Showing results by publisher "Brilliance Audio" in Biographies & Memoirs

When Melissa Francis was eight years old, she won the role of lifetime: playing Cassandra Cooper Ingalls, the little girl who was adopted with her brother (played by young Jason Bateman) by the Ingalls family on the world’s most famous prime-time soap opera, Little House on the Prairie. But behind the scenes, her success was fueled by the pride, pressure, and sometimes grinding cruelty of her stage mother.

Victor Villaseñor creates a powerful, moving protrait of his father's family - the Villaseñors - who in their courage and love of life represent the whole passionate history of Mexico. An epic portrait of Mexico is painted as this spellbinding story of madness and miracles, rage and redemption, unfolds.

How often have you seen a teenage girl pretend to be perturbed, but secretly smile, when she is told that she acts or looks just like her mother? Fathers, brothers, and friends sometimes shake their heads in wonder as girls "turn into their mothers". This new collection from Chicken Soup represents the best stories from Chicken Soup's library on the special bond between mothers and daughters, and the magical, mysterious similarities between them.

Like so many women in today's society, Valerie Frankel's world was dictated by her weight, from starvation and binge eating to her self-loathing and total preoccupation with her weight. Not wanting to pass this legacy on to her own daughters, Valerie set out to cleanse herself of these painful and damaging cycles.

Before Georgetown physics professor Francis Slakey decided to climb the highest mountain on every continent and surf every ocean, he had shut himself off from other people. His lectures were mechanical; his relationships were little more than ways to fill the evenings. But as his journey veered dangerously off course, everything began to change. A gripping adventure of the body and mind, To the Last Breath depicts the quest that leads Slakey around the globe, almost takes his life, and opens his heart.

This new book includes some of the best stories on love and marriage chosen from Chicken Soup's vast library, with selections from past Chicken Soup books. These heartwarming stories will inspire and amuse listeners, and even give them new ideas for their own loving relationships, whether they are just starting to date or are veterans of a long marriage.

When Mary Lou Quinlan’s beloved mother, Mary Finlayson, dies, her family is bereft - until Mary Lou searches for her mother’s "God Box", her private cache of notes to God on behalf of family, friends, and strangers. To Mary Lou’s amazement, she finds not one but 10 boxes stuffed with hundreds of tiny petitions that span the last 20 years of her mother’s life.

Note by note, Mary Lou unearths a treasure of her mother’s wishes and worries and insight. Mary asked God for everything from the right flooring for her daughter’s home to a cure for her own blood cancer.

The stories in Chicken Soup for the Soul will encourage listeners to stay upbeat, because there's always a brighter way to look at life. This collection includess 31 Stories about family, courage, and how to listen.

Everyone loves a good love story. And we all love stories about how the love started and blossomed. This fun new book about dating, romance, love, and marriage, will make you laugh and make you cry, and is guaranteed to inspire you to renew that search for your soul mate or open your heart a little more. Read about how couples met, when “they knew”, good and bad dates, proposals, maintaining the relationship, second chances, and all the other ups and downs of love, romance, and marriage.

In this coming-of-age memoir about a privileged, protected childhood in the exotic milieu of 1950’s Egypt, author Jean Naggar describes a magical time that seemed as if it would never end. But Egypt’s nationalizing of the Suez Canal would set in motion events that would change her life forever. An enchanted existence suddenly ended by international hostilities, her family is quickly scattered far and wide, and Naggar is eventually swept into adulthood and the challenge of new horizons in America.

This book is created for Christian parents to read and enjoy themselves or to share with their children. All of the selected stories are appropriate for children and are about raising Christian kids twelve and under. Parent will enjoy reading these heartfelt, inspiring, and often humorous stories about the ups and downs of daily life in today's contemporary Christian families, written by other Christian parents.

Nina Sovich had always yearned for adventures in faraway places; she imagined herself leading the life of a solitary traveler. Yet at the age of 34, she found herself married and contemplating motherhood. Unwittingly, she had followed life’s script, and now she needed to cast it out. Inspired by female explorers like Mary Kingsley, who explored Gabon’s jungle in the 1890s, and Karen Blixen, who ran a farm in Kenya during World War I, Sovich packed her bags and hopped on the next plane to Africa in search of adventure.

Everyone needs some faith and hope! This book is just the ticket, with a collection of some of the best stories from Chicken Soup for the Soul's past on answered prayers, the power of love, family, and making a difference. These true stories, written by regular people, tell of prayers answered miraculously, amazing coincidences, rediscovered faith, and the serenity that comes from believing in a greater power, appealing to Christians and those of other faiths - anyone who seeks inspiration.

A mother's job is never done, but in this book she gets the praise she deserves. Children from 8 to 80 share their words of gratitude and appreciation in this new collection of stories for moms. Daughters and sons relate tales of love and learning, celebrating moms, their wisdom, and all that they do. These stories of special memories, loving and hard lessons, unforgettable moments, laughter and tears, and support and encouragement will bring any mom joy, inspiration, and amusement.

No one likes to diet, but this book will encourage and inspire listeners with its positive, practical, and purposeful stories of dieting and fitness. You'll find hope, help, and hints on getting fit and staying healthy in these stories from those who have been there, done that, and maintained it. Stories about wake-up calls and realizations, moving more and eating better, self-esteem and support, will motivate any listener looking to start fresh or needing a boost.

Since Andrew Hudgins was a child, he was a compulsive joke teller, so when he sat down to write about jokes, he found that he was writing about himself — what jokes taught him and mistaught him, how they often delighted him but occasionally made him nervous with their delight in chaos and sometimes anger. Because Hudgins’s father, a West Point graduate, served in the US Air Force, his family moved frequently; he learned to relate to other kids by telling jokes and watching how his classmates responded. And jokes opened him up to the serious, taboo subjects that his family didn’t talk about openly — religion, race, sex, and death. Hudgins tells and analyzes the jokes that explore the contradictions in the Baptist religion he was brought up in, the jokes that told him what his parents would not tell him about sex, and the racist jokes that his uncle loved, his father hated, and his mother, caught in the middle, was ambivalent about. This audiobook is both a memoir and a meditation on jokes and how they educated, delighted, and occasionally horrified him as he grew.

Rife with captivating details of survival in an icy wilderness, this reimagining of the famous 1910 expedition to the South Pole, told in Cherry's voice, is an unforgettable tale of courage and camaraderie.

Thanks Dad gives fathers the pat on the back they deserve. Children of all ages share their heartfelt words of thanks and loving memories in these stories. Thanks Dad will bring any father joy, inspiration, and humor - and maybe even the realization that his kids did pay attention after all.

An interview with Paul Feig, author of Ignatius MacFarland: Frequenaut! After being teased one too many times, Ignatius MacFarland decides to build a rocket. Maybe extraterrestrials are nicer than his classmates! But when his rocket takes an explosive wrong turn, Ignatius ends up in another frequency run by former English-teacher-turned-dictator, Chester Arthur.

The stories in Chicken Soup for the Soul will encourage listeners to stay upbeat, because there's always a brighter way to look at life. This collection includes 31 Stories on the true meaning of Christmas, Christmas through the eyes of children, and the spirit of giving.