Best-Selling Full Audiobooks in Biography & Memoir, Memoirs

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/551345 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Who Is Wellness For?: An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who It Leaves Behind Author: Fariha Roisin Narrator: Fariha Roisin Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 25 minutes Release date: June 14, 2022 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: The multi-disciplinary artist and author of Like a Bird and How to Cure a Ghost explores the commodification and appropriation of wellness through the lens of social justice, providing resources to help anyone participate in self-care, regardless of race, identity, socioeconomic status or able-bodiedness. Growing up in Australia, Fariha Róisín, a Bangladeshi Muslim, struggled to fit in. In attempts to assimilate, she distanced herself from her South Asian heritage and identity. Years later, living in the United States, she realized that the customs, practices, and even food of her native culture that had once made her different—everything from ashwagandha to prayer—were now being homogenized and marketed for good health, often at a premium by white people to white people. In this thought-provoking book, part memoir, part journalistic investigation, the acclaimed writer and poet explores the way in which the progressive health industry has appropriated and commodified global healing traditions. She reveals how wellness culture has become a luxury good built on the wisdom of Black, brown, and Indigenous people—while ignoring and excluding them. Who Is Wellness For? is divided into four sections, beginning with The Mind, in which Fariha examines the art of meditation and the importance of intuition. In part two, The Body, she investigates the physiology of trauma, detailing her own journey with fatphobia and gender dysmorphia, as well as her own chronic illness. In part three, Self-Care, she argues against the self-care industrial complex but cautious us against abandoning care completely and offers practical advice. She ends with Justice, arguing that if we truly want to be well, we must be invested in everyone’s well being and shift toward nurturance culture.  Deeply intimate and revelatory, Who Is Wellness For? forces us to confront the imbalance in health and healing and carves a path towards self-care that is inclusionary for all.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/551328 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Evangelical Anxiety: A Memoir Author: Charles Marsh Narrator: Sean Pratt Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 45 minutes Release date: June 14, 2022 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: In this riveting spiritual memoir, the writer, scholar, and commentator tells the story of his struggles with mental illness, explores the void between the Christian faith and scientific treatment, and forges a path toward reconciling these divergent worlds. For years, Charles Marsh suffered panic attacks and debilitating anxiety. As an Evangelical Christian, he was taught to trust in the power of God and His will. While his Christian community resisted therapy and personal introspection, Marsh eventually knew he needed help. To alleviate his suffering, he made the bold decision to seek medical treatment and underwent years of psychoanalysis.  In this riveting spiritual memoir, Marsh tells the story of his struggle to find peace and the dramatic, inspiring transformation that redefined his life and his faith. He examines the tensions between faith and science and reflects on how his own experiences offer hope for bridging the gap between the two. Honest and revealing, Marsh traces the roots of shame, examines Christian notions of sex, faith, and mental illness and their genesis, and chronicles how he redefined his beliefs and rebuilt his relationship with his community.  A poignant and vital story of deep soul work, Evangelical Anxiety helps us look beyond the stigma that leaves too many people in pain and offers people of faith a way forward to find the help they need while remaining true to their beliefs.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/552924 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Blood Orange Night: My Journey to the Edge of Madness Author: Melissa Bond Narrator: Melissa Bond Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 19 minutes Release date: June 14, 2022 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3.67 of Total 3 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Brain on Fire meets High Achiever in this “page-turner memoir chronicling a woman’s accidental descent into prescription benzodiazepine dependence—and the life-threatening impacts of long-term use—that chills to the bone” (Nylon). As Melissa Bond raises her infant daughter and a special-needs one-year-old son, she suffers from unbearable insomnia, sleeping an hour or less each night. She loses her job as a journalist (a casualty of the 2008 recession), and her relationship with her husband grows distant. Her doctor casually prescribes benzodiazepines—a family of drugs that includes Xanax, Valium, Klonopin, Ativan—and increases her dosage regularly. Following her doctor’s orders, Melissa takes the pills night after night until her body begins to shut down. Only when she collapses while