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Title: Night Driving

Subtitle: A Story of Faith in the Dark

Author: Addie Zierman

Narrator: Jaimee Draper

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-15-16

Publisher: Oasis Audio

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs

Publisher's Summary:

How do you know God is real? In the emotionally charged, fire-filled faith in which Addie Zierman grew up, the answer to this question was simple: because you've felt him.

Now, at age 30, she feels nothing. Just the darkness pressing in. Just the winter cold. Just a buzzing silence where God's voice used to be. So she loads her two small children into the minivan one February afternoon and heads south in a last-ditch effort to find the light.

In her second memoir, Night Driving, Zierman powerfully explores the gap between our sunny faith fictions and a God who often seems hidden and silent.

Against the backdrop of rushing interstates, strangers' hospitality, gas station coffee, and screaming children, Zierman stumbles toward a faith that makes room for doubt, disappointment, and darkness...and learns that sometimes you have to run away to find your way home.

Members Reviews:

Introspective

I nearly devoured Addie's first memoir, "When we were on Fire", and was thrilled to read "Night Driving." Addie has a way of describing herself in terms both exacting and accepting, in ways I found both self-aware and self-absorbed. But having grown up in a similar religious environment as Addie (though mine was partly by choice), I understood much of Addie's thoughts and feelings.

It's a beautiful journey, by turns hopeful and hopeless, angry and joyful. Addie is, as we all are, a work in progress.

As with "When we were on Fire", the narrator is a perfect choice, with her voice both light and angsty.

Well worth your time and credit if you're interested in the continuation of Addie's story specifically or faith journeys in general.

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Title: My Train to Freedom

Subtitle: A Jewish Boys Journey from Nazi Europe to a Life of Activism

Author: Ivan A. Backer

Narrator: Eric G. Dove

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-01-16

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs

Publisher's Summary:

The breathtaking memoir by a member of "Nicky's family", a group of 669 Czechoslovakian children who escaped the Holocaust through Sir Nicholas Winton's Kindertransport project. My Train to Freedom relates the trials and achievements of award-winning humanitarian and former Episcopal priest Ivan Backer.

As Backer recounts in his memoir, in May of 1939, as a 10-year-old Jewish boy, he fled Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia for the United Kingdom aboard one of the Kindertransport trains organized by Nicholas Winton, a young London stockbroker. The final train was canceled on September 1 when Hitler invaded Poland. The 250 children scheduled for that train were left on the platform and later transported to concentration camps and presumably perished.

Detailed in this true story is Backer's dangerous escape, his boyhood in England, his perilous 1944 voyage to America, and his mantra today. Now he is an 86-year-old who remains an activist for peace and justice. He has been influenced by his Jewish heritage, his Christian boarding school education in England, and the always present question: "For what purpose was I spared the Holocaust?"

My Train to Freedom was thoroughly researched and shaped by Backer's own memories. It includes interviews he conducted in 1980 in Czech with his mother and her sister, later translated into English; a collection of conversations he had with his older brother and cousin; and insights gained from the Czech film Nicky's Family, about the Kindertransport, and concludes with never-before-published death march accounts by two family members.

Members Reviews:

I believe he did what he could to make the world a better place. He is a good example for the ...

This was a very interesting book. Ivan A. Backer's story was inspiring. For me, he personalized the effect of the Holocaust on the victims. I admire him for his attitude of gratitude that his life had been spared and his determination to make a difference with his work as an activist. I believe he did what he could to make the world a better place. He is a good example for the rest of us.

I thought it was VERY boring, it started well

I thought it was VERY boring, it started well, but a lot of unimportant details were included! I thought after what his family went through in the war, most of them perished, to change his religion, was despicable!

An interesting book, but jumped around a lot, ...

An interesting book, but jumped around a lot, hard to remember time line, interesting history, which we should all remember is true, this young man was lu my.

Inspiring

A different story. I have read many books about the kindertrains, but this one is completely different. Read this for some activist inspiration.

Nice, but not what I expected

It was OK. I thought it was a story about his escape, but it is just an autobiography about his successes in life. Nice, but not what I expected.

