Best-Selling Full Audiobooks in Biography & Memoir, Memoirs

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/546784 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Never Work with Animals Author: Gareth Steel Narrator: Robin Laing Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 46 minutes Release date: February 3, 2022 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Imagine going from neurologist to dermatologist, orthopaedic surgeon to obstetrician, assassin to saviour – all in one day. Welcome to the extraordinary world of veterinary medicine… In Never Work with Animals, vet Gareth Steel shares the moments of humour, horror and heroism across his 20-year career caring for creatures great and small, from bulls to stick insects. Thought-provoking, heartwarming and often laugh-out-loud funny, this unforgettable memoir reveals what life is really like for our vets.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/550251 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Sequins for a Ragged Hem Series: #8 of Black Britain: Writing Back Author: Amryl Johnson Narrator: Martina Laird, Bernardine Evaristo Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 50 minutes Release date: February 3, 2022 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Brought to you by Penguin. A beautifully atmospheric memoir and travelogue from poet Amryl Johnson depicting her journey from the UK to Trinidad in the 1980s 'Memories demanded that I complete this book. If what I experienced was, in fact, a haunting, I believe I have now laid these ghosts to rest in a style which I hope will satisfy even the most determined ones.' Amryl Johnson came to England from Trinidad when she was eleven. As an adult in 1983, ready for a homecoming, she embarks on a journey through the Caribbean searching for home, searching for herself. Landing in Trinidad as carnival begins, she instantly surrenders to the collective, pulsating rhythm of the crowd, euphoric in her total freedom. This elation is shattered when she finds the house where she was born has been destroyed. She cannot escape - nor wants to - from the inheritance of colonialism. Her bittersweet welcome sets the tone for her intoxicating exploration of these distinct islands. In evocative, lyrical prose Sequins for a Ragged Hem is an astonishingly unique memoir, interrogating the way our past and present selves live alongside one another. Selected by Booker Prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo, this series rediscovers and celebrates pioneering books from Black Britain and the diaspora, which remap the nation and reframe our history. © Amryl Johnson 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/555124 to listen full audiobooks. Title: My Fathers' Daughter Series: #7 of Black Britain: Writing Back Author: Hannah Azieb Pool Narrator: Yusra Warsama, Bernardine Evaristo Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 36 minutes Release date: February 3, 2022 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Brought to you by Penguin. A powerful, intimate memoir of Eritrean-British journalist, Hannah Azieb-Pool, who returns to Eritrea at the age of 30 to meet her family for the first time 'When I stepped off the plane in Asmara, I had no idea what lay ahead, or how those events would change me . . .' In her twenties, Hannah-Azieb Pool is given a letter that unravels everything she knows about her life. She knew she was adopted from an orphanage in Eritrea, and as her adoptive family brought her to the UK, they believed she did not have any surviving relatives. When she discovers the truth in a letter from her brother - that her birth father is alive and her Eritrean family are desperate to meet her - she is faced with a critical choice. Should she go? In this intimate memoir, she takes us with her on an extraordinary journey of self-discovery, as she travels to Eritrea to uncover her own story. With radiant warmth, courage and wisdom, Hannah-Azieb disentangles the charged concepts of identity, family and home. Featuring a new introduction from Bernardine Evaristo and an updated afterword from the author, this is a timeless, essential read. 'Remarkable' Observer 'What a story. So vivid, honest and moving' Andrea Levy, author of Small Island Selected by Booker Prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo, this series rediscovers and celebrates pioneering books from black Britain and the diaspora, which remap the nation and reframe our history. © Hannah Azieb 2005 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/548740 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale: Finding a Formula for the Cost of Love Author: Haley Mcgee Narrator: Haley Mcgee Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 37 minutes Release date: February 1, 2022 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 2 of Total 1 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: In this hilarious and heartfelt memoir, Haley McGee sets out to calculate—with mathematical precision—the exact cost of love, and whether all of her former relationships were worth it. Haley McGee is in debt. The solution? A yard sale of gifts from her ex-boyfriends.   But when it comes to pricing, she gets stuck. Surely the ways we invest in our romantic relationships should be reflected in the price. But how? Is the mixtape from your first love worth more than the vintage typewriter from a philanderer? Does sitting on an X-Acto knife wedged between seats on a bus to see the boyfriend you lost your virginity to increase or decrease the value of the necklace he gave you? Should you be compensated for the miserable times or do they render an item worthless?   Haley decides to gamble on a larger payout. She interviews her exes and enlists the help of a mathematician to create a formula—with eighty-six variables—for the cost of love. As she's searching for answers, the one that got away reappears with a new proposition.   Female desire, heartbreak and the chance for integrity in the aftermath of both are held up in this whipsmart, original and daringly candid memoir. As Haley McGee interrogates her romantic triumphs and failures with unflinching detail and hilarity, her exquisite prose elevates this all too human conundrum: Is love worth it?

