Women Audiobooks | Biography & Memoir

I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Rick Bragg lends his remarkable narrative skills to the story of the most famous POW this country has known. In I Am a Soldier, Too, Bragg let's Jessica Lynch tell the story of her capture in the Iraq War in her own words-not the sensationalized ones of the media's initial reports. Here we see how a humble rural upbringing leads to a stint in the military, one of the most exciting job options for a young person in Palestine, West Virginia. We see the real story behind the ambush in the Iraqi Desert that led to Lynch's capture. And we gain new perspective on her rescue from an Iraqi hospital where she had been receiving care. Here Lynch's true heroism and above all, modesty, is allowed to emerge, as we're shown how she managed her physical recovery from her debilitating wounds and contended with the misinformation-both deliberate and unintended-surrounding her highly publicized rescue. In the end, what we see is a uniquely American story of courage and true heroism.

Rick Bragg (Author), Rick Bragg (Narrator)

Audiobook

Reflections: Life After the White House

Barbara Bush was born in Rye, New York, and married George H.W. Bush in 1945. She was the First Lady of the United States from 1989 to 1993. She has five children, including President George W. Bush and Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and is the founder of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy.

Barbara Bush (Author), Barbara Bush (Narrator)

Audiobook

Letters of a Woman Homesteader

After losing her husband, Elinore Pruitt washed clothes in Denver to support herself and her daughter. In 1909 she took a job working for a rancher near Burnt Fork, Wyoming. Subsequently she filed her own claim and married the rancher. The letters she wrote to her former employer over several years are packed with delightful stories and fascinating observations about her new life. In this audiobook, Kate Fleming, a gifted, award-winning, narrator, gives a marvelous performance, taking us back to Burnt Fork and a very rich slice of America's past. Elinore Pruitt Stewart was born at Fort Smith, Arkansas, in 1876. She spent most of her childhood in Oklahoma (Indian Territory). Her schooling came to an end when her teacher was lynched by a group of local men. At the age of fourteen both her parents died. She now had the task of raising her eight younger brothers and sisters. The three youngest were taken to live with their grandmother whereas Elinore and the five older children went to work for the local railroad company. Elinore eventually married a man much older than her. He was killed in an accident and despite having a young child, she trained to become a nurse. Elinore worked at a hospital in Burnt Fork but in her spare time wrote articles for the Kansas City Star. Later she moved with her daughter, Jerrine, to Denver, where she found work as a cook. In 1909 Elinore went to work for Clyde Stewart, at his isolated ranch in Denver. Six weeks later she married the 41 year old widower. Over the next few years the couple had four children. The first one died but the three boys survived childhood. Elinore wrote regular letters to Mrs. Coney, a former employer. Coney was impressed with the standard of Elinore's writing and arranged for them to be published in the Atlantic Monthly. They also appeared in two books, Letters of a Woman Homesteader (1914), and Letters on an Elk Hunt (1915). Elinore Pruitt Stewart died in 1933.

Elinore Pruitt Stewart (Author), Kate Fleming (Narrator)

Audiobook

Kitchen Privileges: Memoirs of a Bronx Girlhood

Even as a young girl, growing up in the Bronx, Mary Higgins Clark knew she wanted to be a writer, The gift of storytelling was a part of her Irish ancestry, so it followed naturally that she would later use her sharp eye, keen intelligence, and inquisitive nature to create stories. Along with all Americans, citizens of the Bronx suffered during the Depression. So when Mary's father died, her mother opened the family home to boarders and placed a discreet sign next to the front door that read, "Furnished Rooms. Kitchen Privileges." The family's struggle to make ends meet; her days as a scholarship student in an exclusive girls academy; the death of her beloved older brother in World War II; her marriage to Warren Clark; writing stories at the kitchen table; finally selling the first one for one hundred dollars, after six years and forty rejections -- all these experiences figure into Kitchen Privileges. Her husband's untimely death left her a widowed mother of five young children. Determined to care for her family and to make a career for herself, she wrote scripts for a radio show. In her spare time she began writing novels. Where Are The Children? became an international bestseller and launched her career. When asked if she might consider giving up writing for a life of leisure, Marv has replied, "Never. To be happy for a year, win the lottery. To be happy for life, do what you love.

