Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/359814 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir Author: Linda Ronstadt Narrator: Kathe Mazur Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 13 minutes Release date: December 15, 2020 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.33 of Total 9 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 2 Genres: Women Publisher's Summary: In this memoir, iconic singer Linda Ronstadt weaves together a captivating story of her origins in Tucson, Arizona, and her rise to stardom in the Southern California music scene of the 1960s and ‘70s. Tracing the timeline of her remarkable life, Linda Ronstadt, whose forty-five year career has encompassed a wide array of musical styles, weaves together a captivating story of her origins in Tucson, Arizona, and her rise to stardom in the Southern California music scene of the 1960s and ‘70s. Linda Ronstadt was born into a musical family, and her childhood was filled with everything from Gilbert and Sullivan to Mexican folk music to jazz and opera. Her artistic curiosity blossomed early, and she and her siblings began performing their own music for anyone who would listen. Now, in this beautifully crafted memoir, Ronstadt tells the story of her wide-ranging and utterly unique musical journey. Ronstadt arrived in Los Angeles just as the folkrock movement was beginning to bloom, setting the stage for the development of country-rock. As part of the coterie of like-minded artists who played at the famed Troubadour club in West Hollywood, she helped define the musical style that dominated American music in the 1970s. One of her early backup bands went on to become the Eagles, and Linda went on to become the most successful female artist of the decade. In Simple Dreams, Ronstadt reveals the eclectic and fascinating journey that led to her long-lasting success, including stories behind many of her beloved songs. And she describes it all in a voice as beautiful as the one that sang “Heart Like a Wheel”—longing, graceful, and authentic.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/358562 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Roaring Girls: The forgotten feminists of British history Author: Holly Kyte Narrator: Helen Keeley Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 14 hours 2 minutes Release date: November 28, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Women Publisher's Summary: ‘Extraordinary’ Woman&Home A Roaring Girl was loud when she should be quiet, disruptive when she should be submissive, sexual when she should be pure, ‘masculine’ when she should be ‘feminine’. Meet the unsung heroines of British history who refused to play by the rules. Roaring Girls tells the game-changing life stories of eight formidable women whose grit, determination and radical unconventionality saw them defy the odds to forge their own paths. From the notorious cross-dressing thief Mary Frith in the seventeenth century to rebel slave Mary Prince and adventurer, industrialist and LGBT trailblazer Anne Lister in the nineteenth, these diverse characters redefined what a woman could be and what she could do in pre-twentieth-century Britain. Bold, inspiring and powerfully written, Roaring Girls tells the electrifying histories of women who, despite every effort to suppress them, dared to be extraordinary.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/368092 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Carrie Fisher: A Life on the Edge Author: Sheila Weller Narrator: Saskia Maarleveld Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 13 hours 20 minutes Release date: November 12, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.04 of Total 28 Ratings of Narrator: 4 of Total 2 Genres: Women Publisher's Summary: 'Narrator Saskia Maarleveld's enthusiasm makes Weller's exhaustive research as engaging as fiction.' — AudioFile Magazine A remarkably candid biography of the remarkably candid—and brilliant—Carrie Fisher In her 2008 bestseller, Girls Like Us, Sheila Weller—with heart and a profound feeling for the times—gave us a surprisingly intimate portrait of three icons: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon. Now she turns her focus to one of the most loved, brilliant, and iconoclastic women of our time: the actress, writer, daughter, and mother Carrie Fisher. Weller traces Fisher’s life from her Hollywood royalty roots to her untimely and shattering death after Christmas 2016. Her mother was the spunky and adorable Debbie Reynolds; her father, the heartthrob crooner Eddie Fisher. When Eddie ran off with Elizabeth Taylor, the scandal thrust little Carrie Frances into a bizarre spotlight, gifting her with an irony and an aplomb that would resonate throughout her life. We follow Fisher’s acting career, from her debut in Shampoo, the hit movie that defined mid-1970s Hollywood, to her seizing of the plum female role in Star Wars, which catapulted her to instant fame. We explore her long, complex relationship with Paul Simon and her relatively peaceful years with the talent agent Bryan Lourd. We witness her startling leap—on the heels of a near-fatal overdose—from actress to highly praised, bestselling author, the Dorothy Parker of her place and time. Weller sympathetically reveals the conditions that Fisher lived with: serious bipolar disorder and an inherited drug addiction. Still, despite crises and overdoses, her life’s work—as an actor, a novelist and memoirist, a script doctor, a hostess, and a friend—was prodigious and unique. As one of her best friends said, “I almost wish the expression ‘one of a kind’ didn’t exist, because it applies to Carrie in a deeper way than it applies to others.” Sourced by friends, colleagues, and witnesses to all stages of Fisher’s life, Carrie Fisher: A Life on the Edge is an empathic and even-handed portrayal of a woman who—as Princess Leia, but mostly as herself—was a feminist heroine, one who died at a time when we need her blazing, healing honesty more than ever.