be human, sometimes returning stronger and wiser and sometimes not returning at all as their characters surge forward into unknown spaces. Contains mature themes.

Alex Difrancesco (Author), Kirsten Potter (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Kirsten Potter