General Audiobooks | Science & Technology

Mark Twain (Author), Michael Prichard (Narrator)

Audiobook

Life on a Thread: How my fight for survival made me stronger

Brought to you by Penguin. SAS trooper and trainee pilot Jamie Hull was flying solo when his aircraft caught fire. It should have been the end of his life, but it was the beginning of his story. With flames up to his chin, he brought the plane in, climbed out and jumped from the wing. As he lay on the ground, fully conscious, waiting for the emergency services, he could smell his flesh burn. Even if he survived, what would he have left to live for? But this man is made of stern stuff. He fought back from the brink of death, and created a new and profoundly meaningful life from the wreckage of his experience. Meet Jamie Hull, former Special Services soldier, now Ambassador for Help for Heroes and veteran of two marathons, a 3,000-mile bicycle race across America and an expedition up Mount Kilimanjaro. His story will take to you to the furthest extremes of human endurance and endeavour. © Jamie Hull 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Jamie Hull (Author), Jamie Hull (Narrator)

Audiobook

Life of the Party

The incredible story of Brownie Wise, the Southern single mother-and postwar #Girlboss-who built, and lost, a Tupperware home-party empire Before Mary Kay, Martha Stewart, and Joy Mangano, there was Brownie Wise, the charismatic Tupperware executive who converted postwar optimism into a record-breaking sales engine powered by American housewives. In Life of the Party, Bob Kealing offers the definitive portrait of Wise, a plucky businesswoman who divorced her alcoholic husband, started her own successful business, and eventually caught the eye of Tupperware inventor, Earl Tupper, whose plastic containers were collecting dust on store shelves. The Tupperware Party that Wise popularized, a master-class in the soft sell, drove Tupperware's sales to soaring heights. It also gave minimally educated and economically invisible postwar women, including some African-American women, an acceptable outlet for making their own money for their families-and for being rewarded for their efforts. With the people skills of Dale Carnegie, the looks of Doris Day, and the magnetism of Eva Peron, Wise was as popular among her many devoted followers as she was among the press, and she become the first woman to appear on the cover of BusinessWeek in 1954. Then, at the height of her success, Wise's ascent ended as quickly as it began. Earl Tupper fired her under mysterious circumstances, wrote her out of Tupperware's success story, and left her with a pittance. He walked away with a fortune and she disappeared-until now. Originally published as Tupperware Unsealed by the University Press of Florida in 2008-and optioned by Sony Pictures, with Sandra Bullock attached to star-this revised and updated edition is perfectly timed to take advantage of renewed interest in this long-overlooked American business icon.

Bob Kealing (Author), Kimberly Farr (Narrator)

Audiobook

Life is Greater Than Limb: My Journey to Becoming Whole

Just before Christmas in 2012, at age fifty-three, John LeMieux lost his left leg to a recurrence of sarcoma. The unique twenty-hour rotationplasty surgery—never done on a man his age—was followed by six months of bed rest. It was only the beginning of years of physical, spiritual, and emotional growth. In this memoir, John recounts the lows and highs of a life forever altered. As an aging, ex-college athlete, John was forced to confront a life where every expectation was changed. With the help of his family and friends, he discovered that he was stronger than he knew, as he grappled with the physical loss of his leg, the crippling anxiety that attacked him, his relationships with others, and his place in the world.

John Lemieux (Author), John Lemieux (Narrator)

Audiobook

Life in the Ocean: The Story of Oceanographer Sylvia Earle

Best-selling author Claire A. Nivola has won multiple awards for her captivating books introducing historical figures to young audiences. In this critically acclaimed profile of noted oceanographer Sylvia Earle, listeners follow Sylvia as her childhood adventures in the Gulf of Mexico help inspire her life's work: discovering the secrets of ''the blue heart of the planet.''

Claire A. Nivola (Author), Nicole Poole (Narrator)

Audiobook

Life in the Garden

Penelope Lively has always been a keen gardener. This book is partly a memoir of her own life in gardens: the large garden at home in Cairo where she spent most of her childhood, her grandmother's garden in a sloping Somerset field, then two successive Oxfordshire gardens of her own, and the smaller urban garden in the North London home she lives in today. It's also a wise, engaging exploration of gardens in literature, from Paradise Lost to Alice in Wonderland.

Penelope Lively (Author), Helen Lloyd (Narrator)

Audiobook

Life in Lashes: The Story of a Drag Superstar

The hilarious tell-all memoir by the first winner of RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under Hailing from a sleepy eastern suburb of Auckland, Nick Nash grew up feeling like he stood out for all the wrong reasons. It wasn't until he experimented with the art of drag that he found freedom in his fierce and confident alter-ego, Kita Mean. From wild nights partying like there was no tomorrow, to scrounging together delightfully camp costumes on a shoestring budget, buying an iconic cabaret bar with bestie Anita Wigl'it, and competing on the global stage alongside Kiwi and Aussie drag legends in the first season of RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under, Kita shares behind-the-scenes goss and important life lessons - many learned the hard way - about fighting your demons and being proud of your most authentic self. Bursting with outrageous style and cheek, Life in Lashes is a memoir of a lost boy who found salvation as a drag queen, learned to love herself, and went on to share her fabulousness with the world.

