Welcome to My Panic


Billie Joe Armstrong - 2021
    Unwavering integrity. Billie Joe Armstrong isn’t the first punk to negotiate mainstream success, but he might be its most undisguised example. In Welcome to my Panic, Green Day’s iconic front man holds nothing back as he tracks listeners though his deeply personal and artistic journey in raw detail.Matching his emotional storytelling with new, exclusive, recordings of Green Day’s biggest hits including "Basket Case," "Good Riddance," "Wake Me Up When September Ends," and "American Idiot," Armstrong chronicles the seminal moments in his life: the trauma and triumphs that have come to define him. As we listen, Billie Joe reminds us punk rock is not about how hard you can play, but how hard you can remain yourself.©2021 Billie Joe Armstrong (P)2021 Audible Originals LLCAbout the Creator and PerformerBillie Joe Armstrong is the frontman and guitarist for four-time Grammy award-winning rock band Green Day. Originally hailed as punk revivalists blindsiding the mainstream from the margins, Green Day has become one of rock’s sturdiest institutions, a band whose sound threads the three-chords-and-a-head-rush excitement that runs through everything from East Bay punk, power pop, 60s garage, and hard rock. The band, inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2015, has released thirteen studio albums to date, including the Diamond-selling Dookie, the punk rock opera album turned Broadway musical American Idiot, and their latest album Father of All… which debuted at number one on the Billboard Top Rock Albums chart and number four on the Billboard 200, resulting in the band’s eleventh US top-10 album.Outside of Green Day, Billie Joe also fronts The Foxboro Hot Tubs, The Longshot, and The Coverups. In 2013, he teamed with jazz singer and pianist Norah Jones in a project to re-create the classic 1958 Everly Brothers album Songs Our Daddy Taught Us that they titled Foreverly. In early 2020 Armstrong launched the No Fun Mondays series in quarantine, released as an LP later that year. The collection of covers sees Armstrong putting his signature melodic-punk spin on the songs that have formed the soundtrack to his life, including classics by John Lennon, Billy Bragg, and Johnny Thunders.

Elizabeth and Her German Garden


Elizabeth von Arnim - 1898
    "Elizabeth and Her German Garden" is a year's diary written by Elizabeth about her experiences learning gardening and interacting with her friends. It includes commentary on the beauty of nature and on society, but is primarily humorous due to Elizabeth's frequent mistakes and her idiosyncratic outlook on life. The story is full of sweet, endearing moments. Elizabeth was an avid reader and has interesting comments on where certain authors are best read; she tells charming stories of her children and has a sometimes sharp sense of humor in regards to the people who will come and disrupt her solitary lifestyle.

The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things


Paula Byrne - 2013
    Going beyond previous traditional biographies which have traced Austen's daily life from Steventon to Bath to Chawton to Winchester, Byrne's portrait-organized thematically and drawn from the most up-to-date scholarship and unexplored sources-explores the lives of Austen's extended family, friends, and acquaintances. Through their absorbing stories we view Austen on a much wider stage and discover unexpected aspects of her life and character. Byrne transports us to different worlds-the East Indies and revolutionary Paris-and different events-from a high society scandal to a petty case of shoplifting, She follows Austen on her extensive travels, setting her in contexts both global and English, urban and rural, political and historical, social and domestic-wider perspectives of vital and still under-estimated importance to her creative life.Literary scholarship has revealed that letters and tokens in Austen's novel's often signal key turning points in the unfolding narrative. This groundbreaking biography explores Jane's own story following the same principle. As Byrne reveals, small things in the writer's world-a scrap of paper, a simple gold chain, an ivory miniature, a bathing machine-hold significance in her emotional and artistic development. The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things introduces us to a woman deeply immersed in the world around her, yet far ahead of her time in her independence and ambition; to an author who was an astute commentator on human nature and the foibles of her own age. Rich and compelling, it is a fresh, insightful, and often surprising portrait of an artist and a vivid evocation of the complex world that shaped her.

