Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/355143 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park Author: Conor Knighton Narrator: Conor Knighton Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 18 minutes Release date: April 7, 2020 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.45 of Total 33 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 5 Genres: Essays & Anthologies Publisher's Summary: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A delightful sampler plate of our national parks, written with charisma and erudition.”—Nick Offerman, author of Paddle Your Own Canoe From CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Conor Knighton, a behind-the-scenery look at his year traveling to each of America's National Parks, discovering the most beautiful places and most interesting people our country has to offer NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY OUTSIDE When Conor Knighton set off to explore America's 'best idea,' he worried the whole thing could end up being his worst idea. A broken engagement and a broken heart had left him longing for a change of scenery, but the plan he'd cooked up in response had gone a bit overboard in that department: Over the course of a single year, Knighton would visit every national park in the country, from Acadia to Zion.   In Leave Only Footprints, Knighton shares informative and entertaining dispatches from what turned out to be the road trip of a lifetime. Whether he's waking up early for a naked scrub in a historic bathhouse in Arkansas or staying up late to stargaze along our loneliest highway in Nevada, Knighton weaves together the type of stories you're not likely to find in any guidebook. Through his unique lens, America the Beautiful becomes America the Captivating, the Hilarious, and the Inspiring. Along the way, he identifies the threads that tie these wildly different places together—and that tie us to nature—and reveals how his trip ended up changing his views on everything from God and love to politics and technology.   Filled with fascinating tidbits about our parks' past and reflections on their fragile future, this book is both a celebration of and a passionate case for the natural wonders that all Americans share.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/343628 to listen full audiobooks. Title: To the Edge of Sorrow: A Novel Author: Aharon Appelfeld Narrator: Michael Crouch Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 41 minutes Release date: January 14, 2020 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 2 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Essays & Anthologies Publisher's Summary: From 'fiction's foremost chronicler of the Holocaust' (Philip Roth), here is a haunting novel about an unforgettable group of Jewish partisans fighting the Nazis during World War II. Battling numbing cold, ever-present hunger, and German soldiers determined to hunt them down, four dozen resistance fighters—escapees from a nearby ghetto—hide in a Ukrainian forest, determined to survive the war, sabotage the German war effort, and rescue as many Jews as they can from the trains taking them to concentration camps. Their leader is relentless in his efforts to turn his ragtag band of men and boys into a disciplined force that accomplishes its goals without losing its moral compass. And so when they're not raiding peasants' homes for food and supplies, or training with the weapons taken from the soldiers they have ambushed and killed, the partisans read books of faith and philosophy that they have rescued from abandoned Jewish homes, and they draw strength from the women, the elderly, and the remarkably resilient orphaned children they are protecting. When they hear about the advances being made by the Soviet Army, the partisans prepare for what they know will be a furious attack on their compound by the retreating Germans. In the heartbreaking aftermath, the survivors emerge from the forest to bury their dead, care for their wounded, and grimly confront a world that is surprised by their existence—and profoundly unwelcoming. Narrated by seventeen-year-old Edmund—a member of the group who maintains his own inner resolve with memories of his parents and their life before the war—this powerful story of Jews who fought back is suffused with the riveting detail that Aharon Appelfeld was uniquely able to bring to his award-winning novels.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/344623 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison Author: Ralph Ellison Narrator: John F. Callahan, Dominic Hoffman Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 49 hours 11 minutes Release date: December 17, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3.25 of Total 4 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Essays & Anthologies Publisher's Summary: A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • A radiant collection of letters from the renowned author of Invisible Man that traces the life and mind of a giant of American literature, with insights into the riddle of identity, the writer’s craft, and the story of a changing nation over six decades These extensive and revealing letters span the life of Ralph Ellison and provide a remarkable window into the great writer’s life and work, his friendships, rivalries, anxieties, and all the questions about identity, art, and the American soul that bedeviled and inspired him until his death. They include early notes to his mother, written as an impoverished college student; lively exchanges with the most distinguished American writers and thinkers of his time, from Romare Bearden to Saul Bellow; and letters to friends and family from his hometown of Oklahoma City, whose influence would always be paramount. These letters are beautifully rendered first-person accounts of Ellison’s life and work and his observations of a changing world, showing his metamorphosis from a wide-eyed student into a towering public intellectual who confronted and articulated America’s complexities.