holding her daughter does Melissa learn that her doctor—like so many others—has over-prescribed the medication and quitting cold turkey could lead to psychosis or fatal seizures. Benzodiazepine addiction is not well studied, and few experts know how to help Melissa as she begins the months-long process of tapering off the pills without suffering debilitating, potentially deadly consequences. Each page thrums with the heartbeat of Melissa’s struggle—how many hours has she slept? How many weeks old are her babies? How many milligrams has she taken? Her propulsive writing crescendos to a fever pitch as she fights for her health and her ability to care for her children. “Propulsive, poetic” (Shelf Awareness), and immersive, this “vivid chronicle of suffering” (Kirkus Reviews) and redemption shines a light on the prescription benzodiazepine epidemic as it reaches a crisis point in this country.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/548754 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Raising Raffi: The First Five Years Author: Keith Gessen Narrator: Keith Gessen Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 7 minutes Release date: June 7, 2022 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: “A wise, mild and enviably lucid book about a chaotic scene.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times “Memoirs of fatherhood are rarely so honest or so blunt.” —Daniel Engber, The Atlantic “An instant classic.” —M. C. Mah, Romper NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2022 BY LIT HUB & THE MILLIONS An unsparing, loving account of fatherhood and the surprising, magical, and maddening first five years of a son’s life “I was not prepared to be a father—this much I knew.” Keith Gessen was nearing forty and hadn’t given much thought to the idea of being a father. He assumed he would have kids, but couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be a parent, or what kind of parent he would be. Then, one Tuesday night in early June, the distant idea of fatherhood came careening into view: Raffi was born, a child as real and complex and demanding of his parents’ energy as he was singularly magical. Fatherhood is another country: a place where the old concerns are swept away, where the ordering of time is reconstituted, where days unfold according to a child’s needs. Whatever rulebooks once existed for this sort of thing seem irrelevant or outdated. Overnight, Gessen’s perception of his neighborhood changes: suddenly there are flocks of other parents and babies, playgrounds, and schools that span entire blocks. Raffi is enchanting, as well as terrifying, and like all parents, Gessen wants to do what is best for his child. But he has no idea what that is. Written over the first five years of Raffi’s life, Raising Raffi examines the profound, overwhelming, often maddening experience of being a dad. Gessen traces how the practical decisions one must make each day intersect with some of the weightiest concerns of our age: What does it mean to choose a school in a segregated city? How do you instill in your child a sense of his heritage without passing on that history’s darker sides? Is parental anger normal, possibly useful, or is it inevitably authoritarian and destructive? How do you get your kid to play sports? And what do you do, in a pandemic, when the whole world seems to fall apart? By turns hilarious and poignant, Raising Raffi is a story of what it means to invent the world anew.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/548807 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Summer Friend: A Memoir Author: Charles Mcgrath Narrator: Charles Mcgrath Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 4 hours 21 minutes Release date: June 7, 2022 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Alive with the intoxicating magic of summer in New England, former editor of the New York Times Book Review Charles McGrath’s evocative memoir looks back at that sun-soaked season, at family, youth, and a singular bond made at a time when he thought he was beyond making friends. “Sun-drenched and deeply touching.” —The New York Times “Positively aches with beauty and loss.” —Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls It was early evening and a new acquaintance had come to retrieve his daughter from a play date. Instead of driving up in a minivan, he arrived by water, tacking his sailboat smartly across a squiggly channel in the marsh, throwing a rope overboard, and zipping back home, his gleeful daughter riding in the wake. Who knew you could do such a thing? And how could you resist befriending a man such as that? Over the course of this rich memoir, McGrath recalls with a gimlet eye the pleasures of summers past: amateur lobstering, 9-hole golf, family costume charades, bridge-jumping, and a friendship forged between two men from different backgrounds who came together late in life. Recounting the vagaries of summer with such precision and warmth-- peeling long strips of sunburnt skin from your shoulder as if “shuffling off your own cocoon,” the outdoor shower curtain blowing open in the breeze, an M80 firework in the mailbox--The Summer Friend is simultaneously a potent evocation of the rhythms and rituals of summer and a stirring remembrance of a friend found and then lost.