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Title: Chasing the Monsoon

Subtitle: A Modern Pilgrimage Through India

Author: Alexander Frater

Narrator: Bernard Mayes

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-01-16

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 5 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs

Publisher's Summary:

This is the inspiring story of how one man realized his dream of witnessing firsthand the most dramatic of meteorological events: the Indian monsoon.

Alexander Frater spent the first six years of his life on a South Pacific island, where his father, the only doctor within a thousand square miles, encouraged his fascination with and respect for the volatile play of the elements. Frater brings this heritage to his observations on the monsoon, following it from its burst on the beaches of Trivandrum through Delhi and Calcutta, across Bangladesh, to its finale in the town of Cherrapunji, the "wettest place on Earth". With exceptional sensitivity and wit, Frater uses fact, impression, and anecdote to vividly describe his own experience of the monsoon while also illustrating the towering influence of nature over the lives of Indians.

Members Reviews:

Like nothing you've read before

You won't read anything remotely like this for a very long time. It reads like a tight paced narrative fiction, but this man actually did chase the monsoon across India, reporting as he went, with amazing courage, insight, humor and the personal touch that made his connections possible. You may not want to chase monsoons yourself, but you just might want to be in on a "burst"! And you'll be glad Mr. Frater did it all for you.

Enjoyable travel essay on India

_Chasing the Monsoon_ by Alexander Frater was an enjoyable travel book, one that I read in just a few days. The author's intention, as one might guess from the title, was to follow the progress of the summer monsoon through India, beginning in the southernmost tip of the subcontinent, Cape Comorin, and following its progress up the west coast through Trivandrum, Calicut, Goa, and Bombay, then jetting over to Delhi, and then to experience the eastern arm of the monsoon (there are two arms, one in the east of India, one in the west) in Calcutta and in two places near Bangladesh, Shillong and Cherrapunji (there was a map illustrating his route).

Frater began the book discussing his childhood in the New Hebrides, a group of islands in the South Pacific jointly administered at one time by both France and the United Kingdom, how growing up his missionary father helped instill in him a fascination for weather. His father had talked about one of the rainiest spots on Earth, Cherrapunji, India, which was known at the height of the monsoon season in July to get as much as 75 feet of rain, though more often in the 30 to 40 foot range, receiving as much as 40 inches in one day. Though Frater's father never visited Cherrapunji and lost interest in meteorology due to mounting family financial problems and the Second World War, Alexander himself never completely lost interest in the weather.

After relating how he finally decided to follow the monsoon in the summer of 1987 and if possible visit Cherrapunji, he detailed his pilgrimage throughout India. Though Frater did discuss some of the science of the monsoon and in particular the history of its study (noting such famous researchers as H.F.

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Title: The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict

Author: Austin Reed, Caleb Smith - editor, David W. Blight - foreword, Robert B. Stepto - foreword

Narrator: Dominic Hoffman

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins

Language: English

Release date: 01-26-16

Publisher: Random House Audio

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 8 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs

Publisher's Summary:

The earliest known prison memoir by an African American writer - recently discovered and authenticated by a team of Yale scholars - sheds light on the longstanding connection between race and incarceration in America.

In 2009, scholars at Yale University came across a startling manuscript: the memoir of Austin Reed, a free black man born in the 1820s who spent most of his early life ricocheting between forced labor in prison and forced labor as an indentured servant. Lost for more than 150 years, the handwritten document is the first known prison memoir written by an African American. Corroborated by prison records and other documentary sources, Reed's text gives a gripping first-person account of an antebellum Northern life lived outside slavery that nonetheless bore, in its day-to-day details, unsettling resemblances to that very institution.

Now, for the first time, we can hear Austin Reed's story as he meant to tell it. He was born to a middle-class black family in the boomtown of Rochester, New York, but when his father died, his mother struggled to make ends meet. Still a child, Austin was placed as an indentured servant to a family of white farmers near Rochester. He was caught attempting to set fire to a building and sentenced to 10 years at Manhattan's brutal House of Refuge, an early juvenile reformatory that would soon become known for beatings and forced labor.

Seven years later, Reed found himself at New York's infamous Auburn State Prison. It was there that he finished writing this memoir, which explores America's first reformatory and first industrial prison from an inmate's point of view, recalling the great cruelties and kindnesses he experienced in those places and excavating patterns of racial segregation, exploitation, and bondage that extended beyond the boundaries of the slaveholding South into free New York.

