Showing results by publisher "Beacon Audiobooks" in Biographies & Memoirs

Harry Sydney III is known for his Straight Talk-Sound Direction. The story of Sydney’s path from North Carolina to three Super Bowls and on to the founding of My Brother's Keeper, will inspire and challenge you to overcome the odds standing between you and your destiny. Told in Harry's unique voice, Win from Within takes listeners on a journey across the U.S. and Canada, from an abusive and alcoholic home to locker rooms filled with world champions; chasing his dream, developing his story, defying all odds, and overcoming disappointments.

When Lerita Coleman, a 41-year-old single African-American psychology professor, learns she has only 18 months to live without a heart transplant, anxiety overwhelmed her. The daunting challenge of medical procedures, medications, and the unknowns of losing an organ that symbolized her core being haunted her. In desperation, she turned to her diseased heart for guidance about whether to live or die. What emerges are a series of remarkably wise and witty conversations with her old heart and the one she ultimately received during a transplant in 1995.

In the space of a few days, Carrie loses her marriage, her career, and her home - all while working in Lagos, Nigeria. She is blindsided by the losses and realizes the story she painstakingly knit together over the past two decades - the story explaining her life and who she is - has unraveled. With no plan and only her deaf cat, Lucy, for company, Carrie decides to remain in Africa. What happens next is an awkward, amusing, and ultimately inspiring journey as Carrie slowly lets go of who she thought she was and starts from scratch at middle-age.

In 2005, after working for 10 years in a comfortable but mundane corporate job in San Antonio, Texas, Vincent Sellers successfully managed to leave behind a dreary cubicle landscape and begin the exciting challenges of a crime-fighting FBI agent. His journey is chronicled in Eyes Pried Open: Rookie FBI Agent. Listeners will experience both the highs and the lows of an FBI agent working bank robbery, kidnapping, murder-for-hire cases, and border-related crimes in San Diego, California. 

Officer Susan L. Bickett invites listeners into her squad car for a ride-along in the city of Green Bay, Wisconsin. Not unlike the good, the bad, and the ugly, listeners will experience the routine, the tones, and the unbelievable. In this candid day-in-the-life memoir, listeners will experience the humanness of police officers as they serve and protect their communities. No two days are the same, and being prepared is a unique challenge, especially as a female officer. Buckle up! This is a ride full of stories with a glimpse behind the badge while riding the thin blue line.

Z.O.S. is a memoir about sex, blood, money, and the CIA in Southeast Asia. Kay Merkel Boruff tells the story from her perspective of wife and widow of an Air America pilot killed during covert operations in Laos. She takes the listener there as only one who has been there can. You experience the highs, understand the efforts to escape the constant fear of the dangerous reality these American heroes face daily, feel the anguish of her loss and the isolation of the “zone of silence” she is required to live in for the rest of her life.  

In Outside the Wire in Blue, coauthors and American Police Officers David Shearman and James "JT” Taman dramatically reveal the highly successful but little-known DOD civilian law-enforcement advisory program born out of the height of the 2006 campaign against the insurgency in Fallujah, Iraq.  

This Side Up: The Road to a Renovated Life is a home and garden editor’s story of a life constantly under construction, none by design. Written with candor, humor and grace, Amy Mangan shares her own home tour, but this one deftly sheds light on job loss, financial shame, home displacement, marital discord, illness, and caregiving. Faced with one crisis after the next, Amy discovers how to cope, hope and rebuild, finding a new way home to a stronger way of life. 

Always at his mother's side, Frank Shankwitz spent much of his childhood on the move, frequently hungry and forever homeless. They moved around the country, sleeping in the family car as they ventured from one city to another in search of gainful employment. Frank remembers vividly those who went out of their way to show kindness and compassion. In every way, these acts of kindness fueled Frank's journey. Journey with Frank as he shares the story of his legacy; a life rooted in kindness, near-misses, and close calls. A life centered around the magic of making wishes come true.