Kita Mean (Author), Kita Mean (Narrator)

Audiobook

Life in Every Breath: Ester Blenda: Reporter, Adventurer, Pioneer

An award-winning biography of one of the first undercover journalists—a pioneering Swedish woman who lived a fascinating life of adventure and forbidden love and who changed journalism forever. Born in 1891 in Stockholm, Ester Blenda Nordström defied stereotypes from an early age. She wore trousers, smoked a pipe, and rode motorbikes, much to the chagrin of her esteemed family. As a young woman, she captivated the public as Sweden’s first investigative journalist. Ester’s real passion was uncovering the truth, which she did by inhabiting the lives of others. Under an assumed identity, she toiled as a Swedish milkmaid on a farm, lived for six months with the Indigenous Scandinavian Sami people, and journeyed to America alongside poor emigrants aspiring to a better life. She saved villages from starvation during the Finnish Civil War and joined an expedition to study volcanoes in Siberia. Her groundbreaking reports were received by a spellbound audience and would change journalism forever. But just as Ester’s star was rising, her forbidden love affair with a woman ended in heartbreak, nearly destroying her. Her spectacular adventures and untamed heart concealed an inner turmoil that threatened to silence her powerful voice, but Ester’s life and spirit were ultimately irrepressible. Life in Every Breath brings Ester’s story back to the fore—and showcases one of the most fascinating women of the twentieth century.

Fatima Bremmer (Author), Laura Jennings (Narrator)

Audiobook

LIFE IN AN AIR-CONDITIONED HELL: A Memoir Full of Stories Of The Sixth Born African Child In A Famil

Michael Bantu-Khoe is the sixth born in a family of twelve, originally from Botswana, Africa. Having lived and studied abroad, Michael today finds himself settled in the United Kingdom. This book details his journey and how he dealt with life's thorniest issues, including losing a loved one during the COVID-19 pandemic, coping with mental health illness, and combating the depressingly persistent impact of racism and discrimination. In a David-versus-Goliath hostile environment, this book documents a Black man's lived experience in modern-day Britain. Read on as he tells the good, the bad, and the ugly, exposing both the highs and lows through light-hearted humour. Michael's experience sheds light on how Black people often navigate a strange and convoluted social structure, rigid with shady practices that have been fostered since the beginning of slavery. Fighting racism and overcoming giants is no walk in the park. Even Achilles was only as strong as his heel. Dig in, if you will, to some of his fun(ish) childhood stories that share a lot about the fun side of coming from a large family and struggling with poverty. Meet his family and friends, who played a crucial part in his life. They are the ones to whom this book is dedicated.

Michael Bantu-Khoe (Author), Michael Bantu-Khoe (Narrator)

Audiobook

Life in a Jar

During World War II, Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic social worker, organized a rescue network of fellow social workers to save 2,500 Jewish children from certain death in the Warsaw ghetto. Incredibly, after the war her heroism, like that of many others, was suppressed by communist Poland and remained virtually unknown for sixty years. Unknown, that is, until three high school girls from an economically depressed, rural school district in southeast Kansas stumbled upon a tantalizing reference to Sendler's rescues, which they fashioned into a history project, a play they called Life in a Jar. Their innocent drama was first seen in Kansas, then the Midwest, then New York, Los Angeles, Montreal, and finally Poland, where they elevated Irena Sendler to a national hero, championing her legacy of tolerance and respect for all people. Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project is a Holocaust history and more. It is the inspirational story of Protestant students from Kansas, each called in her own complex way to the history of a Catholic woman who knocked on Jewish doors in the Warsaw ghetto and, in Sendler's own words, "tried to talk the mothers out of their children."

Jack Mayer (Author), Patrick Lawlor (Narrator)

Audiobook

Life Detonated: The True Story of a Widow and a Hijacker

Watching the towers crumble, few remembered America had been attacked on 9/11, once before. Kathleen Murray Moran's own September 11th twenty-five years earlier occurred when her husband Brian, a member of the New York City Bomb Squad was killed defusing a bomb Croatian freedom-fighters placed in a Grand Central Station locker before hijacking TWA flight 355 from La Guardia airport. Life Detonated is the story of how that bomb ripped through Kathleen's life, the life she had so carefully created after spending her childhood in a bug-infested basement of a Bronx tenement, one of eight children, where the door was left open to drug dealers and pimps, until she was saved by the man who became a hero to Kathleen and the city of New York. This is a survivor's story. It is the story of moving from being the unintended target of political terrorism to becoming the founder of Survivors of the Shield, a group that advocates for and provides support and assistance to the spouses and children of New York City police officers killed in the line of duty. It is the story of how she moved from poverty to the suburbs and refused to go back after Brian's death. It is a story of resilience in the face of senseless tragedy. And it is the story of evil villains and surprising superheroes.

Kathleen Murray Moran (Author), Coleen Marlo (Narrator)

Audiobook

Life as Jamie Knows It: An Exceptional Child Grows Up

The story of Jamie Bérubé's journey to adulthood and a meditation on disability in American life. Published in 1996, Life as We Know It introduced Jamie Bérubé to the world as a sweet, bright, gregarious little boy who loves The Beatles, pizza, and making lists. At four he is like many young people his age, but his Down syndrome leads most people to see him only in terms of his disability. Twenty years later Jamie is no longer little, though he still loves The Beatles, pizza, and making lists. In Life as Jamie Knows It, Michael Bérubé chronicles his son's growth and his growing love of the world, writing as both a disability studies scholar and as a father. He follows Jamie through the transitions within his family and home life, through his school years, through the complicated process of entering the workforce with a disability. In a book that joins stirring memoir and sharp philosophical inquiry, Bérubé guides us through the labyrinth of ethical issues surrounding how we approach disability and uses Jamie's story to argue for a deeper understanding of disability that challenges us to move toward a more just, more inclusive society.

Michael Berube (Author), Brian Roberts (Narrator)

Audiobook

General Audiobooks in Science & Technology