Audiobook Giveaway April, 2025
All registered Tekread members eligible, every month. Click the image of the TekRead 5 Star audio book you want. Only one click per month accepted. You will be asked for your name and email address only if you have not registered before. Make sure you are logged in before you make your selection. Ten winners will be selected at random at the end of each month.
Click on any one of the 100 audio books shown below to see a summary and hear an audio sample or select your own book by entering Title by Author. When you find the audio book you want click on the “My Giveaway Choice” button to register it for your choice for the month.
AUTHOR’S BIO
Born in 1965, Harkness grew up near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter of an American-born father and a British-born mother. She is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College (B.A., 1986), Northwestern University (M.A., 1990), and the University of California, Davis (Ph.D., 1994). Harkness also studied abroad at Oxford University. She is a well-regarded historian of science and medicine, as well as having taught courses about the history of magic and science.
DEBORRAH HARKNESS BIBLIOGRAPHY
A Discovery of Witches 02-08-11
Shadow of Night 07-10-12
The Book of Life 07-15-14
Time’s Convert 09-18-18
The Black Bird Oracle 07-16-24
LJ Review of the Day
Harkness returns after a six-year hiatus in her “All Souls” series, whose most recent outing was 2018’s Time’s Convert. She picks up the story as witch and professor Diana Bishop is wrapping up the spring semester at Yale. She and her family—her vampire husband (knight/geneticist Matthew) and their twin Bright Born children—are preparing to head to Oxford. When an unkindness of ravens descends, carrying a magical ring and a message, their plans change. It’s time for Diana to meet her father’s side of the family, under the leadership of Gwyneth Proctor, an extraordinary witch of great knowledge. The visit carries with it promise and peril, as it pulls Diana into another stream of magic and a new realm of danger—a risk to both her and her children. Harkness balances the novel’s threats with deep joy, filling the book with new characters (many of them ghosts), the power of nature, and the connection of family. Affirming Harkness’s skill as a storyteller, the 464 pages unfold at a delightful speed, constantly moving the plot forward but also offering a lovely lull that creates a sensory experience; readers will get lost in the novel’s details—magic camp flags, the mysterious Ravens’ Wood, variously flavored teas, and the history of the Salem witch trials. Harkness is equally good at characterization. She puts a large cast in play while also reaching across the series and wonderfully blending new characters into a family that spans centuries, secrets, and expertise. Marked by Harkness’s deft evocations and appreciation of learning, this is a book to treasure. The portentous ending, rife with new story threads and threats, will leave readers hoping that she doesn’t wait another six years to continue the series.
THE AUDIOBOOK
The audiobook is narrated by Jennifer Ikeda and is 17 hrs and 3 mins.
Watch Deborah Harkness discuss her book The Black Bird Oracle on Good Morning America
On YouTube.
AUTHOR’S BIO
Helprin was born in Manhattan, New York City, in 1947. His father, Morris Helprin, worked in the film industry, eventually becoming president of London Films. His mother was actress Eleanor Lynn, who starred in several Broadway productions in the 1930s and 40s. In 1953 the family left New York City for the prosperous Hudson River Valley suburb of Ossining, New York. He was raised on the Hudson River and was educated at the Scarborough School,[2] graduating in 1965.[3] He later lived in the British West Indies. Helprin holds degrees from Harvard University (B.A. 1969), and Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (M.A. 1972). Helprin’s postgraduate study was at Princeton University and Magdalen College, Oxford, University of Oxford, 1976–77. He is Jewish-American, and he became an Israeli citizen during the late 1970s. He served in the Israeli infantry and the Israeli Air Force. Helprin is married to Lisa (Kennedy) Helprin. They have two daughters, Alexandra and Olivia. They live on a 56-acre farm in Earlysville, Virginia, and like his father and grandfather who had farms before him, Helprin does much of the work on his land
MARK HELPRIN BIBLIOGRAPHY
A Dove of the East and Other Stories (1975)
Refiner’s Fire (1977)
Ellis Island and Other Stories (1981)
Winter’s Tale (1983)
Swan Lake (1989)
A Soldier of the Great War (1991)
Memoir From Antproof Case (1995)
A City in Winter (1996)
The Veil of Snows (1997)
The Pacific and Other Stories (2004)
Freddy and Fredericka (2005)
Digital Barbarism (2009)
A Kingdom Far and Clear (2010)
In Sunlight and In Shadow (2012)
Paris In the Present Tense (2017)
The Ocean and the Stars (2023)
The Harvard Bookstore
A Navy captain near the end of a decorated career, Stephen Rensselaer is disciplined, intelligent, and determined to always do what’s right. In defending the development of a new variant of warship, he makes an enemy of the president of the United States, who assigns him to command the doomed line’s only prototype––Athena, Patrol Coastal 15––with the intent to humiliate a man who should have been an admiral.
