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Aftershocks : a memoir by Nadia Owusu (read by the author)Young Nadia Owusu followed her father, a United Nations official, from Europe to Africa and back again. Just as she and her family settled into a new home, her father would tell them it was time to say their goodbyes. The instability wrought by Nadia’s nomadic childhood was deepened by family secrets and fractures, both lived and inherited. Her Armenian American mother, who abandoned Nadia when she was two, would periodically reappear, only to vanish again. Her father, a Ghanaian, the great hero of her life, died when she was thirteen. After his passing, Nadia’s stepmother weighed her down with a revelation that was either a bombshell secret or a lie, rife with shaming innuendo.
With these and other ruptures, Nadia arrived in New York as a young woman feeling stateless, motherless, and uncertain about her future, yet eager to find her own identity. What followed, however, were periods of depression in which she struggled to hold herself and her siblings together.
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Vera : a novel by Carol Edgarian (read by Kathe Mazur)Scrappy fifteen-year-old Vera Johnson—illegitimate daughter of Rose, the notorious proprietor of San Francisco’s ritziest bordello and ally to the city’s corrupt politicians—narrowly survives the devastating 1906 earthquake. Relying on her wit and determination, Vera and her unlikely new family of survivors navigate a world reborn in the wake of disaster.
In Vera, Carol Edgarian creates a panoramic and deeply compassionate world where notions of honor, survival, and love are tested, and grace is hard-won. Vera celebrates the bold resilience its heroine bears in the face of a disregarding mother and a colorful cohort of liars, thieves, and con artists who would manipulate the teenage girl while her righteous neighbors judge her for her low birth. A ravishing, heartbreaking, and profound affirmation of youth and a testament to a city eternally reimagining itself, Vera’s story brings to life legendary characters—tenor Enrico Caruso, indicted Mayor Eugene Schmitz and boss Abe Ruef, tabloid celebrity and fabled doyenne Alma Spreckels, as well as an unforgettable cast that includes Vera’s young lover, Bobby, protector of the city’s tribe of orphans, and three generations of a Chinese family competing and conspiring with Vera.
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The Trial by Charlotte Page (read by the author) When Blythe Bradbury moves to Brekham, it takes less than a day for rumors of witchcraft to find their way to the town’s minister. But the ravings of the town’s gossip mean little to the minster’s son, Caleb Walcott, who finds himself drawn to the strange, outspoken young woman. Caleb isn’t the only man in Brekham entranced by her rare beauty, but he is the only one to earn her heart. Yet when the minister’s daughter is found murdered in the forest, Blythe is there beside her. Covered in blood. To save Blythe from the gallows, Caleb must piece together what really happened the night of his sister’s death. If he can survive long enough to uncover the real killer, Caleb will find that everyone, including his dead sister, has something to hide.
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Between Sisters by Kristin Hannah (read by Laural Merlington) Meghann Dontess is a woman haunted by heartbreak. Twenty-five years ago she was forced to make a terrible choice, one that cost her everything, including the love of her sister, Claire. Now, Meghann is a hotshot divorce attorney who doesn’t believe in intimacy - until she meets the one man who can change her mind. Claire Cavenaugh has fallen in love for the first time in her life. As her wedding day approaches, she prepares to face her harsh, judgmental older sister and their self-absorbed mother. It is the first time they have been together in more than two decades. Over the course of a hot Pacific Northwest summer, these three women who believe they have nothing in common will try to become what they never were: a family.
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Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid (read by Julia Whelan) Malibu: August 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over - especially as the offspring of the legendary singer Mick Riva. The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud - because it is long past time for him to confess something to the brother from whom he’s been inseparable since birth. Jay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he can’t stop thinking about promised she’ll be there. And Kit has a couple secrets of her own - including a guest she invited without consulting anyone. By midnight the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family’s generations will all come rising to the surface.
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The Quiet Boy by Ben H. Winters (read by William DeMerrit) In 2008, a cheerful ambulance-chasing lawyer named Jay Shenk persuades the grieving Keener family to sue a private LA hospital. Their son, Wesley, has been transformed by a routine surgery into a kind of golem, absent all normal functioning or personality, walking in endless empty circles around his hospital room. In 2019, Shenk - still in practice but a shell of his former self - is hired to defend Wesley Keener’s father when he is charged with murder...the murder, as it turns out, of the expert witness from the 2008 hospital case. Shenk’s adopted son, a fragile teenager in 2008, is a wayward adult, though he may find his purpose when he investigates what really happened to the murdered witness. Two thrilling trials braid together, medical malpractice and murder, jostling us back and forth in time. The Quiet Boy is a book full of mysteries, not only about the death of a brilliant scientist, not only about the outcome of the medical malpractice suit, but about the relationship between children and their parents, between the past and the present, between truth and lies. At the center of it all is Wesley Keener, endlessly walking, staring empty-eyed, in whose quiet, hollow body may lie the fate of humankind.
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The consequences of fear by Jacqueline Winspear (read by Orlagh Cassidy) October 1941. While on a delivery, young Freddie Hackett, a message runner for a government office, witnesses an argument that ends in murder. Crouching in the doorway of a bombed-out house, Freddie waits until the coast is clear. But when he arrives at the delivery address, he’s shocked to come face-to-face with the killer. Dismissed by the police when he attempts to report the crime, Freddie goes in search of a woman he once met when delivering a message: Maisie Dobbs. While Maisie believes the boy and wants to help, she must maintain extreme caution: she’s working secretly for the Special Operations Executive, assessing candidates for crucial work with the French resistance. Her two worlds collide when she spots the killer in a place she least expects. She soon realizes she’s been pulled into the orbit of a man who has his own reasons to kill - reasons that go back to the last war.
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Contact your librarian for more great audiobooks!
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