Free Audiobooks in Biography & Memoir, Memoirs

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/702779 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy: A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry Author: Gretchen Cherington Narrator: Linda Jones Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 17 minutes Release date: October 10, 2023 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Three powerful men converge on the banks of the Red Cedar River in the early 1900s in southern Minnesota—George Albert Hormel, founder of what will become the $10 billion food conglomerate Hormel Foods; Alpha LaRue Eberhart, the author's paternal grandfather and Hormel's executive vice president and corporate secretary; and Ransome Josiah Thomson, Hormel's comptroller. Over ten years, Thomson will embezzle $1.2 million from the company's coffers, nearly bringing the company to its knees. The Butcher, The Embezzler, and The Fall Guy opens in 1922 as George Hormel calls Eberhart into his office and demands his resignation. Hailed as the true leader of the company he'd helped Hormel build—is Eberhart complicit in the embezzlement? Far worse than losing his job and the great wealth he'd rightfully accumulated is that his beloved young wife, Lena, is dying while their three children grieve alongside. Of course, his story doesn't end there. In scale both intimate and grand, Cherington deftly weaves the histories of Hormel, Eberhart, and Thomson within the sweeping landscape of our country's early industries, along with keen observations about business leaders gleaned from her thirty-five-year career advising top company executives.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/701666 to listen full audiobooks. Title: [Spanish] - El regreso Author: Hisham Matar Narrator: Diego Rousselon Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 22 minutes Release date: October 5, 2023 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: El autor de Solo en el mundo e Historia de una desaparición emprende en este relato autobiográfico una infatigable búsqueda de la verdad y nos invita a compartir sus emociones más íntimas, desde las luminosas estampas de una infancia mediterránea en Trípoli y Bengasi hasta un áspero presente donde se mezclan la ilusión, la rabia y la impotencia. En marzo de 2012, treinta y tres años después de haber pisado por última vez la tierra de sus orígenes, el autor de este libro regresó a Libia junto a su madre y su mujer. El derrocamiento de Gadafi había abierto un tiempo nuevo en el que cabía la esperanza de refundar una sociedad devastada por los abominables crímenes de la dictadura, recuperando un sistema de valores basado en la justicia y el respeto por la vida humana. Sin embargo, más allá de soñar con un país en libertad y progreso, en la mente de Hisham bullía el deseo de cerrar una herida profunda y dolorosa que había marcado su vida y la de su familia. En 1990, su padre, Jaballa Matar, un próspero y culto empresario, amante de la poesía y líder de la disidencia en el exilio, había sido secuestrado en El Cairo y confinado en una prisión libia. Seis años más tarde, las escasas noticias que llegaban se interrumpieron: el rastro de Jaballa se perdió definitivamente. Transitando con maestría entre las convulsiones personales y los acontecimientos históricos, este sincero y poliédrico relato autobiográfico no se limita a tratar de comprender las aflicciones del pasado, sino que señala una y otra vez el consuelo reparador que ofrecen el amor y la amistad, la literatura y el arte. La crítica ha dicho... «¡Brillante! [...] El relato de la búsqueda de su padre es meticuloso, incluso frío, pero su rabia es destemplada e irreconciliable. Con gran destreza, Hisham Matar da forma a la pérdida y dota de universalidad esta particular experiencia de la desolación.» Hilary Mantel «Un libro fascinante sobre el amor y la esperanza, y al mismo tiempo una conmovedora reflexión sobre el dolor y la pérdida. Hisham Matar traza un retrato memorable de una familia en el exilio y, al mismo tiempo, analiza con sutileza e inteligencia la política de Libia. [...] Seguramente se convertirá en un clásico.» Colm Tóibín «Matar escribe con el ojo de un novelista para los detalles físicos y emocionales, y el tacto de un periodista para describir instantes y lugares. La prosa es concisa, económica, está tallada con precisión; la estructura narrativa es elíptica, casi musical.» Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times «Sabio, aterrador y emocionante.» Zadie Smith «El autor posee una mirada y un oído de enorme sutileza y sensibilidad [...]. Una impactante historia de amor, lealtad y coraje. Sin duda, hay que leerla.» The Spectator