Rather than resign, Rensselaer takes the new assignment in stride, and while supervising Athena’s fitting out in New Orleans, encounters a brilliant lawyer, Katy Farrar, with whom he falls in last-chance love. Soon thereafter, he is deployed on a mission that subjects his integrity, morality, and skill to the ultimate test, and ensures that Athena will live forever in the annals of the Navy.
As in the Odyssey, Katy is the force that keeps him alive and the beacon that lights the way home through seven battles, mutiny, and court martial. In classic literary form, an enthralling new novel that extolls the virtues of living by the laws of conscience, decency, and sacrifice, The Oceans and the Stars is nothing short of a masterpiece.
THE AUDIOBOOK
The audiobook is narrated by Traber Burns and is 21 hrs and 36 mins.
Watch Mark Helprin discuss his book The Oceans and the Stars on The Story Craft Cafe
On YouTube.
AUTHOR’S BIO
Lehane was born August 4, 1965, and raised in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. He lived in the Boston area most of his life,
where he sets most of his books, but now lives in southern California
He spent summers on Fieldston Beach in Marshfield. Lehane is the youngest of five children. His father was a foreman for Sears & Roebuck,
and his mother worked in a Boston public school cafeteria.
Both of his parents emigrated from Ireland. Lehane is a graduate of Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida.
His brother, Gerry Lehane, who is two and a half years older than Dennis, trained at the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence and became an actor in New York in 1990. Gerry is a member of the Invisible City Theatre Company.
Lehane is married to Chisa Lehane. He has two children from a previous marriage.
He is a graduate of Boston College High School, a Jesuit prep school. Eckerd College, where he found his passion for writing,
and the graduate program in creative writing at Florida International University in Miami, Florida.
He occasionally made guest appearances as himself in the ABC comedy/drama TV series Castle.
DENNIS LEHANE BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bibliography
A Drink Before the War (1994)
Darkness, Take My Hand (1996)
Sacred (1997)
Gone, Baby, Gone (1998)
Prayers for Rain (1999)
Moonlight Mile (2010)
The Given Day (2008)
Live by Night (2012)
World Gone By (2015)
Mystic River (2001)
Shutter Island (2003)
Coronado: Stories (2006)
The Drop (2014)
Since We Fell (2017)
Small Mercies (2023)
NPR -GABINO IGLESIAS REVIEW
Dennis Lehane’s Small Mercies may take place in Boston’s Southie neighborhood in 1974 — but the topics it deals with are incredibly timely.
At once a crime novel, a deep, unflinching look at racism, and a heart-wrenching story about a mother who has lost everything, this narrative delves into life in the projects at a time when the city of Boston struggled with the desegregation of its public school system — and a lot residents were showing their worst side.
In the sweltering summer of 1974, Mary Pat Fennessy is trying to get by and keep the bill collectors at bay. Mary Pat has lived her entire life in Southie, in Boston’s mostly Irish-American housing projects. Her ex-husband left her, her son overdosed on heroin after returning from Vietnam, and her teenage daughter Jules is running around with a boyfriend Mary Pat hates. One night Jules goes out with her boyfriend and a friend and never comes back home. That same night, a young Black man is found dead on the subway train tracks and no one knows what happened to him.
