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The Boy in Wellington Boots
- Narrated by: Guy Barnes
- Length: 5 hrs and 57 mins
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The Boy in Wellington Boots
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Publisher's summary
The Boy in Wellington Boots is a true story. It faithfully recounts a childhood lost, as seen through the eyes of the young boy who lived through it and the hindsight of the adult author.
The story charts the fallout for a family plucked from home and deposited in a strange and unfamiliar land where they are torn apart by infidelity, poverty, and sheer physical hardship.
The author describes, in painful and frank detail, a young kid’s struggle against the neglect, hunger, and abuse visited upon him by circumstance. The account goes on to follow the author's onward journey to maturity and beyond.
The material for The Boy in Wellington Boots provided the bittersweet inspiration for VM Frost’s previous novel, By Conscience Bound.
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By: Kapka Kassabova
-
Destined to Witness
- Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany
- By: Hans Massaquoi
- Narrated by: Peter Jay Fernandez
- Length: 19 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 148
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 132
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Story5 out of 5 stars 133
What would life be like for a Black boy growing up in Nazi Germany? This unprecedented autobiography answers that question with the spellbinding true story of Hans J. Massaquoi’s life in Hamburg during the height of Hitler’s regime. Hans is the son of a Black Liberian diplomat father and a white German mother. His father returns to Africa at the beginning of the war, leaving them behind in poverty without the means to flee. Within this tense atmosphere, increasingly violent Nazi policies and Allied bombing raids make Hans and his mother’s lives a day-to-day survival struggle.
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3 out of 5 stars
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An important story, marred by lackluster writing.
- By Christopher on 03-04-15
By: Hans Massaquoi
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Forgiveness
- A Gift from My Grandparents
- By: Mark Sakamoto
- Narrated by: Geoff Sugiyama
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 32
When the Second World War broke out, Ralph MacLean chose to escape his troubled life on the Magdalen Islands in eastern Canada and volunteer to serve his country overseas. Meanwhile, in Vancouver, Mitsue Sakamoto saw her family and her stable community torn apart after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Admirable progenitors
- By M. D. Baines on 04-24-18
By: Mark Sakamoto
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Dadland
- By: Keggie Carew
- Narrated by: Pippa Haywood, Robert Bathurst, Tom Golding, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 33
Keggie Carew grew up in the gravitational field of an unorthodox father who lived on his wits and dazzling charm. As his memory begins to fail, she embarks on a quest to unravel his story and get to know who her father really was.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Superb. Best memoir/history book
- By Readerwith opinions on 11-25-22
By: Keggie Carew
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Pearl in a Cage
- By: Joy Dettman
- Narrated by: Deidre Rubenstein
- Length: 20 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
On a balmy midsummer's evening in 1923, a young woman - foreign, dishevelled and heavily pregnant - is found unconscious just off the railway tracks in the tiny logging community of Woody Creek. The town midwife, Gertrude Foote, is roused from her bed when the woman is brought to her door. Try as she might, Gertrude is unable to save her, but the baby lives.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Pearl in a Cage
- By Verita on 06-16-17
By: Joy Dettman
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Something Fierce
- Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter
- By: Carmen Aguirre
- Narrated by: Carmen Aguirre
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 28
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 27
Carmen Aguirre was six-year-old when she and her family fled to Canada following General Augusto Pinochet’s violent 1973 coup in Chile. She was only eleven-years-old when her mother and stepfather joined the resistance movement and returned to South America, taking Carmen and her sister went with them. As their mother and stepfather set up a safe house for resistance members in La Paz, Bolivia, the girls' own double lives began. At 18, Carmen became a militant herself, plunging further into a world of terror, paranoia and euphoria.