Mary Higgins Clark (Author), Mary Higgins Clark (Narrator)

Audiobook

Lazy B: Growing up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest

What was it in Sandra Day O'Connor's background and early life that helped make her the woman she is today-the first female justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and one of the most powerful women in America? In this beautiful, illuminating, and unusual book, Sandra Day O'Connor, with her brother, Alan, tells the story of the Day family and of growing up on the harsh yet beautiful land of the Lazy B Ranch in Arizona. Laced throughout these stories about three generations of the Day family, and everyday life on the Lazy B, are the lessons Sandra and Alan learned about the world, about people, self-reliance, and survival, and the reader will learn how the values of the Lazy B shaped them and their lives. Sandra's grandfather first put some cattle on open grazing land in 1886, and the Lazy B developed and continued to prosper as Sandra's parents, who eloped and then lived on the Lazy B all their lives, carved out a frugal and happy life for themselves and their three children on the rugged frontier. As you read about the daily adventures, the cattle drives and roundups, the cowboys and horses, the continual praying for rain and fixing of windmills, the values instilled by a self-reliant way of life, you see how Sandra Day O'Connor grew up. This fascinating glimpse of life in the American Southwest in the last century recounts an interesting time in our history, and gives us an enduring portrait of an independent young woman on the brink of becoming one of the most prominent figures in America today.

H. Alan Day, Sandra Day O'Connor (Author), Sandra Day O'Connor (Narrator)

Audiobook

Special Agent

A twenty-year veteran of the FBI, Candice DeLong worked on some of the toughest hig-stakes criminal investigations of our time. As a field profiler, DeLong collected evidence at the scene of the crime to creat a specific portrait of criminals via behavioral patterns, character traits, background, etc. Special Agent is her remarkable personal story– of drama and danger on the front lines of law enforcement, of the art and science of criminal profiling, and of the challenge of maintaining courage, wise-cracking humor, and grace under fire. Candice DeLong tailed terrorists and helped track the notorious Tylenol killer; she was one of three agents hand-picked to mastermind the Montana manhunt for the Unabomber; and she went undercover for major stings, sometimes in such exotic roles as a gangster’s moll, and as a madam of a call-girl ringdubbed the "Candy Store." As Profiling Coordinator, she was Chicago’s and until her recent retirement, San Francisco’s link to the Bureau’s legendary Behavioral Science Unit, spearheading investigations into the most recondite serial murders and sex crimes. Packed with fascinating details about her job, Special Agent reveals what life is like for a woman and for an agent on the front lines.

Candice DeLong (Author), Candice DeLong (Narrator)

Audiobook

It's Always Something

A month before her death on May 20, 1989, Gilda Radner entered a Los Angeles recording studio to deliver what would be her final performance - this remarkable audio autobiography, in which she reveals the inspirational story of her struggle with cancer...a private, personal battle in which the humor and humanity that has touched millions became her most powerful weapon.

Gilda Radner (Author), Gilda Radner (Narrator)

Audiobook

Land of a Thousand Hills: My Life in Rwanda

When Rosamond Halsey Carr first arrived in Africa, she didn't realize that she would spend the rest of her life there. As a young fashion illustrator living in New York City in the 1940s, she seemed the least likely candidate for such a life of adventure. But marriage to a hunter-explorer took her to what was then the Belgian Congo, and divorce left her determined to stay on in neighboring Rwanda as the manager of a flower plantation. In the ensuing half century she witnessed the fall of colonialism, the wars for independence, the loss of her friend, Dian Fossey, the relentless clashes of the Hutus and Tutsis, and finally, 1994's horrific genocide, of which she provides an unparalleled first-hand account. This is the epic story of a woman alone in an exotic land, struggling to survive untold hardships only to emerge with an extraordinary love for her adopted country and its people.