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/369788 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Mud and Stars: Travels in Russia with Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Other Geniuses of the Golden Age Author: Sara Wheeler Narrator: Sara Wheeler Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 38 minutes Release date: November 5, 2019 Genres: Women Publisher's Summary: With the writers of the Golden Age as her guides—Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol, and Turgenev, among others—Sara Wheeler searches for a Russia not in the news, traveling from rinsed northwestern beet fields and the Far Eastern Arctic tundra to the cauldron of nation­alities, religions, and languages in the Caucasus. Bypassing major cities as much as possible, she goes instead to the places associated with the country’s literary masters. With her, we see the fabled Trigorskoye (“three hills”) estate that Pushkin frequented during his exile, now preserved in his honor. We look for Dostoevsky along the waters of Lake Ilmen, site of the only house the restless writer ever owned. We pay tribute to the single stone that remains of Tol­stoy’s birthplace. Wheeler weaves these writers’ lives and works around their historical homes, giving us rich portraits of the many diverse Russias from which these writers spoke.   As she travels, Wheeler follows local guides, boards with families in modest homestays, eats roe and pelmeni and cabbage soup, invokes recipes from Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking, learns the language, and observes the pattern of outcry and silence that characterizes life under Vladimir Putin. Mud and Stars gives us timely, witty, and deeply personal insights into Russia, then and now.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/354597 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Jet Girl: My Life in War, Peace, and the Cockpit of the Navy's Most Lethal Aircraft, the F/A-18 Super Hornet Author: Hof Williams, Caroline Johnson Narrator: Caroline Johnson Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 13 minutes Release date: November 5, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.5 of Total 4 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 2 Genres: Women Publisher's Summary: 'Fans of military biographies and memoirs will enjoy this inside look at the experiences of a determined woman in the cockpit.' —Booklist A fresh, unique insider’s view of what it’s like to be a woman aviator in today’s US Navy—from pedicures to parachutes. Caroline Johnson was an unlikely aviator candidate. A tall blonde debutante from Colorado, she could have just as easily gone into fashion or filmmaking, and yet she went on to become an F/A-18 Super Hornet Weapons System Operator. She was one of the first women to fly a combat mission over Iraq since 2011, and she was the first woman to drop bombs on ISIS. Jet Girl tells the remarkable story of the women fighting at the forefront in a military system that allows them to reach the highest peaks, and yet is in many respects still a fraternity. Johnson offers an insider’s view on the fascinating, thrilling, dangerous and, at times, glamorous world of being a naval aviator. This is a coming-of age story about a young college-aged girl who draws strength from a tight knit group of friends, called the Jet Girls, and struggles with all the ordinary problems of life: love, work, catty housewives, father figures, make-up, wardrobe, not to mention being put into harm’s way daily with terrorist groups such as ISIS and world powers such as Russia and Iran. Some of the most memorable parts of the audiobook are about real life in training, in the air and in combat—how do you deal with having to pee in a cockpit the size of a bumper car going 900 miles an hour? Not just a memoir, this audiobook also aims to change the conversation and to inspire and attract the next generation of men and women who are tempted to explore a life of adventure and service.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/369096 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Janis: Her Life and Music Author: Holly George-Warren Narrator: Nina Arianda Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 12 hours 21 minutes Release date: October 22, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.3 of Total 23 Ratings of Narrator: 4.5 of Total 2 Genres: Women Publisher's Summary: Longlisted for the 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence This blazingly intimate biography of Janis Joplin establishes the Queen of Rock & Roll as the rule-breaking musical trailblazer and complicated, gender-bending rebel she was. Janis Joplin’s first transgressive act was to be a white girl who gained an early sense of the power of the blues, music you could only find on obscure records and in roadhouses