Audiobooks narrated by Paula Parker

A salty, wrenchingly honest collection of stories set on one block of 145th Street. We get to know the oldest resident; the cop on the beat; fine Peaches and her girl, Squeezie; Monkeyman; and Benny, a fighter on the way to a knockout. We meet Angela, who starts having prophetic dreams after her father is killed; Kitty, whose love for Mack pulls him back from the brink; and Big Joe, who wants a bang-up funeral while he's still around to enjoy it. Some of these stories are private, and some are the ones behind the headlines. In each one, characters jump off the page and pull readers right into the mix on 1-4-5.

Walter Dean Myers (Author), Adenrele Ojo, Almarie Guerra, Bahni Turpin, Brandon Gill, Dominic Hoffman, Heather Alicia Simms, Jaqwan J. Kelly, Johnny Heller, Paula Parker, Sullivan Jones (Narrator)

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A Short History of Women

The novel opens in England in 1915, at the deathbed of Dorothy Townsend, a suffragist and one of the first women to integrate Cambridge University. Her decision to starve herself for the cause informs and echoes in the later, overlapping narratives of her descendants. Among them are her daughter Evie, who becomes a professor of chemistry at Barnard College in the middle of the century and never marries, and her granddaughter Dorothy Townsend Barrett, who focuses her grief over the loss of her son by repeatedly defying the ban on photographing the bodies of dead soldiers returned to Dover Air Force base from Iraq. The contemporary chapters chronicle Dorothy Barrett's girls, both young professionals embarrassed by their mother's activism and baffled when she leaves their father after fifty years of marriage. Walbert deftly explores the ways in which successive generations of women have attempted to articulate what the nineteenth century called "the woman question." Her novel is a moving reflection on the tides of history, and how the lives of our great-grandmothers resonate in our own.

Kate Walbert (Author), Eliza Foss, Kathleen McInerney, Nicola Barber, Paula Parker, Ruth Moore (Narrator)

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Baby, You're the Best

New York Times bestselling author Mary B. Morrison introduces her most seductive and vulnerable characters yet with the Crystal women, a family whose bonds are tested by love, lust, and the elusive quest for true happiness. . . Blake Crystal has the best of almost everything. She's at the top of her game at work, she has four wonderful daughters, and at fifty, she's more financially secure than she's ever been. In and out of the bedroom, her new younger lover takes her in breathtaking directions that force her to make decisions she never imagined. . . On the surface, Alexis Crystal is an ideal daughter. As confident as she is beautiful, she can have any man or woman she wants, so she has both in her collection of bed partners. Determined to add one more, she doesn't care that he's dating a family member. But for all the satisfaction she gets between the sheets, she's left unsatisfied by the one thing that troubles her--the identity of her father is listed as unknown on her birth certificate. Her mother has kept him a secret for twenty-six years. Alexis can't move forward with her life until she stands face-to-face with the man she feels abandoned her. It doesn't help that her three other sisters don't know the identity of their fathers either. . .but they've also got their hands full with problems. . . As the Crystal women celebrate Blake's big birthday, they realize the issues in their relationships are too big to ignore. To get what they want, they'll have to lie, use their seductive power, battle their insecurities, and if necessary, betray each other. . .

Mary B. Morrison (Author), Dylan Ford, Kentra Lynn, Paula Jai Parker, Paula Parker (Narrator)

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Behind the Laughter: A Comedian's Tale of Tragedy and Hope

"I was living every comic's dream…with a nightmare attached." Anthony Griffith, a stand-up comic from Chicago's South Side, has lived on the borderline of comedy and tragedy. At the very time his career as a stand-up comedian was taking off, and he had finally achieved his dream of appearing on The Tonight Show, he was also enduring an unimaginable personal nightmare: his two-year-old daughter, Brittany Nicole, was dying from cancer. While Anthony performed under bright lights, he struggled not to succumb to the darkness of losing a child. Behind the Laughter asks, When your world is falling apart, how do you keep going? It's the story of how Anthony and his wife, Brigitte, learned to endure the most painful of times and emerge on the other side of the "zombie years." This memoir is deeply moving yet also humorous-packed with laughs as Anthony takes us from his gun-toting grandma's home to Chicago's white and black comedy clubs, then to Hollywood, and to the world of network television. The surprising twists along Anthony's path highlight the power of God that goes before us and prepares the way-a truth that later encourages Anthony and Brigitte after Brittany's death and moves them to reach out and comfort others going through similar difficulties. With humor and deep insights into the human spirit, Behind the Laughter explores the bonds of not only parent and child but also husband and wife. While Anthony and Brigitte's story is uniquely theirs, it elicits powerful, relatable emotions and lessons that are universal and inspiring.