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/361631 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Inheritors: Stories Of Entrepreneurship And Success Author: Sonu Bhasin Narrator: Chintan Buddhadev Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 52 minutes Release date: December 10, 2019 Genres: Essays & Anthologies Publisher's Summary: Why did Harsh Mariwala leave his family business? Why did the Burman family quit the day-to-day operations of Dabur? How did the Dhingras turn a collapsing business into India's second-largest paint company? The Inheritors offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at what goes on in Marico, Dabur, Keventers, Berger Paints, Select Group, Antara, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, Luxor and Motilal Oswal. The book focuses on culture, family politics, ego battles, business rivalries and a lot more. And then, of course, there are the inheritors themselves-some take the businesses to even greater heights while others lead them to doom.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/361551 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Rusty Goes To London Author: Ruskin Bond Narrator: Derek Denzil Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 4 hours 39 minutes Release date: December 10, 2019 Genres: Essays & Anthologies Publisher's Summary: In his early twenties now, Rusty finally leaves Dehra and books a passage to England, dreaming of writing and selling his novel abroad. First in Jersey, and then in in London, he works as a clerk by day and writes in the evenings. Eventually, the novel is finished and Rusty even finds a publisher. But this, he discovers, does not mean that his book will see the light of day soon. But London has many adventures in store for Rusty. Strolling down Baker Street, he runs into Sherlock Holmes, is accosted by Rudyard Kipling and has an escapade in the Chinese quarter! After three years abroad, however, Rusty realizes that he wants to make India his permanent home. Returning to Dehra, he renews some acquaintances and makes a few new ones, and settles into his role as full-time author. Full of interesting stories and memorable characters, Rusty Goes to London will delight all of Ruskin Bond's fans.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/343589 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Good Things Out of Nazareth: The Uncollected Letters of Flannery O'Connor and Friends Author: Flannery O’Connor Narrator: Dorothy Dillingham Blue, John H. Mayer, Various Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 14 hours 5 minutes Release date: October 15, 2019 Genres: Essays & Anthologies Publisher's Summary: A literary treasure of over one hundred unpublished letters from National Book Award-winning author Flannery O'Connor and her circle of extraordinary friends. Flannery O’Connor is a master of twentieth-century American fiction, joining, since her untimely death in 1964, the likes of Hawthorne, Hemingway, and Faulkner. Those familiar with her work know that her powerful ethical vision was rooted in a quiet, devout faith and informed all she wrote and did. Good Things Out of Nazareth, a much-anticipated collection of many of O’Connor’s previously unpublished letters—along with those of literary luminaries such as Walker Percy (The Moviegoer), Caroline Gordon (None Shall Look Back), Katherine Anne Porter (Ship of Fools), Robert Giroux and movie critic Stanley Kauffmann. The letters explore such themes as creativity, faith, suffering, and writing. Brought together, they form a riveting literary portrait of these friends, artists, and thinkers. Here we find their joys and loves, as well as their trials and tribulations as they struggle with doubt and illness while championing their beliefs and often confronting racism in American society during the civil rights era. Praise for Good Things Out of Nazareth “An epistolary group portrait that will appeal to readers interested in the Catholic underpinnings of O'Connor's life and work . . . These letters by the National Book Award–winning short story writer and her friends alternately fit and break the mold. Anyone looking for Southern literary gossip will find plenty of barbs. . . . But there’s also higher-toned talk on topics such as the symbolism in O’Connor’s work and the nature of free will.”—Kirkus Reviews   “A fascinating set of Flannery O’Connor’s correspondence . . . The compilation is highlighted by gems from O’Connor’s writing mentor, Caroline Gordon. . . . While O’Connor’s milieu can seem intimidatingly insular, the volume allows readers to feel closer to the writer, by glimpsing O’Connor’s struggles with lupus, which sometimes leaves her bedridden or walking on crutches, and by hearing her famously strong Georgian accent in the colloquialisms she sprinkles throughout the letters. . . . This is an important addition to the knowledge of O’Connor, her world, and her writing.”—Publishers Weekly