along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast. But even before that, she stood out in her conservative oil town. She was a tomboy who was also intellectually curious and artistic. By the time she reached high school, she had drawn the scorn of her peers for her embrace of the Beats and her racially progressive views. Her parents doted on her in many ways, but were ultimately put off by her repeated acts of defiance. Janis Joplin has passed into legend as a brash, impassioned soul doomed by the pain that produced one of the most extraordinary voices in rock history. But in these pages, Holly George-Warren provides a revelatory and deeply satisfying portrait of a woman who wasn’t all about suffering. Janis was a perfectionist: a passionate, erudite musician who was born with talent but also worked exceptionally hard to develop it. She was a woman who pushed the boundaries of gender and sexuality long before it was socially acceptable. She was a sensitive seeker who wanted to marry and settle down—but couldn’t, or wouldn’t. She was a Texan who yearned to flee Texas but could never quite get away—even after becoming a countercultural icon in San Francisco. Written by one of the most highly regarded chroniclers of American music history, and based on unprecedented access to Janis Joplin’s family, friends, band mates, archives, and long-lost interviews, Janis is a complex, rewarding portrait of a remarkable artist finally getting her due.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/368039 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA Author: Amaryllis Fox Narrator: Amaryllis Fox Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 10 minutes Release date: October 15, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.25 of Total 16 Ratings of Narrator: 4.33 of Total 3 Genres: Women Publisher's Summary: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER  “Fast and thrilling . . . Life Undercover reads as if a John le Carré character landed in Eat Pray Love.' —The New York Times Amaryllis Fox's riveting memoir tells the story of her ten years in the most elite clandestine ops unit of the CIA, hunting the world's most dangerous terrorists in sixteen countries while marrying and giving birth to a daughter Amaryllis Fox was in her last year as an undergraduate at Oxford studying theology and international law when her writing mentor Daniel Pearl was captured and beheaded. Galvanized by this brutality, Fox applied to a master's program in conflict and terrorism at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, where she created an algorithm that predicted, with uncanny certainty, the likelihood of a terrorist cell arising in any village around the world. At twenty-one, she was recruited by the CIA. Her first assignment was reading and analyzing hundreds of classified cables a day from foreign governments and synthesizing them into daily briefs for the president. Her next assignment was at the Iraq desk in the Counterterrorism center. At twenty-two, she was fast-tracked into advanced operations training, sent from Langley to 'the Farm,' where she lived for six months in a simulated world learning how to use a Glock, how to get out of flexicuffs while locked in the trunk of a car, how to withstand torture, and the best ways to commit suicide in case of captivity. At the end of this training she was deployed as a spy under non-official cover--the most difficult and coveted job in the field as an art dealer specializing in tribal and indigenous art and sent to infiltrate terrorist networks in remote areas of the Middle East and Asia. Life Undercover is exhilarating, intimate, fiercely intelligent--an impossible to put down record of an extraordinary life, and of Amaryllis Fox's astonishing courage and passion.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/368778 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Here We Are: American Dreams, American Nightmares (A Memoir) Author: Aarti Namdev Shahani Narrator: Aarti Namdev Shahani Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 39 minutes Release date: October 1, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Women Publisher's Summary: 'This is simply a beautiful, moving memoir read exceptionally well by Shahani.' — AudioFile Magazine This program is read by the author. Here We Are is a heart-wrenching memoir about an immigrant family's American Dream, the justice system that took it away, and the daughter who fought to get it back, from NPR correspondent Aarti Namdev Shahani. The Shahanis came to Queens—from India, by way of Casablanca—in the 1980s. They were undocumented for a few unsteady years and then, with the arrival of their green cards, they thought they'd made it. This is the story of how they did, and didn't; the unforeseen obstacles that propelled them into years of disillusionment and heartbreak; and the strength of a family determined to stay together. Here We Are: American Dreams, American Nightmares follows the lives of Aarti, the precocious scholarship kid at one of Manhattan's most elite prep schools, and her dad, the shopkeeper who mistakenly sells watches and calculators to the notorious Cali drug cartel. Together, the two represent the extremes that coexist in our country, even within a single family, and a truth about immigrants that gets lost in the headlines. It isn’t a matter of good or evil; it's complicated. Ultimately, Here We Are is a coming-of-age story, a love letter from an outspoken modern daughter to her soft-spoken Old World father. She never expected they'd become best friends.