Audiobooks narrated by Christa Lewis

Same River, Twice: Putin's War on Women Audiobook

Blending the journalistic rigor of Masha Gessen with the call to action of We Should All Be Feminists, a startling denunciation of Vladimir Putin’s war on women that reveals how modern Russia’s history of weaponizing sexual violence against women is part of the Russian leader’s strategy to retain political influence and domination. On March 22, 2023, the Swedish Academy organized a conference on threats to freedom of expression and democracy, featuring a roster of stellar speakers, including Arundhati Roy, Timothy Snyder, and Sofi Oksanen. Oksanen’s address—“Putin's War on Women”—generated such interest that the acclaimed Finnish writer used it as the basis for a larger, in-depth look at Putin’s threat to women. The result is Same River Twice, a devastating expose that builds on the themes and arguments introduced in Oksanen’s urgent and incisive speech. During the Soviet occupation of Estonia, Oksanen's great aunt was arrested and brutally interrogated—a terrifying experience that permanently traumatized her, leaving her silent for the rest of her life. Same River Twice uses this family story to illustrate the systematic crimes perpetrated by Russian soldiers and the Russian government for nearly a century. From the Russian military's entry into Berlin in 1945 to its modern invasion of Ukraine, Russia has continually employed violence against women when fighting its enemies—including using rape as instrument of war. But as Oksanen reveals, such violence has never before been used on such a widespread scale. Life for women in Putin's Russia is little better; gender equality is in decline, women are silenced by the legal system, and rape is used to humiliate victims, especially women in media. Oksanen's sober analysis exposes how, under Putin, genocide and misogyny are inextricably linked: misogyny undergirds Russia’s international alliances, threatening the rights of women and minorities worldwide. As Oksanen ominously reminds us, “In Ukraine, sexual violence is an integral part of genocide. In domestic politics, misogyny is a tool used by the Kremlin to prevent women from rising to power. In international politics, it is a tool of Russian imperialism.” As the threats to democracy grow stronger around the globe, this powerful and timely book is a warning that must not be ignored. Translated from the Finnish by Owen F. Witesman

Sofi Oksanen (Author), Christa Lewis, TBD (Narrator)

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Schubert: A Musical Wayfarer

An insightful biography of the great composer, revealing Schubert's complex and fascinating private life alongside his musical genius Brilliant, short-lived, incredibly prolific-Schubert is one of the most intriguing figures in music history. While his music attracts a wide audience, much of his private life remains shrouded in mystery, and significant portions of his work have been overlooked. In this major new biography, Lorraine Byrne Bodley takes a detailed look into Schubert's life, from his early years at the Stadtkonvikt to the harrowing battle with syphilis that led to his death at the age of thirty-one. Drawing on extensive archival research in Vienna and the Czech Republic, and reconsidering the meaning of some of his best-known works, Bodley provides a fuller account than ever before of Schubert's extraordinary achievement and incredible courage. This is a compelling new portrait of one of the most beloved composers of the nineteenth century.

Lorraine Byrne Bodley (Author), Christa Lewis (Narrator)

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The United States of English: The American Language from Colonial Times to the Twenty-First Century

The story of how English became American-and how it became Southern, Bostonian, Californian, African American, Chicano, elite, working-class, urban, rural, and everything in between By the time of the Revolution, the English that Americans spoke was recognizably different from the British variety. Americans added dozens of new words to the language, either borrowed from Native Americans (raccoon, persimmon, caucus) or created from repurposed English (backwoods, cane brake, salt lick). Americans had their own pronunciations (bath rhymed with hat, not hot) and their own spelling (honor, not honour), not to mention a host of new expressions that grew out of the American landscape and culture (blaze a trail, back track, pull up stakes). Americans even invented their own slang, like stiff as a ringbolt to mean drunk. American English has continued to grow and change ever since. The United States of English tells the engrossing tale of how the American language evolved over four hundred years, explaining both how and why it changed and which parts of the 'mother tongue' it preserved (I guess was heard in the British countryside long before it became a typical Americanism). Plentiful examples of the American vernacular, past and present, bring the language to life and make for an engaging as well as enlightening listen.

Rosemarie Ostler (Author), Christa Lewis (Narrator)

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Star-Crossed: A True Romeo and Juliet Story in Hitler's Paris

Paris, 1940. The City of Light has fallen under German Occupation. Among patriotic Parisians, the pursuit of art, culture, and jazz have become bold acts of defiance. So has forbidden romance for talented and spirited Jewish teenager Annette Zelman and dashing young Catholic poet Jean Jausion. Despite their devout families' vehement opposition, the young couple finds acceptance at the famed Cafe de Flore, whose habitues include Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Picasso, Django Reinhardt, and other luminaries of the Latin Quarter's creative world. For a time, Annette and Jean feel they have eluded the brute might of the relentless Nazis-and more immediately, their parents' threats and demands. But as restrictions on the Jewish community escalate to arrests and deportations, the maleficent forces gathering around the young lovers set them on divergent and tragically inevitable paths. Drawn from never-before-published family letters and other treasures, as well as archival sources and exclusive interviews, Star-Crossed offers us precious insight into the Holocaust and the lives French people bravely led under the Hitler regime. This breathtaking true story of beauty, art, liberation, and the transformative power of love resonates with an intimate story of undying devotion, seen through the prism of history.