Formatted for optimal listenability and including fascinating historical documents (including a series of poignant letters written by Reed near the end of his life), The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict is a work of uncommon beauty that tells a story of 19th-century racism, violence, labor, and captivity in a proud, defiant voice. Reed's memoir illuminates his own life and times - as well as ours today.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

Critic Reviews:

"This extraordinary first-person account, from New York's House of Refuge to the Auburn State Prison, exposes the roots of a prison culture that continues to haunt far too many black families today.

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Title: Controlled

Subtitle: The Worst Night of My Life and Its Aftermath

Author: Neesha Arter

Narrator: Elizabeth Evans

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-22-15

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 10 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs

Publisher's Summary:

In her debut memoir, Controlled, Neesha Arter shares the year of her life that followed a harrowing crime. When she was 14 years old, she was sexually assaulted by people she had no reason to mistrust. She tried, subsequently, to reconcile feelings of guilt and shame by searching for a means of control. In a whirlwind of legal proceedings, family conflicts, and loss of identity, Arter succumbed to anorexia as the only way to find her childhood self in an unraveling world. Ten years later, she is able to look back with healing insight about the importance of speaking uncomfortable truths.

Critic Reviews:

"With hauntingly vivid detail, Neesha Arter's Controlled brings the trauma of surviving sexual assault to life. In the midst of profound pain, she finds indefatigable courage - a force so palpable it stays with you long after the final page. Fearlessly intimate and strikingly honest, its a gripping tale not simply of survival, but the refusal to be silenced. Her first memoir is rife with suffering and bursting at the seams with hope. I felt it in my bones - and still do." (Abby Haglage, The Daily Beast)

"Neesha Arter's honest, no holds barred account of stolen innocence is an important entry into understanding the sexual violence so many girls and women experience. Arter not only illustrates the devastating effects of her assault, the familial betrayal she faced, and her own self-harm, but also chronicles how she conquered these tremendous adversities. Controlled depicts the power of a young woman who chose to own her story." (Lane Florsheim, Marie Claire)

"Neesha Arter puts a name, a face and a riveting, rocking, shame-free and utterly gifted writing voice to an all too common female coming-of-age experience, sexual assault. Required reading for parents and educators and especially for teen boys and men who care about women and girls." (Nina Burleigh, best-selling Aathor of The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The Trials of Amanda Knox)

Members Reviews:

Heart wrenching

This book is so needed, so hard to listen to, and so good at the same time. Narrated wonderfully, it is a mirror held up to sexual assault, rape culture, trauma and eating disorders.

Thank you

Thank you for writing what I have not been able to say for 20 years.

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Title: Stet

Subtitle: An Editor's Life

Author: Diana Athill

Narrator: Jan Cramer

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-16-15

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 7 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs

Publisher's Summary:

For nearly five decades Diana Athill edited (nursed, coerced, coaxed) some of the most celebrated writers in the English language - among them V. S. Naipaul, Philip Roth, Mordecai Richler, and Norman Mailer. A founding editor of the prestigious publishing house Andr Deutsch Ltd., Athill takes us on a guided tour through the corridors of literary London, offering a keenly observed, devilishly funny, and always compassionate insider's portrait of the glories and pitfalls of making books.

Stet is spiced with candid insights about the type of people who make brilliant writers and ingenious publishers and the idiosyncrasies of both. It brims with Athill's memories of serving as confidante, midwife, and sometime therapist to great literary figures: Nobody who has read Jean Rhys' first four novels can suppose that she was good at life, but no one who never met her could know how very bad she was at it; "It was my job to listen to [Naipaul's] unhappiness and do what I could to ease it, which would not have been too bad if there had been anything I could do." Most of all it is Athill's voice that captivates - intimate, lively, generous, humorous, the voice of a favorite aunt who is as warm and big-hearted as she is worldly and irreverent.

Packed with delights, Stet is about the world of books, about people who write them and the process of making them, a world dissected with sharp and irresistible honesty. It is an invaluable contribution to the world of literature.