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/553737 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Mala's Cat: The moving and unforgettable true story of one girl's survival during the Holocaust Author: Mala Kacenberg Narrator: Kristin Atherton Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 44 minutes Release date: January 20, 2022 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Brought to you by Penguin. Alone in a forest with only a cat for company, this is the deeply moving true story of one little girl's remarkable survival in the shadow of the Holocaust. Growing up in the Polish village of Tarnogrod on the fringes of a deep pine forest, gives Mala the happiest childhood she could have hoped for. But, as the German invasion begins, her beloved village becomes a ghetto and her family and friends reduced to starvation. She takes matters into her own hands, and bravely removes her yellow star, risking sneaking out to the surrounding villages to barter for food. It is on her way back that she sees her loved ones rounded up for deportation, and receives a smuggled letter from her sister warning her to stay away. With only her cat, Malach, and the strength of the stories taught by her family, she walks away from everything she holds dear. Malach becomes her family, her only respite from painful loneliness, a guide and reminder to stay hopeful even when faced with unfathomable darkness. With her guardian angel by her side, Mala finds a way to navigate the dangerous forests, outwit German soldiers and hostile villagers, and survive, against all odds. © Mala Kacenberg 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/548481 to listen full audiobooks. Title: This Will Be Funny Later: A Memoir Author: Jenny Pentland Narrator: Jenny Pentland Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 32 minutes Release date: January 18, 2022 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 4 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 2 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: A funny, biting, and entertaining memoir of coming of age in the shadow of celebrity and finding your own way in the face of absolute chaos that is both a moving portrait of a complicated family and an exploration of the cost of fame. Growing up, Jenny Pentland’s life was a literal sitcom. Many of the storylines for her mother’s smash hit series, Roseanne, were drawn from Pentland’s early family life in working-class Denver. But that was only the beginning of the drama. Roseanne Barr’s success as a comedian catapulted the family from the Rockies to star-studded Hollywood—with its toxic culture of money, celebrity, and prying tabloids that was destabilizing for a child in grade school.  By adolescence, Jenny struggled with anxiety and eating issues. Her parents and new stepfather, struggling to help, responded by sending Jenny and her siblings on a grand tour of the self-help movement of the ’80s—from fat camps to brat camps, wilderness survival programs to drug rehab clinics (even though Jenny didn’t take drugs). Becoming an adult, all Jenny wanted was to get married and have kids, despite Roseanne’s admonishments not to limit herself to being just a wife and mother.  In this scathingly funny and moving memoir, Pentland reveals what it’s like to grow up as the daughter of a television star and how she navigated the turmoil, eventually finding her own path. Now happily married and raising five sons on a farm, Pentland has worked tirelessly to create the stable family she never had, while coming to terms at last with her deep-seated anxiety.  This Will Be Funny Later is a darkly funny and frank chronicle of transition, from childhood to adulthood and motherhood—one woman’s journey to define herself and create the life she always wanted.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/553134 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Inconvenient Journalist Author: Dusko Doder, Louise Branson Narrator: Julian Elfer Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 23 minutes Release date: January 18, 2022 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: In The Inconvenient Journalist, Dusko Doder, writing with his spouse and journalistic partner Louise Branson, describes how one February night crystalized the values and personal risks that shaped his life. The frigid Moscow night in question was in 1984, and Washington Post correspondent Doder reported signs that Soviet leader Yuri Andropov had died. The CIA at first dismissed the reporting, saying that 'Doder must be smoking pot.' When Soviet authorities confirmed Andropov's death, journalists and intelligence officials questioned how a lone reporter could scoop the multibillion-dollar US spy agency. The stage was set for Cold War-style revenge against the star journalist, and that long night at the teletype machine in Moscow became a pivotal moment in Doder's life. Taking aim at Doder, the CIA insinuated a story into Time magazine suggesting that he had been coopted by the KGB. Doder's professional world collapsed and his personal life was shaken as he fought Time in court. In The Inconvenient Journalist, Doder reflects on this attempt to destroy his reputation, his dedication to reporting the truth, and the vital but precarious role of the free press today.