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Fiction & Literature

Tales of the City Audiobook: LGBTQ+ Fiction Gem – Free Download

Introduction written and read by Rachel Maddow • Narrated by Frances McDormand

The first novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin’s bestselling San Francisco saga, and inspiration for the Netflix original series, Tales of the City

“A consummate entertainer who has made a generation laugh. . . . . It is Maupin’s Dickensian gift to be able to render love convincingly.”— Edmund White, Times Literary Supplement

For almost four decades Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City has blazed its own trail through popular culture—from a groundbreaking newspaper serial to a classic novel, to a television event that entranced millions around the world. The first of ten novels about the denizens of the mythic apartment house at 28 Barbary Lane, Tales is both a sparkling comedy of manners and an indelible portrait of an era that changed forever the way we live.

Drama

Taming of the Shrew Audiobook Free: A Shakespeare Drama – Free Download

The Taming of the Shrew is one of Shakespeare’s earliest comedies, and was inspired by classical Roman comedy and the Italian commedia dell’arte. Baptista Minola, a rich gentleman of Padua, has two daughters: Katherina, renowned for her sharp tongue, and Bianca, who is sought after by multiple suitors. Baptista decides that Bianca cannot marry until her elder sister finds a husband. Enter Petruchio, who has come to “wive it wealthily in Padua,” and who is convinced by Bianca’s suitors to woo Katherina. The play ultimately poses the question of who is the bigger shrew: Kate or Petruchio. The subplot involves the subterfuge employed by Lucentio to woo the lovely Bianca. (Summary by Elizabeth Klett)

Business & Economics

Power of Storytelling Audiobook: Business Storytelling – Free Download

A guide to crafting unforgettable, attention-grabbing business communications – from speeches and letters to business plans – using stories from the world’s top business leaders.

The world’s foremost business leaders are also great storytellers. For example, industry titan Jack Welch has told how his mother instilled enough tough love and confidence in him to overcome the fact that he was the shortest kid in his class and had a severe stutter. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, often tells a story of setting up the company’s first office in a converted garage.

The Power of Storytelling collects the best of these stories, which listeners can use to strengthen their own communication. It’s great for anyone who needs to lead, inspire, and motivate an audience in a business setting, whether they’re writing speeches, pep talks, interview talking points, employee letters, or Op- Eds. With anecdotes from Bill Gates, Sam Walton, Ted Turner, Steve Jobs, and many more, this is an inspiring and immensely useful audiobook.

Romance

Summer That Made Us Audiobook: A Heartfelt Romance Review – Free Download

The next original trade women’s fiction novel from beloved bestselling author Robyn Carr. Carr is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Virgin River and Thunder Point series. Her trade women’s fiction novel Four Friends debuted at #5 on the New York Times. Her hardcover debut, What We Find was #10 on the ebook list and #14 on the combined list. Her most recent trade original, The Life She Wants, debuted at #15 on the print list, #10 on the ebook list and #13 on the combined list. A television talk show host returns to her childhood summer home to rebuild her life after she’s fired for falling ratings. The return is bittersweet as the house has been neglected for years. She’s flooded with memories of the wonderful summers she spent with her sisters and cousins before a tragic event changed everything. Working to uncover what really happened the last summer they were all together, she reaches out to her family and the women all gather for an uneasy family reunion. As they share their stories they realize their recollections of their summer childhoods are vastly different and no one’s lives are what they’d dreamed of when they were children. But being together again helps them all to heal from the scars of the past.

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Desperation Audiobook: A Haunting Horror Experience – Free Download

Stephen King’s #1 national bestseller about a little mining town, Desperation, that many will enter on their way to somewhere else. But getting out is not easy as it would seem…

‘I see holes like eyes. My mind is full of them.’

For all intents and purposes, police officer Collie Entragian, chief law enforcement for the small mining town of Desperation, Nevada, appears to be completely insane. He’s taken to stopping vehicles along the desolate Interstate 50 and abducting unwary travelers with various unusual ploys. There’s something very wrong here in Desperation…and Officer Entragian is only at the surface of it. The secrets embedded in Desperation’s landscape, and the horrifying evil that infects the town like some viral hot zone, are both awesome and terrifying. But one of Entragian’s victims, young David Carver, seems to know—and it scares him nearly to death to realize this truth—that the forces being summoned to combat this frightful, maniacal aberration are of equal and opposite intensity…

History

Now It Can Be Told Audiobook Free: History Unraveled – Free Download

In this book I have written about some aspects of the war which, I believe, the world must know and remember, not only as a memorial of men’s courage in tragic years, but as a warning of what will happen again–surely–if a heritage of evil and of folly is not cut out of the hearts of peoples. Here it is the reality of modern warfare not only as it appears to British soldiers, of whom I can tell, but to soldiers on all the fronts where conditions were the same…