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/367198 to listen full audiobooks. Title: A Guest of the Reich: The Story of American Heiress Gertrude Legendre's Dramatic Captivity and Escape from Nazi Germany Author: Peter Finn Narrator: Rebecca Lowman Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 11 minutes Release date: September 24, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 2 Ratings of Narrator: 4 of Total 1 Genres: Women Publisher's Summary: A Washington Post Best Book of the Year The dramatic story of a South Carolina heiress who joined the OSS and became the first American woman in uniform taken prisoner on the Western front—until her escape from Nazi Germany.   Gertrude “Gertie” Legendre was a big-game hunter from a wealthy industrial family who lived a charmed life in Jazz Age America. Her adventurous spirit made her the inspiration for the Broadway play Holiday, which became a film starring Katharine Hepburn. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Legendre, by then married and a mother of two, joined the OSS, the wartime spy organization that preceded the CIA. First in Washington and then in London, some of the most closely-held United States government secrets passed through her hands. In A Guest of the Reich, Peter Finn tells the gripping story of how in 1944, while on leave in liberated Paris, Legendre was captured by the Germans after accidentally crossing the front lines.   Subjected to repeated interrogations, including by the Gestapo, Legendre entered a daring game of lies with her captors. The Nazis treated her as a “special prisoner” of the SS and moved her from city to city throughout Germany, where she witnessed the collapse of Hitler’s Reich as no other American did. After six months in captivity, Legendre escaped into Switzerland.   A Guest of the Reich is a propulsive account of a little-known chapter in the history of World War II, as well as a fascinating portrait of an extraordinary woman.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/369335 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Sontag: Her Life and Work Author: Benjamin Moser Narrator: Tavia Gilbert Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 22 hours 7 minutes Release date: September 17, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3.67 of Total 6 Ratings of Narrator: 2.5 of Total 2 Genres: Women Publisher's Summary: The definitive portrait of one of the American Century’s most towering intellectuals: her writing and her radical thought, her public activism and her hidden private face. No writer is as emblematic of the American twentieth century as Susan Sontag. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and loathed, a girl from the suburbs who became a proud symbol of cosmopolitanism, Sontag left a legacy of writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, radicalism and Fascism and Freudianism and Communism and Americanism, that forms an indispensable key to modern culture. She was there when the Cuban Revolution began, and when the Berlin Wall came down; in Vietnam under American bombardment, in wartime Israel, in besieged Sarajevo. She was in New York when artists tried to resist the tug of money—and when many gave in. No writer negotiated as many worlds; no serious writer had as many glamorous lovers. Sontag tells these stories and examines the work upon which her reputation was based. It explores the agonizing insecurity behind the formidable public face: the broken relationships, the struggles with her sexuality, that animated—and undermined—her writing. And it shows her attempts to respond to the cruelties and absurdities of a country that had lost its way, and her conviction that fidelity to high culture was an activism of its own.  Utilizing hundreds of interviews conducted from Maui to Stockholm and from London to Sarajevo—Sontag is the first book based on the writer’s restricted archives, and on access to many people who have never before spoken about Sontag, including Annie Leibovitz. It is a definitive portrait—a great American novel in the form of a biography.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/370351 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Queen Bess: An Unauthorized Biography of Bess Myerson Author: Jennifer Preston Narrator: Suzanne Toren Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 17 hours 22 minutes Release date: August 20, 2019 Genres: Women Publisher's Summary: This 'fascinating' biography details the rise of the first Jewish Miss America, TV star, and political player—and the scandal that toppled her career (The New York Times). When Bess Myerson, the Bronx-born daughter of Jewish immigrants, was crowned Miss America in 1945, she was determined to break down gender barriers and be more than a beauty queen. Amid rampant anti-Semitism, she took advantage of her reign to call for an end to bigotry and hate. Then, after more than two decades as a glamorous television personality, Myerson took on corporate America, applying her celebrity as a consumer advocate to become an influential New York City political figure credited with helping elect Mayor Edward I. Koch. But behind the glittering public image, Myerson struggled with unhappy marriages. Then, in her early sixties, she found love with a much younger married man. The romance put her at the center of a political corruption scandal that led to federal charges brought by US Attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, ending the reign of Queen Bess, New York's favorite daughter, after more than forty years. Award-winning investigative journalist Jennifer Preston reveals Myerson's fascinating life story in this engaging biography. Featuring interviews with Myerson herself and a new introduction from the author, Queen Bess remains the most comprehensive account of this ambitious and talented woman who inspired, entertained, and shocked millions.