Biography & Memoir audiobooks

Leonardo Da Vinci

By: Sherwin Nuland

Narrated by: Scott Brick

Length: 4 hours 32 minutes

Abridged: No

In Leonardo Da Vinci, Sherwin Nuland completes his 20-year quest to understand an unlettered man who was a painter, architect, engineer, philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. What was it that propelled Leonardo's insatiable curiosity? Nuland finds clues in his subject's art, relationships, and scientific studies. He detects the siren... Read more

Virginia Woolf

By: Nigel Nicolson

Narrated by: Karesa McElheny

Length: 5 hours 4 minutes

Abridged: No

Virginia Woolf's life as part of the avant-garde Bloomsbury Group has captured the imagination of millions. Now Nigel Nicolson, the distinguished son of British writers Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West (Vita was one of Woolf's closest and most intimate friends) threads his personal reminiscences through the narrative of her life. In so... Read more

Cherry - Abridged

By: Mary Karr

Narrated by: Mary Karr

Length: 5 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Mary Karr told the prize-winning tale of her hardscrabble Texas childhood with enough literary verve to spark a renaissance in memoir. The Liar's Club rode the top of The New York Times bestseller list for more than a year, and publications ranging from The New Yorker to People picked it as one of the best books of the year. But it left... Read more

Natural Blonde - Abridged

By: Liz Smith

Narrated by: Liz Smith

Length: 6 hours 1 minute

Abridged: Yes

From Tallulah Bankhead to Joan Crawford to the Kennedys and Madonna, the ultimate insider, Liz Smith has hobnobbed, air-kissed, and lunched with just about everybody who's been anybody over the last half-century--and then rushed to tell the world all about it. Now, in this candid, down-to-earth autobiography, she tells all about herself, and... Read more

Land of a Thousand Hills

By: Rosamond Halsey Carr

Narrated by: C. M. Hébert

Length: 10 hours 37 minutes

Abridged: No

When Rosamond Halsey Carr first arrived in Africa, she didn’t realize that she would spend the rest of her life there. As a young fashion illustrator living in New York City in the 1940s, she seemed the least likely candidate for such a life of adventure. But marriage to a hunter-explorer took her to what was then the Belgian Congo, and divorce... Read more

King David

By: Jonathan Kirsch

Narrated by: Jonathan Kirsch

Length: 11 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

David, King of the Jews, possessed every flaw and failing a mortal is capable of, yet men and women adored him and God showered him with many more blessings than he did Abraham or Moses. His sexual appetite and prowess were matched only by his violence, both on the battlefield and in the bedroom. A charismatic leader, exalted as "a man after... Read more

You Go Girl! Winning the Woman's Way

By: Kim Doren & Charlie Jones

Narrated by: Matilda Novak

Length: 6 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

A collection of first-person insights, thoughts, and stories from successful women in the world of sports, including Mia Hamm; Gabrielle Reece; Marion Jones; Kerri Strug; Chris Evert; Nancy Lopez; Picabo Street and more. Read more

Married to Laughter - Abridged

By: Jerry Stiller

Narrated by: Jerry Stiller

Length: 5 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara began performing together in coffehouses in Greenwich Village in the 1960's, and then as frequent guests on The Ed Sullivan Show. They based their standup characters on exaggerated vrsions of themselves, especially in the irrepressible commercials for Blue Nun wine. Offstage they raised two children, Amy and... Read more

The Language of Life

By: Bill Moyers

Narrated by: Bill Moyers

Length: 7 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

"Poets live the lives all of us live," says Bill Moyers, "with one big difference. They have the power--the power of the word--to create a world of thoughts and emotions other can share. We only have to learn to listen."



In a series of fascinating conversations with thirty-four American poets, The Language Of Life celebrates language in its "most... Read more

His Bright Light

By: Danielle Steel

Narrated by: Traci Godfrey

Length: 9 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

At once a loving legacy and an unsparing depiction of a devastating illness, Danielle Steel’s tribute to her lost son is a gift of life, hope, healing, and understanding to us all.

“This is the story of an extraordinary boy with a brilliant mind, a heart of gold, and a tortured soul. It is the story of an illness, a fight to live, and a race... Read more

In a Sunburned Country

By: Bill Bryson

Narrated by: Bill Bryson

Length: 11 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

Every time Bill Bryson walks out the door, memorable travel literature threatens to break out. This time in Australia.

His previous excursion along the Appalachian Trail resulted in the sublime national bestseller A Walk in the Woods. In A Sunburned Country is his report on what he found in an entirely different place: Australia, the country that... Read more

Bella Tuscany

By: Frances Mayes

Narrated by: Frances Mayes

Length: TBA

Abridged: No

Frances Mayes, whose enchanting #1 New York Times bestseller Under the Tuscan Sun made the world fall in love with Tuscany, invites readers back for a delightful new season of friendship, festivity, and food, there and throughout Italy.

