Audiobooks narrated by Sandy Rustin

Shift Happens: The History of Labor in the United States

"For readers of Stamped and An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People, Albert J. Mann’s Shift Happens: The History of Labor in the United States is an accessible and comprehensive YA history of the way the labor movement has shaped America and how it intersects with many of the major issues facing modern teens. “Mann explores the often oppressive, abusive, and bloody history of labor conditions and the merciless rise of capitalism with wit, snark, and comprehensive context.... Riveting, enlightening, infuriating, and timely: compulsory reading.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) ''Its edgy title may attract attention, but it’s the compelling narrative and enlightening content that will keep readers engaged from cover to cover.'' —SLJ (starred review) ''In other hands, the snarky, conversational tone might feel like an adult’s overreach, but Mann’s simmering anger and clear passion for the working class will inspire readers just as much as the union leaders and organization efforts she covers.'' —BCCB (starred review) “Mann’s introduction to the history of labor is full of sharp, galvanizing points that will keep readers engaged and help them look critically at some of our entrenched systems.” —ALA Booklist “The narrative’s laser focus on organizing heroes and essential employees, and the power of unions and striking workers to enact change, results in powerful storytelling.” —Publishers Weekly You need to work to live. That’s the truth for most people, and plenty of people in power have been abusing that truth for centuries. Long before the first labor unions were formed, workers still knew what exploitation looked like. It looked like the enslavement of Black people. It looked like generations of children dying in dangerous jobs. It looked like wealthy people hiring private militaries to attack their employees. But workers have always found a way to fight back. Lokono tribespeople resisted Columbus and his colonizers. Enslaved people led walkouts and rebellions. Textile workers demanded a wage that would let them have fun, not just survive. Miners died for the right to unionize. From 30,000 young seamstresses striking in the early 1900s to Uber drivers organizing for change today, people have learned we’re stronger when we are united. Shift Happens is a smart, funny, and engaging look at the history of the worker actions that brought us weekends, pay equality, desegregation, an end to child labor, and so much more. "

J. Albert Mann (Author), Sandy Rustin (Narrator)

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Born of Gilded Mountains

"A lost treasure. A riddled quest. The healing power of friendship. Legends are tucked into every fold of the Colorado mountains surrounding the quaint town of Mercy Peak, where residents are the stuff of tall tales, the peaks are taller still, and a lost treasure has etched mystery into the very terrain. In 1948, when outsider Mercy Windsor arrives after a scandal shatters her gilded world as Hollywood’s beloved leading lady, she is determined to forge a new life in obscurity in this time-forgotten Colorado haven. She purchases Wildwood, an abandoned estate with a haunting history, and begins to restore it to its former glory. But as she does, her every move tugs at the threads of the mountain’s lore, unearthing what became of her long-lost pen pal Rusty Bright, and the whereabouts of the infamous Galloping Goose Railcar No. 8, which vanished years ago—along with the mailbag it carried, whose contents could change the course of countless lives. Not to mention the fabled treasure that—if found—could right so many wrongs. Among the towering mountains that stand as silent witnesses, the ghosts of the past entangle with the courage of the present to find a place where healing, friendship, and hope can abide amid a world forever changed."

Amanda Dykes (Author), Sandy Rustin (Narrator)

Audiobook

Outside Voices: A Memoir of the Berkeley Revolution

"Berkeley, 1972: a hotbed of creativity where painters, filmmakers, musicians, and writers inspire a young poet. Second-wave feminism, inspired by Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, and Betty Friedan is swelling into a tsunami. Women are joining together to change power dynamics in politics, the home, and the workplace. On election day, Joan Gelfand casts her vote for George McGovern and boards a plane from New York to California. With one introduction to a woman musician, Joan’s journey to become a writer is born. Embraced by a thriving women’s community of artists, filmmakers, musicians, poets, and writers, Joan is encouraged to find her voice. Mentored by paradigm-changing writers, Joan finds the courage to face her darkest fears through poetry and art, mining the trauma she experienced after losing her father and questioning her Jewish identity. Reminiscent of Paris in the twenties, Greenwich Village in the sixties, and Berlin in the eighties, Berkeley in the seventies was the “it” city of America. Outside Voices reports the ups and downs of finding one’s way as an artist, living with a women’s band, forging an independent Jewish identity, founding a women’s restaurant, and becoming a published writer and songwriter while exploring the limits of sexuality and spirituality. The story includes road trips to music festivals in the woods, beaches in Mexico, concerts in Southern California, and a retreat in the Pacific Northwest. A triumphant story of determination and will, Outside Voices is a backstage look at the women’s movement that sets the stage for decades of change. This book is a firsthand look at how the power of community emboldened innovation, social change, and self-discovery. “Joan Gelfand has written a compelling book about coming of age in Berkeley in the second wave of feminism circa 1970s. Her depth of discovering herself and her world is intense and reveals all the passion and confusion of a sensitive soul grasping at life through politics, sex, and the long road to becoming a writer.”—Geri Spieler, author of Housewife Assassin: The Woman Who Tried to Kill Gerald Ford"