Victoria The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire


Julia Baird - 2016
    Drawing on previously unpublished papers, this stunning new portrait is a story of love and heartbreak, of devotion and grief, of strength and resilience.NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYTHE NEW YORK TIMES - ESQUIRE - THE CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY "Victoria the Queen, Julia Baird's exquisitely wrought and meticulously researched biography, brushes the dusty myth off this extraordinary monarch."--The New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice) When Victoria was born, in 1819, the world was a very different place. Revolution would threaten many of Europe's monarchies in the coming decades. In Britain, a generation of royals had indulged their whims at the public's expense, and republican sentiment was growing. The Industrial Revolution was transforming the landscape, and the British Empire was commanding ever larger tracts of the globe. In a world where women were often powerless, during a century roiling with change, Victoria went on to rule the most powerful country on earth with a decisive hand. Fifth in line to the throne at the time of her birth, Victoria was an ordinary woman thrust into an extraordinary role. As a girl, she defied her mother's meddling and an adviser's bullying, forging an iron will of her own. As a teenage queen, she eagerly grasped the crown and relished the freedom it brought her. At twenty, she fell passionately in love with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, eventually giving birth to nine children. She loved sex and delighted in power. She was outspoken with her ministers, overstepping conventional boundaries and asserting her opinions. After the death of her adored Albert, she began a controversial, intimate relationship with her servant John Brown. She survived eight assassination attempts over the course of her lifetime. And as science, technology, and democracy were dramatically reshaping the world, Victoria was a symbol of steadfastness and security--queen of a quarter of the world's population at the height of the British Empire's reach. Drawing on sources that include fresh revelations about Victoria's relationship with John Brown, Julia Baird brings vividly to life the fascinating story of a woman who struggled with so many of the things we do today: balancing work and family, raising children, navigating marital strife, losing parents, combating anxiety and self-doubt, finding an identity, searching for meaning.

The Man Who Knew The Way to the Moon


Todd Zwillich - 2019
    Houbolt, an unsung hero of Apollo 11 and the man who showed NASA how to put America on the moon. Without John C. Houbolt, a junior engineer at NASA, Apollo 11 would never have made it to the moon. Top NASA engineers on the project, including Werner Von Braun, strongly advocated for a single, huge spacecraft to travel to the moon, land, and return to Earth. It's the scenario used in 1950s cartoons and horror movies about traveling to outer space. Houbolt had another idea: Lunar Orbit Rendezvous. LOR would link two spacecraft in orbit while the crafts were travelling at 17,000 miles per hour. His plan was ridiculed and considered unthinkable. But this junior engineer was irrepressible. He stood by his concept, fired off memos to executives, and argued that LOR was the only way to success. For the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, hear the untold story of the man who helped fulfill Kennedy’s challenge to reach the moon and begin exploring the final frontier.

Confident Women: Swindlers, Grifters, and Shapeshifters of the Feminine Persuasion


Tori Telfer - 2021
    As Tori Telfer reveals in Confident Women, the art of the con has a long and venerable tradition, and its female practitioners are some of the best—or worst.In the 1700s in Paris, Jeanne de Saint-Rémy scammed the royal jewelers out of a necklace made from six hundred and forty-seven diamonds by pretending she was best friends with Queen Marie Antoinette.In the mid-1800s, sisters Kate and Maggie Fox began pretending they could speak to spirits and accidentally started a religious movement that was soon crawling with female con artists. A gal calling herself Loreta Janeta Velasquez claimed to be a soldier and convinced people she worked for the Confederacy—or the Union, depending on who she was talking to. Meanwhile, Cassie Chadwick was forging paperwork and getting banks to loan her upwards of $40,000 by telling people she was Andrew Carnegie’s illegitimate daughter.In the 1900s, a 40something woman named Margaret Lydia Burton embezzled money all over the country and stole upwards of forty prized show dogs, while a few decades later, a teenager named Roxie Ann Rice scammed the entire NFL. And since the death of the Romanovs, women claiming to be Anastasia have been selling their stories to magazines. What about today? Spoiler alert: these “artists” are still conning. Confident Women asks the provocative question: Where does chutzpah intersect with a uniquely female pathology—and how were these notorious women able to so spectacularly dupe and swindle their victims?