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/552436 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History Author: Lea Ypi Narrator: Rachel Babbage, Lea Ypi Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 8 minutes Release date: January 18, 2022 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3.8 of Total 5 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Longlisted for the 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction A reflection on 'freedom' in a dramatic, beautifully written memoir of the end of Communism in the Balkans. Lea Ypi grew up in the last Stalinist country in Europe: Albania, a place of queuing and scarcity, of political executions and secret police. While family members disappeared to what she was told were 'universities' from which few 'graduated,' she swore loyalty to the Party. In her eyes, people were equal, neighbors helped each other, and children were expected to build a better world. Then the statues of Stalin and Hoxha were toppled. Almost overnight, people could vote and worship freely, and invest in hopes of striking it rich. But factories shut, jobs disappeared, and thousands fled to Italy, only to be sent back. Pyramid schemes bankrupted the country, leading to violence. One generation's dreams became another's disillusionment. As her own family's secrets were revealed, Ypi found herself questioning what 'freedom' really means. With acute insight and wit, Ypi traces the perils of ideology, and what people need to flourish.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/554699 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Persephone's Children: A Life in Fragments Author: Rowan Mccandless Narrator: Deanna Anthony Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 49 minutes Release date: January 18, 2022 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 2 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: After years of secrecy and silence, Rowan McCandless leaves an abusive relationship and rediscovers her voice and identity through writing. She was never to lie to him. She was never to leave him; and she was never supposed to tell. Persephone's Children chronicles Rowan McCandless's odyssey as a Black, biracial woman escaping the stranglehold of a long-term abusive relationship. Through a series of thematically linked and structurally inventive essays, McCandless explores the fraught and fragmented relationship between memory and trauma. Multiple mythologies emerge to bind legacy and loss, motherhood and daughterhood, racism and intergenerational trauma, mental illness and resiliency. It is only in the aftermath that she can begin to see the patterns in her history, hear the echoes of oppression passed down from unknown, unnamed ancestors, and discover her worth and right to exist in the world.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/556159 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Manifesto: On Never Giving Up Author: Bernardine Evaristo Narrator: Bernardine Evaristo Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 7 minutes Release date: January 18, 2022 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: From the bestselling and Booker Prize–winning author of Girl, Woman, Other, Bernardine Evaristo’s memoir of her own life and writing, and her manifesto on unstoppability, creativity, and activism Bernardine Evaristo’s 2019 Booker Prize win was a historic and revolutionary occasion, with Evaristo being the first Black woman and first Black British person ever to win the prize in its fifty-year history. Girl, Woman, Other was named a favorite book of the year by President Obama and Roxane Gay, was translated into thirty-five languages, and has now reached more than a million readers. Evaristo’s astonishing nonfiction debut, Manifesto, is a vibrant and inspirational account of Evaristo’s life and career as she rebelled against the mainstream and fought over several decades to bring her creative work into the world. With her characteristic humor, Evaristo describes her childhood as one of eight siblings, with a Nigerian father and white Catholic mother; tells the story of how she helped set up Britain’s first Black women’s theater company; remembers the queer relationships of her twenties; and recounts her determination to write books that were absent in the literary world around her. She provides a hugely powerful perspective to contemporary conversations around race, class, feminism, sexuality, and aging. She reminds us of how far we have come, and how far we still have to go. In Manifesto, Evaristo charts her theory of unstoppability, showing creative people how they too can visualize and find success in their work, ignoring the naysayers. Both unconventional memoir and inspirational text, Manifesto is a unique reminder to us all to persist in doing work we believe in, even when we might feel overlooked or discounted. Evaristo shows us how we too can follow in her footsteps, from first vision, to insistent perseverance, to eventual triumph.