Audiobooks narrated by Alex Picard

Behind the Dress: One Woman's Life in a Religious Cult, and the Healing That Came After

Have you known someone who was in a cult? Do you think you know your neighbors pretty well? You really don't know what's going on behind the smile, the dress, and the doors of the house down the street. This is the story of a Canadian woman who was in the Advanced Training Institute, run by Bill Gothard, for fourteen years. The amazing thing is that she never knew she was in a cult until several years after she was out. That's what happened to Christine in 2014. She has spent the past nine years trying to deprogram and change the way she sees the world. The Advanced Training Institute had all the hallmarks of a cult, it even fit Bill Gothard's definition of a cult, but Christine and her family believed they were God's cream of the crop. Join her as she navigates the cult, goes through a divorce, finds out she was in a cult and subsequently has to unlearn all she believed to be true. Interestingly, this is the same cult the Duggar family of 19 Kids and Counting is a part of. Written with humor and candor, her story is both heart wrenching and humorous at the same time.

Christine Faour (Author), Alex Picard (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Scarab Mission

A scavenger and her oddball crew are catapulted into the midst of a strange secret at the heart of a derelict colony ship among the Billion Worlds of the Tenth Millennium in a new novel of explosive SF from James L. Cambias. Solana Sina is a scarab, salvaging wrecked and abandoned space habitats among the Billion Worlds of the Tenth Millennium. She and an oddball crew-a raven, a cyborg, and a dinosaur-board the derelict colony Safdaghar hoping to score some loot before the colony gets catapulted into the outer reaches of the Solar System. But Solana and the scarabs come face-to-face with a gang of vicious pirates looking for slaves and treasure, and a mysterious stranger intent on preserving an explosive secret. Solana must overcome her own horrifying past to survive and escape before it's too late. But there's an even more dangerous threat lurking in the dark passages and ruined buildings of Safdaghar . . .

James L. Cambias (Author), Alex Picard (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Family Business

Decades ago, the Visitors descended on Earth. They claimed to bring peace and prosperity. Their real goal was the total subjugation of humankind. But humanity did not give up its only home without a fight. After a devastating war, the Visitors were driven back to Mars. Their millions of willing human collaborators were left behind. The task of hunting down these former alien collaborators and bringing them to justice falls to Federal Recovery Agents like Nathan Foster. Now, Nathan Foster is tasked with bringing to justice Emmogene Anderson. As a teenager, Emmogene was experimented on by the Visitors and implated with a device that allows her to control other people. With her is her obsessive ex-lover, who was also a former commando of the Visitors' forces. It's an easy enough job-but Emmogene has been implanted with something else, something much more important. Nathan and Ben must decide what is right in a largely lawless world-and the fate of the planet hangs in the balance. Contains mature themes.

Mike Kupari (Author), Alex Picard (Narrator)

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The Breakthrough Manifesto: Ten Principles to Spark Transformative Innovation

Innovation is a process by which new ideas, services, and sources of value are brought to life. Yet approaches to the pursuit of innovation are often far from novel, relying on stale methodologies applied against well-defined problem sets. Transformative innovation requires something else. Not just methodologies, but mindsets. Not just focusing on known challenges, but on unknown opportunities. Not just hoping for breakthrough by default, but realizing breakthrough by design. In The Breakthrough Manifesto, a renowned business innovation leader teams up with a social-personality psychologist to offer that something else-a collection of ten visionary principles to obliterate barriers to change and ignite a whole new level of creative problem-solving. Drawing upon decades of experience working with the world's best-known organizations and their teams, the authors provide practical advice that goes beyond 'business as usual' for successfully tackling intractable challenges. The Breakthrough Manifesto explores why these principles are critical for the current times and how they can spark breakthrough and unlock potential for you and your teams. Whether you're an executive or manager, product or service designer, educator or student, this book is a must-listen for anyone inspired to change the world or transform their own place in it.