The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World


Sarah Weinman - 2018
    And yet, very few of its readers know that the subject of the novel was inspired by a real-life case: the 1948 abduction of eleven-year-old Sally Horner.Weaving together suspenseful crime narrative, cultural and social history, and literary investigation, The Real Lolita tells Sally Horner’s full story for the very first time. Drawing upon extensive investigations, legal documents, public records, and interviews with remaining relatives, Sarah Weinman uncovers how much Nabokov knew of the Sally Horner case and the efforts he took to disguise that knowledge during the process of writing and publishing Lolita.Sally Horner’s story echoes the stories of countless girls and women who never had the chance to speak for themselves. By diving deeper in the publication history of Lolita and restoring Sally to her rightful place in the lore of the novel’s creation, The Real Lolita casts a new light on the dark inspiration for a modern classic.

The Diary of Samuel Pepys


Samuel Pepys - 1669
    As well as recording public and historical events, Pepys paints a vivid picture of his personal life, from his socializing and amorous entanglements, to his theatre-going and his work at the Navy Board. Unequaled for its frankness, high spirits and sharp observations, the diary is both a literary masterpiece and a marvelous portrait of seventeenth-century life.Previously published as The Shorter Pepys, this edition is edited and abridged by Robert Latham, Fellow and Pepys Librarian at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Escape From Jonestown


Laurence Bouvard - 2018
    18, 1978, 914 members of a ‘utopian’ society deep in the Guyana jungle, known as Jonestown, drank a lethal elixir of Flavor-Aid and cyanide. Tim Carter was in the inner circle of its charismatic leader, Jim Jones. He escaped into the jungle. This is his story.As an Audio Show - free for members - when you add Escape From Jonestown to your library, you'll get all 6 episodes, with runtimes varying from 15 to 32 minutes.©2018 Audible, Ltd. (P)2018 Audible, Ltd.

Classics of British Literature


John Sutherland - 2008
    More important, Britain's writers have long challenged readers with new ways of understanding an ever-changing world.This series of 48 fascinating lectures by an award-winning professor provides you with a rare opportunity to step beyond the surface of Britain's grand literary masterpieces and experience the times and conditions they came from and the diverse issues with which their writers grappled.The unique insights Professor Sutherland shares about how and why these works succeed as both literature and documents of Britain's social and political history can forever alter the way you experience a novel, poem, or play.More than just a survey, these lectures reveal how Britain's cultural landscape acted upon its literature and how, in turn, literature affected the cultural landscape. Professor Sutherland takes a historical approach to the wealth of works explored in these lectures, grounding them in specific contexts and often connecting them with one another.All the great writers that come to mind when you think of British literature are here, along with unique looks at their most popular and powerful works. You also enjoy the company of less-familiar voices and contemporary authors who continue to take literature into new territories.

What Matters in Jane Austen?: Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved


John Mullan - 2012
    Asking and answering some very specific questions about what goes on in her novels, he reveals the inner workings of their greatness.In twenty short chapters, each of which explores a question prompted by Austen's novels, Mullan illuminates the themes that matter most in her beloved fiction. Readers will discover when Austen's characters had their meals and what shops they went to; how vicars got good livings; and how wealth was inherited. What Matters in Jane Austen? illuminates the rituals and conventions of her fictional world in order to reveal her technical virtuosity and daring as a novelist. It uses telling passages from Austen's letters and details from her own life to explain episodes in her novels: readers will find out, for example, what novels she read, how much money she had to live on, and what she saw at the theater.Written with flair and based on a lifetime's study, What Matters in Jane Austen? will allow readers to appreciate Jane Austen's work in greater depth than ever before.

