Language Arts Audiobooks | Language Instruction

7,000 Universes: How the Languages We Speak Shape the Way We Think

Lera Boroditsky (Author), TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Centre Stage: Lessons from Actors on the Art of Charisma

Jeannette Nelson (Author), Jeannette Nelson, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Guilty by Definition: The debut murder mystery from the genius of Countdown's Dictionary Corner

An anonymous letter arrives at the offices of the Clarendon English Dictionary containing a challenge for the team of lexicographers working there. It's clear that's it's not the usual run-of-the-mill, eccentric enquiry. The letter hints at secrets, lies and a year. 2010. For Martha Thornhill, the new senior editor, that year can mean only one thing: the summer her brilliant, beautiful older sister Charlie went missing. After a decade living abroad, Martha has returned to her father, her family home and the city whose institutions have defined her family, but the ghosts she thought at rest were only waiting for her to return. More letters arrive, pointing towards a secret in the heart of the dictionary itself. As Martha and her colleagues start pulling apart the clues, the questions become more insistent and troubling. Charlie's disappearance is one of a series of secret absences going back centuries, and someone wants to keep those secrets buried.

Susie Dent (Author), Jack Edwards, Louise Brealey, Susie Dent, Unknown (Narrator)

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Writing on Empty: A Guide to Finding Your Voice

Bestselling author and teacher Natalie Goldberg shares her inspiring personal journey out of a devastating period of writer’s block and back into a life of growth, creativity, and healing. Natalie Goldberg has been writing for the past fifty years. But at the beginning of the pandemic, she suddenly wasn’t able to write anymore. Her imaginative wellspring had dried up, and she was forced to ask herself: what do I do when what has always worked for me doesn’t work anymore? In this beautifully written, inspiring personal account, Natalie shares her harrowing journey out of creative paralysis and back onto the page. When all of her tried and true methods – meditation, sitting still, writing practice – stopped working, she had to take drastic action. She got into her car and left New Mexico in search of a new inventive source. In her journey through the western states, she visited famous literary sites, searching for the spark that would reignite her ability to write. And, next to Hemingway’s grave, she found it. “Get going,” he seemed to say to her, and she did. Now, Natalie shares her story of traveling through literary and personal memory to clarify her way forward, struggling to make sense of her difficult relationships with parents and teachers, and digging into her long-held grief. Ultimately, she discovers how to write through the emptiness in order to fill up the world with compassion, healing, and renewed liveliness. For anyone struggling to reconnect with their own creative source, Writing on Empty is a gentle and instructive guidebook back to remembering what truly matters.

Natalie Goldberg (Author), Natalie Goldberg, TBD (Narrator)

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Break, Blow, Burn, and Make: A Writer's Thoughts on Creation

When a writer and the Creator work together, the universe is set in order. Centuries ago, sound theology and good fiction were friends and not strangers. Decades ago, authors strove not for self-expression and self-disclosure but for a mastery of craft and language and books that transformed the reader with wisdom and love. In more recent years, the old ideals have been exchanged for lesser ones. Few guides to writing, which tend to focus on mechanics, point of view, and plot, address the more important matters of meaning, depth, and heart. But it is the latter qualities that make a book a blessing and gift to both writer and reader. Like Christ's invitation to follow, they demand a risk and sacrifice of the self and all it holds dear. Writers from George MacDonald to James Baldwin understood this, but in recent years this understanding has been lost. Making old things new, this book proposes an ethics of reading, writing, and living based on truth and love. Break, Blow, Burn, & Make returns the literary conversation to the practices of co-creation with God. Part bugle call, part compass for writing and for life, and part love song to the books that set us on fire, it offers those who are willing to receive it the courage to live, read, and write more deeply and honestly.

