Showing results by publisher "audible originals" in Biographies & Memoirs

On Christmas Eve, 2017, Tess Henry was found dead in a dumpster in Las Vegas. Tess was a 28-year-old new mother, a former honor roll student, and a high school basketball player from suburban Roanoke, Virginia, a place ravaged by the national opioid crisis. The New York Times best-selling author Beth Macy chronicled Tess and her mom, Patricia, through Tess' harrowing, years-long battle to recover from heroin addiction in her award-winning book Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America.

In the six lectures of The Great Gatsby at 100, you will join Sheila Liming of Champlain College to revisit the context and culture of the Roaring ‘20s, which inspired the story of the mysterious Jay Gatsby and his disastrous pursuit of Daisy Buchanan. As you’ll discover, while Gatsby is framed as a love story, it’s also a story of the American experience, revealing the unspoken rules of wealth and class and the false promises of self-made success in a world of Old Money privilege.

How do you explain Liz Phair? Looking at her career, the word fearless seems the right place to start. In Never Said Nothing, the latest in Audible’s Words + Music series, Phair charts her unlikely journey from making her first record - one that’s now ensconced on Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” - to a trial by fire (she’d never set foot on stage before its release), to even more improbably, a second and a third, maybe fourth act, depending on how one counts these things.

Some people amass artwork. For others, it's stamps. But why would you want to collect the possessions of a serial killer?

In 2011 a group of fishermen living on the Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England, were convicted for one of the largest, most audacious drug-smuggling plots in British history. They were accused of scooping up £53mill ($69 mill) worth of pure cocaine in the dead of night from the middle of the English Channel.

As a gay person, Joanne dreamed of falling in love and having a child. This seemed impossible - until she swiped right on Lara. From their first date on, Joanne knew Lara was the one - kind, caring, and wanting to have a child together someday. Two years later, Lara, a transgender woman, told Joanne, a cisgender woman, that if they wanted to try having a biological child, it was now or never. Despite the physical and mental obstacles, the couple embarked on a conception journey that would take their bond to the brink.

Gorgeous music, riveting stories, and the open road ahead. Don’t miss your chance to join Rufus Wainwright, the inimitable singer, songwriter, and composer, as he tracks his fascinating journey as an artist and man over the course of his deeply familiar car ride between the storied home of his youth (Saint-Sauveur, Quebec) and New York City, the birthplace of his musical rise. Part of Audible’s Words + Music series, Road Trip Elegies features more than 20 songs performed by Rufus and a tight-knit band (including family and friends) at a recent set of performances out West.

With an entirely fresh take on presidential history, James Swanson, author of the New York Times best-selling, Edgar Award-winning Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, shares the story of his lifelong obsession with the murder of America’s most revered president and the frantic hunt for his assassin. The renowned Lincoln scholar treats listeners to an audible “walking tour” of the people, places, events, and artifacts that tell the story of those horrible days in April 1865.

In George Orwell: The Man and the Mind Behind 1984, Professor Michael Shelden will show you how 1984 presents a plausible reality of thought control and totalitarian power that feels contemporary even as it reflects its own time.

Misanthrope. Iconoclast. Apostate. Drunk. Many words have been used to describe Doug Stanhope, but rarely has “hopeful” been one of them. However, heading into 2016, Stanhope peered through the apocalyptic fog and saw a forecast that was more rainbows than acid rain: His first book was set for release, his new stand-up special was in the can, and he was about to film a television pilot with his friend and confidant Johnny Depp. The only thing that could stop Doug was himself, and that’s exactly what he did.

[Contains sensitive content] On a warm evening in a small Mexican border town, men and women started disappearing. Local officials were warned to stay away and when it was all done, up to 200 people were gone. The Making of a Massacre is five-part true story detailing how well-intentioned efforts to curtail the drug trade by the US and Mexican governments had devastating effects. Led by ProPublica's award-winning journalist Ginger Thompson and featuring true to life performances by notable actors Cheech Marin, Danny Trejo, Alana del la Garza, Clifton Collins Jr. and Snow Tha Product, listeners will hear how a town was caught in the crossfire of the drug war. When you add Making of a Massacre to your library you will receive all 5 episodes, each with a runtime of approximately 25 minutes.