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4 out of 5 stars
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revolutionary read
- By David Brown on 04-05-18
By: Carmen Aguirre
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Naples '44
- By: Norman Lewis
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 47
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 46
Naples '44 is an unflinching autobiographical account of a year in Naples after the armistice and Allied landings in Sorrento in 1943. Working as a British counterintelligence officer under the Allied occupation, Lewis documents the rich pageant of life in the city and its surrounding areas. There is suffering and squalor: Criminal gangs are on the rise, along with typhus and black market commerce, and the female population is forced into part-time prostitution. But there is farce and humor, too, witnessed in the Roman uncle paid handsomely simply to appear at funerals.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Sharply observed, beautifully written, and deeply humane
- By cw on 11-13-23
By: Norman Lewis
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That’s That
- By: Colin Broderick
- Narrated by: Gerard Doyle
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 38
Colin Broderick was born in 1968 and spent his childhood in Tyrone County in Northern Ireland. It was the beginning of the period of heightened tension and violence known as the Troubles, and Colin’s Catholic family lived in the heart of rebel country. The community was filled with Provisional IRA members, whose lives depended on the silence and complicity of their neighbors. But even when Colin does ask his parents about these events, he never receives a clear explanation. Desperate to protect her children, Colin’s mother tries to prevent exposure to or knowledge of the harm that surrounds them.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Well Written and Very Personal Memoir
- By Lulu on 01-08-16
By: Colin Broderick
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GI Brides
- The Wartime Girls Who Crossed the Atlantic for Love
- By: Duncan Barrett, Nuala Calvi
- Narrated by: Tania Rodrigues
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 184
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 166
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 165
The "friendly invasion" of Britain by over a million American G.I.s bewitched a generation of young women deprived of male company during the Second World War. With their exotic accents, smart uniforms, and aura of Hollywood glamour, the G.I.s easily conquered their hearts, leaving British boys fighting abroad green with envy. But for girls like Sylvia, Margaret, Gwendolyn, and even the skeptical Rae, American soldiers offered something even more tantalizing than chocolate, chewing gum, and nylon stockings: An escape route from Blitz-ravaged Britain.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful true stories of very brave women
- By Cindy on 05-12-15
By: Duncan Barrett, and others
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Gypsy Boy
- By: Mikey Walsh
- Narrated by: Mikey Walsh
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 80
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 73
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 73
Mikey's family were Gypsies. They live in a closed community and little is known about their way of life. As he didn't go to school, the caravan became his world. But although Mikey inherited a vibrant culture, his family had a dark hidden history. Eventually Mikey was forced to make a decision – to stay and keep secrets, or escape and find somewhere to belong.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beaten up
- By Bel on 06-10-21
By: Mikey Walsh
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The Cut Out Girl
- A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found
- By: Bart van Es
- Narrated by: Bart van Es
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 67
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 60
Bart van Es left Holland for England many years ago, but one story from his Dutch childhood never left him. It was a mystery of sorts: A young Jewish girl named Lientje had been taken in during the war by relatives and hidden from the Nazis, handed over by her parents. The girl had been raised by her foster family as one of their own, but then, well after the war, they were no longer in touch. What was the girl's side of the story, Bart wondered? What really happened during the war and after? So began an investigation that would consume Bart van Es's life and change it.
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5 out of 5 stars
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a powerful & unique work on the Holocaust
- By D. Littman on 03-06-19
By: Bart van Es
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On Hitler's Mountain
- Overcoming the Legacy of a Nazi Childhood
- By: Irmgard A. Hunt
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 53
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 54
Growing up in the beautiful mountains of Berchtesgaden - just steps from Adolf Hitler's alpine retreat - Irmgard Hunt had a seemingly happy, simple childhood. In her powerful, illuminating, and sometimes frightening memoir, Hunt recounts a youth lived under an evil but persuasive leader. As she grew older, the harsh reality of war - and a few brave adults who opposed the Nazi regime - aroused in her skepticism of National Socialist ideology and the Nazi propaganda she was taught to believe in.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A rare and very much appreciated perspective.
- By tabounds on 12-28-17
By: Irmgard A. Hunt
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When a Crocodile Eats the Sun
- A Memoir of Africa
- By: Peter Godwin
- Narrated by: Peter Godwin
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 89
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 80
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Story5 out of 5 stars 78
After his father's heart attack in 1984, Peter Godwin began a series of pilgrimages back to Zimbabwe, the land of his birth, from Manhattan, where he now lives. On these frequent visits to check on his elderly parents, he bore witness to Zimbabwe's dramatic spiral downward into the jaws of violent chaos, presided over by an increasingly enraged dictator. And yet long after their comfortable lifestyle had been shattered and millions were fleeing, his parents refuse to leave, steadfast in their allegiance to the failed state that has been their adopted home for 50 years.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Worth the listen.
- By SEE on 09-06-21
By: Peter Godwin
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This is Not a Drill
- Just Another Glorious Day in the Oilfield
- By: Paul Carter
- Narrated by: Paul Carter
- Length: 4 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 52
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 37
Picking up right where he left off, Paul Carter pulls out more tall tales of a mad, bad and dangerous life in the international oil trade. Starting with action and mayhem galore This Is Not A Drill sets an unrelenting pace that just doesn't let up, as Paul almost drowns when the Russian rig he's working on begins to capsize; is reunited with his Dad - another adrenaline junkie; gets married; hangs out with his rig pig buddies in exotic locations; and spends a couple of interesting weeks in Afghanistan.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I want to party with this guy!
- By colleen on 05-06-14
By: Paul Carter
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The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
- By: Sue Townsend
- Narrated by: Nicholas Barnes
- Length: 5 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 206
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 187
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Story4 out of 5 stars 188
Meet Adrian Mole, a hapless teenager providing an unabashed, pimples-and-all glimpse into adolescent life. Writing candidly about his parents' marital troubles, the dog, and his life as a tortured poet and 'misunderstood intellectual', Adrian's painfully honest diary is still hilarious and compelling reading thirty years after it first appeared.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Funny little book
- By K Sto on 06-04-18
By: Sue Townsend
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First Man In
- Leading from the Front
- By: Ant Middleton
- Narrated by: Ant Middleton
- Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 242
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 220
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 221
No one is born a leader. But through sheer determination and by confronting life’s challenges, Ant Middleton has come to know the meaning of true leadership. In First Man In, he shares the core lessons he’s learned over the course of his fascinating, exhilarating life. Special forces training is no walk in the park. The rules are strict, and they make sure you learn the hard way, pushing you beyond the limits of what is physically possible. There is no mercy. Even when you are bleeding and broken, to admit defeat is failure.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Leader, more like a lost sheep
- By Amazon Customer on 11-13-20
By: Ant Middleton