Audiobooks narrated by Mary Helen Gallucci

Plain: A Memoir of Mennonite Girlhood Audiobook

Plain tells the story of Mary Alice Hostetter's journey to define an authentic self amid a rigid religious upbringing in a Mennonite farm family. Although endowed with a personality 'prone toward questioning and challenging,' the young Mary Alice at first wants nothing more than to be a good girl, to do her share, and-alongside her eleven siblings-to work her family's Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, farm. She feels fortunate to have been born into a religion where, as the familiar hymn states, she is 'safe in the arms of Jesus.' As an adolescent, that keen desire for belonging becomes focused on her worldly peers, even though she knows that Mennonites consider themselves a people apart. Eventually she leaves behind the fields and fences of her youth, thinking she will finally be able to grow beyond the prohibitions of her church. Discovering and accepting her sexuality, she once again finds herself apart, on the outside of family, community, and societal norms. This quietly powerful memoir of longing and acceptance casts a humanizing eye on a little-understood American religious tradition and a woman's striving to grow within and beyond it.

Mary Alice Hostetter (Author), Mary Helen Gallucci (Narrator)

Audiobook

In Blood and Ashes: Curse Tablets and Binding Spells in Ancient Greece

In Blood and Ashes provides the first historical study of the development and dissemination of ritualized curse practice from 750-250 BCE, documenting the cultural pressures that drove the use of curse tablets, charms, spells, and other private rites. This book expands our understanding of daily life in ancient communities, showing how individuals were making sense of the world and coping with conflict, vulnerability, competition, anxiety, desire, and loss, all while conjuring the gods and powers of the Underworld. Bringing together epigraphic, literary, archaeological, and material evidence, Jessica L. Lamont reads between traditional histories of Archaic, Classical, and early Hellenistic Greece, drawing out new voices and new narratives to consider: here are the cooks, tavern keepers, garland weavers, helmsmen, barbers, and other persons who often slip through the cracks of ancient history. The texts and objects presented here offer glimpses of public and private lives across many centuries, illuminating the interplay of ritual and conflict-management strategies among citizens and slaves, men and women, pagans and Christians. Filled with new material and insights, Lamont's volume offers a groundbreaking perspective on ancient Greek social history and religion, highlighting the role of ritual in negotiating life's uncertainties.

Jessica L. Lamont, Jessica Lamont (Author), Mary Helen Gallucci (Narrator)

Audiobook

Secret Life of the City: How Nature Thrives in the Urban Wild

Come along on an informative, whirlwind tour of urban species and discover that you are surrounded by wild nature, even in your own backyard. When biologist Hanna Bjørgaas spots a fairy cup lichen in Antarctica, she is surprised to recognize it from her own backyard in Oslo. When she returns home, she embarks on a journey into urban nature, visiting city parks, cemeteries, and concrete rooftops to investigate the species that live in urban spaces. Along the way, she meets corvids, songbirds, ants, pigeons, bats, sparrows, fungi, and linden trees-and the experts who study their surprising abilities to survive, and thrive, in the city. As Bjørgaas discovers, urban nature-and its unique mixture of species that have never lived together before in Earth's history-is valuable. More than half of the world's human population lives in densely populated areas-and plants and animals have followed us into cities. Secret Life of the City invites us to pay more attention to the sounds, sights, and smells of urban nature right outside our door. A treasure trove of fascinating flora and fauna, this wonderful book offers a plea to save our city plants, animals, and fungi before we lose them, too.

Hanna Hagen Bjørgaas (Author), Mary Helen Gallucci (Narrator)

Audiobook

Mary, Will I Die?

It starts innocently enough. Four kids-three girls, one boy-are at one of their houses, playing games. One of them has read about 'Bloody Mary' and the idea that if you look into a mirror and say her name thirteen times, she will show you the future. Some legends say she'll show you your one true love or a skull to mark your death within five years. Others say that conjuring Bloody Mary will bring her into your world. Both sets of legends are true. The kids go through with the act, saying her name thirteen times. They try to laugh it off. And mostly they forget about it. Or at least they don't talk about it. Yes, over the next few years, whenever they look into a mirror, it's like there's always another figure standing in the background, getting closer. Just short of five years later, the four of them are no longer friends. The girl whose house it was has always tried to avoid the mirror they used. One morning as she's passing by, she sees much more than her own reflection-it's a scary figure taunting her. She startles and breaks the mirror. When the pieces are put back together (barely), the figure is gone. That day in school, a new girl arrives. Her name is Mary . . .

Shawn Sarles (Author), Mary Helen Gallucci (Narrator)

Audiobook

Pieces

Orphaned Carmen is sixteen, newly homeless and will do almost anything to survive and keep her and her kid brother safe, together, and out of foster care. Ollie, also sixteen, has a life that's all about parents, school pressure, friends, and dreams of summer. The two fall into each other's orbit, and one kiss changes everything. Ollie is captivated . . . but then Carmen vanishes. When they cross paths months later, everything is different. A young adult queer romance that looks at what we're prepared to sacrifice for those we care about. Contains mature themes.

G. Benson (Author), Mary Helen Gallucci (Narrator)

Audiobook

Night Shine

An orphan girl must face untold danger and an ancient evil to save her kingdom’s prince in this “dark, sensuous…queer and lush” (Kirkus Reviews) fantasy perfect for fans of Girls of Paper and Fire and Tess of the Road. How can you live without your heart? In the vast palace of the empress lives an orphan girl called Nothing. She slips within the shadows of the Court, unseen except by the Great Demon of the palace and her true friend, Prince Kirin, heir to the throne. When Kirin is kidnapped, only Nothing and the prince’s bodyguard suspect that Kirin may have been taken by the Sorceress Who Eats Girls, a powerful woman who has plagued the land for decades. The sorceress has never bothered with boys before, but Nothing has uncovered many secrets in her sixteen years in the palace, including a few about the prince. As the empress’s army searches fruitlessly, Nothing and the bodyguard set out on a rescue mission, through demon-filled rain forests and past crossroads guarded by spirits. Their journey takes them to the gates of the Fifth Mountain, where the sorceress wields her power. There, Nothing discovers that all magic is a bargain, and she may be more powerful than she ever imagined. But the price the Sorceress demands for Kirin may very well cost Nothing her heart.

Tessa Gratton (Author), Mary Helen Gallucci (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks Narrated by Mary Helen Gallucci