
The Secret History of the Rape Kit
A True Crime Story
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $15.75
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Claire Danes
-
By:
-
Pagan Kennedy
About this listen
Marty Goddard dreamed up a new crime-solving tool—a kit that could help rape survivors fight for justice. This thrilling investigation tells the story of the troubled, heroic woman who kicked off a feminist revolution in forensics, and then vanished into obscurity.
"Astonishing . . . Marty Goddard takes her rightful place as a visionary thanks to Kennedy’s relentless investigation.”—Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises
"The Secret History of the Rape Kit is stunning: part thriller, part feminist reclamation, part personal journey, fully a page-turner. How did we not know about Marty Goddard?"—Peggy Orenstein author of Girls & Sex and Boys & Sex
In 1972, Martha "Marty" Goddard volunteered at a crisis hotline, counseling girls who had been molested by their fathers, their teachers, their uncles. Soon, Marty was on a mission to answer a question: Why were so many sexual predators getting away with these crimes? By the end of the decade, she had launched a campaign pushing hospitals and police departments to collect evidence of sexual assault and treat survivors with dignity. She designed a new kind of forensics tool—the rape kit—and new practices around evidence collection that spread across the country. Yet even as Marty fought for women's rights, she allowed a man to take credit for her work.
When journalist Pagan Kennedy went looking for this forgotten pioneer, she discovered that even Marty Goddard's closest friends had lost track of her. As Pagan followed a trail of clues to solve the mystery of Marty, she also delved into the problematic history of forensics in America. The Secret History of the Rape Kit chronicles one journalist's mission to understand a crucial innovation in forensics and the woman who championed it. As Pagan Kennedy hunts for answers, she reflects on her own experiences with sexual assault and her own desire for justice.
©2023 Pagan Kennedy (P)2023 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
Waco
- David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and a Legacy of Rage
- By: Jeff Guinn
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For the first time in thirty years, more than a dozen former ATF agents who participated in the initial February 28, 1993, raid speak on the record about the poor decisions of their commanders that led to this deadly confrontation. Revelations in this book include why the FBI chose to end the siege with the use of CS gas; how both ATF and FBI officials tried and failed to cover up their agencies’ mistakes; where David Koresh plagiarized his infamous prophecies; and direct links between the Branch Davidian tragedy and the modern militia movement in America.
-
-
Another excellent book by Guinn
- By Amazon Customer on 02-19-23
By: Jeff Guinn
-
Original Sins
- The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism
- By: Eve L. Ewing
- Narrated by: Robin Miles, Eve L. Ewing
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why don’t our schools work? Eve L. Ewing tackles this question from a new angle: What if they’re actually doing what they were built to do? She argues that instead of being the great equalizer, America’s classrooms were designed to do the opposite: to maintain the nation’s inequalities. It’s a task at which they excel.
-
-
A must read for educators and everyone!
- By Alonna on 05-06-25
By: Eve L. Ewing
-
Bibliophobia
- A Memoir
- By: Sarah Chihaya
- Narrated by: Traci Kato-Kiriyama
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Books can seduce you. They can, Sarah Chihaya believes, annihilate, reveal, and provoke you. And anyone incurably obsessed with books understands this kind of unsettling literary encounter. Sarah calls books that have this effect “Life Ruiners”. Her Life Ruiner, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, became a talisman for her in high school when its electrifying treatment of race exposed Sarah’s deepest feelings about being Japanese American in a predominantly white suburb of Cleveland.
By: Sarah Chihaya
-
Murder in the Dollhouse
- The Jennifer Dulos Story
- By: Rich Cohen
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rich Cohen’s Murder in the Dollhouse is the chilling story of Jennifer Dulos, a beautiful, rich suburban mother who dropped her kids off at the New Canaan Country School one morning and vanished. Her body has never been found. Dulos was in the midst of an ugly divorce—one of the most contentious in Connecticut state history. The couple, a beautiful, highly connected pair, met at Brown University, had five children, and led what appeared to be a charmed life. In the wake of her disappearance, Dulos’s husband and his girlfriend were arrested.
-
-
Thorough
- By Cathryn K Farnsworth on 07-08-25
By: Rich Cohen
-
Everything Is Tuberculosis
- The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
- By: John Green
- Narrated by: John Green
- Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2019, author John Green met Henry Reider, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, preventable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing over a million people every year. In Everything Is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story.
-
-
TB: The past? More like the present.
- By Kindle Customer on 04-02-25
By: John Green
-
Relinquished
- The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood
- By: Gretchen Sisson
- Narrated by: Angel Pean, Emily Norman, Katie Koster, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A powerful decade-long study of adoption in the age of Roe, revealing the grief of the American mothers for whom the choice to parent was never real.