Joan Gelfand (Author), Sandy Rustin (Narrator)

Audiobook

Spying on Spies: How Elizebeth Smith Friedman Broke the Nazis' Secret Codes

"The fascinating story of America's first female code-breaker, Elizebeth Smith Friedman As one of the world’s greatest code-breakers, Elizebeth Smith Friedman saved many lives throughout the twentieth century, catching dangerous criminals with her brilliant mind. Yet, she has largely been written out of history books, unlike her famous code-breaker husband. Spying on Spies seeks to right this oversight. Whip-smart and determined, Elizebeth displayed a remarkable aptitude for language and recognizing patterns from a young age. After she became the Treasury Department’s and Coast Guard’s first code-breaker, she trained all her male colleagues and created her own top-notch code-breaking unit, the first ever led by a woman. During Prohibition, her work solving and intercepting coded messages from mobsters and criminal gangs led to hundreds of high-profile prosecutions, including members of Al Capone’s gang. Her crowning achievement came during World War II, when Elizebeth uncovered an intricate network of Nazi spies operating in South America. She cracked supposedly unsolvable codes just like the much more famous Alan Turing did at Bletchley Park in England. Spying on Spies tells the inspiring story of a groundbreaking woman in STEM whose legacy deserves to come out of the shadows. This audiobook contains a supplemental PDF."

Marissa Moss (Author), Sandy Rustin (Narrator)

Audiobook

The All-American

"It is 1952, and nearly all the girls Bertha Harding knows dream of getting married, keeping house, and raising children. Bertha dreams of baseball. She reads every story in the sports section, she plays ball with the neighborhood boys—she even writes letters to the pitcher for the Workington Sweet Peas, part of the AllAmerican Girls Professional Baseball League. When Bertha’s father is accused of being part of the Communist Party by the House Un-American Activities Committee, life comes crashing down. But dreams are hard to kill, and when Bertha gets a chance to try out for the Workington Sweet Peas, she packs her bags for an adventure she’ll never forget. Join award-winning author Susie Finkbeiner for a summer of chasing down your dreams and discovering the place you truly belong."

Susie Finkbeiner (Author), Andrea Emmes, Sandy Rustin (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Power Code: More Joy. Less Ego. Maximum Impact for Women (and Everyone).

"Power is not working—for women, for men, or for the world. We don’t need to remake women. We need to remake power. New York Times bestselling authors Katty Kay and Claire Shipman are on a mission to reclaim power for women. In the wake of sweeping changes in the way we work, the veteran journalists challenge preconceived notions of what power is and what it’s good for, along with the insidious, mostly hidden structures of the status quo that hold women back. What started as a straightforward examination of best practices has become a manifesto for a new form of power, a distinctly female version that is already emerging in workplaces, in politics, and on the home front. It’s a version that is more appealing to women (and most men as well). It offers women a blueprint for shaping their own professional futures, maximizing their impact for the benefit of others, and experiencing the real joy that comes from taking the reins and influencing outcomes. Writing from their own lived experiences, Kay and Shipman interviewed dozens of women of all ages, races, and backgrounds around the world, as well as cutting-edge academic researchers. Taken together, these perspectives offer a clear-eyed and hopeful redesign of the workplace and our relationships at home, one that puts women in a remade and modernized seat of power. And now is exactly the right moment for women to step into their power. What’s at stake is much greater than the next job; it’s about the need for a new vision of what power can be, for a new code that focuses not simply on hierarchy, on having power over others, but also on purpose, on what power can achieve. Both a prescription for societal change and a pro-fessional guidebook for individual women, The Power Code shows you how to leverage the power you already have, find new sources of power in yourself and your community, and remodel your workplace and your home-life to produce less ego, more joy, and maximum impact."

Claire Shipman, Katty Kay (Author), Claire Shipman, Katty Kay, Sandy Rustin (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Sky We Shared

"In southern Japan, Tamiko spends her time writing in her diary, dreaming of making theatrical costumes, and praying her brother Kyo makes it back from the war. She wishes she could be brave like him and help the war effort. In rural Oregon, Nellie spends her time lying in the grass, studying the stars, and wishing for her pa to return from the war. She also wishes the boy next door, Joey, would talk to her again like he used to. Soon the girls' lives become inextricably linked. Tamiko and her classmates are brought to a damp, repurposed theater to make large paper balloons to help the military. No one knows what they are for. Nellie and her classmates ration food, work in salvage drives, and support their community. No one knows what's coming. Based on Japan's Project Fu-Go during the last stretch of World War II, The Sky We Shared uses the alternating perspectives of Nellie and Tamiko to depict the shared tragedies of two countries at war."