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/361660 to listen full audiobooks. Title: A Woman of Firsts: The midwife who built a hospital and changed the world Author: Edna Adan Ismail Narrator: Edna Adan Ismail Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 13 hours 27 minutes Release date: August 8, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 2 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 2 Genres: Women Publisher's Summary: ‘The Muslim Mother Teresa’ Huffington Post Winner of the 2023 Templeton Prize Imprisonment. Mutilation. Persecution. Edna Adan Ismail endured it all – for the women of Africa. Imprisonment. Mutilation. Persecution. ‘The Muslim Mother Teresa’ Huffington Post Edna Adan Ismail endured it all – for the women of Africa. Edna saw first-hand how poor healthcare, lack of education and ancient superstitions had devastating effects on Somaliland’s people, especially its women. When she suffered the trauma of FGM herself as a young girl at the bidding of her mother, Edna’s determination was set. The first midwife to practise in Somaliland, Edna became a formidable teacher and campaigner for women’s health. As her country was swept up in its bloody fight for independence, Edna rose to become its First Lady and first female cabinet minister. She built her own hospital, brick by brick, training future generations in what has been hailed as one of the Horn of Africa’s finest university hospitals This is Edna’s truly remarkable story.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/359688 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Girl on the Block: A True Story of Coming of Age Behind the Counter Author: Jessica Wragg Narrator: Billie Fulford-Brown Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 1 minute Release date: August 6, 2019 Genres: Women Publisher's Summary: A memoir of coming of age behind the counter, exploring butchery as an art form and taking an incisive look at an industry on the brink. When sixteen-year-old Jessica Wragg applied for a job at her local farm shop in Derbyshire, England, she never expected to land a position behind the butchery counter. Wragg was younger than many of her colleagues by decades and she was one of the few women on staff, struggling to earn her keep among colleagues who were reluctant to share the tricks of their trade with a novice. Breaking down carcasses by day, and studying animal anatomy by night, Wragg was soon hooked and determined to establish herself in an industry that is steeped in tradition, and often resistant to change. From the English countryside to the streets of London, Girl on the Block blends Wragg’s personal coming of age story with a lyrical exploration of her craft and a rich history of butchery. She also examines the modern meat industry and the ever-changing ideologies around ethical meat consumption, as an often-conflicted carnivore who has spent time in an abattoir and witnessed slaughter firsthand. A raw tour through one of the world’s oldest, dirtiest, and most fascinating professions, Girl on the Block is Wragg’s tale of returning home with blood on her boots at the end of fourteen-hour days and finding her way in the end.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/360520 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Motherland: A Memoir of Love, Loathing, and Longing Author: Elissa Altman Narrator: Elissa Altman Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 35 minutes Release date: August 6, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 3 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Women Publisher's Summary: “I’m reading this book right now and loving it!”—Cheryl Strayed, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wild How can a mother and daughter who love (but don’t always like) each other coexist without driving each other crazy?  “Vibrating with emotion, this deeply honest account strikes a chord.”—People “A wry and moving meditation on aging and the different kinds of love between women.”