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/699536 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Who Am I? Author: Danny Cipriani Narrator: Harriet Fisher, Joe Gaminara Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 59 minutes Release date: October 5, 2023 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: ‘Powerful and thoughtful’ Don McRae, Guardian ‘A fascinating and incredibly honest insight into the pressurised life of an elite athlete, on and off the pitch’ Piers Morgan RAW. REVEALING. REFLECTIVE. The candid autobiography. This audio edition includes an exclusive in-conversation interview with Danny as he reflects on his life and career Danny Cipriani has always been searching for something. On the pitch, it was a line-break or space. A chink of light to dart through. An angle that no one else could see. Off the pitch, it was seeking a path through the pressure, fame and chaos that came with being anointed the ‘Saviour of English Rugby’. Who Am I? is the raw and powerful memoir of a man of mercurial talent who, with the world at his feet, made his England rugby debut aged 20. A man who, just a year later, contemplated suicide. A man whose safe space was on the field, away from the drink, the women and the drugs he turned to in an attempt to escape his thoughts. Now, for the first time, one of the most compelling personalities in the sport reflects on who he was, where he’s come from and the man he’s become. Alongside his astute insight into playing under Martin Johnson, Stuart Lancaster and Eddie Jones, Danny also talks about chasing his dreams, his desire and passion to represent England, and his drive to become the best player he could be. This is the story of a once complicated man. A man searching for answers. A man trying to understand who he is.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/715778 to listen full audiobooks. Title: [Spanish] - Solito: Una memoria Author: Javier Zamora Narrator: Javier Zamora Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 17 hours 26 minutes Release date: October 5, 2023 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: «En esta conmovedora autobiografía que no podrás soltar, un joven poeta relata la inolvidable historia de su desgarradora migración hacia Estados Unidos desde El Salvador a los nueve años, considerada 'el viaje mítico de nuestra era'.» —Sandra Cisneros Viaje. Mis padres empezaron a usar esa palabra hace más o menos un año: “un día vas a hacer un viaje para estar con nosotros. Como una aventura”. La aventura de Javier es una travesía de tres mil millas desde su pequeño pueblo en El Salvador, a través de Guatemala y México, hacia la frontera de Estados Unidos. Dejará atrás a sus queridos abuelos y su tía para reunirse con una madre que se fue cuatro años atrás y con un padre al que prácticamente no recuerda. Al viajar solo, a excepción de un grupo de extraños y un coyote contratado para guiarlos a salvo, Javier debía tardar solo dos semanas en llegar. A los nueve años, todo lo que Javier puede imaginar es correr a los brazos de sus padres, acurrucarse en la cama entre ellos y vivir bajo el mismo techo otra vez. No puede prever los peligrosos trayectos en bote, las interminables caminatas por el desierto, las armas apuntándole, los arrestos y los engaños que le esperan. Tampoco sabe que esas dos semanas se alargarán hasta dos meses y le cambiarán la vida, junto a un grupo de extraños que acabará por cobijarlo como una familia improvisada. Una autobiografía tan apasionante como emotiva, Solito no solo nos ofrece un recuento íntimo e inmediato de un viaje sinuoso y casi imposible, sino la milagrosa bondad y el amor que se entrega en los momentos más inesperados. Solito es la historia de Javier, pero es también la historia de millones más que no tuvieron otra opción más que irse de casa. La crítica ha dicho: «He esperado décadas para unas memorias como las de Solito». Sandra Cisneros «Es imposible que este libro no te arrastre y te transforme». Los Angeles Times «Solito es tanto una obra de sanación personal como una demanda implícita a los países, incluido Estados Unidos, para que aborden las dificultades y el peligro que la inmigración supuso para Zamora y los riesgos que sigue entrañando para muchas otras personas». The New York Times «Un trabajo bellamente forjado que convierte la experiencia de la migración en una narración vívida e inmediatamente accesible». Kirkus Reviews «Un emotivo retrato del poder de la conexión humana. Una historia enormemente conmovedora». Publishers Weekly «Unas memorias fascinantes. Solito es especial por muchas razones, pero la principal es la voz de Zamora y la energía con la que vívidamente relata de nuevo su viaje. Una lectura muy necesaria». Gabino Iglesias, NPR «Un logro monumental». Oprah «Una obra indispensable y bellísima». The New York Times Book Review «Un clásico inmediato. Javier Zamora ha elevado la historia de chico migrante a cimas literarias». Jose Antonio Vargas «Lo que Javier Zamora ha conseguido con Solito parece miraculoso. Esa perfecta recuperación de la voz, la consciencia y las emociones del niño de nueve años que Zamora fue». Francisco Goldman «La magia de este libro no solo yace en la cautivadora voz del joven Javier, el desgarrador viaje y la inmensa valentía de los inmigrantes, o la construcción del viaje del héroe. Es difícil aceptar que este libro no siempre ha estado con nosotros. ¿Cómo puede ser que algo tan esencial y fundamental para la historia norteamericana no forme parte aún de nuestro canon?». San Francisco Chronicle «Solito es una revelación». Daniel Alarcón