A Secret Service agent and a hacker-turned-informant join forces to take down a global cybercriminal ring, back when there were barely laws in place to prohibit what the cyber criminals were up to. It’s the early 2000s. The Internet is still a novelty. Twitter, Facebook, and Apple’s iPhones have yet to be invented. Terms like “cyberterrorism” and “ransomware” are not yet part of the mainstream lexicon. But the information superhighway already presents an attractive route for criminals—one with infinite lanes. While his colleagues were still focused on crimes committed IRL (in real life), Steve Ward, a Special Agent with the United States Secret Service, talks his superiors into letting him embark on an unprecedented covert operation designed to discover and stop shadowy operations made possible by the Internet. Steve’s not making much headway when through a lucky break he finds himself partnered with an unlikely ally: a 20-something, Miami-born hacker named Albert Gonzalez. Albert turns informant after he’s popped for a slew of infractions that include computer crimes and possession of ecstasy and cocaine. The two prove to be radically successful in a colossal sting operation—to everyone’s surprise, including their own. But success doesn’t remain sweet. When Albert is accused of spearheading the biggest theft of credit card data at that time, he turns on Steve, attempting to implicate him in criminal malfeasance. Veteran technology journalist and Fortune writer Michal Lev-Ram, tells the gripping story of Operation Firewall, giving a rare look into the murky world of hackers and the heroes who try to catch them. Told through the eyes of Steve, other Secret Service agents, analysts, prosecutors, and former hackers and their families, Operation Firewall takes listeners through the twists and turns of this historic investigation. But Operation Firewall is much more than a tale about good versus evil—duking it out in the cyber-world. It is also the story of a friendship between two men, the partnership that unfolds, and later implodes, with high-stakes consequences.

A true musical polymath, Beck shifts between and blends genres and generations with a preternatural ease—one foot in the secret history of American music and the other moving toward the future. Consistently brushed off by industry gatekeepers on both coasts, Beck perseveres—ultimately building a bespoke audience of millions who share his borderless musical vision. In Dear Life, Beck proves that the most powerful art is made by those who are brave enough to be fully themselves.

Pete Townshend is one of the great figures in rock ‘n’ roll history. For almost 60 years, The Who have balanced the physical and the spiritual with introspective lyrics and inspirational music. But there is a part of Townshend’s story—and The Who’s—that has not been examined. These are his Words + Music. In the Audible Original Pete Townshend: Somebody Saved Me, the songwriter takes us through the period between the 1978 death of Who drummer Keith Moon and the 2002 loss of bassist John Entwistle.

First dates are a total gamble, especially if your date is a total stranger.

In the six lectures of Margaret Atwood: A Modern Myth-Maker, Dr. Jennifer Cognard-Black will take you on a thorough exploration of Atwood’s most celebrated novel to examine the many ways this book has transcended its dystopian roots to become something more than a tale of, “What if?” Over the course of these lectures, you’ll examine the social, political, cultural, and spiritual impact of the novel—and of Atwood herself—as you dive deep into the text to unravel its themes and inspirations.

“This is a story about an idea that I have,” Americana legend and self-proclaimed “recovering folk singer” Steve Earle states early in his enthralling Words + Music performance. “This job of mine becomes an artform spontaneously in 1965 - when Bob Dylan wants to be John Lennon, and John Lennon wants to be Bob Dylan, whether either one of them would admit it or not - and in that moment, rock and roll becomes art."

Between 1993 and 1998, eight women went missing from an area around Dublin that became known as the ‘Vanishing Triangle’. Was there a link? Speculation abounded. There were whispers of a serial killer, responsible for some, if not all, of these cases. But nobody was ever brought to justice. Twenty years later, the brutal murder of Jastine Valdez disturbs crime novelist Claire McGowan into action.

How did DEA agents orchestrate the capture of one of the world’s most wanted weapons dealers? How does an all-female, unarmed group of rangers stop poachers from killing South Africa’s most majestic wild animals? And how did a scrappy crew of soldiers help desperate Afghans escape Kabul during the Taliban’s rapid takeover? Welcome to Heroes Behind Headlines: Only the Brave, where host Ralph Pezzullo takes you on deep dives into extraordinary true stories, told to you by the experts and the brave men and women who lived them.

On rare occasion, a fascinating artist will endeavor to peel back the curtain and truly reveal themselves: Their craft, their thoughts, their pain, their humanity. But it is even more rare that the artist actually possesses the range of gifts to pull it off. St. Vincent is such an artist. And St. Vincent: Words plus Music is such an experience.