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/348913 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr Author: Susan Holloway Scott Narrator: Kirsten Potter Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 17 hours 56 minutes Release date: September 24, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 2 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Essays & Anthologies Publisher's Summary: Eugénie Bearhani (1760–1835) was born in Calcutta, raised in Haiti, and brought as a servant—a free woman of color—to America by an English officer on the eve of the American Revolution. Yet none of that prepared Eugénie for her next employer: Colonel Aaron Burr, a man some whispered had made a pact with the devil. The lines between master and servant soon tangle and blur, and first attraction becomes dangerous obsession. Many historians deny she even existed, but Eugénie and the children she bore to Burr were very real—and so was her little-known marriage to America's first true villain.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/355972 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The First Stone Author: Carsten Jensen Narrator: Ray Chase Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 17 hours 0 minutes Release date: September 1, 2019 Genres: Essays & Anthologies Publisher's Summary: From the award-winning author of We, the Drowned comes a brutal, unflinching, and bestselling epic novel of a platoon of soldiers descending into the insanity of the war in Afghanistan. Dispatched to fight the Taliban as part of the NATO forces, the soldiers of the Third Platoon arrive in a desert hell intent on testing their courage and endurance. Among them are the charismatic platoon leader Schrøder, a former games designer fascinated by the imaginative potential of war; Colonel Steffensen, whose negotiating tactics will have deadly consequences; Sidekick, the LifeLogger whose online “war memorial” will blur into horror; and the hardened but vulnerable Hannah, who must bury her womanhood—or sacrifice her soul. Confronted by a betrayal that no military training could prepare them for, the soldiers must embark on a desperate mission to track down an enemy whose methods are as murderous as they are unfathomable. As the hunters become the hunted, the mission turns into a depraved, hallucinatory voyage into an Afghanistan they never knew existed. With the Third Platoon’s most fundamental notions of good and evil called into question, survival becomes their only mission. An explicitly brutal portrait of battle told with the propulsion of a harrowing psychological thriller, The First Stone is a stunning and epic depiction of comradeship, humanity, and the bestial realities of a conflict without end.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/345469 to listen full audiobooks. Title: I'm Telling the Truth, but I'm Lying: Essays Author: Bassey Ikpi Narrator: Bassey Ikpi Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 12 minutes Release date: August 20, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.8 of Total 5 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 3 Genres: Essays & Anthologies Publisher's Summary: 2020 Audie Finalist – Short Stories/Collections In I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Lying Bassey Ikpi explores her life—as a Nigerian-American immigrant, a black woman, a slam poet, a mother, a daughter, an artist—through the lens of her mental health and diagnosis of bipolar II and anxiety. Her remarkable memoir in essays implodes our preconceptions of the mind and normalcy as Bassey bares her own truths and lies for us all to behold with radical honesty and brutal intimacy. A Bitch Magazine Most Anticipated Book of 2019 • A Bustle 21 New Memoirs That Will Inspire, Motivate, and Captivate You • A Publishers Weekly Spring Preview Selection • An Electric Lit 48 Books by Women and Nonbinary Authors of Color to Read in 2019 • A Bookish Best Nonfiction of Summer Selection ''We will not think or talk about mental health or normalcy the same after reading this momentous art object moonlighting as a colossal collection of essays.”     —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy From her early childhood in Nigeria through her adolescence in Oklahoma, Bassey Ikpi lived with a tumult of emotions, cycling between extreme euphoria and deep depression—sometimes within the course of a single day. By the time she was in her early twenties, Bassey was a spoken word artist and traveling with HBO's Def Poetry Jam, channeling her life into art. But beneath the façade of the confident performer, Bassey's mental health was in a precipitous decline, culminating in a breakdown that resulted in hospitalization and a diagnosis of Bipolar II. In I'm Telling the Truth, But I'm Lying, Bassey Ikpi breaks open our understanding of mental health by giving us intimate access to her own. Exploring shame, confusion, medication, and family in the process, Bassey looks at how mental health impacts every aspect of our lives—how we appear to others, and more importantly to ourselves—and challenges our preconception about what it means to be ''normal.''  Viscerally raw and honest, the result is an exploration of the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of who we are—and the ways, as honest as we try to be, each of these stories can also be a lie.