Ann Halsey Howard, Rosamond Halsey Carr (Author), C. M. Hébert, C.M. Hebert, C.M. Herbert (Narrator)

Audiobook

Under the Tuscan Sun

A CLASSIC FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF UNDER MAGNOLIA Frances Mayes—widely published poet, gourmet cook, and travel writer—opens the door to a wondrous new world when she buys and restores an abandoned villa in the spectacular Tuscan countryside. In evocative language, she brings the reader along as she discovers the beauty and simplicity of life in Italy. Mayes also creates dozens of delicious seasonal recipes from her traditional kitchen and simple garden, all of which she includes in the book. Doing for Tuscany what M.F.K. Fisher and Peter Mayle did for Provence, Mayes writes about the tastes and pleasures of a foreign country with gusto and passion.

Frances Mayes (Author), Frances Mayes (Narrator)

Audiobook

Out of Africa

"When I was a young girl, it was very far from my thoughts to go to Africa, nor did I dream then that an African farm should be the place in which I should be perfectly happy." After the failure of her coffee farm, Karen Blixen returned to Denmark, where she wrote this classic account of her experiences. Out of Africa is a celebration of her life there and her friendship with the various peoples of the area. Her sympathetic response to the landscape and animals are drawn with warmth and unusual clarity.

Isak Dinesen (Author), Julie Harris (Narrator)

Audiobook

Barbara Bush: A Memoir

Barbara Bush is certainly among the most popular First Ladies ever to live in the White House. Politics aside, people worldwide have come to admire her wit, her candor and compassion, as well as her unswerving devotion to her husband and children. In her memoir, Mrs. Bush for the first time gives readers a very private look at a life lived in the public eye for more than twenty-five years. She begins with a compelling portrait of her early years, including: growing up in Rye, New York, and meeting George Bush; life as a young bride and mother, moving far away from home to West Texas; and the almost unbearable pain of losing a child. With contemporary American history as the backdrop, Mrs. Bush remembers the shock of learning that her fiance has been shot down in the Pacific during World War II; the disbelief when a black friend is refused service in a Southern restaurant in the 1950s; and the fear when she is caught in the middle of a student protest march in the 1960s. She recounts her years in public life, from first moving to Washington when George Bush was elected to Congress; to her experience living in New York as the wife of the Ambassador to the United Nations and in China as wife of the U.S. envoy. She talks candidly about the ups and downs of three presidential campaigns and describes her role as the wife of the Vice President, culminating in the climactic White House years. Drawing upon excerpts from her diary, which she has compiled for more than thirty years, Mrs. Bush takes us behind the scenes of the Persian Gulf conflict and the end of the Cold War. She talks about both the Bushes' struggle to overcome Graves' disease and how she faced the controversy that erupted at Wellesley College before her commencement speech. Through the friendships she developed over the years with world leaders and their spouses, we meet and get to know the Gorbachevs, the Thatchers, the Mitterrands, the Mubaraks, and many others. And she tells us why she threw so much of her energy and compassion behind the important cause of making more Americans literate. This memoir includes hundreds of the funny, often self-deprecating, and occasionally touching anecdotes for which Mrs. Bush is well known: surprising a rat while swimming in the White House pool; accidentally stomping on Boris Yeltsin's foot under the table during a state dinner; wearing a $29 pair of shoes for her husband's inaugural ball. She also talks about the disappointments of the 1992 presidential campaign and the joys of rediscovering private life, including driving and cooking again for the first time in twelve years. This is a warm and funny memoir that will charm Mrs. Bush's millions of admirers and earn her many more.

Barbara Bush (Author), Barbara Bush (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Hiding Place

At one time, Corrie ten Boom would have laughed at the idea that she had a story to tell. For the first fifty years of her life, nothing out of the ordinary ever happened to her. She was an old-maid watchmaker living contentedly with her sister and their elderly father in the tiny Dutch house over their shop. Their uneventful days, as regulated as their own watches, revolved around their abiding love for one another. But with the Nazi invasion and occupation of Holland, everything changed. Corrie ten Boom and her family became leaders in the Dutch underground, hiding Jewish people in their home in a specially built room and aiding their escape from the Nazis. For their pains, all but Corrie found death in a concentration camp. Here is a story aglow with the glory of God and the courage of a quiet Christian spinster whose life was transformed by it.

Corrie Ten Boom (Author), Nadia May (Narrator)

Audiobook

Women Audiobooks in Biography & Memoir