—O: The Oprah Magazine  After surviving a traumatic childhood in nineteen-seventies New York and young adulthood living in the shadow of her flamboyant mother, Rita, a makeup-addicted former television singer, Elissa Altman has managed to build a very different life, settling in Connecticut with her wife of nearly twenty years. After much time, therapy, and wine, Elissa is at last in a healthy place, still orbiting around her mother but keeping far enough away to preserve the stable, independent world she has built as a writer and editor. Then Elissa is confronted with the unthinkable: Rita, whose days are spent as a flâneur, traversing Manhattan from the Clinique counters at Bergdorf to Bloomingdale’s and back again, suffers an incapacitating fall, leaving her completely dependent upon her daughter. Now Elissa is forced to finally confront their profound differences, Rita’s yearning for beauty and glamour, her view of the world through her days in the spotlight, and the money that has mysteriously disappeared in the name of preserving youth. To sustain their fragile mother-daughter bond, Elissa must navigate the turbulent waters of their shared lives, the practical challenges of caregiving for someone who refuses to accept it, the tentacles of narcissism, and the mutual, frenetic obsession that has defined their relationship. Motherland is a story that touches every home and every life, mapping the ferocity of maternal love, moral obligation, the choices women make about motherhood, and the possibility of healing. Filled with tenderness, wry irreverence, and unforgettable characters, it is an exploration of what it means to escape from the shackles of the past only to have to face them all over again. Praise for Motherland “Rarely has a mother-daughter relationship been excavated with such honesty. Elissa Altman is a beautiful, big-hearted writer who mines her most central subject: her gorgeous, tempestuous, difficult mother, and the terrain of their shared life. The result is a testament to the power of love and family.”—Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/366856 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Prognosis: A Memoir of My Brain Author: Sarah Vallance Narrator: Cat Gould Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 9 minutes Release date: August 1, 2019 Genres: Women Publisher's Summary: The searing, wry memoir about a woman’s fight for a new life after a devastating brain injury. When Sarah Vallance is thrown from a horse and suffers a jarring blow to the head, she believes she’s walked away unscathed. The next morning, things take a sharp turn as she’s led from work to the emergency room. By the end of the week, a neurologist delivers a devastating prognosis: Sarah suffered a traumatic brain injury that has caused her IQ to plummet, with no hope of recovery. Her brain has irrevocably changed. Afraid of judgment and deemed no longer fit for work, Sarah isolates herself from the outside world. She spends months at home, with her dogs as her only source of companionship, battling a personality she no longer recognizes and her shock and rage over losing simple functions she’d taken for granted. Her life is consumed by fear and shame until a chance encounter gives Sarah hope that her brain can heal. That conversation lights a small flame of determination, and Sarah begins to push back, painstakingly reteaching herself to read and write, and eventually reentering the workforce and a new, if unpredictable, life. In this highly intimate account of devastation and renewal, Sarah pulls back the curtain on life with traumatic brain injury, an affliction where the wounds are invisible and the lasting effects are often misunderstood. Over years of frustrating setbacks and uncertain triumphs, Sarah comes to terms with her disability and finds love with a woman who helps her embrace a new, accepting sense of self.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/359201 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Middle Matters: Why That (Extra)Ordinary Life Looks Really Good on You Author: Lisa-Jo Baker Narrator: Lisa-Jo Baker Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 24 minutes Release date: July 23, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Women Publisher's Summary: The best-selling author of Never Unfriended opens up about midlife and what it feels like to have outgrown those teenage jeans—but finally grown into the shape of our souls.   “I want to give Lisa-Jo’s book a standing ovation.”—Aarti Sequeira, chef and TV personality   Do you ever wonder how you woke up one day with all the responsibilities of a grown-up who secretly enjoys buying groceries in bulk, can no longer recognize the tween celebrities on the magazines at checkout, but is still surprised when a Starbucks barista calls you “ma’am”—because your inside self is frozen in time to about twenty years ago?   So does Lisa-Jo Baker.   In these intimate reflections on midlife, Lisa-Jo invites us to get a good look at our middles and gives us permission to embrace them—beyond what the media, the mirror, or the magazines say. Through gutsy, beautiful storytelling, she admits out loud what most of us are thinking about marriage, parenting, the bathroom scale, and how badly we all want to buy those matching Magnolia Market mugs.   Her delicious stories come from not being afraid of who she is, because Lisa-Jo knows that the middle might be the best part of the love story of life, kids, faith, doubt, marriage, failure, wonder, and the muffin top—and that these are all good things. She’s not asking you to seize the day, just to make sure you actually see it for all its wildly ordinary glory.   Welcome to the middle! Praise for The Middle Matters “What a thought-provoking collection of reflections and wisdom! Through personal stories about love, loss, and life in the middle, Lisa-Jo invites us to take a long look inside our own mind’s secret nooks and crannies, which aren’t nearly as dark, scary, or ordinary as we might think.”—Layla Palmer, The Lettered Cottage blog “With captivating wit, hard-won wisdom, and breathtaking honesty, Lisa-Jo has written a love letter to the delicious middle.”—Mandy Arioto, president and CEO of MOPS International and author of Have More Fun “With Lisa-Jo’s guts as our unfettered guide, may we finally learn the sumptuous truth of our years: that a grilled cheese sandwich without the middle is just toast.”—Erin Loechner, founder of OtherGoose and author of Chasing Slow “Thank you, Lisa-Jo, for reminding women everywhere how important it is to find meaning in the midst of the confusing middle.”—Joy Prouty, artist and educator