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/356892 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Mary Shelley Author: Miranda Seymour Narrator: Sandra Duncan Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 27 hours 33 minutes Release date: August 15, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3.5 of Total 2 Genres: Essays & Anthologies Publisher's Summary: ‘The most dazzling biography of a female writer to have come my way for a decade…' – Financial Times ‘To be savoured for its vivid and sympathetic recreation of the tragic life and brilliant times of the gifted Mary Shelley’ – Times Literary Supplement ‘Brilliant and enthralling' – Independent On Sunday 'Wonderfully vivid' – Spectator The definitive and richly woven biography of Mary Shelley, in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein   The creator of the world’s most famous outsider became one herself . . . There is no more dramatic scene in literary history than the stormy night by Lake Geneva when Byron, Claire Clairmont, Polidori and the Shelleys met to talk of horror and the unexplained. From that emerged Frankenstein, a monster who has haunted imaginations for two hundred years.   Miranda Seymour illustrates the rich and unexplored life of Mary Shelley. Everything from her childhood to her tempestuous relationship with Percy Shelley; Seymour brings to life the brilliant mind that created Frankenstein through unexplored and intriguing sources.    The Mary Shelley we meet here is a woman we can engage with and understand. Her world, so rich in its settings and its cast of characters, seems drawn from a novel. She, at its centre, is flawed, brave, generous, and impetuous, a woman whose dark and brilliant imagination gave us a myth which seems ever more potent in our own era.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/359641 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Home for Erring and Outcast Girls: A Novel Author: Julie Kibler Narrator: Karissa Vacker Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 14 hours 21 minutes Release date: July 23, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.6 of Total 10 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 2 Genres: Essays & Anthologies Publisher's Summary: An emotionally raw and resonant story of love, loss, and the enduring power of friendship, following the lives of two young women connected by a home for “fallen girls,” and inspired by historical events.   “Home for Erring and Outcast Girls deftly reimagines the wounded women who came seeking a second chance and a sustaining hope.”—Lisa Wingate, author of Before We Were Yours In turn-of-the-20th century Texas, the Berachah Home for the Redemption and Protection of Erring Girls is an unprecedented beacon of hope for young women consigned to the dangerous poverty of the streets by birth, circumstance, or personal tragedy. Built in 1903 on the dusty outskirts of Arlington, a remote dot between Dallas and Fort Worth’s red-light districts, the progressive home bucks public opinion by offering faith, training, and rehabilitation to prostitutes, addicts, unwed mothers, and “ruined” girls without forcibly separating mothers from children. When Lizzie Bates and Mattie McBride meet there—one sick and abused, but desperately clinging to her young daughter, the other jilted by the beau who fathered her ailing son—they form a friendship that will see them through unbearable loss, heartbreak, difficult choices, and ultimately, diverging paths. A century later, Cate Sutton, a reclusive university librarian, uncovers the hidden histories of the two troubled women as she stumbles upon the cemetery on the home’s former grounds and begins to comb through its archives in her library. Pulled by an indescribable connection, what Cate discovers about their stories leads her to confront her own heartbreaking past, and to reclaim the life she thought she'd let go forever. With great pathos and powerful emotional resonance, Home for Erring and Outcast Girls explores the dark roads that lead us to ruin, and the paths we take to return to ourselves.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/355783 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Screen Tests: Stories and Other Writing Author: Kate Zambreno Narrator: Mia Barron Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 7 minutes Release date: July 23, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Essays & Anthologies Publisher's Summary: In Screen Tests, an astoundingly original and stylish collection, Zambreno has once again created new categories of writing, of vivid and surprising language and thought. In the first half, the narrator regales us with incisive and witty swatches from a life lived inside a brilliant mind, meditating on aging and vanity, fame and failure, writing and writers, and the dailiness of a woman and an artist, along with Warholian portraits of everyone from Susan Sontag to Amal Clooney, Maurice Blanchot to Louise Brooks. The series of essays that follow, on figures central to her thinking, from Kathy Acker to Shulamith Firestone, David Wojnarowicz to Barbara Loden, are passionate manifestoes about art, that intersect and chime with the stories that came before them. Throughout these philosophical investigations is the quintessential Zambreno voice, unable to be imitated—witty and morbid, serious and playful, poetic and profane, doubting yet radiant.