Narrator Tavia Gilbert transports listeners with this engaging short story collection honoring the American women's suffrage movement. The stories recount the lives of women, children, and men over the course of a fateful day in 1915. Lisa Wingate, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, and other contemporary authors illuminate their characters' aspirations, frustrations, and hopes, alongside issues of classicism, racism, and sexism pervading the era. Gilbert's vocal versatility provides rich characterizations for both fictional and actual people who range from Irish, Hungarian, and Armenian immigrants to artists, students, orphans, and well-heeled widows. Discrimination and exclusion experienced by historical figures like Ida B. Wells-Barnett, in "American Womanhood,"are juxtaposed with stories featuring privileged white activists. These thoughtfully composed and performed tales provide meaningful connections between the past and today's listeners.
Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2020
Duration: 8 hrs, 45 mins
DD ISBN: 9781250772428
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
Ayla, one of the "others," is adopted by a clan of Neanderthal cave people. She struggles to conform to their ways, but her advanced human traits overwhelm and threaten their primitive culture in this initial installment of an immensely popular series. Although the story might benefit from abridgment, Rowena Cooper easily carries out the formidable task of enlivening the mostly silent and stereotypical characters with consistent, diverse personalities and human dimension. Through skillful phrasing and inflection, she maintains the reader's interest and suspense, especially with Ayla and her plight, throughout this rambling and imaginative story.
Pub Date: N/A
Duration: 22 hrs
Publisher: BBC Audiobooks America/ Chivers
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
This lyrical, sensual novel of woman's lot in Manchu, China, is as well researched as it is well written. Authentic in tone, it's nonetheless written for Westerners by a Western expert on China. Moreover, Susan Clark performs the demanding text superbly, with only occasional signs of fatigue. For the most part she not only sustains the quaint diction and Asian atmosphere, but also, creates whole worlds with her voice. She acts the book, rather than reads it, and, in so doing, turns a pretty trifle into a stupendous beauty.
Pub Date: N/A
Duration: 4 hrs, 30 mins
Publisher: Audio Literature
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
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