Members Reviews:

An inside look at publishing

Diana Athill worked for a London publishing company for approximately fifty years. Athill edited some of the best minds of the post war (WWII) generation, including John Updike, Gitta Sereny, Philip Roth, Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, Molly Keane, and George Orwell and many more. During World War II she worked for the BBC.

Athill discusses her life as an editor including her wartime fling with Hungarian expat Andre Deutsch of the Deutsch Ltd. Publishing Company for whom she later worked. This book provides a glimpse inside the world of authors, editors and publishing. Athill is quite candid, funny, witty and astute about her workplace.

I learned a new term while reading this book. I love to learn new words. Stet is an editing term. A copy editor wanting to rescue a deletion puts a row of dots under it and writes Stet (let it stand) in the margin.

The book is well written and charming. I would assume that the bibliophiles would be the major purchasers of this book. The book is about seven hours long and the narrator Jan Cramer does an excellent job.

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Title: Unveiled Threat

Subtitle: A Personal Experience of Fundamentalist Islam and the Roots of Terrorism

Author: Janet M. Tavakoli

Narrator: Diane Piron-Gelman

Format: Unabridged

Length: 2 hrs and 46 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-11-15

Publisher: Lyons McNamara LLC

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 10 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs

Publisher's Summary:

In this part heart-rending memoir, part expose of fundamentalist Islamic terrorism, finance expert Janet Tavakoli bears witness to the incompatibility of Western values and fundamentalist Islam.

In 1978, Janet Tavakoli moved to Tehran with her Iranian husband and witnessed the overthrow of the progressive Shah and the birth of the fundamentalist Islamic Republic of Iran. After fleeing Iran, she followed the expansion of fundamentalist Islam and the spread of terrorism promoted by religious leaders at the highest echelons in the Middle East.

In 1993, she worked in the World Trade Center complex when terrorists detonated a bomb in the parking garage of the North Tower. On 9/11, she watched the news from London as terrorist plane hijackers destroyed the World Trade Center's Twin Towers in New York on 9/11. She has followed multiple acts of terrorism by multiple fundamentalist Muslim terrorist organizations.

Sharia law, embraced by fundamentalists, allows forced marriages of female children, oppresses women, suppresses dissent, destroys freedom of speech, and promotes intolerance of other religions.

Tavakoli explains why the insistence of fundamentalist Muslims that sharia law is supreme over Western laws, including the United States Constitution, requires a response from those who believe in, and are willing to defend, the values of Western civilization.

Members Reviews:

Not as advertised

Would you try another book from Janet M. Tavakoli and/or Diane Piron-Gelman?

No. The description of the book says, "heart-rending memoir". I was expecting personal experiences and instead got a recent history lesson.

Would you ever listen to anything by Janet M. Tavakoli again?

No. I found the depth of material to be superficial.

Would you be willing to try another one of Diane Piron-Gelmans performances?

Maybe

Any additional comments?

I bought this book to fill time between credits and thought it would be interesting but I was disappointed.

Clear, Concise & Fearlessly Informative

A narrative warning of the personal experiences of the author and her collection of similar victimization by adherants to an ideology of evil, torture, terror and enslavement, which stands ready and willing to attack all unwitting or uninformed among us, worldwide. A sad testament of global inaction, insensitivity to suffering, and a growing moral depravity.

I thank her for her courage, and effectively righteous clarity.

An interesting read about Islam

This book is a very interesiting read if you want to know more about Islam and how a large part of the muslim population thinks.

You will learn quite a bit about the Iranian revolution and a bit of other hot topics in the Middle-East.

And the book is short; so there is no excuse for anyone in need of an introduction to the muslim world and way of life

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Title: A Dime a Dozen

Subtitle: The True Story of Twelve Siblings Victimized by Extreme Child Abuse

Author: Robert Theodore, Georgia Roberts, Shelly S. Theodore

Narrator: Ryan Bell

Format: Abridged

Length: 4 hrs and 3 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-27-15

Publisher: Tate Publishing and Enterprises, LLC

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 6 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs

Publisher's Summary:

A Dime a Dozen is the true account of 12 brothers and sisters traumatized by years of abuse inflicted by those who were supposed to have loved them the most - their mother and father.

Members Reviews:

Good story , but the reader is terrible!!

