New Free Audiobooks in Biography & Memoir, Memoirs

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/693905 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Wives: A Memoir Author: Simone Gorrindo Narrator: Simone Gorrindo Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 42 minutes Release date: April 9, 2024 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3 of Total 4 Ratings of Narrator: 4.5 of Total 2 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: “[Simone] Gorrindo’s prose is inviting and fluid, and her storytelling is intimate and vivid...[an] engaging, evocative memoir.” —The New York Times Book Review “A hopeful, unifying memoir.” —People This profoundly intimate memoir about marriage, friendship, and the power of human connection tells the story of one woman’s experience of joining a community of army wives after leaving her New York City job. When her new husband joins an elite Army unit, Simone Gorrindo is uprooted from New York City and dropped into Columbus, Georgia. With her husband frequently deployed, Simone is left to find her place in this new world, alone—until she meets the wives. Gorrindo gives us an intimate look into the inner lives of a remarkable group of women and a tender, unflinching portrait of a marriage. A love story, an unforgettable coming-of-age tale, and a bracing tour of the intractable divisions that plague our country today, The Wives offers a rare and powerful gift: a hopeful stitch in the fabric of a torn America.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/693919 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Sociopath: A Memoir Author: Patric Gagne Narrator: Patric Gagne Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 7 minutes Release date: April 2, 2024 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.36 of Total 78 Ratings of Narrator: 4.85 of Total 27 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: The acclaimed New York Times bestselling memoir of the author’s struggle to understand her own sociopathy and shed light on the often maligned and misunderstood mental disorder. “A cross between a podcast by relationship therapist Esther Perel and a salacious tell-all.” —San Francisco Chronicle Patric Gagne realized she made others uncomfortable before she started kindergarten. Something about her caused people to react in a way she didn’t understand. She suspected it was because she didn’t feel things the way other kids did. Emotions like fear, guilt, and empathy eluded her. For the most part, she felt nothing. And she didn’t like the way that “nothing” felt. She did her best to pretend she was like everyone else, but the constant pressure to conform to a society she knew rejected anyone like her was unbearable. So Patric stole. She lied. She was occasionally violent. She became an expert lock-picker and home-invader. All with the goal of replacing the nothingness with...something. In college, Patric finally confirmed what she’d long suspected. She was a sociopath. But even though it was the very first personality disorder identified—well over 200 years ago—sociopathy had been neglected by mental health professionals for decades. She was told there was no treatment, no hope for a normal life. She found herself haunted by sociopaths in pop culture, madmen and evil villains who are considered monsters. Her future looked grim. But when Patric reconnects with an old flame, she gets a glimpse of a future beyond her diagnosis. If she’s capable of love, it must mean that she isn’t a monster. With the help of her sweetheart (and some curious characters she meets along the way) she embarks on a mission to prove that the millions of Americans who share her diagnosis aren’t all monsters either. This is the inspiring story of her journey to change her fate and how she managed to build a life full of love and hope.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/684223 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Little Girl Lost: Amelia just wants a home she feels safe in… Author: Casey Watson Narrator: Kate Lock Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 28 minutes Release date: March 28, 2024 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: The new fostering memoir from the Sunday Times bestselling author Casey Watson Six-year-old Amelie lives with her mother, Kelly, who suffers from bipolar disorder. After Kelly attempts to burn down their family house, it becomes clear that her daughter is in grave danger. Amelie is quickly taken into care. When she arrives with foster carer Casey Watson, Amelie acts much younger than her age. Casey must get to the root of Amelie’s behaviour, while doing what she can to keep the family together. Will Amelie ever find the safety of home?