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/358584 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Raised in Captivity: Fictional Nonfiction Author: Chuck Klosterman Narrator: Jon Dolan, Bill Wise, Will Brill, Jon Wurster, Kurt Loder, Chris Gethard, H. Jon Benjamin, James Urbaniak, Eddie Huang, Mike Birbiglia, Sloane Crosley, Chuck Klosterman, John Hodgman, Various Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 12 minutes Release date: July 16, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Essays & Anthologies Publisher's Summary: Microdoses of the straight dope, stories so true they had to be wrapped in fiction for our own protection, from the best-selling author of But What if We're Wrong? A man flying first class discovers a puma in the lavatory. A new coach of a small-town Oklahoma high school football team installs an offense comprised of only one, very special, play. A man explains to the police why he told the employee of his local bodega that his colleague looked like the lead singer of Depeche Mode, a statement that may or may not have led in some way to a violent crime. A college professor discusses with his friend his difficulties with the new generation of students. An obscure power pop band wrestles with its new-found fame when its song 'Blizzard of Summer' becomes an anthem for white supremacists. A couple considers getting a medical procedure that will transfer the pain of childbirth from the woman to her husband. A woman interviews a hit man about killing her husband but is shocked by the method he proposes. A man is recruited to join a secret government research team investigating why coin flips are no longer exactly 50/50. A man sees a whale struck by lightning, and knows that everything about his life has to change. A lawyer grapples with the unintended side effects of a veterinarian's rabies vaccination.  Fair warning: Raised in Captivity does not slot into a smooth preexisting groove. If Saul Steinberg and Italo Calvino had adopted a child from a Romanian orphanage and raised him on Gary Larsen and Thomas Bernhard, he would still be nothing like Chuck Klosterman. They might be good company, though. Funny, wise and weird in equal measure, Raised in Captivity bids fair to be one of the most original and exciting story collections in recent memory, a fever graph of our deepest unvoiced hopes, fears and preoccupations. Ceaselessly inventive, hostile to corniness in all its forms, and mean only to the things that really deserve it, it marks a cosmic leap forward for one of our most consistently interesting writers. Read by Chuck Klosterman, James Urbaniak, Bill Wise, Eddie Huang, Jon Wurster, H. Jon Benjamin, Jon Dolan, Mike Birbiglia, Kurt Loder, John Hodgman, Sloane Crosley, Chris Gethard, Will Brill, Dennis Boutsikaris, Melissa Maerz, Jeremy Bobb, Scott Shepherd, Brent Musburger, and Vincent Kartheiser

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/357093 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Hungry: Eating, Road-Tripping, and Risking It All with the Greatest Chef in the World Author: Jeff Gordinier Narrator: Jeff Gordinier Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 48 minutes Release date: July 9, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.33 of Total 3 Ratings of Narrator: 4 of Total 1 Genres: Essays & Anthologies Publisher's Summary: A food critic chronicles four years spent traveling with René Redzepi, the renowned chef of Noma, in search of the most tantalizing flavors the world has to offer.   “If you want to understand modern restaurant culture, you need to read this book.”—Ruth Reichl, author of Save Me the Plums   Hungry is a book about not only the hunger for food, but for risk, for reinvention, for creative breakthroughs, and for connection. Feeling stuck in his work and home life, writer Jeff Gordinier happened into a fateful meeting with Danish chef René Redzepi, whose restaurant, Noma, has been called the best in the world. A restless perfectionist, Redzepi was at the top of his game but was looking to tear it all down, to shutter his restaurant and set out for new places, flavors, and recipes.   This is the story of the subsequent four years of globe-trotting culinary adventure, with Gordinier joining Redzepi as his Sancho Panza. In the jungle of the Yucatán peninsula, Redzepi and his comrades go off-road in search of the perfect taco. In Sydney, they forage for sea rocket and sandpaper figs in suburban parks and on surf-lashed beaches. On a boat in the Arctic Circle, a lone fisherman guides them to what may or may not be his secret cache of the world’s finest sea urchins. And back in Copenhagen, the quiet canal-lined city where Redzepi started it all, he plans the resurrection of his restaurant on the unlikely site of a garbage-filled lot. Along the way, readers meet Redzepi’s merry band of friends and collaborators, including acclaimed chefs such as Danny Bowien, Kylie Kwong, Rosio Sánchez, David Chang, and Enrique Olvera.   Hungry is a memoir, a travelogue, a portrait of a chef, and a chronicle of the moment when daredevil cooking became the most exciting and groundbreaking form of artistry. Praise for Hungry “In Hungry, Gordinier invokes such playful and lush prose that the scents of mole, chiles and even lingonberry juice waft off the page.”—Time “This wonderful book is really about the adventures of two men: a great chef and a great journalist. Hungry is a feast for the senses, filled with complex passion and joy, bursting with life. Not only did Jeff Gordinier make me want to jump on the next flight (to Mexico, Copenhagen, Sydney) in search of the perfect meal, but he also reminded me to stop and savor the ride.”—Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/357100 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Delayed Rays of a Star: A Novel Author: Amanda Lee Koe Narrator: Amanda Lee Koe, Orlagh Cassidy Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 14 hours 37 minutes Release date: July 9, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Essays & Anthologies Publisher's Summary: An NPR Best Book of the Year A dazzling debut novel following the lives of three groundbreaking women--Marlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong, and Leni Riefenstahl--cinema legends who lit up the twentieth century At a chance encounter at a Berlin soirée in 1928, the photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt captures three very different women together in one frame: up-and-coming German actress Marlene Dietrich, who would wend her way into Hollywood as one of its lasting icons; Anna May Wong, the world's first Chinese American star, playing bit parts while dreaming of breaking away from her father's modest laundry; and Leni Riefenstahl, whose work as a director of propaganda art films would first make her famous--then, infamous.      From this curious point of intersection, Delayed Rays of a Star lets loose the trajectories of these women's lives. From Weimar Berlin to LA's Chinatown, from a bucolic village in the Bavarian Alps to a luxury apartment on the Champs-Élysées, the different settings they inhabit are as richly textured as the roles they play: siren, victim, predator, or lover, each one a carefully calibrated performance. And in the orbit of each star live secondary players--a Chinese immigrant housemaid, a German soldier on leave from North Africa, a pompous Hollywood director--whose voices and viewpoints reveal the legacy each woman left in her own time, as well as in ours.      Amanda Lee Koe's playful, wry prose guides the reader dexterously around murky questions of identity, complicity, desire, and difference. Intimate and clear-eyed, Delayed Rays of a Star is a visceral depiction of womanhood--its particular hungers, its oblique calculations, and its eventual betrayals--and announces a bold new literary voice.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/355956 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Stars in His Eyes Author: Martí Gironell Narrator: Timothy Andrés Pabon Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 20 minutes Release date: July 1, 2019 Genres: Essays & Anthologies Publisher's Summary: From the fascist Franco regime to Hollywood’s glamour—an epic historical novel based on the meteoric rise of one of the world’s most celebrated restaurateurs. Ceferino Carrión is desperate for a new life—one of opportunity, fortune, and fame. But he knows he’ll never find this life in war-torn Spain. With his home country under the heel of the devastating Franco dictatorship and call-up papers on his doorstep, Cefe knows there’s only one thing he can do: run. A new life awaits in America, as does a new name—Jean Leon. From the concrete valleys of the Bronx to the sun-soaked hills of California, Jean crosses paths with legendary superstars, political powerhouses, and dangerous mobsters as he flees his past and pursues his dreams. With friends like Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, and James Dean to see him through, Jean soon gets his own taste of stardom, opening his glamourous Beverly Hills restaurant, La Scala, to nightly swarms of celebrities. But with every new adrenaline rush of celebrity, Jean is further distanced from everyone he loves. Only in searching through his ever-receding past in Barcelona can he find the key to unlock the dream life he has risked so much to build.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/355957 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Still I Miss You Author: Inês Pedrosa Narrator: Rebecca Mozo, Jonathan Davis Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 24 minutes Release date: July 1, 2019 Genres: Essays & Anthologies Publisher's Summary: From the acclaimed author of In Your Hands comes a heartrending novel about the struggle to hold on to what you’ve lost, and knowing when it’s time to let go. In this keenly observant dissection of a love affair in limbo, award-winning author Inês Pedrosa masterfully draws readers into the feverish, unsparing dual confessions of a man and a woman who are finally baring their hearts, souls, fury, and grief over a relationship that was abruptly shattered and never forgotten. Until now, there was so much between them left unspoken. With each new unguarded, darkly funny, and emotional disclosure, they’re brought back together—though impossibly so. Through the intimate voices of these unforgettable narrators unfolds a remarkable love story of regret and reconciliation, of loss and wrenching truths, told across lines few have ever considered crossing. Praised by the New York Times for the “incantatory prose . . . absorbing in its history, as well as in its family dynamics” of her multigenerational saga In Your Hands, Pedrosa casts a seductive new spell with Still I Miss You, her second novel to be translated into English.