The purpose of this book is to get deeper into the truth of this war and of all war–not by a more detailed narrative of events, but rather as the truth was revealed to the minds of men, in many aspects, out of their experience; and by a plain statement of realities, however painful, to add something to the world’s knowledge out of which men of good-will may try to shape some new system of relationship between one people and another, some new code of international morality, preventing or at least postponing another massacre of youth like that five years’ sacrifice of boys of which I was a witness.
– Summary by Philip Gibbs, from the Preface

MysteryThriller & Horror

Deadly Cross Audiobook: A Thrilling Mystery Review – Free Download

The murder of a glamorous DC socialite becomes Alex Cross’s deadliest case since Along Came a Spider.
Kay Willingham led a life as glamorous as it was public—she was a gorgeous Georgetown socialite, philanthropist, and the ex-wife of the vice president. So why was she parked in a Bentley convertible idling behind a DC private school, in the middle of the night, with the man who was the head of that school? Who shot them both, point blank, and why? The shocking double homicide is blazed across the internet, TV, newspapers—and across Alex Cross's mind. Kay had been his patient once. And maybe more.

While John Sampson of DC Metro Police investigates the last movements of Christopher Randall, the educator killed along with Kay Willingham, detective Alex Cross and FBI special agent Ned Mahoney find unanswered questions from Willingham's past, before she arrived in DC and became known in DC society as someone who could make things happen. They travel to Alabama to investigate Kay's early years. There they find a world of trouble, corruption, and secrets, all of them closed to outsiders like Cross and Mahoney.

Kay had many enemies, but all of them seemed to need her alive. The harder the investigators push, the more resistance they find when they leave behind the polite law offices and doctors' quarters of the state capital. Alex Cross will need to use all his skills as a doctor, a detective, and a family man to prevent that resistance from turning lethal . . . again.

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Twelve (Book Two of The Passage Trilogy) Audiobook: Dystopian Epic – Free Download

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The end of the world was only the beginning. 

In his internationally bestselling and critically acclaimed novel The Passage, Justin Cronin constructed an unforgettable world transformed by a government experiment gone horribly wrong. Now the scope widens and the intensity deepens as the epic story surges forward . . .

In the present day, as the man-made apocalypse unfolds, three strangers navigate the chaos. Lila, a doctor and an expectant mother, is so shattered by the spread of violence and infection that she continues to plan for her child’s arrival even as society dissolves around her. Kittridge, known to the world as “Last Stand in Denver,” has been forced to flee his stronghold and is now on the road, dodging the infected, armed but alone and well aware that a tank of gas will get him only so far. April is a teenager fighting to guide her little brother safely through a landscape of death and ruin. These three will learn that they have not been fully abandoned—and that in connection lies hope, even on the darkest of nights.

One hundred years in the future, Amy and the others fight on for humankind’s salvation . . . unaware that the rules have changed. The enemy has evolved, and a dark new order has arisen with a vision of the future infinitely more horrifying than man’s extinction. If the Twelve are to fall, one of those united to vanquish them will have to pay the ultimate price.

A heart-stopping thriller rendered with masterful literary skill, The Twelve is a grand and gripping tale of sacrifice and survival.

Look for the entire Passage trilogy:
THE PASSAGE | THE TWELVE | THE CITY OF MIRRORS

Praise for The Twelve
 
“[A] literary superthriller.”—The New York Times Book Review
 
“An undeniable and compelling epic . . . a complex narrative of flight and forgiveness, of great suffering and staggering loss, of terrible betrayals and incredible hope.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
 
“The Twelve is even better than The Passage.”—The Plain Dealer
 
“A compulsive read.”—San Francisco Chronicle
 
“Gripping . . . Cronin [introduces] eerie new elements to his masterful mythology. . . . Enthralling, emotional and entertaining.”—The San Diego Union-Tribune
 
“Fine storytelling.”—Associated Press
 
“Cronin is one of those rare authors who works on two different levels, blending elegantly crafted literary fiction with cliff-hanging thrills.”—Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Biography & Memoir

Not That Kind of Girl Audiobook: A Memoir Review – Free Download

For readers of Nora Ephron, Tina Fey, and David Sedaris, this hilarious, poignant, and extremely frank collection of personal essays confirms Lena Dunham—the acclaimed creator, producer, and star of HBO’s Girls—as one of the brightest and most original writers working today.
 
“If I can take what I’ve learned in this life and make one treacherous relationship or degrading job easier for you, perhaps even prevent you from becoming temporarily vegan, then every misstep of mine will have been worthwhile. This book contains stories about wonderful nights with terrible boys and terrible days with wonderful friends, about ambition and the two existential crises I had before the age of twenty. About fashion and its many discontents. About publicly sharing your body, having to prove yourself in a meeting full of fifty-year-old men, and the health fears (tinnitus, lamp dust, infertility) that keep me up at night. I’m already predicting my future shame at thinking I had anything to offer you with this book,  but also my future glory in having stopped you from trying an expensive juice cleanse or having the kind of sexual encounter where you keep your sneakers on. No, I am not a sexpert, a psychologist, or a registered dietician. I am not a married mother of three or the owner of a successful hosiery franchise. But I am a girl with a keen interest in self-actualization, sending hopeful dispatches from the front lines of that struggle.”

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