Heather Dune Macadam, Simon Worrall (Author), Christa Lewis (Narrator)

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America's Youngest Ambassador: The Cold War Story of Samantha Smith’s Lasting Message of Peace

In 1982, amid the nuclear paranoia that engulfed the US and the Soviet Union, Samantha Smith, a fifth grader from Manchester, Maine, wrote a letter to the Kremlin asking the Soviet leader if he was going to start a war. When Pravda, the biggest Soviet newspaper, published her letter-and Samantha received an unprecedented invitation to visit the Soviet Union -her family embarked on a historic journey. The story of a young American girl's letter to the Soviet leader and her innocent curiosity about the other side of the Iron Curtain holds an important lesson for every American. America's Youngest Ambassador provides insights into a forgotten era and has an important message for young people who strive to be more involved in facilitating change, both locally and worldwide. Juxtaposing Samantha's narrative with that of her own childhood in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, Lena Nelson explores the consequences of government propaganda on both sides of the ocean and reveals how Samantha Smith's journey in the summer of 1983 helped melt the hearts of the Soviets and thaw the ice of the Cold War. Drawing on interviews conducted in both the US and Russia with key players in the events of those days, Nelson blends storytelling, anecdotes, and analysis of Soviet-American relations to tell the story of this unprecedented moment in history.

Lena Nelson (Author), Christa Lewis (Narrator)

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Doctors at War: The Clandestine Battle Against the Nazi Occupation of France

Doctors at War tells the stories of physicians in France working to impede the German war effort and undermine French collaborators during the Occupation from 1940 to 1945. Determined to defeat the Third Reich's incursion, one group of prominent Paris doctors founded a medical network to treat injured Resistance fighters who they then secretly transported to Allied countries to avoid forced labor in Germany. Another team of medics organized a cabal focused on intelligence gathering and sabotage that became one of the largest in wartime France, even after the Gestapo arrested and imprisoned its leaders. Deported to concentration camps, these physicians continued to frustrate Nazi efforts by rendering aid and keeping their fellow prisoners alive. Others joined rural guerrilla camps to care for the young conscripts fighting to block German reinforcements from reaching Normandy after the D-Day landing. These stories add a crucial dimension to the history of Occupied France. Written for both historians and general listeners of World War II history, Doctors at War stands as a dramatic, character-driven account of physicians' courage and resilience in the face of evil. It serves as a window into life under a fascist regime and the travails of doctors who negotiated the terrifying moral labyrinth that was the German military's occupation of France.

Ellen Hampton (Author), Christa Lewis (Narrator)

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Never Give Up the Jump: Combat, Resilience, and the Legacy of World War II through the Eyes and Voic

Young Sue Gurwell had always known that her father had been a paratrooper. And then there was the special poem in his roll-top desk she sometimes snuck a peek at, written by a member of Dad's regiment. This poem was a premonition of the sergeant's death. 'Yes,' her dad told her, 'He was right-he died on D-Day.' But it's not until 2016, after her parents had both passed away, that Susan Gurwell Talley and her husband Jack L. Talley begin to understand the true extent and significance of the wartime artifacts that had been staples of Sue's childhood. The Talleys discovered that Sue's father, Lt. George L. Gurwell, Executive Officer, HqHq, 508th PIR, had silently squirreled away thousands of wartime documents in the family home. This precious resource could not have passed into better hands than those of Jack and Sue Talley. Jack, a PhD psychologist specializing in PTSD, was the first to understand that George had PTSD symptoms that still lingered from the war years when he and George were introduced on June 6, 2001. That evening, the fifty-seventh anniversary of D-Day, George first opened up about the war, and preceded to talk late into the night. In that conversation lies the genesis of this book.

