Historical Audiobooks

Crows & Cards

Three warnings for listeners who hate surprises: 1. Beware of slivers, 2. and gamblers, 3. and aces. Zebulon Crabtree found all that out the hard way back in 1849 when his mother and father shipped him off to St. Louis to apprentice with a tanner. Too bad he had serious allergies to fur and advice from his parents. Hearing the beat of a different drummer, Zeb takes up with a riverboat gambler who has some special plans for him, crosses paths with a slave who turns out to be a better friend than cook, and learns that some Indian medicine men can see even though blind. And then there's the Brotherhood - the one that Zeb can't seem to get out of...

Joseph Helgerson (Author), MacLeod Andrews (Narrator)

Audiobook

Daughter of Winter

It's 1849, and twelve-year-old Addie lives in the shipbuilding town of Essex, Massachusetts. Her father has left the family to seek gold on the West Coast, and tragically the flux has ended the lives of her mother and baby brother, leaving Addie all alone. Fearful of being taken in as a servant, Addie flees from her house into the snowy woods, where she endures hunger and bitter cold until Nokummus, an elderly Wampanoag woman, coaxes Addie to her dwelling. Now living under the care of the mercurial old woman, Addie slowly recognizes the truth of her past. Through an intense ancient ceremony and by force of her own wits and will, Addie must come to grips with the facts of her newfound identity - and find the courage to build a future unlike any she could ever have imagined.

Pat Lowery Collins (Author), Kate Rudd (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Freedom Maze

Set against the burgeoning Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, and then just before the outbreak of the Civil War, The Freedom Maze explores both political and personal liberation, and how the two intertwine. In 1960, thirteen-year-old Sophie isn't happy about spending the summer at her grandmother's old house in the Bayou. But the house has a maze Sophie can't resist exploring once she finds it has a secretive and mischievious inhabitant. When Sophie, bored and lonely, makes an impulsive wish, she slips back one hundred years into the past, to the year 1860. She hopes for a fantasy book adventure with herself as the heroine. Instead, she gets a real adventure in the race-haunted world of her family's Louisiana sugar plantation in 1860, where she is mistaken for a slave. President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation is still two years in the future. The Thirteen Amendment-abolishing and prohibiting slavery-will not be not passed until April 1864. Muddy and bedraggled, Sophie obviously isn't a young lady of good breeding. She must therefore be a slave. And she is.

Delia Sherman (Author), Robin Miles (Narrator)

Audiobook

Beyond Courage

Under the noses of the German military and French police, Georges Loinger smuggles Jewish children out of occupied France into Switzerland. In Belgium, Youra Livchitz and two other resisters ambush a train destined for a death camp, allowing scores of Jews to flee from the cattle cars. Four brothers lead more than 1,200 ghetto refugees deep into the Byelorussian forest, where they build a partisan fighting force and self-sufficient village. Forced to make detonators for German bombs, Estusia Wajcblum smuggles out gunpowder, grain by grain, to be used to blow up the crematoriums in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Despite debilitating wounds to both his feet, fourteen-year-old Idel Kagan helps dig an escape tunnel out of a forced labor camp in Poland. Sarika Yehoshua forms an all-girl unit of guerrilla fighters in the mountains of Greece, teaching them to shed their traditional ways and become soldiers. And twelve-year-old Motele Shlayan entertains German officers with his violin moments before setting off a bomb. Through meticulously researched and stirring accounts - some well known and some chronicled here in book form for the first time - Doreen Rappaport brings to light the defiance of tens of thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. These resisters answered the genocidal madness and unspeakable depravity that was Hitler's Holocaust with the greatest weapons of all - courage, ingenuity, the will to survive, and the resolve to save others or to die trying.