I wouldn't recommend this book in audio the reader makes it difficult to listen! It is a good story though.

Narrator makes it hard to listen!

Narrator isn't the best reader and it makes it difficult to listen. Good story tho!

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Title: The Best Boy in the United States of America

Subtitle: A Memoir of Blessings and Kisses

Author: Dr. Ron Wolfson

Narrator: Dr. Ron Wolfson

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs

Language: English

Release date: 09-15-15

Publisher: Ron Wolfson

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs

Publisher's Summary:

Hilarious and heartfelt, Ron Wolfson's inspiring memoir is filled with stories of growing up in a warm family, encountering colorful characters like the merchants of Omaha and the famous Warren Buffett, navigating adolescence and learning never to underestimate his mother. With easygoing Midwestern humor and profound poignancy, Ron's true stories of family and community in the United States of America will resonate with anyone seeking to shape stronger families, create compelling communities, and live their best life - a life of joy and laughter, meaning and purpose, and, yes, blessings and kisses.

Members Reviews:

The Best Book from the Best Boy

I laughed (hard) and I wept. Ron Wolfson is a consummate storyteller, and his coming-of-age tale is sweet, warm, and captivating. His dedication to his family and his love for his hometown are inspiring. Going far beyond his own personal reminisces, this book is the chronicle of the transformation of Jewish education in America by one of our most innovative, creative, pathfinding educators. It used to be said that "Jewish education in America is a mile wide but only an inch deep." Dr. Ron dug deeper and deeper, and because of him, and the thousands he has trained and inspired, our children know and love much more of their heritage. The Best Boy in the United States is a celebration of life that ignites the spirit and satisfies the soul. Highly, highly recommended.

Wonderful! Beautiful stories, beautiful message!

What a marvelous book! I grew up in the Omaha Beth El Jewish community Ron writes about. It was wonderful to see it all again through the lens of Ron's memory, to see unfolding in the specific microcosm of a Midwestern town, universal, timeless values of faith, family, and community. Who knew Omaha would become the Anatevka of the new millennium? Ron makes his own miracle with the material. He is never preachy. He tells us stories, and through them, how life in a Jewish community in a Midwestern town gave birth to his own Jewish neshama, Jewish soul. He provides us with a model for processing our own stories and for living our lives with joy and commitment. Ron's message of joy empowers and lifts the reader to new heights! Mazal Tov! What a wonderful Shanah Tovah gift to the world!

His speeches and The Best Boy in the United States of America are most ...

Dr. Wolfson is an outstanding speaker & author. Several people have told me they couldn't put the book down. He is an educator who entertains

while teaching. His speeches and The Best Boy in the United States of America are most enjoyable. Ellen L. Jacobs

I enjoyed reading this book very much

I enjoyed reading this book very much. I liked the short and specific chapters on different subjects. Although the title may be a little arrogant, the author did not impress me as being arrogant. It was interesting to read about the family relationships the author had and to read about his ups and downs at various times in his life. I had a few tears in my eyes when I finished reading the book.

Fabulous book

I loved this book. It was a heartwarming book telling of the love of family and community. It made you laugh and cry. it also made me so proud to be a Jewish American. It reminded me of my European grandparents and the overwhelming love grandparents can have for grandchildren. It is a wonderful book filled with love of family.

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Title: Nothing Is Ever Free

Author: Robin Lee

Narrator: Denice Stradling

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 min

Language: English

Release date: 09-15-15

Publisher: Reader's Digest

Ratings: 2 of 5 out of 9 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs

Publisher's Summary:

The Best Life Stories by Reader's Digest are 150 of the best hand-picked real-life tales of resilience, joy, and hope - all in 150 words or less! When I was six and my brother was five, our mom allowed us to walk to the corner store to buy some candy.

Members Reviews:

way to short. I thought I had time to relax while

way to short. I was looking for something to listen to while I fell asleep and relaxed. barely had enough time to lay down. waste of a dollar. get what you pay for

sucked!

what the description says is vercually the whole story for .66 its defantly not worth it, than god I didn't use my credit. I thought it would be more than just one little description if you can even call it that. it's inot worth anything.

Review of this year is a great way to the point of view is that the company said the company has to do with my life is I can't

I don't have to go out and get the best of all the way it