E. Lily Yu (Author), Nancy Peterson, TBD (Narrator)

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Write Yourself In

Write authentic, memorable college essays that will help you get into the right school for you with this guidebook from a veteran college admissions expert. Every spring, over one million high school juniors embark on an annual rite of passage: applying to college. And with college admission rates at an all-time low, getting into a competitive school is now tougher than ever. At the top schools, a strong transcript and great test scores will get your application noticed, but it's your essays, and the personal story that they highlight, that will get you admitted. But often, students don't know where to start. Teens fret over topics because they don't know what college admissions officers are looking for. They bend over backwards to write what they think colleges want to read, instead of telling their authentic story—which is what admissions officers actually want—in a way that will resonate with their readers. They also struggle because college essays, which are narrative, first-person, and introspective require a different set of skills from academic, expository writing they've been learning for years in the classroom. Seasoned college admissions expert and educator Eric Tipler has seen this firsthand. Teens and their parents spend countless, anxiety-filled hours crafting and refining essays that are often lackluster. In Write Yourself In, Tipler meets students where they are, and provides comprehensive actionable advice in a warm and conversational tone. He demonstrates how to craft a winning essay, one that is authentic, vulnerable, and demonstrative of qualities like personal growth and emotional maturity. Instead of formulas, Write Yourself In gives students step-by-step processes for brainstorming, outlining, writing, and revising essays. It encourages them to seek out feedback at key points in the process, something Tipler has found to be vital to helping students produce their best writing. Further, the book includes sidebars that teach essential components of good storytelling, a "secret weapon" in the admissions process. In addition to the admissions essay, Write Yourself In also covers the most common supplemental essays on topics like community, diversity, openness to others' viewpoints, and why their school is a good fit for the student scholarship essays, as well as scholarship essays. Tipler includes sections that address current topics like the widespread use of ChatGPT and the discussion of race in the admissions essay, a facet of the student's application that will have newfound importance given the Supreme Court decision on affirmative action. Written with both the parent and teen in mind, Write Yourself In is the go-to handbook for writing a great college essay.

Eric Tipler (Author), Max Meyers, TBD (Narrator)

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The Book-Makers: A History of the Book in 18 Remarkable Lives

Brought to you by Penguin. The Book-Makers is a celebration of the printed book, from the late fifteenth century to the early twenty-first, told through the lives of eighteenth extraordinary men and women who made the book as we know it - printers and typesetters, publishers and illustrators, paper-makers and library founders, as well as eccentrics and artists who continued to re-invent it. Some of these names are familiar. We meet the jobbing printer Benjamin Franklin who preferred to produce popular almanacs to canonical literature. We witness how William Morris made books as if they were medieval manuscripts, even though that age had long passed. And we encounter the socialite Nancy Cunard, running a small press printing avantgarde titles from a farmhouse in France. Others have been forgotten, even written out of history. We don't remember Sarah Eaves, wife of John Baskerville, and her crucial contribution to the famous typeface named after her husband. Not to speak of Charles Edward Mudie - perhaps the most influential figure in book publishing before Jeff Bezos - the populariser of the circulating library, who created both the 'general reader' and set the standards for literary taste. The history of the book is the story of the men and women who made it. The Book-Makers puts people back into that story: it's not a determinist account of technological change, nor a chronology of inventions, but a narrative teeming with lives, and a history that is full of the contingencies and quirks, the successes and failures, the routes forward and the paths not taken, of eighteen remarkable individuals. ©2024 Adam Smyth (P)2024 Penguin Audiov

Adam Smyth (Author), Adam Smyth, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

On the Art of the Craft: A Guidebook to Collaborative Storytelling

A writing companion, inspirational guide to the craft, and anthology featuring outstanding essays from the acclaimed nonprofit mentoring organization on its twenty-fifth anniversary helping underserved youth find their voice. We all have stories to tell, but not everyone gets the training or encouragement necessary to be great storytellers. Founded a quarter century ago, the Girls Write Now mentoring program has helped young women and gender expansive youth unleash their creative talent to gain confidence and skills that last a lifetime. When these underserved communities get to tell their stories in their most powerful voices, we all benefit from their insight, empathy, ideas, ingenuity, and ultimately hope. In celebration of the organization’s more than two decades working with youth, this hands-on guide gives aspiring young writers the tools they need to develop their own skills—including tips, insights on the writing and publishing process, critical thinking about the future of storytelling, and advice on how to become a writer—drawn from their creative workshops and one-on-one mentoring. With this handbook, readers everywhere can develop their own talents, thoughts, and ideas to become the writers—and leaders—they are capable of becoming, no matter their pathway in life. On the Art of the Craft is structured around three main themes: Creation, Combination, and Transformation. From the organization’s remarkable archive, current mentees have selected topical and resonant pieces and addressed them, crafting their own essay in conversation with the past. At the end of each piece, readers will find prompts they can use to craft their own responses. Both uplifting and practical, this book, written by young people, is meant to help the upcoming generations empower each other. Showcasing rising talents, offering fresh and welcome new perspectives, and providing hands-on tools, community, and encouragement, On the Art of the Craft will inspire change for all.