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/548971 to listen full audiobooks. Title: My Life in the Sunshine: Searching for My Father and Discovering My Family Author: Nabil Ayers Narrator: Nabil Ayers Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 46 minutes Release date: June 7, 2022 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: “Nabil traces the image of his father through song. With growing fascination and heartbreak, he draws out meaning from the shadow of absence, and ultimately redefines what it means to be a family.” - Michelle Zauner, New York Times bestselling author of Crying in H Mart and Grammy nominated musician Japanese Breakfast A memoir about one man's journey to connect with his musician father, ultimately re-drawing the lines that define family and race. Throughout his adult life, whether he was opening a Seattle record store in the '90s or touring the world as the only non-white band member in alternative rock bands, Nabil Ayers felt the shadow and legacy of his father's musical genius, and his race, everywhere.    In 1971, a white, Jewish, former ballerina, chose to have a child with the famous Black jazz musician Roy Ayers, fully expecting and agreeing that he would not be involved in the child's life. In this highly original memoir, their son, Nabil Ayers, recounts a life spent living with the aftermath of that decision, and his journey to build an identity of his own despite and in spite of his father’s absence.   Growing up, Nabil only meets his father a handful of times. But Roy’s influence is strong, showing itself in Nabil’s instinctual love of music, and later, in the music industry—Nabil’s chosen career path. By turns hopeful--wanting to connect with the man who passed down his genetic predisposition for musical talent—and frustrated with Roy’s continued emotional distance, Nabil struggles with how much DNA can define a family… and a person.   Unable to fully connect with Roy, Nabil ultimately discovers the existence of several half-siblings as well as a paternal ancestor who was enslaved. Following these connections, Nabil meets and befriends the descendant of the plantation owner, which, strangely, paves the way for him to make meaningful connections with extended family he never knew existed.    Undeterred by his father's absence, Nabil, through sheer will and a drive to understand his roots, re-draws the lines that define family and race.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/548803 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Daffodil Hill: Uprooting My Life, Buying a Farm, and Learning to Bloom Author: Jake Keiser Narrator: Jake Keiser Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 39 minutes Release date: June 7, 2022 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: A candid and heartwarming memoir of reinvention about a city girl who trades her career and her heels for five acres and a herd of goats “Jake Keiser is my favorite kind of woman—gutsy, tenacious, and not afraid to be vulnerable. And the animals are pretty f*cking adorable, too.”—Tara Schuster, author of Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies Jake Keiser was living the life in Tampa, Florida, running a high-powered PR firm and juggling drink dates, shopping sprees, and charity galas. But at age thirty-eight, following a failed marriage, a series of miscarriages, and a still-blistering breakup, she began to suffer from extreme anxiety. Hit with the realization that no amount of Botox could fill the hole in her heart, she decided to make the impulse purchase of a lifetime and bought a farm in the middle of nowhere, Mississippi. Suddenly responsible for more than seventy-five animals and five acres of land, and with only one bar of cell service, Jake begins her search for inner peace. She learns to fix a well, haul wood, shoot a gun, and care for baby chicks, goats, turkeys, geese, dogs, and a cat, playing spa music for them when they’re sick and naming them after her favorite fashion designers. The only problem is that she still can’t figure out how to truly care for herself. Unable to escape the accumulated pain of her past, Jake hits rock bottom. With nowhere left to run, she’s finally forced to confront a bracing reality: The farm won’t save her. Only she can save herself. Poignant, hilarious, and utterly charming, Daffodil Hill is for anyone who feels stuck—for those of us strapped to our desks and dreaming of an unconventional life, for those of us searching for something more. Most of all, it is for people who believe that the greatest love story of all is the one we write with ourselves.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/548769 to listen full audiobooks. Title: An Extravagant Life: An Autobiography Incorporating Blue Water, Green Skipper Author: Stuart Woods Narrator: Tony Roberts Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 14 hours 12 minutes Release date: June 7, 2022 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: The #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Stone Barrington series tells the story of his own life from childhood to the present, and chronicles the journey that made him the writer he is today. Over the last forty years, Stuart Woods has written more than ninety novels of suspense and intrigue, beginning with the award-winning Chiefs. Featuring iconic crime-fighting and jet-setting leads, the plots are masterfully conceived and wonderfully escapist.    