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/693925 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Where Rivers Part: A Story of My Mother's Life Author: Kao Kalia Yang Narrator: Pamela Xiong, Kao Kalia Yang Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 12 hours 2 minutes Release date: March 19, 2024 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: This powerful memoir about a Hmong family’s epic journey to safety is a profound “testament to the miraculous strength of women and the indomitable resolve of the human spirit” (Cristina Henríquez, author of The Book of Unknown Americans). Born in 1961 in war-torn Laos, Tswb’s childhood was marked by the violence of America’s Secret War and the CIA recruitment of the Hmong and other ethnic minorities into the lost cause. By the time Tswb was a teenager, the US had completely vacated Laos, and the country erupted into genocidal attacks on the Hmong people, who were labeled as traitors. Fearing for their lives, Tswb and her family left everything they knew behind and fled their village for the jungle. Perpetually on the run and on the brink of starvation, Tswb eventually crossed paths with the man who would become her future husband. Leaving her own mother behind, she joined his family at a refugee camp, a choice that would haunt her for the rest of her life. Eventually becoming a mother herself, Tswb raised her daughters in a state of constant fear and hunger until they were able to emigrate to the US, where the determined couple enrolled in high school even though they were both nearly thirty and worked grueling jobs to provide for their children. Now, her daughter, Kao Kalia Yang, reveals her mother’s astonishing saga with tenderness and clarity, giving voice to the countless resilient refugees who are often overlooked as one of the essential foundations of this country. “Haunting and painfully relevant” (Booklist), Where Rivers Part is destined to become a classic.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/693892 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Notes from the Henhouse: On Marrying a Poet, Raising Children and Chickens, and Writing Author: Elspeth Barker Narrator: Raffaella Barker Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 5 hours 56 minutes Release date: March 19, 2024 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: A sharp and witty collection of autobiographical essays by the late Elspeth Barker—acclaimed journalist and author of the beloved modern classic O Caledonia. Following the publication of her acclaimed, darkly funny novel O Caledonia, Elspeth Barker’s sharp and witty essays appeared regularly in the national press. Notes from the Henhouse, a selection of the most personal of these pieces, welcomes readers into the celebrated writer’s life. Tracing Barker’s upbringing from her Scottish roots, these essays beautifully capture her time with the poet George Barker and her profound sense of loss following his death. She writes about George’s former lover Elizabeth Smart and other figures from 1950s bohemia and 1960s counterculture. Pieces like “Thoughts in a Garden,” equal parts hilarious and moving, read like dispatches from the front lines of country living, depicting the vagaries of raising a large family and assorted pets in a damp and drafty farmhouse. Vivid, charming, and wholly original, Notes from the Henhouse is a wonderful glimpse into the life of an extraordinary writer.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/693018 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Motorhome Prophecies: A Journey of Healing and Forgiveness Author: Carrie Sheffield Narrator: Carrie Sheffield Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 55 minutes Release date: March 12, 2024 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: In the vein of Educated and Hillbilly Elegy comes a young woman’s memoir chronicling her harrowing journey from despair to salvation that showcases the depths and resilience of the human spirit and empowers readers on their own paths toward healing, forgiveness, and redemption.   Carrie Sheffield grew up fifth of eight children with a violent, mentally ill, street-musician father who believed he was a modern-day Mormon prophet destined to become U.S. president someday. She and her seven siblings were often forced to live as vagabonds, remaining on the move across the country. They frequently subsisted in sheds, tents, and, most notably, motorhomes. They often lived a dysfunctional drifter existence, camping out in their motorhome in Walmart parking lots. Carrie attended 17 public schools and homeschool, all while performing classical music on the streets and passing out fire-and-brimstone religious pamphlets—at times while child custody workers loomed.    Carrie’s father was eventually excommunicated from the official LDS Church, and she was the first of her siblings to escape the toxic brainwashing of his fundamentalist creed. Declared legally estranged from her parents, Carrie struggled with her mental health during college and for most of her adult life. But she eventually seized control of her life, transcended her troubled past, and overcame her toxic inner voice (and a near death experience)—thanks to the power of forgiveness, cultivated through her conversion to Christianity. She evolved from a scared and abused motorhome-dwelling girl to a Harvard-educated professional with a passion for empowering others to reject the cycles of poverty, depression, and self-hatred.   Motorhome Prophecies is the story of Carrie’s unbelievable, yet in many ways, very American journey. It resonates with those trapped in difficult situations and awes all who are enchanted by the depths and resilience of the human spirit.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/693902 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Sky Was Falling: A Young Surgeon's Story of Bravery, Survival, and Hope Author: Cornelia Griggs Narrator: Cornelia Griggs Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 5 hours 47 minutes Release date: March 12, 2024 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: A NATIONAL BESTSELLER In this “essential work that provides lasting insights and lessons for the individual and society” (Jerome Groopman, MD, New York Times bestselling author), a young pediatric surgeon and mother reveals her dramatic, cathartic diary, written as she worked on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic at one of New York City’s busiest hospitals. For many of us, the experience of the peak pandemic was eerily incongruous. We were sequestered in our quiet homes but reminded of the devastation by the never-ending ping of news alerts. Dr. Cornelia Griggs’s experience was altogether different. A pediatric surgery fellow in New York City, she was entering the final victory lap at the end of nine grueling years of training. She was set for a big graduation celebration and looking forward to spending some real time with her husband and kids. Then came COVID-19. Initially, Griggs encouraged her friends and family not to panic. However, as mysterious cases began showing up in the hospital, and then hospital supplies started disappearing from shelves, she couldn’t hold back the feeling that this was going to be worse than she had thought. She wrote a startling op-ed in The New York Times called “The Sky Is Falling” that went, for lack of a better word, viral. The piece was read by over a million people, and Griggs appeared on CNN. Having once aspired to be a journalist, Griggs found that the only way to make sense of what she was witnessing around her and maintain her sanity was to keep a diary. The Sky Was Falling is her day-to-day account of what most of us were grateful to only see in the news—the sharply increasing case numbers, the dwindling supply of respirators, the lack of clarity on how to treat this new disease. Harrowing, deeply personal, and page-turning in the way of the best medical memoirs, it tells the story of healthcare professionals who went beyond what they thought they were capable of to heal their patients, and themselves.