When Luisa’s mother died, Luisa was left to take care of her family. Her dream of leaving Naples for a better life died, too. Hard work and sacrifice left no time for dreaming or romance. Until one day she met a US Marine stationed in Italy. Though Brandon didn’t speak Italian, he understood what Luisa needed and made her feel like a princess. They fell in love, married, and began to build a life together in the United States. Because of Brandon’s military service, Luisa spent long periods apart from him.

"The Opposite" wasn't just the classic Seinfeld episode in which George Costanza followed the opposite of his instincts to land success. The method behind the madness has been championed in industries worldwide and even likened to the rise of Trump. The award-winning writer who helped Costanza win, and first pondered "the opposite" in his own life, identifies traces of it in the legends he mined for anecdotes before the cameras rolled at his first high-profile Hollywood job.

From his first interactions with “The Mob” in his early childhood and his nightmarish life with his father until he was on his own at 15 years of age through his marriages and how he became one of the best and most famous stand-up comedians of his time, Kip Addotta tells all. He names names and details the how-to and fine-tuning of comedy. 

Joel Dahmen overcame the loss of his mother to cancer only to fight the disease himself. Through it all, he was a survivor and never lost sight of his dream of playing on the PGA Tour. In August 2016, Dahmen gained the right to chase the dream for real, but learned quickly that staying on the tour may be harder than getting there. Geno Bonnalie is also a dreamer who lives life with a special zest. He believes in Joel so much that he gave up a safe and secure lifestyle to become his caddie. Together, the two small-town kids face an uphill battle seeking success on golf’s biggest stage. 

For boys and girls growing up playing baseball in the 50s and 60s, one player stood out above all others - Mickey Mantle. Millions of kids copied his batting stance, ran the bases like he did, and pretended to be him on the sandlot, schoolyards, and Little League fields all across the country. But for one young boy that fantasy went far beyond just pretending and believing - convincing himself that indeed, he was, Mickey Mantle.

Fighter Pilot's Daughter: Growing Up in the Sixties and the Cold War details author and Professor Mary Lawlor’s unconventional upbringing in Cold War America. Memories of her early life—as the daughter of a Marine Corps and then Army father—reveal the personal costs of tensions that once gripped the entire world, and illustrate the ways in which bold foreign policy decisions shaped an entire generation of Americans, defining not just the ways they were raised, but who they would ultimately become. 

Blue Lives Matter is a audiobook that explores the line-of-duty deaths suffered by the law enforcement blue family. This audiobook examines the deaths of eight police officers and one police canine in Los Angeles County. The chapters portray the fallen officers and the canine as true heroes who each made the ultimate sacrifice in service to their community. Co-authors Steve Cooley and Bob Schirn discuss each case in detail.

Jabali spent years being beaten, tortured, starved, sexualized, brainwashed, and confined to a dark closet in both Mexico and the United States. Jabali Smith was a six-year-old in Berkeley, California, when he was trafficked along with his sister over the border into Mexico and held captive by a messianic doomsday sex cult. Slave courageously and boldly chronicles his journey as a child slave - the escape and eventual rise from the ashes of tragedy.

Christmas is eagerly awaited by Lulu, a young girl living in a small Wisconsin town during the Great Depression. Anticipation is transformed into anxiety when Daddy loses his job, doubts about Santa flicker, and that Shirley Temple doll seems further away than ever. Mama reveals her own brutal Christmas as an orphan, adding new worries. But it's Lulu's deep faith and vibrant hope that keeps her looking forward to each new day and the glorious gift of Christmas.

On the first day of school, 10-year-old Jeffrey and his six-year-old brother, Tyler, climbed out of the school bus at the foot of their driveway, walking into their home, excited about the first day of school. Instantly, their anticipation for the family back-to-school celebration turned to horror as they found their father murdered, stabbed and shot in a laundry room awash with blood. With a rush of adrenaline and terror, Jeffrey hid his younger brother, huddled behind the couch, and called 911 where his mother had worked for years.

Shattered, How Everything Comes Together When It All Falls Apart chronicles the transformational journey of one mother, psychologist, and researcher who found the courage to truly live while grappling with the diagnosis of her child with a life-limiting congenital heart defect. Written as a memoir (with the backing of a lot of solid research), this book offers an intimate journey of a parent facing the unthinkable - the possibility of outliving their child.