What many readers don’t know is that Woods's very own life was filled with similar stories of adventure. Born in Georgia, Woods worked in advertising in New York, served in the US Air Force, and had a short stint as an advance man. At the age of 37, he found himself in a transatlantic sailing race, and pursued writing as a full-time career shortly thereafter. Along the way, Woods has lived all over the world, from New York to London, Santa Fe to Ireland. Incorporating his iconic sailing memoir Blue Water, Green Skipper, this is the story of a life well-lived, and a special inside look into the beloved author’s many exploits.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/551273 to listen full audiobooks. Title: A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman: A Memoir Author: Lindy Elkins-Tanton Narrator: Lisa Flanagan Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 36 minutes Release date: June 7, 2022 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.67 of Total 3 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 2 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: From one of the world’s leading planetary scientists, a luminous memoir of exploration on Earth, in space, and within oneself—equal parts ode to the beauty of science, meditation on loss, and roadmap for personal resilience ''Fierce, absorbing, and ultimately inspiring.'' —ELIZABETH KOLBERT ''[A] riveting book, beautifully written.'' —Washington Post Named a Best Book of the Year by Christian Science Monitor and Science News Deep in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, three times farther from the sun than the Earth is, orbits a massive asteroid called (16) Psyche. It is one of the largest objects in the belt, potentially containing the equivalent of the world’s total economy in metals, though they cannot be brought back to Earth. But (16) Psyche has the potential to unlock something even more valuable: the story of how planets form, and how our planet formed. Soon we will find out, thanks to the extraordinary work of Lindy Elkins-Tanton, the Principal Investigator of NASA’s $800 million Psyche mission, and the second woman ever to be awarded a major NASA space exploration contract. The journey that brought her to this place is extraordinary. Amid a childhood of terrible trauma, Elkins-Tanton fell in love with science as a means of healing and consolation. But still she wondered, was forced to wonder: as a woman, was science “for her”? In answering that question, she takes us from the wilds of the Siberian tundra to the furthest reaches of outer space, from the Mayo Clinic, where Elkins-Tanton battled ovarian cancer while writing the Psyche proposal, to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where her team brought that proposal to life. A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman is a beautifully-constructed memoir that explores how a philosophy of life can be built from the tools of scientific inquiry. It teaches us how to approach difficult problems by asking the right questions and truly listening to the answers—and how we may find meaning through exploring the wonders of the universe around us.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/552909 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Asylum: A Memoir & Manifesto Author: Edafe Okporo Narrator: Prentice Onayemi Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 5 hours 55 minutes Release date: June 7, 2022 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: A “moving…dramatic” (David Ebershoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Danish Girl), and urgent call to action for immigration justice by a Nigerian asylee and global gay rights and immigration activist Edafe Okporo. On the eve of Edafe Okporo’s twenty-sixth birthday, he was awoken by a violent mob outside his window in Abuja, Nigeria. The mob threatened his life after discovering the secret Edafe had been hiding for years—that he is a gay man. Left with no other choice, he purchased a one-way plane ticket to New York City and fled for his life. Though America had always been painted to him as a land of freedom and opportunity, it was anything but when he arrived just days before the tumultuous 2016 Presidential Election. Edafe would go on to spend the next six months at an immigration detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey. After navigating the confusing, often draconian, US immigration and legal system, he was finally granted asylum. But he would soon realize that America is exceptionally good at keeping people locked up but is seriously lacking in integrating freed refugees into society. Asylum is Edafe’s “powerful, eye-opening” (Dr. Eric Cervini, New York Times bestselling author of The Deviant’s War) memoir and manifesto, which documents his experiences growing up gay in Nigeria, fleeing to America, navigating the immigration system, and making a life for himself as a Black, gay immigrant. Alongside his personal story is a blaring call to action—not only for immigration reform but for a just immigration system for refugees everywhere. This book imagines a future where immigrants and asylees are treated with fairness, transparency, and compassion. It aims to help us understand that home is not just where you feel safe and welcome but also how you can make it feel safe and welcome for others.