These two events seem unconnected at first. But as Mary Pat asks around and starts learning about what Jules was up to and where she was the last time anyone saw her, she learns they might actually be linked. Unfortunately, Mary Pat’s desperate search puts her in the crosshairs of Marty Butler, the head of Southie’s Irish mob. Marty doesn’t want the attention Southie is getting because of the manifestations against desegregation, and Mary Pat is making things worse by asking too many questions in her desperate search for her missing daughter. Mary Pat and Marty know each other, so he explains why Mary Pat needs to be a good neighbor and let things go. But there’s no stopping a worried mother from finding out what happened to her daughter, the only thing she had left in this world.
Small Mercies is the story of a desperate mother trying to find her daughter and getting in trouble with the mob in the process, but it’s also much more than that. Set against the tumultuous months of manifestations, constant anger, violence, anti-government sentiment, and rampant racism that marked Boston’s desegregation of its public schools, this novel cuts to the heart of the problem and offers a scathing look at a how race was seen by many Southie residents.
Between the constant racist discourse and endless racial slurs, Small Mercies is a difficult read. However, there are moments in which Mary Pat begins to see how everything she thought she knew about Black people might not be true. It’s not enough to redeem her — there is no redemption here, for anyone — but it’s enough to show readers how sometimes racism was more like an inherited trait rather than a conscious decision.
In many of Lehane’s novels, noir is not only something tied to crime; it’s also something akin to a filter that shows the characters’ realities. Small Mercies is no different. Mary Pat, her sister, and Jules, for example, are all profoundly unhappy because of who they are and how hard they must work to barely stay afloat. Also, the novel inhabits a place in which crime, race, class, and geography are all profoundly interconnected, which makes breaking cycles almost impossible, especially for people who see Southie as the center of the world and have no desire to see, and no respect for, any other place on the map.
This is a novel about grief, poverty, desperation, and the power of the criminals running Southie. However, the main element here is racism, and that makes it a relevant read today because, sadly, some of the discursive elements present in the story are still around. For example, most people in the story are convinced the young Black man who was found dead on the subway was an uneducated drug dealer from a broken family. He wasn’t; he was educated, from a loving family (his mother worked with Mary Pat and considered her a friend), an athlete, and had no criminal record. While some folks see a bit of light, many don’t, and that echoes with some of the behavior and discourse about race we see today.
While this is a timely thriller that carries a lot of emotion, memorable characters, crackling dialogue, and great action, the rampant racism and constant use of racist jokes, comments, and slurs almost overpowers everything else. It’s hard to feel empathy for racist characters — and dark narratives tend to fail in the absence of empathy — so this might be, for some readers, the kind of novel they read and immediately forget about. For others, however, Lehane’s brutal honesty will come across as an attempt to show something ugly he lived through and has now written about as a call to action and an invitation to do better moving forward — instead of repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
THE AUDIOBOOK
The audiobook is narrated by Robin Miles and is 10 hrs and 23 mins.
Watch Dennis Lehane discuss his book Small Mercies on CBS Saturday Morning
On YouTube.
AUTHOR’S BIO
Kate Quinn is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of historical fiction. A native of southern California, she attended Boston University where she earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Classical Voice. She has written four novels in the Empress of Rome Saga, and two books in the Italian Renaissance, before turning to the 20th century with “The Alice Network”, “The Huntress,” “The Rose Code,” and “The Diamond Eye.” All have been translated into multiple languages. Kate and her husband now live in San Diego with three rescue dogs.
KATE QUINN BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bibliography
The Empress of Rome Series
Mistress of Rome (2010).
Daughters of Rome (2011).
Empress of the Seven Hills (2012).
The Three Fates (2015).
Lady of the Eternal City (2015).
The Borgia Chronicles
The Serpent and the Pearl (2013).
The Lion and the Rose (2014).
20th Century Novels
The Alice Network (2017).
The Huntress (2019).
The Rose Code (2021).
The Diamond Eye (2022).
BOOKPAGE – MATTHEW JACKSON REVIEW
As she has consistently proven in historical novels such as The Alice Network and The Rose Code, Kate Quinn is a master at crafting an intoxicating, well-balanced blend of immersive period details and deft character work. With The Diamond Eye, she returns to the fertile storytelling terrain of World War II for a tale inspired by the extraordinary life of Russian sniper Lyudmila “Mila” Pavlichenko, known as “Lady Death.”