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/351090 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Casting into the Light: Tales of a Fishing Life Author: Janet Messineo Narrator: Janet Messineo Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 8 minutes Release date: July 2, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 1 Ratings of Narrator: 4 of Total 1 Genres: Women Publisher's Summary: Tales of a champion surfcaster: the education of a young woman hell-bent on following her dream and learning the mysterious and profound sport, and art, of surfcasting, on the island of Martha’s Vineyard.   Janet Messineo knew from the get-go that she wanted to become a great fisherman. She knew she was as capable as any man of catching and landing a huge fish. It took years—and many terrifying nights along on the beach in complete darkness, in search of a huge creature to pull out of the sea—for her to prove to herself and to the male-dominated fishing community that she could make her dream real.   Messineo writes of the object of her obsession: striped bass and how it can take a lifetime to become a proficient striped bass fisherman; of stripers as nocturnal feeders, hard-fighting, clever fish that under the cover of darkness trap bait against jetties or between fields of large boulders near shorelines, or, once hooked, rub their mouths against the rocks to cut the line.   She writes of growing up in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and Salem, New Hampshire, the granddaughter of textile mill workers, tagging along with her father and brother as they cast off of jetties; of going to art school, feeling from a young age the need to escape, and finding herself, one summer, on the Vineyard.   She describes the series of jobs that supported her fishing—waitressing at the Black Dog, Helios, and the Home Port, among other restaurants. She writes of her education in patience and the technique to land a fish; learning the equipment—hooks, sinkers, her first squid jig; buying her first one-ounce Rebel lure.   She re-created the thrill of fishing at night, of being buffeted by the island’s harsh winds and torrential rains; the terror of hooking something mysterious in the darkness that might pull her into water over her head.   She gives us a rich portrait of island life and writes of its history and of Chappaquiddick’s (it belonged to the Wampanoags, who originally called it Cheppiaquidne—“separate island”); of the Martha’s Vineyard Derby: its beginning in 1946 as a way to bring tourism to the island during the offseason, and the Derby’s growing into one of the largest tournaments in the world.   Messineo describes her dream of becoming a marine taxidermist, of learning the craft and perfecting the art of it. She writes of the men she’s fished with and the women who forged the path for others (among them, Lorraine “Tootie” Johnson, who fished Vineyard waters for more than sixty years, and Lori VanDerlaske, who won the Derby shore division in 1995). And she writes of her life commingled with fishing—her marriage to a singer, poet, activist; their adopting a son with Asperger’s; and her teaching him to fish. She writes of the transformative power of fishing that helped her to shake off drugs and alcohol, and of her profound respect for fish as a magnificent animal.   With eighteen of the author’s favorite fish recipes, Casting into the Light is a book about following one’s dreams and about the quiet reckoning with self in the long hours of darkness at the water’s edge, with the sounds of the ocean, the night air, and the jet-black sky. *Includes a PDF of author Janet Messineo’s favorite fish recipes

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/347998 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Coitus Chronicles: My Quest for Sex, Love, and Orgasms Author: Olive Persimmon Narrator: Olive Persimmon Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 16 minutes Release date: June 11, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3.43 of Total 14 Ratings of Narrator: 3.8 of Total 5 Genres: Women Publisher's Summary: Think you know everything about sex? Think again! This funny and true story of one woman’s journey to reclaim her sexuality on the fringes of New York City’s sex and dating world will make you think twice about everything there is to learn about sex! Meet Olive Persimmon. Growing up, she looked exactly like Danny DeVito, except she was thirteen and a girl. By some miracle, she grew into a relatively normal, well-adjusted thirty-something woman living in New York City—with one notable exception: she hasn’t had sex in five years, one month, three days, two-point-five hours . . . and counting. Faced with bona fide sex rut, she decides it's time to take action to save her love life and get her mojo back. Challenged by a friend to 'say yes' to experiences she might normally avoid, Olive embarks on a series of adventures and explores everything from BDSM classes to cuddlers-for-hire, from foot