Girls Write Now (Author), Alice Wen, Dana Wing Lau, Elena Rey, Grace Capeless, Karen Chilton, Nicky Endres, Nikki Massoud, Rachel Perry, Reader Tbd 1, Tyla Collier (Narrator)

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Farnsworth's Classical English Argument

Learn how to argue from the masters. This book is a complete course on the art of argument, taught by the greatest practitioners of it: Churchill, Lincoln, and hundreds of others from the golden age of debate in England and America. The book's concise chapters provide lessons in all aspects of give and take-the syllogism and the slippery slope, the argumentum ad hominem and reductio ad absurdum, the fallacy and the insult. Ward Farnsworth shows how the full range of such techniques can be used or repelled, and illustrates them with examples that are fascinating and instructive. The result is a must-listen reference in which every page is a pleasure. It will leave you better able to win arguments and to defend yourself under fire. It's also an entertaining reminder that argument can be a source of beauty and delight. As Farnsworth says of the illustrations, they show talented advocates 'crossing analytical swords and exchanging abuse when those things were done with more talent and dignity than is common today. They made argument a spectator sport of lasting value and interest.'

Ward Farnsworth (Author), Derek Perkins (Narrator)

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Story Like You Mean It: How to Build and Use Your Personal Narrative to Illustrate Who You Really Ar

Each of us has a story to share, a mixture of lived experiences-planned and unplanned-that come together and give our existence shape and identity. But in a world where we rely on screens and images for communication and self-expression, do we truly know how to tell our story? Do you know how to tell yours? In Story Like You Mean It, Dr. Dennis Rebelo helps you communicate with ease and connect with others by constructing a self-narrative with intention and purpose. At the intersection of academic theory and practical experience, Dr. Rebelo shares insights he has gained coaching clients on how to build and then share their life-work narratives. Students from the US Navy and CVS Health's Executive Learning Series for Diverse Suppliers, and even NFL alumni, have used Dr. Rebelo's Peak Storytelling model to navigate personal history, reflect on influential moments, and compellingly communicate their true value. What raw experiences made you who you are today? How do you express them meaningfully to showcase your worth? Dive into the intricacies of StoryPathing, become the master of your own narrative, and reap the benefits of sharing who you truly are.

Dr. Dennis Rebelo (Author), Asa Siegel (Narrator)

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Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York

Half of all 7,000-plus human languages may disappear over the next century and when they're gone, it will be forever. Ross Perlin, a linguist and codirector of the Manhattan-based non-profit Endangered Language Alliance, is racing against time to map little-known languages across the most linguistically diverse city in history: contemporary New York. Perlin recounts the unique history of immigration that shaped the city, and follows six remarkable yet ordinary speakers of endangered languages deep into their communities to learn how they are maintaining and reviving their languages. Seke is spoken by 700 people from five ancestral villages in Nepal, a hundred of whom have lived in a single Brooklyn apartment building. N'ko is a radical new West African writing system now going global in Harlem and the Bronx. After centuries of colonization and displacement, Lenape, the city's original Indigenous language and the source of the name Manhattan ('the place where we get bows'), has just one fluent native speaker, bolstered by a small band of revivalists. A century after the anti-immigration Johnson-Reed Act closed America's doors for decades and on the 400th anniversary of New York's colonial founding, Perlin raises the alarm about growing political threats and the onslaught of 'killer languages' like English and Spanish.

Ross Perlin (Author), Ross Perlin (Narrator)

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The Secret Lives of Booksellers & Librarians

Brought to you by Penguin. To be a bookseller or librarian . . . You have to play detective. Be a treasure hunter. A matchmaker. A brilliant listener. A person who creates a kind of magic by pulling a book from a shelf, handing it to someone and saying, 'You've got to read this. You're going to love it'. In this love letter to the heroes of literacy, James Patterson uncovers true stories from booksellers and librarians. Prepare to enter a world where you can feed your curiosities, discover new voices, and find whatever you need. Meet the smart and talented people who live between the shelves - and who can't wait to help you find your next great read. PRAISE FOR JAMES PATTERSON 'No one gets this big without amazing natural storytelling talent - which is what Jim has, in spades.' LEE CHILD 'James Patterson is The Boss. End of.' IAN RANKIN 'The master storyteller of our times' HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON ©2024 James Patterson (P)2024 Penguin Audio

James Patterson (Author), Amy Jensen, Daniel Henning, Deanna Anthony, Jane Oppenheimer, Jenn Lee, Jennifer Pickens, Marni Penning, Nancy Peterson, Rob Reider, Susan Hanfield, TBD, Tom Force (Narrator)

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Language Arts Audiobooks in Language Instruction