Kim Christfort, Suzanne Vickberg (Author), Alex Picard (Narrator)

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From Conquest to Colony: Empire, Wealth, and Difference in Eighteenth-Century Brazil

A new history of Brazil's eighteenth century that foregrounds debates about wealth, difference, and governance Transformations in Portugal and Brazil followed the discovery of gold in Brazil's hinterland and the hinterland's subsequent settlement. Although earlier conquests and evangelizations had incorporated new lands and peoples into the monarchy, royal officials now argued that the extraction of gold and the imperatives of rivalry and commerce demanded new approaches to governance to ensure that Brazil's wealth flowed to Portugal and into imperial networks of exchange. Using archival records of royal and local administrations, as well as contemporary print culture, Kirsten Schultz shows how the eighteenth-century Portuguese crown came to define and defend Brazil as a 'colony' that would reinvigorate Portuguese power. Making Brazil a colony entailed reckoning with dynamic societies that encompassed Indigenous peoples, Africans, and Europeans; the free and the enslaved; the wealthy and the poor. It also involved regulating social relations defined by legal status, ancestry, labor, and wealth to ensure that Portuguese America complemented and supported, rather than reproduced, metropolitan ways of producing and consuming wealth.

Kirsten Schultz (Author), Alex Picard (Narrator)

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Soldier On: A Woman's Memoir of Resilience and Hope

Soldier On is a true story about what it means to become a woman, and how the heat of hardships can forge strong character and lead to a purposeful life. The daughter of an Auschwitz survivor, author Bracha Horovitz spent her childhood surrounded by people who worked fervently to establish the fledgling nation of Israel after its 1948 independence. Inspired by their resilience and fortitude, Bracha set her heart on living a life that would honor her family, her community, and her heritage. At eighteen, Bracha joined the Israel Defense Forces. Alongside other female soldiers, she parachuted from planes, marched through hot deserts, and learned to shoot machine guns. Intense military training taught her that women, too, can be fierce fighters. Then, while serving at IDF headquarters among Israel’s top military leaders, she was selected to participate in the Miss Israel beauty pageant. For her, the experience raised new questions about the meaning of womanhood and her purpose in life. In a beautiful love story, Bracha married an honorable, entrepreneurial man. The two of them seemed to have it all—lucrative careers, a happy marriage, and a small family. Invited to work in the US, they struggled to maintain their Israeli identity while adapting to cross-cultural life. And then . . . tragedy struck. Hardship suddenly became a permanent aspect of Bracha’s everyday existence. Written with elegant prose and profound insights for our lives, Soldier On is the story of how one woman and her family discovered how they could, with courage and perseverance, transform suffering into a beautiful life. In an era that is brimming with anxiety and despair, this book reminds us that no amount of suffering can destroy hope and love.

Bracha Horovitz (Author), Alex Picard (Narrator)

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Deep Waters: A Memoir of Loss, Alaska Adventure, and Love Rekindled

In this intimate story of relationship resilience, marine biologist Beth Mathews’s adventurous life as a professor and mother in Alaska is upended when her healthy husband is slammed by a rare type of stroke. Jim’s radical approach to recovery clashes with Beth’s instinct to keep him safe at home and sets them on a collision course as he insists on ambitious sailing expeditions with Beth and their young son in Alaska’s magnificent yet unforgiving waters.

Beth Ann Mathews (Author), Alex Picard (Narrator)

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You Are Not Your Mother: Releasing Generational Trauma and Shame

What is your relationship to shame? How can you overcome it and live an intentional life of vulnerability? You Are Not Your Mother guides listeners on how to see shame, and live separately from it. Explore your personal roots to shame with an expert. As a top authority on recovering from growing up in toxic families, Karen C. L. Anderson walks you through her shame story, her relationship with her narcissistic mother, and the simple practices she has developed to alleviate guilt from unhealthy relationships. Author of bestselling Difficult Mothers, Adult Daughters with over 150,000 copies sold, Karen offers tools to process, understand, and move beyond childhood trauma so you can not only survive, but thrive. You'll find: Karen's story on dealing with a narcissistic mother and how she overcame her shame; journal prompts, mind-body practices, and simple exercises to release shame and toxic habits; and a guide on how to finally identify shame, and how to embrace living free from it. If you enjoy therapy books and content on emotion management, then this book is for you! If you liked I'm Glad My Mom Died, Mother Hunger, or Uprooting Shame And Guilt, you'll love You Are Not Your Mother.