Doreen Rappaport (Author), Emily Beresford, Jeff Crawford (Narrator)

Audiobook

Button Down

Ever since local boy Lester Ward got drafted by the University of Iowa Hawkeyes and football fever hit Goodhue, Iowa, scrawny Ned Button can think of nothing but the game. Sure, Lester's younger bully of a brother is determined to keep Ned and his gang from ever getting near a real pickup game. But Ned has a few tricks up his sleeve: he can catch and sometimes even throw, much to his surprise. And he's got his eccentric grandpa Ike, who has less get-up-and-go these days but no shortage of down-home wisdom to pass along. Like that being a football star is less about being big and more about strategy and playing as part of a team. And that having friends and family in your corner is a bigger prize than a lucky football will ever be. From the acclaimed author of The Luck of the Buttons comes another story about a sometimes hapless, always winning family that scores big points for humor and heart.

Anne Ylvisaker (Author), Sanjiv Jhaveri (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Jaguar Stones, Book Three: The River of No Return

A hurricane is brewing in the jungles of the Maya, and the ancient Death Lords are on the warpath. Across the world in Venice, hanging out with his friend Nasty (Anastasia) Smith-Jones, Max Murphy thinks he is safe from their clutches. But when a rogue octopus pulls him off his gondola and tries to drag him down to the underworld, Max realizes that the Death Lords have not finished with him yet. Soon Max is back in Central America and reunited with the only ones who can help him in his battle—Lola and the howler monkeys Lord 6-Dog and Lady Coco. Once again it’s up to the four of them to save the world. With the hurricane about to hit land, Max and Lola embark on a one-way journey to danger down the blighted Monkey River. Torn between rescuing themselves and rescuing one of the last wild jaguars of the Monkey River region, Max and Lola find themselves drawn into an ever more bizarre series of tests, culminating in a terrifying ballgame that they can never win.

Jon Voelkel, Pamela Voelkel (Author), Mike Chamberlain, Scott Brick (Narrator)

Audiobook

Emperors of the Ice

In 1909, every continent had been thoroughly explored . . . except one. That September, Captain Robert F. Scott announced a new scientific expedition that would put Antarctica firmly on the map at last and claim the South Pole for Great Britain. Twenty-three-year-old Apsley Cherry-Garrard was asked to join. With no special skills, and terrible eyesight, he seemed a surprising choice. Yet in the most lethal wilderness on earth, where temperatures plummet to -77°F and even bacteria can't survive, "Cherry" proved himself so capable that he became a key member of the expedition. He volunteered for the infamous "Winter Journey" in 1911 - a horrific month long trek through storm-lashed darkness to collect the eggs of the Emperor penguin - and this half-mad outing in the name of science became the central experience of his life. The following spring, he was among the members chosen to support the 800-mile march to the South Pole - and then he was sent on another nearly disastrous mission, a doomed attempt to resupply the five men who had reached the Pole but never returned. Emperors of the Ice is based on extensive research, and incorporates dozens of photographs and other material from the actual expedition. But this is no mere history: recreating the story in Cherry's own voice, Richard Farr places listeners right inside this horrifying ordeal - and the amazing feats of courage and camaraderie that survival required. The result is inspiring and heartbreaking: a narrative you will never forget.

Richard Farr (Author), Michael Page (Narrator)

Audiobook

Will Sparrow's Road

Will Sparrow, liar and thief, is running away-from the father who sold him for beer, from the innkeeper who threatened to sell him as a chimney sweep, from his whole sorry life. Barefoot and penniless, without family, friends, or boots, Will is determined to avoid capture and, of course, to find something to eat. Some of the travelers he meets on the road have a kind word for him and a promise of better things to come, such as coins and juicy beef ribs. Eager to go along, Will repeatedly finds himself tricked by older and wiser tricksters. Each time, he resolves afresh to trust no one and care for no one. But luckily for Will, he can't keep his guard up forever. The lively goings-on behind the scenes of Elizabethan market fairs provide a colorful, earthy backdrop for Karen Cushman's wise and funny story of a runaway who finally, and unexpectedly, stops running.

