list of classic books to read Audiobooks

“It’s like the meanest, wildest monkey running around my head, constantly looking for ways to bite me.” That was how Kirsten Pagacz described her OCD to her therapist on their first session when she was well into her 30s she’d been following orders from this mean taskmaster for 20 years, without understanding why. Initially the tapping and counting and cleaning and ordering brought her comfort and structure, two things lacking in her family life. But it never lasted; the loathsome self-talk only intensified, and the rituals she had to perform got more bizarre. By high school she was anorexic and a substance abuser, common "shadow syndromes" of OCD. By adulthood, she could barely hide her problems and held on to jobs and friends through sheer grit. Help finally came in the form of a miraculously well-timed public service announcement on NPR about OCD -- at last her illness had an identity. Leaving the OCD Circus reveals the story of Pagacz’s traumatic childhood and the escalation of her disorder demonstrating how OCD works to misshape a life from a very young age and explains the various tools she used for healing including meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy, yoga, exposure therapy, and medication.

The Attempted Murder of Teddy Roosevelt is a historical thriller from award-winning political journalist and Washington insider Burt Solomon, featuring Teddy Roosevelt's near death...accident or assassination attempt? Theodore Roosevelt had been president for less than a year when on a tour in New England his horse-drawn carriage was broadsided by an electric trolley. TR was thrown clear but his Secret Service bodyguard was killed instantly. The trolley’s motorman pleaded guilty to manslaughter and the matter was quietly put to rest. But was it an accident or an assassination attempt…and would there be another “accident” soon? The Attempted Murder of Teddy Roosevelt casts this event in a darker light. John Hay, the Secretary of State, finds himself in pursuit of a would-be assassin, investigating the motives of TR’s many enemies, including political rivals and the industrial trusts. He crosses paths with luminaries of the day, such as best-pal Henry Adams, Emma Goldman, J.P. Morgan, Mark Hanna, and (as an investigatory sidekick) the infamous Nellie Bly, who will help Hay protect the man who wants to transform a nation.

The first novel from award-winning author Gianfranco Calligarich to be published in English, Last Summer in the City is a witty and despairing classic of Italian literature. Biting, tragic, and endlessly quotable, this translated edition features an introductory appreciation from longtime fan New York Times bestselling author André Aciman. In a city smothering under the summer sun and an overdose of la dolce vita, Leo Gazarra spends his time in an alcoholic haze, bouncing between run-down hotels and the homes of his rich and well-educated friends, without whom he would probably starve. At thirty, he’s still drifting: between jobs that mean nothing to him, between human relationships both ephemeral and frayed. Everyone he knows wants to graduate, get married, get rich―but not him. He has no ambitions whatsoever. Rather than toil and spin, isn’t it better to submit to the alienation of the Eternal City, Rome, sometimes a cruel and indifferent mistress, sometimes sweet and sublime? There can be no half measures with her, either she’s the love of your life or you have to leave her. First discovered by Natalia Ginzburg, Last Summer in the City is a forgotten classic of Italian literature, a great novel of a stature similar to that of The Great Gatsby or The Catcher in the Rye. Gianfranco Calligarich’s enduring masterpiece has drawn comparisons to such writers as Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, and Jonathan Franzen and is here made available in English for the first time.

Prior to 1990, fewer than five percent of domestic infant adoptions were open. In 2012, ninety percent or more of adoption agencies are recommending open adoption. Yet these agencies do not often or adequately prepare either adopting parents or birth parents for the road ahead of them! The adult parties in open adoptions are left floundering. There are many resources on why to do open adoption, but what about how? Open adoption isn't just something parents do when they exchange photos, send emails, share a visit. It's a lifestyle that may feel intrusive at times, be difficult or inconvenient at other times. Tensions can arise even in the best of circumstances. But knowing how to handle these situations and how to continue to make arrangements work for the child involved is paramount. This book offers readers the tools and the insight to do just that. It covers common open-adoption situations and how real families have navigated typical issues successfully. Like all useful parenting books, it provides parents with the tools to come to answers on their own, and answers questions that might not yet have come up. Through their own stories and those of other families of open adoption, Lori and Crystal review the secrets to success, the pitfalls and challenges, the joys and triumphs. By putting the adopted child at the center, families can come to enjoy the benefits of open adoption and mitigate the challenges that may arise. More than a how-to, this book shares a mindset, a heartset, that can be learned and internalized, so parents can choose to act out of love and honesty throughout their child’s growing up years, helping that child to grow up whole.

Longtime manuscript editor and Chicago Manual of Style guru Carol Fisher Saller has negotiated many a standoff between a writer and editor refusing to compromise on the “rights” and “wrongs” of prose styling. Saller realized that when these sides squared off, it was often the reader who lost. In her search for practical strategies for keeping the peace, The Subversive Copy Editor was born. Saller’s ideas struck a chord, and the little book with big advice quickly became a must-have reference for copy editors everywhere. In this second edition, Saller adds new chapters, on the dangers of allegiance to outdated grammar and style rules and on ways to stay current in language and technology. She expands her advice for writers on formatting manuscripts for publication, on self-editing, and on how not to be “difficult.” Saller’s own gaffes provide firsthand (and sometimes humorous) examples of exactly what not to do. The revised content reflects today’s publishing practices while retaining the self-deprecating tone and sharp humor that helped make the first edition so popular. Saller maintains that through carefulness, transparency, and flexibility, editors can build trust and cooperation with writers. The Subversive Copy Editor brings a refreshingly levelheaded approach to the classic battle between writers and editors. This sage advice will prove useful and entertaining to anyone charged with the sometimes perilous task of improving the writing of others.