Jack L. Talley, Susan Gurwell Talley (Author), Christa Lewis (Narrator)

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Hannah Arendt: A Very Short Introduction

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was one of the major intellectual figures of the twentieth century. Born in Konigsberg to secular Jewish parents, she was a student of the two major exponents of Existenz philosophy in Germany, Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger. Arendt escaped Nazi Germany in 1933, traveling first to Paris, and then in 1940 to the United States, where she gained citizenship in 1951. As director of the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction she oversaw the collection and presentation of over 1.5 million articles of Judaica and Hebraica that had been hidden from or looted by the Nazis. This Very Short Introduction explores the philosophical ideas and political theories belonging to one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. As a survivor of the Holocaust, Arendt's life informed her work exploring the meaning and construction of power, evil, totalitarianism, and direct democracy. Dana Villa explains how Arendt gained world-wide fame with the publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism, and went on to have a distinguished career as a political theorist and public intellectual. A sometimes controversial figure, Arendt is now recognized as one of the most important political thinkers of the twentieth century and her works have become an acknowledged part of the Western canon of political theory and philosophy.

Dana Villa (Author), Christa Lewis (Narrator)

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Three Sisters: A True Holocaust Story of Love, Luck, and Survival

Three young Jewish sisters from Leipzig, Germany huddle together in the cold darkness of night waiting for their smugglers to rescue them and bring them to freedom in Belgium. Their mother, in a state of shock following Kristallnacht, is left behind, sedated in a psychiatric hospital. November 1938 begins the four year ordeal of the seven member Kroch family who endure unfathomable conditions in their fight for survival: imprisonment in French internment camps, hiding in a tiny tool shed, and adapting to the deplorable conditions of a Nazi prison. The memoirs of Alexandra, age eleven, and her sisters, fifteen year old Eva and fourteen year old Judith, interweave as they recount the true story of their escape from the Nazis. Leaving behind their life of luxury, the girls describe unimaginable hunger, deprivation, and fear. Family love, music, and the close friendship of strangers are the essential ingredients that sustain them through the hardships they face. A narrative backdrop threads through the story, providing the socio-political context. From a historical perspective and from the three sisters' witness accounts, the listener will come to understand the progression of antisemitism in Germany and France, the course by which Hitler dismantled democracy, the role France adopted as Nazi collaborators, and how the Swiss policies towards Jews were executed.

Alexandra Littauer, Celia Clement, Eva Heymann, Judith Kashti (Author), Christa Lewis (Narrator)

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Nothing Sung and Nothing Spoken

“A heartbreaking and bittersweet novel about the need for queer joy even in the midst of the horrors of war. The ending had me in tears.”—Malinda Lo, New York Times bestselling and National Book Award–winning author of Last Night at the Telegraph Club For fans of Ruta Sepetys and Malinda Lo, a heart-wrenching queer historical YA romance set in the Swing Youth movement of World War II Berlin Charlotte Kraus would follow Angelika Haas anywhere. Which is how she finds herself in an underground club one Friday night the summer before World War II, dancing to contraband American jazz and swing music, suddenly feeling that anything might be possible. Unable to resist the allure of sharing this secret with Geli, Charlie returns to the club again and again, despite the dangers of breaking the Nazi Party’s rules. Soon, terrified by the tightening vise of Hitler’s power, Charlie and the other Swingjugend are drawn to larger and larger acts of rebellion. But the war will test how much they are willing to risk—and to lose. From the critically acclaimed author of Who I Was with Her, this beautifully told story of hope, love, and resistance will captivate readers of Girl in the Blue Coat and Last Night at the Telegraph Club.

Nita Tyndall (Author), Christa Lewis (Narrator)

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The Perfect Place to Die

Stalking Jack the Ripper meets Devil in the White City in this terrifying historical fiction debut about one of the world's most notorious serial killers. In order to save her sister, Zuretta takes a job at an infamous house of horrors-but she might never escape. Zuretta never thought she'd encounter a monster. She had resigned herself to a quiet life in Utah. But when her younger sister, Ruby, travels to Chicago during the World's Fair, and disappears, Zuretta leaves home to find her. But 1890s Chicago is more dangerous and chaotic than she imagined. She doesn't know where to start until she learns of her sister's last place of employment . . . a mysterious hotel known as The Castle. Zuretta takes a job there hoping to learn more. And before long she realizes the hotel isn't what it seems. Women disappear at an alarming rate, she hears crying from the walls, and terrifying whispers follow her at night. In the end, she finds herself up against one of the most infamous mass murderers in American history-and his custom-built death trap.

Bryce Moore (Author), Christa Lewis (Narrator)

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Four and Twenty Blackbirds

A magical maniac is loose in Alanda! A magical murderer is loose in Alanda. The victims are always women, always lower-class, and the weapon is always a three-sided stiletto, most often found among Church regalia. But the killers are never churchmen, and they always commit suicide immediately after the bloody deed. Tal Rufen is just a simple constable. But he really cares about his job, and when one of these murder/suicides happens on his beat he becomes obsessed. His superiors don't care-the victims will never be missed, and their murderers are already justly dead. But every instinct Tal Rufen has cries out that he has seen only one small piece of a bigger and much nastier puzzle . . .

Mercedes Lackey (Author), Christa Lewis (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Christa Lewis