Having spent her summers in Tuscany for the past several years, Frances Mayes relished the opportunity to... Read more

Desire of the Everlasting Hills

By: Thomas Cahill

Narrated by: Brian F. O'Byrne

Length: 9 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author of How the Irish Saved Civilization comes a compelling historical narrative about Jesus—an obscure rabbi from a backwater of the Roman Empire who became the central figure in Western Civilization.

"Divertingly instructive...gratifying...[Cahill] makes Jesus a still-living literary presence." —The... Read more

What Falls Away

By: Mia Farrow

Narrated by: Mia Farrow

Length: 9 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

In an exquisitely written memoir, Mia Farrow introduces us to the landscapes of her extraordinary life.  Moving from her earliest memories of the walled gardens and rocky shores of western Ireland and her Hollywood childhood to her career as an actress, she writes of these experiences and her struggle to protect her children in a painful custody... Read more

Hillary's Choice - Abridged

By: Gail Sheehy

Narrated by: Gail Sheehy

Length: TBA

Abridged: Yes

This is the story of a woman and a marriage, both so famous the world over, we think we know everything there is to know. But Hillary's Choice renders America's First Lady fully human for the first time.
        
Gail Sheehy uncovers the lifelong imprint of Hillary's drillmaster father and the frustrated mother who taught her to bottle up her... Read more

Stalin - Abridged

By: Edvard Radzinsky

Narrated by: David McCallum

Length: 6 hours 17 minutes

Abridged: Yes

From the author of The Last Tsar, the first full-scale life of Stalin to have what no previous biography has fully obtained: the facts. Granted privileged access to Russia's secret archives, Edvard Radzinsky paints a picture of the Soviet strongman as more calculating, ruthless, and blood-crazed than has ever been described or imagined. Stalin... Read more

Bella Tuscany - Abridged

By: Frances Mayes

Narrated by: Frances Mayes

Length: TBA

Abridged: Yes

Frances Mayes, whose enchanting #1 New York Times bestseller Under the Tuscan Sun made the world fall in love with Tuscany, invites readers back for a delightful new season of friendship, festivity, and food, there and throughout Italy.

Having spent her summers in Tuscany for the past several years, Frances Mayes relished the opportunity to... Read more

Under the Tuscan Sun - Abridged

By: Frances Mayes

Narrated by: Frances Mayes

Length: 6 hours 1 minute

Abridged: Yes

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The beloved memoir of self-discovery set against the spectacular Tuscan countryside that inspired the major motion picture starring Diane Lane—now in a twentieth-anniversary edition featuring a new afterword
 
“This beautifully written memoir about taking chances, living in Italy, loving a house and, always, the... Read more

Tender at the Bone - Abridged

By: Ruth Reichl

Narrated by: Ruth Reichl

Length: 5 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: Yes

At an early age, Ruth Reichl discovered that "food could be a way of making sense of the world. . . . If you watched people as they ate, you could find out who they were." Her deliciously crafted memoir, Tender at the Bone, is the story of a life determined, enhanced, and defined in equal measure by a passion for food, unforgettable people, and... Read more

Actual Innocence - Abridged

By: Barry Scheck, Peter Neufeld & Jim Dwyer

Narrated by: Michael Boatman

Length: 6 hours 1 minute

Abridged: Yes

Extraordinarily powerful stories of ordinary people locked up for crimes they did not commit, and how they were freed against great odds.

A nightmare from a thousand B-movies: a horrible crime is committed in your neighborhood, and the police knock at your door. A witness swears you are the perpetrator; you have no alibi, and no one believes your... Read more

Sinbad's Guide to Life - Abridged

By: Sinbad

Narrated by: Sinbad

Length: 2 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: Yes

A hilarious guide to life from a man who has "lived large and fallen hard--lost every job I ever had, messed up everybody I've ever dated, been kicked out of every institution I've ever been in"--and still survived; offering observations on courage ("Lots of guys brag they'd fight off anything to save their woman. Yeah, right--there is no sense... Read more

Daughter of the Queen of Sheba - Abridged

By: Jacki Lyden

Narrated by: Jacki Lyden

Length: TBA

Abridged: Yes

As an adult, National Public Radio foreign correspondent Jacki Lyden has spent her life on the front lines of some of the world's most dangerous war zones. As a child, she lived in a war zone of a different kind. Her mother, Dolores, suffered from what is now called manic depression; but when Jacki was growing up in a small Midwestern town,... Read more

Flags of Our Fathers - Abridged

By: James Bradley & Ron Powers

Narrated by: Barry Bostwick

Length: 6 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Now abridged for young people, Flags of Our Fathers is the unforgettable chronicle of perhaps the most famous moment in American military history: the raising of the U. S. flag at Iwo Jima. Here is the true story behind the immortal photograph that has come to symbolize the courage and indomitable will of America.

In February 1945, American... Read more

Shot in the Heart - Abridged

By: Mikal Gilmore

Narrated by: Will Patton

Length: 3 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: Yes

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • A murder tale "from inside the house where murder is born." Haunting, harrowing, and profoundly affecting, Shot in the Heart exposes and explores a dark vein of American life that most of us would rather ignore. It is a book that will leave no reader unchanged.

Gary Gilmore, the infamous murderer... Read more