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/696281 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Brutalities: A Love Story Author: Margo Steines Narrator: Margo Steines Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 11 minutes Release date: October 3, 2023 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Quarantined in a southwestern desert city in the midst of her high-risk pregnancy, Margo Steines felt her life narrow around her growing body, compelling her to reckon with the violence entangled in its history. She was a professional dominatrix in New York City, a homestead farmer in a brutal relationship, a welder on a high-rise building crew, and a Mixed Martial Arts enthusiast; each of her many lives brought a new vantage point from which to see how power and masculinity coalesce?and how her body paid the price. With unflinching candor, Steines searches for the roots of her erstwhile attraction to pain while charting the complicated triumph of tenderness and care.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/702572 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Book of Life Author: Deborah Conway Narrator: Deborah Conway Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 21 minutes Release date: October 3, 2023 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: A no-holds-barred memoir that charts the rise and fall - and rise - of one of Australia's most iconic music performers. You think you know Deborah Conway? You think seeing her striding and scowling down Sydney's back streets in an oversize coat or galavanting around a golf course wearing a close approximation of plus fours means you know who Deborah Conway is? She figures you probably don't know the half of it. And there's a lot to know. If you have listened to any of Deborah Conway's songs and were half curious about the origins; if you have ever wondered whatever happened to that chick who covered herself in Nutella and was photographed shovelling cream cakes in to her mouth; if you gave a nanosecond of thought to whose bare arse adorned the giant Billboard ads for Bluegrass jeans in the 1980's and how much someone could get paid to do that; if you liked Tracey Mann's vocals in The Takeaways but asked yourself, 'did she really sing them?'; if you were a movie buff who thought Running On Empty was a classic BEFORE it became a cult phenomenon and need behind the scenes gossip, now's your chance to find out all this and so much more. Conway pulls back the curtain on the fevered world of a 1980's post punk band, the spectacular rise and fall and rise of one of the more obstreperous women working inside Australia's music industry, a woman who has straddled the high arts and the low without losing her footing or her mind and whose fierce independence has seen her produce her best work. Book Of Life: the good, the bad, and the ugly of being alive in the 20th and 21st centuries from the vantage point of a music insider (and outsider) with a deep need to tell the truth about it all.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/702567 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Home to Biloela Author: Priya Nadesalingam Narrator: Shabana Azeez, Rachael Tidd Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 59 minutes Release date: October 3, 2023 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: The dramatic inside story of the Tamil refugee family which became a cause célèbre all around Australia, and the epic fight by a small rural community to set them free.? It was dawn in the small rural town of Biloela. Loud thumping on the front door signalled the start of a four-year odyssey that would catapult Priya and her family into national debate. For the first time, Priya shares the story of her sheltered childhood in war-torn Sri Lanka, and her perilous escape across the Indian Ocean on an overcrowded and leaking fishing boat. Alone in a strange country, she had to make a new life without family or friends. She marries Nades and settles with him in Biloela, where they have two daughters. The shocking dawn raid was the first of multiple attempts by Australian government to deport the family. But the people of Biloela wouldn't have it. A small group swung into action, and built an extraordinarily powerful social media campaign that broke through into the mainstream, gathering support from hundreds of thousands of ordinary Australians around the country. Journalist Rebekah Holt has been following the family's journey over the four long, painful years, and she recounts the dramatic behind the scenes efforts to prevent the family from being deported. Finally, Priya, Nades and the girls were all granted the permanent visas they need by the new government, and they were able to return home to Biloela in the happiest ending they could have wanted.