fetishes to lessons with a top-ranked pickup artist, and more! Each awkward, funny, and sometimes downright embarrassing encounter brings Olive closer to discovering the power of saying yes—to herself, others, and life itself. For fans of Jenny Slate, this is a funny, irreverent, and honest tale of one young woman's journey to reclaim her sexuality on the fringes of New York City's sex and dating world. Readers can see for themselves how this girl next door overcame insecurities around dating, sex, and love--all with openness, honesty, and a wicked sense of humor. Along the way, readers will wonder: Will Olive ever have sex again? Will her love life be okay? Will her toe fungus come back? Does she ever find her mojo, and where was it hiding? Weaving together the awkwardness of Mindy Kaling, the candor of Chelsea Handler, and Olive’s own hilarious vulnerability, The Coitus Chronicles will encourage readers to explore their own sexuality and consider what surprises they may discover if they, too, just say yes.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/349495 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Beautiful No: And Other Tales of Trial, Transcendence, and Transformation Author: Sheri Salata Narrator: Sheri Salata Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 40 minutes Release date: June 4, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.33 of Total 6 Ratings of Narrator: 4 of Total 1 Genres: Women Publisher's Summary: “Thursday morning. One hundred pounds overweight, no man in sight, and rounding the bend to 57 years old—a full-blown catastrophe.” What happens when you realize you’ve had the career of your dreams, but you don’t have the life of your dreams? This was the stark reality facing Sheri Salata when she left her twenty-year stint at The Oprah Winfrey Show, Harpo Studios and the OWN network. She had dedicated decades to her dream job, and loved (almost) every minute of it, but had left the rest of her life gathering dust on the shelf. After years of telling other people’s makeover stories, Sheri decided to “produce” her own life transformation. And this meant revisiting her past, excavating its lessons, and boldly reimagining her future. In this audiobook, she invites readers along for the ride—detoxing in the desert, braving humiliation at Hollywood’s favorite fitness studio, grappling with losses, reinventing friendships, baring her soul in sex therapy, and more. Part cautionary tale, part middle-of-life rallying cry, Sheri’s stories offer profound inspiration for personal renewal.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/359624 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Leaving the Witness: Exiting a Religion and Finding a Life Author: Amber Scorah Narrator: Amber Scorah Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 57 minutes Release date: June 4, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.27 of Total 11 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 5 Genres: Women Publisher's Summary: 'À la Tara Westover's Educated, Scorah's pensive, ultimately liberating memoir chronicles her formative years as a Jehovah's Witness...and captures the bewilderment of belief and the bliss of self-discovery.'--O, The Oprah Magazine, Named one of 'The Best Books by Women of Summer 2019' 'Scorah's book, the bravery of which cannot be overstated, is an earnest one, fueled by a plucky humor and a can-do spirit that endears. Her tale, though an exploration of extremity, is highly readable and warm.'--The New York Times Book Review A riveting memoir of losing faith and finding freedom while a covert missionary in one of the world's most restrictive countries. A third-generation Jehovah's Witness, Amber Scorah had devoted her life to sounding God's warning of impending Armageddon. She volunteered to take the message to China, where the preaching she did was illegal and could result in her expulsion or worse. Here, she had some distance from her community for the first time. Immersion in a foreign language and culture--and a whole new way of thinking--turned her world upside down, and eventually led her to lose all that she had been sure was true. As a proselytizer in Shanghai, using fake names and secret codes to evade the authorities' notice, Scorah discreetly looked for targets in public parks and stores. To support herself, she found work at a Chinese language learning podcast, hiding her real purpose from her coworkers. Now with a creative outlet, getting to know worldly people for the first time, she began to understand that there were other ways of seeing the world and living a fulfilling life. When one of these relationships became an 'escape hatch,' Scorah's loss of faith culminated in her own personal apocalypse, the only kind of ending possible for a Jehovah's Witness. Shunned by family and friends as an apostate, Scorah was alone in Shanghai and thrown into a world she had only known from the periphery--with no education or support system. A coming of age story of a woman already in her thirties, this unforgettable memoir examines what it's like to start one's life over again with an entirely new identity. It follows Scorah to New York City, where a personal tragedy forces her to look for new ways to find meaning in the absence of religion. With compelling, spare prose, Leaving the Witness traces the bittersweet process of starting over, when everything one's life was built around is gone.