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/693594 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Cloistered: My Years as a Nun Author: Catherine Coldstream Narrator: Catherine Coldstream Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 23 minutes Release date: March 7, 2024 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Brought to you by Penguin. An astonishing memoir of twelve years as a contemplative nun in a silent monastery Cloistered takes the reader deep into the hidden world of a traditional Carmelite monastery as it approaches the third Millennium and tells the story of an intense personal journey into and out of an enclosed life of poverty, chastity and obedience. Finding an apparently perfect world at Akenside Priory, and a haven after the loss of her father, Catherine Coldstream trusts herself to a group of twenty silent women, believing she is trusting herself to God. As the beauty and mystery of an ancient way of life enfolds her, she surrenders herself wholly to its power, only to find that all is not as it seems behind the Order's closed doors. Cut off from the wider world for decades, the community has managed to evade accountability to any authority beyond itself. When Sister Catherine realises that a toxic cult of the personality has replaced the ancient ideal of religious obedience, she is faced with a dilemma. Will she submit even to this, or will she be forced to speak out? An exploration of the limits of trust, Cloistered shows us how far grief can take us along the road of self-surrender, and of how much harm is done when institutional flaws go unacknowledged. Catherine's honest account of her time in the monastery - and her dramatic flight from it - is both a beautiful love song to a lost community and a sharp critique of the abuse of power in an ancient institution. Disclaimer: This book is a work of non-fiction based on the life, experiences and recollections of the author. In some cases names of people and places, dates, sequences and the detail of events have been changed to protect the privacy of others. ©2024 Catherine Coldstream (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/689503 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Riddles of the Sphinx: Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle Author: Anna Shechtman Narrator: Anna Shechtman Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 18 minutes Release date: March 5, 2024 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Combining the soul-baring confessional of Brain on Fire and the addictive storytelling of The Queen’s Gambit, a renowned puzzle creator’s compulsively readable memoir and history of the crossword puzzle as an unexpected site of women’s work and feminist protest. The indisputable “queen of crosswords,” Anna Shechtman published her first New York Times puzzle at age nineteen, and later, spearheaded the The New Yorker’s popular crossword section. Working with a medium often criticized as exclusionary, elitist, and out-of-touch, Anna is one of very few women in the field of puzzle making, where she strives to make the everyday diversion more diverse. In this fascinating work—part memoir, part cultural analysis—she excavates the hidden history of the crossword and the overlooked women who have been central to its creation and evolution, from the “Crossword Craze” of the 1920s to the role of digital technology today. As she tells the story of her own experience in the CrossWorld, she analyzes the roles assigned to women in American culture, the boxes they’ve been allowed to fill, and the ways that they’ve used puzzles to negotiate the constraints and play of desire under patriarchy. The result is an unforgettable and engrossing work of art, a loving and revealing homage to one of our most treasured, entertaining, and ultimately political pastimes. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/692285 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Trading Game: A Confession Author: Gary Stevenson Narrator: Gary Stevenson Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 12 hours 40 minutes Release date: March 5, 2024 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.89 of Total 9 Ratings of Narrator: 4.75 of Total 4 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Brought to you by Penguin. In this bestselling audiobook read by the author, Gary Stevenson relives his time on the trading floor with raw honesty, gritty humour and true conviction. An outrageous, white-knuckle journey to the dark heart of an intoxicating world - from someone who survived the trading game and then blew it all wide open Ever since he was a kid, kicking broken footballs on the streets of East London in the shadow of Canary Wharf's skyscrapers, Gary wanted something better. Something a whole lot bigger. Then he won a competition run by a bank: 'The Trading Game'. The prize: a golden ticket to a new life, as the youngest trader in the whole city. A place where you could make more money than you'd ever imagined. Where your colleagues are dysfunctional maths geniuses, overfed public schoolboys and borderline psychopaths, yet they start to feel like family. Where soon you're the bank's most profitable trader, dealing in nearly a trillion dollars. A day. Where you dream of numbers in your sleep - and then stop sleeping at all. But what happens when winning starts to feel like losing? When the easiest way to make money is to bet on millions becoming poorer and poorer - and, as the economy starts slipping off a precipice, your own sanity starts slipping with it? You want to stop, but you can't. Because nobody ever leaves. Would you stick, or quit? Even if it meant risking everything? This is an outrageous, unvarnished, white-knuckle journey to the dark heart of an intoxicating world - from someone who survived the game and then blew it all wide open. 'An unforgettable story of greed, financial madness and moral decay' Rory Stewart 'Hilarious, shocking and deeply sad — often in the same sentence' Sunday Times 'The Wolf of Wall Street with a moral compass' Irvine Welsh ©2024 Gary Stevenson (P)2024 Penguin Audio