The Space Race


Colin Brake - 2019
    Today’s efforts to revitalize and expand space travel is being driven not just by government agencies such as NASA, but also by visionaries such as Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic), Elon Musk (SpaceX), and Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin).To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1969 moon landing, this major documentary-drama series brings to life the past, present, and future of man’s exploration of space. Between 1969 and 1972, twelve Americans walked on the moon. You’ll get to experience the thrill of that era and much, much more.Narrated by Kate Mulgrew (Emmy Award and Golden Globe nominee for Orange Is the New Black; Obie Award winner for Iphigenia 2.0); TV: Star Trek: Voyager, film: Star Trek: Nemesis), The Space Race uses actual audio, original interviews, dramatic reconstructions, and first-hand accounts to tell the story of mankind’s first amazing steps off our world and onto the lunar surface.With unprecedented access, The Space Race takes listeners to Virgin Galactic’s space program in the Mojave Desert, features conversations with Buzz Aldrin, Gene Cernan, Sergei Krikalev, Tim Peake, and numerous key players at mission control. This Audible Original and takes you behind the scenes to see how these exciting adventures in outer space came to be.©2019 Audible, Ltd (P)2019 Audible, Ltd

The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey


James Lecesne - 2016
    It was directed by Tony Speciale; it was produced by Dixon Place; the original music was by Duncan Sheik; the visuals were by Matthew Sandager; and the clothing was by Paul Marlow.

American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road


Nick Bilton - 2017
    In 2011, a twenty-six-year-old libertarian programmer named Ross Ulbricht launched the ultimate free market: the Silk Road, a clandestine Web site hosted on the Dark Web where anyone could trade anything—drugs, hacking software, forged passports, counterfeit cash, poisons—free of the government’s watchful eye. It wasn’t long before the media got wind of the new Web site where anyone—not just teenagers and weed dealers but terrorists and black hat hackers—could buy and sell contraband detection-free. Spurred by a public outcry, the federal government launched an epic two-year manhunt for the site’s elusive proprietor, with no leads, no witnesses, and no clear jurisdiction. All the investigators knew was that whoever was running the site called himself the Dread Pirate Roberts. The Silk Road quickly ballooned into $1.2 billion enterprise, and Ross embraced his new role as kingpin. He enlisted a loyal crew of allies in high and low places, all as addicted to the danger and thrill of running an illegal marketplace as their customers were to the heroin they sold. Through his network he got wind of the target on his back and took drastic steps to protect himself—including ordering a hit on a former employee. As Ross made plans to disappear forever, the Feds raced against the clock to catch a man they weren’t sure even existed, searching for a needle in the haystack of the global Internet.Drawing on exclusive access to key players and two billion digital words and images Ross left behind, Vanity Fair correspondent and New York Times bestselling author Nick Bilton offers a tale filled with twists and turns, lucky breaks and unbelievable close calls. It’s a story of the boy next door’s ambition gone criminal, spurred on by the clash between the new world of libertarian-leaning, anonymous, decentralized Web advocates and the old world of government control, order, and the rule of law. Filled with unforgettable characters and capped by an astonishing climax, American Kingpin might be dismissed as too outrageous for fiction. But it’s all too real.

Pretty Jane and the Viper of Kidbrooke Lane: A True Story of Victorian Law and Disorder: The Unsolved Murder that Shocked Victorian England


Paul Thomas Murphy - 2015
    The policeman gaped in horror as the woman held out her hand before collapsing into the mud, muttering “let me die” and slipping into a coma. Five days later, she died, her identity still unknown.Within hours of her discovery on Kidbrooke Lane scores of the officers of Greenwich Division were involved in the investigation, and Scotland Yard had sent one of its top detectives, John Mulvany, to lead it. After five days of gathering evidence, the police discovered the girl’s identity: Jane Maria Clouson, a maid in the house of the renowned Pook family . . . and she was two months’ pregnant with Edmund Pook’s child when she died.Murphy carefully reviews the evidence in the light of 21st century forensic science in order to identify Jane’s killer as Edmund Walter Pook. Using a surprisingly abundant collection of primary sources, Murphy aims to recreate the drama of the case as it unfolded, with its many twists and turns, from the discovery of the body to the final crack of the gavel—and beyond.