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/695351 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Running from the Mirror: A Memoir Author: Howard Shulman Narrator: David De Vries Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 6 minutes Release date: September 26, 2023 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: As quickly as his face disappeared, so did his mother and father. Just three days after he was born, Howard Shulman contracted an infection that attacked his face, devouring his nose, lips, lower right eyelid, tear ducts, and palate. Abandoned at the hospital by his parents, he became a ward of New Jersey under the care of a state-employed surgeon who experimentally rebuilt his face. Running from the Mirror is a poignant story of one man's struggle to survive against staggering odds and create a meaningful life for himself. With unapologetic candor, Howard gives an unflinching account of growing up a bullied outcast, with no family to officially call his own. Relying on little more than street smarts and grit, he rises from dishwasher to successful entrepreneur. Along the way, a European actress, a schoolteacher, and a fiery Latina help transform his life. Filled with heart-wrenching suffering as well as soul-lifting joy, Running from the Mirror is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/704256 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The 23rd Psalm: A Holocaust Memoir Author: George Salton Narrator: Steven Jay Cohen Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 46 minutes Release date: September 26, 2023 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Twenty years since its first publication, this new anniversary edition of the Holocaust memoir of George Salton (then Lucjan Salzman), gives listeners a personal and powerful account of his survival through one of the darkest periods in human history. With heartbreaking and honest reflection, the author shares a gripping first-person narrative of his transformation from a Jewish eleven-year-old boy living happily in Tyczyn, Poland, with his brother and parents, to his experiences as a teenage victim of growing persecution, brutality, and imprisonment as the Nazis pursued the Final Solution. The author takes the listener back in time as he reveals in vivid and engrossing details the painful memories of life in his childhood town during Nazi occupation, the forced march before his jeering and cold-eyed former friends and neighbors as they are driven from their homes into the crowded and terrible conditions in the Rzeszow ghetto, and the heart-wrenching memory of his final farewell as he is separated from his parents who would be sent in boxcars to the Belzec extermination camp. This new and substantially reworked twentieth anniversary edition incorporates research based on recently discovered documents related to George Salton's concentration camp experience, a new foreword by Michael Berenbaum, and a new afterword of George Salton's unpublished speeches.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/706884 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Kings, Queens, and Pawns: An American Woman at the Front Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart Narrator: Anne Marie Lewis Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 56 minutes Release date: September 26, 2023 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Mary Roberts Rinehart, known for her bestselling mystery novels such as The Circular Staircase published in 1907, earned a reputation as “the American Agatha Christie” through the success of her novels. Yet Rinehart was also a WWI correspondent. After convincing her editor at The Saturday Evening Post to send her to the Belgian front, and armed with letters of introduction, her status as a well-known writer and member of the American Red Cross, as well as plenty of fearless initiative, she became the first American to report from the front. In Kings, Queens and Pawns (1915) Rinehart records scenes of life at, and far from, the front: a baby whose legs were blown off, a young soldier rendered blind in battle sitting quietly as he listens to a recording of Madama Butterfly, the entire noncombatant population of a Belgian town homeless after relentless German-lead bombings, a queen overseeing her Needlework Guild. Anticipating the ultimately widely held view of the bloody and often futile conflict, Rinehart argues that the greatest treasures of the warring countries, the young soldiers fighting so valiantly in the prime of their lives, are mere pawns wasted and lost on the desolate battlefields.