Shirley Reva Vernick (Author), Sandy Rustin, Sophie Oda (Narrator)

Audiobook

Hard Rain

"From the Tony Hillerman Prize-winning author of Pay Dirt Road comes Hard Rain, Samantha Jayne Allen's mesmerizing next novel set in a hardscrabble Texas town dealing with disaster. In shock and found clinging to a tree branch, Bethany Richter is pulled from thrashing floodwaters that have decimated the town of Garnett, Texas and killed a dozen others. Six months after solving the murder of a local waitress, Annie McIntyre is working as an apprentice P.I. when she's handed her first solo case: uncover the identity of the man who rescued Bethany before he was swept downriver. When Annie's search turns up a different victim—shot dead, not drowned—Annie questions if the hero they seek is actually a killer. Flexing her new skills while relying on the wisdom of her eccentric, ex-cop grandfather, the case leads Annie into a web of drug dealers, preachers, and wayward drifters trying to make sense of life after a disaster. Annie's own convictions are put to the ultimate test as long-held secrets, corruption, and violence are exposed like the ruin that lies beneath receding waters."

Samantha Jayne Allen (Author), Sandy Rustin (Narrator)

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Drive

"World War II is over, but the Honeycutt family is still feeling its devastating effects. Especially Daddy, who can’t forget what he saw on the battlefield and sometimes can’t cope with everyday life. Fourteen-year-old Ellie Honeycutt finds escape at the NASCAR speedway and in her dreams of travel and college. Her twin sister, Ida, clings to family and finds solace in her sketchbook. Once inseparable, the two sisters find themselves growing apart with the start of high school. They make different friends, take different classes—and unfortunately fall for the same charming classmate. Can Ellie and Ida renew their deep bond while finding their own separate drives in life? In this fourth addition to the acclaimed Bakers Mountain Stories, Joyce Moyer Hostetter once again brings to life the quiet town of Hickory, North Carolina, and its residents, exploring the close ties of family and friends against the backdrop of the nuclear arms race, the Korean War, polio scares, and the 1952 presidential election."

Joyce Moyer Hostetter (Author), Sandy Rustin, Suzy Jackson (Narrator)

Audiobook

Circle of Vengeance

"Twenty-five years ago, a body was discovered in the Turney family barn—and the locals were all too ready to believe that killing blood ran through Turney veins. Every member of the family came under suspicion, their reputations crumbled to pieces, and with no convictions, no one has ever been cleared. Daughter Jill, now a Chicago lawyer, is ready for this case to be solved and for her broken family to be repaired at last. Who better to find the answers than coldcase PI Star Cavanaugh? But as Star begins to dig into generations-old secrets, the killer resurfaces to make sure none of those skeletons leave the closet—no matter what the cost. As the danger mounts, Star again joins forces with police chief, Mike Luinetti, and begins to uncover truths that the whole town has kept hidden. But becoming the target of the determined killer isn’t the way Star wants to find the answers. Now it’s a race to solve the case before it becomes a matter of her life or death."

Ramona Richards (Author), Sandy Rustin (Narrator)

Audiobook

Burying Daisy Doe: A Star Cavanaugh Cold Case

"Every small town has one unsolved case that haunts its memory, festering for generations below the surface with the truth of humanity’s darkness. Star Cavanaugh is obsessed with the one that tore her family apart. Over sixty years ago, Daisy Doe was murdered and discarded outside Pineville, Alabama, buried without a name or anyone to mourn her loss. When Star’s father tried to solve the case, he too was killed. Now a cold-case detective with resources of her own, Star is determined to get to the bottom of both crimes. But to do so, she’ll have to face an entire town locked in corruption, racism, silence, and fear—and the same dangerous killer who took two other lives. The only people in town she can trust are her grandmother and the charming Mike Luinetti, and both of them trust a God Star isn’t sure she believes in. Can Christians so focused on the good really help her track down this evil? Through slip time moments across decades, Burying Daisy Doe will pull you into the generations-old mystery alongside Star. Packed with Ramona Richards’s irresistible combination of sharp suspense, faith, humor, and authentic regional flavor, this is Christian suspense guaranteed to deliver."

Ramona Richards (Author), Sandy Rustin (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Gravity of Missing Things

"Flight 133 disappeared over the ocean. No wreckage. No distress signal. Just gone. Suddenly, everyone on the news and social media is talking about whether the pilot intentionally crashed it—everyone but me. Because I know her. The pilot was my mom, and there’s no way she would hurt anyone. No one else knows that before she left, she wrote me a note. Trust me, it said. Now it feels like someone split my world—and me—in two, and the only person who believes me is Landon. I want to trust him, to let him see who I really am, but I can’t. I have my secrets, the same way Mom has hers. All I know is falling for him will only make things more complicated. Just as I start to open up, the answer to what really happened to Flight 133 could rip my world apart all over again—for good this time."

Marisa Urgo (Author), Sandy Rustin (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks Narrated by Sandy Rustin