Anthony Griffith, Brigitte Travis-Griffin, Dr. Brigitte Travis-Griffin (Author), Avery Waddell, Paula Parker (Narrator)

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Cyberselfish

This enormously controversial take on high tech culture "combines common sense with an old-fashioned humanism to make sense of the current high-tech gestalt. " -Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times. Paulina Borsook has been stirring up a ruckus in Silicon Valley since her days as a regular contributor to Wired magazine. She ruffled feathers again with Cyberselfish, a spirited, funny, gimlet-eyed look at the worldview of the digerati-one she terms "violently lacking in compassion, ravingly anti-government, and tremendously opposed to regulation. " PublicAffairs' new trade paperback edition is updated throughout, and includes a new afterword by the author addressing the cat calls, jeers, and cries of "foul" from the world of high tech that greeted the hardcover. In Cyberselfish Borsook journeys through and rants about high tech culture, profiling the worlds of ravers, gilders, cypherpunks, anarchocapitalists, and other Silicon Valley life forms; and exploring the theory and practice of what she dubs "technolibertarianism" in all its manifestations. Whether she is attending Bionomics conferences or hanging out with Wired staffers, reading personal ads or evaluating high-tech's sorry philanthropic record, Borsook is full of original observations, mordant wit, and furious passion that readers wake up to the social and political consequences of having computer geeks run the world. Cyberselfish raises the hackles of high techies and clarifies what makes the rest of us so nervous about the brave new cyberworld.

Pauline Borsook (Author), Paula Parker (Narrator)

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Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live

Saturday Night Live changed the face of television: it introduced brash new stars, trashed TV taboos, and had an impact on American life, laughter, and politics. Dozens of stars, writers, guest hosts, contributors, and craftsmen (as read by professional narrators) recall the backstage stories, behind-the-scenes gossip, feuds, foibles, drugs, sex, struggles, and calamities, including personal details never before revealed. Stars interviewed include Mike Meyers, Chris Rock, Bill Murray, Tom Hanks, Adam Sandler, Chevy Chase, Will Ferrell, Dan Aykroyd, Steve Martin, Jon Lovitz, Jane Curtain, Chris Kattan, Julie Louis-Dreyfus, Garrett Morris, Molly Shannon, Damon Wayans, Chris Elliott, Julie Sweeney, Norm Macdonald, and Paul Simon, plus writers like Al Franken, Conan O'Brien, Larry David, Rosie Shuster, Jack Handey, Robert Smigel, Don Novello, and others who got their big breaks as part of the SNL team. Live from New York does what no other book about the show has ever done: It lets the people who were there tell the story in their own words, blunt and loving and uncensored.

James Andrew Miller, Tom Shales (Author), Agnes Herrmann, Beth McDonald, Charles Stransky, Don Leslie, Eric Conger, Jeffrey Joseph, Kevin McCue, Oliver Wyman, Paula Parker, Phil Lee (Narrator)

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The Comfort Trap: or, What If You're Riding a Dead Horse?

If your life has run out of soul and there's no obvious refueling station, this audiobook is for you! Are you stuck in a comfortable, but less-than-satisfying job, marriage, or relationship? If you're loitering at what feels like a dead end, you may be locked into a comfort zone, and it's time to make a break for it! The author of the national best-seller Excess Baggage shows us how to take seven life-changing steps to push past self-imposed limits and the seductions of security to the joys of self-propelled change. Understand the paradox of how enjoying the safety of your comfort zone can also lull you into a secure but stagnant pattern of life, love, and work. With warmth, wisdom, and gentle humor, The Comfort Trap challenges us to stretch, take risks, and jump into the unknown abyss because the rewards for moving beyond the comfort zone can be enormous.

Judith Sills, Ph.D. (Author), Paula Parker (Narrator)

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The Tragedy of Macbeth

William Shakespeare's shortest—but one of his most popular—tragedies features a man who will do anything to fulfill a prophecy that will lead him to become the King of Scotland. Fresh from battle, Macbeth and his companion Banquo come across three witches who tell of great power that is in store for Macbeth. Driven by their prophecy and aided by his wife, Macbeth sets out on a journey that is wrought with deceit, murder, and suffering to acquire the throne of Scotland. At each and every turn, Macbeth must make choices that alter the trajectory of not only his life but every life around him, as he begins to fall mad with greed. This multi-voice production of The Tragedy of Macbeth features an all-star cast under the direction of acclaimed producer Paul Alan Ruben, a Grammy Award-winning veteran of the audiobook industry. With five AudioFile magazine Golden Voice recipients, multiple Grammy and SOVAS nominations, and countless Earphones and Audie Awards, this phenomenal cast brings Shakespeare's work to life.

William Shakespeare (Author), Carol Monda, Dion Graham, J. D. Jackson, Jd Jackson, Johnny Heller, Käthe Mazur, Maggie-Meg Reed, Paula Parker, Scott Brick, Simon Vance, Steven Anthony Jones (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks Narrated by Paula Parker