Mila becomes a mother at 15; six years later, amid an impending divorce, she promises her son that she’ll teach him to shoot. In between working on her dissertation at Kiev University and raising Alexei, she finds that she’s brilliant with a rifle. When the Nazis invade the Soviet Union, her elite skill becomes a key asset in the Red Army’s fight to defend the motherland. Mila sets off for war and marches into her own legend.
In each of her novels, Quinn displays an innate awareness of how history can be warped by time and power. In The Diamond Eye, we don’t just follow Mila’s journey into war; we see her actions in sharp contrast to what the Soviet government will later say she’s done. Mila’s perceptions of events are shown in relief to those of the men around her, and even to the perceptions of the American public, thanks to a 1942 press tour hosted by first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. That press tour forms the novel’s narrative spine, unfolding in sections that alternate with Mila’s larger wartime odyssey. This structure steadily ratchets up the suspense as it becomes clear that Mila is not as welcome in the U.S. as she was led to believe.
The Diamond Eye is a remarkable combination of immersive wartime storytelling, rich detailing and wonderful pacing. What really makes The Diamond Eye land, though, goes beyond Quinn’s mastery of her chosen genre. This is, first and foremost, an exceptional character piece, a study of a woman who is a killer, a mother, a lover and, above all else, a survivor.
Ingeniously structured and so damn entertaining; this novel is as ambitious as its heroines—but it never falls from the sky.
THE AUDIOBOOK
The audio book is narrated by Saskia Maarleveld and is 12 hrs and 51 mins.
Watch Kate Quinn discuss her book The Diamond Eye with Rachel Barenbaum
On YouTube.
AUTHOR’S BIO
Maggie Shipstead is the New York Times-bestselling author of the novels Seating Arrangements, Astonish Me, and Great Circle, and the winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize and the L.A. Times Book Prize for First Fiction. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford, and the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Great Circle is currently shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Her writing has appeared in many places, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, Travel + Leisure, Departures, Condé Nast Traveler, Outside, The Best American Short Stories, and The Best American Sports Writing. She lives in Los Angeles.
MAGGIE SHIPSTEAD BIBLIOGRAPHY
Seating Arrangements, 2012.
Astonish Me, 2014.
Great Circle, 2021.
KIRKUS REVIEW
The intertwined journeys of an aviatrix born in 1914 and an actress cast to play her a century later.
In a novel twice as long as and an order of magnitude more complex than the well-received Seating Arrangements (2012) and Astonish Me (2014), Shipstead reveals breathtaking range and skill, expertly juggling a multigenerational historical epic and a scandal-soaked Hollywood satire, with scenes playing out on land, at sea, and in the air. “We were both products of vanishment and orphanhood and negligence and airplanes and uncles. She was like me but wasn’t. She was uncanny, unknowable except for a few constellations I recognized from my own sky”: These are the musings of actress Hadley Baxter. She has been familiar with the story of Marian Graves, an aviatrix who disappeared while trying to circumnavigate the globe, since she was just a little girl—before she became a pop-culture phenomenon, turned into a movie star with a mega-franchise, accidentally destroyed her career, and was given the chance to reinvent herself…by playing Marian in a biopic. The film, Peregrine, is based at least partly on the logbook of Marian’s “great circle,” which was found wrapped in a life preserver on an ice floe near the South Pole. Shipstead’s story begins decades earlier, with the christening of the Josephina Eterna in Glasgow in 1909. The unhappy woman who breaks the bottle on her bow, the laconic captain who takes the ship to sea, the woman he beds onboard, the babies that result from this union—Marian Graves and her twin, Jamie—the uncle who has to raise them when their mother drowns and their father disappears: The destinies of every one of these people, and many more unforgettable characters, intersect in ways that reverberate through a hundred years of story. Whether Shipstead is creating scenes in the Prohibition-era American West, in wartime London, or on a Hollywood movie set, her research is as invisible as it should be, allowing a fully immersive experience.
Ingeniously structured and so damn entertaining; this novel is as ambitious as its heroines—but it never falls from the sky.
THE AUDIOBOOK
The audio book is narrated by Cassandra Campbell and Alex McKenna and is 25 hrs and 16 mins.
Watch Maggie Shipstead discuss her book Great Circle with Curtis Sittenfeld
On YouTube.