Karen C. L. Anderson (Author), Alex Picard (Narrator)

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What the Ravens Sing

An arcane horror emerges from battle and blood. To stop it, Lily must risk becoming everything she fears. In a Europe devastated by four years of war, a platoon of elite Italian soldiers is horrifically and mysteriously slaughtered. Strangford's occult ability can uncover the truth behind the massacre, but a violent fate stalks him from the trenches. Only Lily stands a chance of changing its course. To save the man she loves, she must gather allies splintered by war, grief and betrayal, following the whisper of a gothic horror through ice-dimmed caverns and an ancient forest haunted by something worse than wolves. Far more than Strangford's life hangs in the balance. The future itself is threatened by monsters born from the bloodsoaked work of Lily's worst enemy. To stop them, she confront the darkest potential of a power that could tear her apart—and everything may depend upon who is left to pull her back together again. Prepare to fall into the shattering conclusion of The London Charismatics historical fantasy series, narrated by twenty-year acting veteran Alex Picard.

Jacquelyn Benson (Author), Alex Picard (Narrator)

Audiobook

Coil Quake Rift

When Margot learns she is carrying her husband Knox's child, she questions if she can bear another loss after a failed pregnancy divided her and Jason. Knox celebrates the news-despite the sorrow and guilt still lingering after his astrophysicist ex, Tiffany, died one year ago-until an earthquake jostles their Hollywood apartment and strips them of power. Moments later, when a small fissure opens in Venice Beach, Jason discovers an abandoned little girl outside his home. As authorities prove unable to help them, Jason determines that the already-fraught city and child are both worse off than he initially imagined. And Tiffany? After the sting of Knox's betrayal, she programmed the RIFT-a byproduct of her particle collider-to activate after her suicide. Thus, a ground-opening black hole is created, into which Margot, Knox, and Jason must descend. In multiple hall-of-mirror-like alternate universes, they are confronted with a choice: Accept the true pain of losing someone you love, or live a lie wherein the loved one was never lost?

Nathan Elias (Author), Alex Picard (Narrator)

Audiobook

Pulse

Staff Sergeant Grace Woods has had enough of pain. Her assignment as a cryptographer at an underground black site lets her focus on her precision work. She’s in control, shielded from past loss of everyone she loved. But Grace can’t control the sun. Massive solar flares create electromagnetic pulses, killing electricity on Earth and throwing Grace into a duplicate plane, and duplicate command populated by Fae. Immersed in her new world, threads tying her to a malevolent Fae and her former world multiply, her life unravelling at the repeating pattern of death. Is it her fault? Fate has never been in her hands, or on her side. Grace must choose among those she loves, and millions who will die. Fate will not force her hand. She will.

Jz York (Author), Alex Picard (Narrator)

Audiobook

Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker

An entertaining and eye-opening biography of America's most memorable first daughter From the moment Teddy Roosevelt's outrageous and charming teenage daughter strode into the White House-carrying a snake and dangling a cigarette-the outspoken Alice began to put her imprint on the whole of the twentieth-century political scene. Her barbed tongue was as infamous as her scandalous personal life, but whenever she talked, powerful people listened, and she reigned for eight decades as the social doyenne in a town where socializing was state business. Historian Stacy Cordery's unprecedented access to personal papers and family archives enlivens and informs this richly entertaining portrait of America?s most memorable first daughter and one of the most influential women in twentieth-century American society and politics. * This audiobook includes a downloadable PDF that contains the Roosevelt family tree from the book. Please feel free to refer to it as you listen along. The names in boldface are mentioned in Alice.

Stacy A. Cordery (Author), Alex Picard (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks Narrated by Alex Picard