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/347896 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Blue Period: A Novel Author: Luke Jerod Kummer Narrator: Angela Dawe Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 20 minutes Release date: July 1, 2019 Genres: Essays & Anthologies Publisher's Summary: A riveting novel about the tragic romance that nearly destroyed a young Pablo Picasso—while granting him his first flight of creative genius. From rowdy Barcelona barrooms to the incandescent streets of turn-of-the-century Paris, Pablo Picasso experiences the sumptuous highs and seedy lows of bohemian life alongside his rebellious poet friend with a shadowy past, Carles Casagemas. Fleeing family misfortune and their parents’ expectations, the two young artists seek their creative outlet while chasing inspiration in drugs, decadence, and the liberated women of Montmartre—creatures far different from the veiled ones back home. The new life feels like bliss, and nothing can come between them…until a dark-haired, enigmatic muse enters the picture. The two artists’ passion for Germaine will lead to a devastating turn. Amid soul-searching and despair, however, Picasso discovers a color palette in which to render his demons and paint himself into lasting history. Bringing the exuberance of the era vividly to life, this richly imagined portrait of Picasso’s coming of age intertwines the love, death, lust, and friendships that inspired the immortal works of a defiant master.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/359645 to listen full audiobooks. Title: I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution Author: Emily Nussbaum Narrator: Emily Nussbaum Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 13 hours 44 minutes Release date: June 25, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Essays & Anthologies Publisher's Summary: From The New Yorker’s fiercely original, Pulitzer Prize-winning culture critic, a provocative collection of new and previously published essays arguing that we are what we watch. “Emily Nussbaum is the perfect critic—smart, engaging, funny, generous, and insightful.”—David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • Chicago Tribune • Esquire • Library Journal • Kirkus Reviews From her creation of the “Approval Matrix” in New York magazine in 2004 to her Pulitzer Prize–winning columns for The New Yorker, Emily Nussbaum has argued for a new way of looking at TV. In this collection, including two never-before-published essays, Nussbaum writes about her passion for television, beginning with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the show that set her on a fresh intellectual path. She explores the rise of the female screw-up, how fans warp the shows they love, the messy power of sexual violence on TV, and the year that jokes helped elect a reality-television president. There are three big profiles of television showrunners—Kenya Barris, Jenji Kohan, and Ryan Murphy—as well as examinations of the legacies of Norman Lear and Joan Rivers. The book also includes a major new essay written during the year of MeToo, wrestling with the question of what to do when the artist you love is a monster. More than a collection of reviews, the book makes a case for toppling the status anxiety that has long haunted the “idiot box,” even as it transformed. Through it all, Nussbaum recounts her fervent search, over fifteen years, for a new kind of criticism, one that resists the false hierarchy that elevates one kind of culture (violent, dramatic, gritty) over another (joyful, funny, stylized). I Like to Watch traces her own struggle to punch through stifling notions of “prestige television,” searching for a more expansive, more embracing vision of artistic ambition—one that acknowledges many types of beauty and complexity and opens to more varied voices. It’s a book that celebrates television as television, even as each year warps the definition of just what that might mean. FINALIST FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD FOR THE ART OF THE ESSAY “This collection, including some powerful new work, proves once and for all that there’s no better American critic of anything than Emily Nussbaum. But I Like to Watch turns out to be even greater than the sum of its brilliant parts—it’s the most incisive, intimate, entertaining, authoritative guide to the shows of this golden television age.”—Kurt Andersen, author of Fantasyland “Reading Emily Nussbaum makes us smarter not just about what we watch, but about how we live, what we love, and who we are. I Like to Watch is a joy.”—Rebecca Traister

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/351082 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Last Collection: A Novel of Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel Author: Jeanne Mackin Narrator: Sarah Mollo-Christensen Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 59 minutes Release date: June 25, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.67 of Total 3 Genres: Essays & Anthologies Publisher's Summary: An American woman becomes entangled in the intense rivalry between iconic fashion designers Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli in this captivating novel from the acclaimed author of The Beautiful American. Paris, 1938. Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli are fighting for recognition as the most successful and influential fashion designer in France, and their rivalry is already legendary. They oppose each other at every turn, in both their politics and their designs: Chanel’s are classic, elegant, and practical; Schiaparelli’s bold, experimental, and surreal. When Lily Sutter, a recently widowed young American teacher, visits her brother, Charlie, in Paris, he insists on buying her a couture dress—a Chanel. Lily, however, prefers a Schiaparelli. Charlie’s beautiful and socially prominent girlfriend soon begins wearing Schiaparelli’s designs as well, and much of Paris follows in her footsteps.  Schiaparelli offers budding artist Lily a job at her store, and Lily finds herself increasingly involved with Schiaparelli and Chanel’s personal war. Their fierce competition reaches new and dangerous heights as the Nazis and the looming threat of World War II bear down on Paris.