AN AMAZON BEST SELLING BOOK FOR KIDS! This entertaining, illustrated, middle grade chapter book is the series opener. Sign up for the spelling bee? No way! If there's one thing 10-year-old Texan Sophie Washington is good at, it's spelling. She's earned straight 100s on all her spelling tests to prove it. Her parents want her to compete in the Xavier Academy spelling bee,but Sophie wishes they would buzz off. That's until her irritating classmate, Nathan Jones, challenges her. There's no way she can let Mr. Know-It-All win. Studying is hard when you have a pesky younger brother and a busy social calendar. Can Sophie ignore the distractions and become Queen of the Bee? Here's what Goodreads reviewers say about Sophie Washington: Queen of the Bee: "Another great Sophie Washington book. Super cute. My 11-year-old loves these books." "As someone with a 10-year niece who is in fifth grade like Sophie, I believe that she would love this book and the rest of the Sophie Washington series by Tonya Duncan Ellis." "This series will go far. The story is down to earth, realistic and easy to read." This is the first book in the Readers' Favorite five star rated Sophie Washington book series that includes: Sophie Washington: Queen of the Bee (Book 1) Sophie Washington: The Snitch (Book 2) Sophie Washington: Things You Didn't Know About Sophie (Book 3) Sophie Washington: The Gamer (Book 4) Sophie Washington: Hurricane (Book 5) Sophie Washington: Mission Costa Rica (Book 6) Sophie Washington: Secret Santa (Book 7) Sophie Washington: Code One (Book 8) Sophie Washington: Mismatch (Book 9) Sophie Washington: My BFF (Book 10) Kids Ages 8-12 Click above to get your copy today!

From Cradle to Classroom: A Guide to Special Education for Young Children is a book written for regular and special education teachers, school administrators, school psychologists, related educational personnel, day care providers, parents, graduate students, and policy makers who work on behalf of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers to ensure they are ready for formal education when they reach age 5. It reflects a keen understanding that early interventions are most effective in reducing the potential for special education or other support services later in a child’s development. Research shows the benefits of investing in early intervention and high-quality preschool as a way to mitigate educational gaps in learning and to improve the development of children across all domains (Executive Office of the President of the United States, 2015; Lynch & Vaghul, 2015; Yoshikawa et al., 2013). Throughout the book, readers will find strategies to help atypical children navigate the world as they move from infancy to toddlerhood, and to preschool and beyond. The chapters dig deep and offer expansive understandings of the components necessary to ensure young children, especially those with exceptionalities, become successful students.

You will be known by the company you keep! Successfully steer your own life instead of having it determined by others, advises Tobias Beck in this German bestseller narrated in his pithy, to-the-point style. Tobias provides the coaching needed to liberate ourselves from chronic complainers. Killjoys, energy vampires, and chronic complainers. Everyone knows a Debbie Downer, moaning the whole day long because nothing ever goes right. The weather is miserable, it’s Monday, and to top it all off, the doughnut has a hole! Tobias shows us a way out: simply not to bother with such acquaintances at all. Positive thinking for peak performance. Polarizing, provocative and exaggerated, the Liberated® philosophy urges readers to free themselves from negative people in order to live successfully and authentically. With success factors based on 15 years of personal experience in the field of personality development and behavioral psychology, you’ll learn how to: Think in terms of chances and opportunities rather than problems and risks Motivate yourself, forge your own path, and let yourself be guided by your dreams and vision Seek out people who support you and who let you grow and move forward Amusing stories, funny illustrations, and proven techniques. With success stories that are as entertaining as they are instructive, this book is as easy to read as it is unconventional. Part workbook and part self-help and nonfiction, this narrative book includes funny comics to illustrate proven-to-work strategies. If you enjoyed books like The Four Agreements, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, The Empath’s Survival Guide, and The 5 Types of People Who Can Ruin Your Life, then you’ll love Unbox Your Life.

Available for the first time as an audiobook, New York Times bestselling author Eric Jerome Dickey’s thrilling short story Harlem “People called me Harlem. I dubbed myself after that dangerous neighborhood that I’d never seen. I read life is rough in Harlem, and a black man isn’t expected to live to see twenty-five. I was twenty-three. The clock was ticking.” When Harlem gets off on a murder charge due to insanity, the asylum he’s sent to feels worse than death, with one exception: the beautiful nurse Daphane. As their relationship grows, so do the stakes: she has the ability to help him escape, and he has the ability to set her free from her abusive relationship. Yet Harlem has one big secret: he was perfectly sane when he committed his crime. But in the end, Daphane’s own secret may be the deadliest of all. . . .

In a fusion of fact and fiction, nineteenth-century women institutionalized as hysterics reveal what history ignored “ City of Incurable Women is a brilliant exploration of the type of female bodily and psychic pain once commonly diagnosed as hysteria—and the curiously hysterical response to it commonly exhibited by medical men. It is a novel of powerful originality, riveting historical interest, and haunting lyrical beauty.” — Sigrid Nunez , author of The Friend and What Are You Going Through “Where are the hysterics, those magnificent women of former times?” wrote Jacques Lacan. Long history’s ghosts, marginalized and dispossessed due to their gender and class, they are reimagined by Maud Casey as complex, flesh-and-blood people with stories to tell. These linked, evocative prose portraits, accompanied by period photographs and medical documents both authentic and invented, poignantly restore the humanity to the nineteenth-century female psychiatric patients confined in Paris’s Salpêtrière hospital and reduced to specimens for study by the celebrated neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot and his male colleagues. Maud Casey is the author of five books of fiction, including The Man Who Walked Away , and a work of nonfiction, The Art of Mystery: The Search for Questions . A Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the St. Francis College Literary Prize, she teaches at the University of Maryland.