Karen Cushman (Author), Katherine Kellgren (Narrator)

Audiobook

Jepp, Who Defied the Stars

Fate-is it written in the stars from the moment we are born, or is it a bendable thing that we can shape with our own hands? Jepp of Astraveld needs to know. He left his countryside home on the empty promise of a stranger, only to become a captive in the strange, luxurious prison that is Coudenberg Palace, the royal court of the Spanish infanta. Nobody warned Jepp that, as a court dwarf, daily injustices would become his seemingly unshakeable fate. If the humiliations were his alone, perhaps he could endure them, but it breaks Jepp's heart to see his friend Lia suffer. After Jepp and Lia perform a daring escape from the palace, Jepp is imprisoned again, alone in a cage. Now, spirited across Europe by a kidnapper in a horse-drawn carriage, Jepp is unsure where his unfortunate stars may lead him. Before Jepp can become the master of his own destiny, he will need to prove himself to a brilliant and eccentric new master-a man devoted to uncovering the secrets of the stars-earn the love of a girl brave and true, and unearth the long-buried secrets of his parentage. He will find that beneath the breathtaking cruelty of the world is something else: the persistence of human kindness. Masterfully written, grippingly paced, and inspired by real historical characters, Jepp, Who Defied the Stars is an awe-inspiring story of triumph in the face of unimaginable odds. "Delightful characters, unique setting, and lovely prose. This is historical fiction at its best!"-Ruta Sepetys, New York Times bestselling author of Between Shades of Gray

Katherine Marsh (Author), Paul Michael Garcia, Richard Powers (Narrator)

Audiobook

Incantation

Estrella deMadrigal thought she knew herself: daughter, granddaughter, sister, dearest friend, beloved. She is Star in the Night Sky, Truth in the Darkness. But truth is rare and precious in this cruel and unforgiving century in Spain, when Jews who refused conversion to Christianity risked everything - love, life, family, faith. Then: A startling discovery shakes Estrella's world to the core. And yet, it is something small and sweet that sets it aflame. A kiss. A kiss from someone she is forbidden to love. As a new girl emerges from the cocoon of secrets in which she has been shrouded, passion burns and friendship crumbles - and betrayal unleashes a monstrous evil from the very deepest part of the earth. Estrella crosses over to a place she never thought she could be; she is someone she never could have imagined. Remember the story she is about to tell you.

Alice Hoffman (Author), Jenna Lamia (Narrator)

Audiobook

Starfields

Rosalba is a nine-year-old Mayan girl living in rural Mexico. Like her mother and grandmother, she weaves stories of her people onto blouses, ensuring that the age-old traditions continue. But new influences are entering her life. A ladina girl from the city, visiting with her scientist father, passes on the astonishing news that the Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world in 2012. Rosalba knows nothing about that, but her village is faced with a bulldozer tearing through the forest, dying wildlife, and cornfields in danger. Rosalba's new friend tells her she must do something to help, but what? As she ponders, she dreams of an ancient Mayan boy, eyes bound in a shamanistic ritual, who hints at a way she can make her voice heard. Interweaving a contemporary story with a mythical dream narrative, Carolyn Marsden spins a gripping tale of friendship, cultural identity, and urgent environmental themes.

Carolyn Marsden (Author), Adriana Sananes and Sanjiv Jhaveri (Narrator)

Audiobook

Never Forgotten

"Forceful and iconic," raved Publishers Weekly in a starred review. This gorgeous picture book by Newbery Honor winner Patricia C. McKissack and two-time Caldecott Medal-winning husband-and-wife team Leo and Diane Dillon is sure to become a treasured keepsake for African American families. Set in West Africa, this a lyrical story-in-verse is about a young black boy who is kidnapped and sold into slavery, and his father who is left behind to mourn the loss of his son. Here's a beautiful, powerful, truly unforgettable story about family, memory, and freedom.

Patricia McKissack (Author), Lizan Mitchell (Narrator)

Audiobook