-
-
A “birth mothers” review
- By Abigail Johnson on 05-13-25
By: Gretchen Sisson
-
Waco
- David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and a Legacy of Rage
- By: Jeff Guinn
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For the first time in thirty years, more than a dozen former ATF agents who participated in the initial February 28, 1993, raid speak on the record about the poor decisions of their commanders that led to this deadly confrontation. Revelations in this book include why the FBI chose to end the siege with the use of CS gas; how both ATF and FBI officials tried and failed to cover up their agencies’ mistakes; where David Koresh plagiarized his infamous prophecies; and direct links between the Branch Davidian tragedy and the modern militia movement in America.
-
-
Another excellent book by Guinn
- By Amazon Customer on 02-19-23
By: Jeff Guinn
-
Original Sins
- The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism
- By: Eve L. Ewing
- Narrated by: Robin Miles, Eve L. Ewing
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why don’t our schools work? Eve L. Ewing tackles this question from a new angle: What if they’re actually doing what they were built to do? She argues that instead of being the great equalizer, America’s classrooms were designed to do the opposite: to maintain the nation’s inequalities. It’s a task at which they excel.
-
-
A must read for educators and everyone!
- By Alonna on 05-06-25
By: Eve L. Ewing
-
Bibliophobia
- A Memoir
- By: Sarah Chihaya
- Narrated by: Traci Kato-Kiriyama
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Books can seduce you. They can, Sarah Chihaya believes, annihilate, reveal, and provoke you. And anyone incurably obsessed with books understands this kind of unsettling literary encounter. Sarah calls books that have this effect “Life Ruiners”. Her Life Ruiner, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, became a talisman for her in high school when its electrifying treatment of race exposed Sarah’s deepest feelings about being Japanese American in a predominantly white suburb of Cleveland.
By: Sarah Chihaya
-
Murder in the Dollhouse
- The Jennifer Dulos Story
- By: Rich Cohen
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rich Cohen’s Murder in the Dollhouse is the chilling story of Jennifer Dulos, a beautiful, rich suburban mother who dropped her kids off at the New Canaan Country School one morning and vanished. Her body has never been found. Dulos was in the midst of an ugly divorce—one of the most contentious in Connecticut state history. The couple, a beautiful, highly connected pair, met at Brown University, had five children, and led what appeared to be a charmed life. In the wake of her disappearance, Dulos’s husband and his girlfriend were arrested.
-
-
Thorough
- By Cathryn K Farnsworth on 07-08-25
By: Rich Cohen
-
Everything Is Tuberculosis
- The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
- By: John Green
- Narrated by: John Green
- Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2019, author John Green met Henry Reider, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, preventable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing over a million people every year. In Everything Is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story.
-
-
TB: The past? More like the present.
- By Kindle Customer on 04-02-25
By: John Green
-
Relinquished
- The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood
- By: Gretchen Sisson
- Narrated by: Angel Pean, Emily Norman, Katie Koster, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A powerful decade-long study of adoption in the age of Roe, revealing the grief of the American mothers for whom the choice to parent was never real.
-
-
A “birth mothers” review
- By Abigail Johnson on 05-13-25
By: Gretchen Sisson
-
Girl on Girl
- How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves
- By: Sophie Gilbert
- Narrated by: Sophie Gilbert
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What happened to feminism in the twenty-first century? This question feels increasingly urgent after a period of cultural and legislative backlash, when widespread uncertainty about the movement’s power, focus, and currency threatens decades of progress. Sophie Gilbert identifies an inflection point in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the energy of third-wave and “riot grrrl” feminism collapsed into a regressive period of hyper-objectification, sexualization, and infantilization.
-
-
Why did I download this book?
- By Rehlander Reviews on 07-01-25
By: Sophie Gilbert
-
Down Girl
- The Logic of Misogyny
- By: Kate Manne
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Misogyny is a hot topic, yet it's often misunderstood. What is misogyny, exactly? Who deserves to be called a misogynist? How does misogyny contrast with sexism, and why is it prone to persist - or increase - even when sexist gender roles are waning? This book is an exploration of misogyny in public life and politics by the moral philosopher Kate Manne. It argues that misogyny should not be understood primarily in terms of the hatred or hostility some men feel toward all or most women. Rather, it's primarily about controlling, policing, punishing, and exiling the "bad" women.
-
-
Five Star Book w/bad Narration
- By Cherrybomb on 02-08-19
By: Kate Manne
-
The Mother Next Door
- Medicine, Deception, and Munchausen by Proxy
- By: Andrea Dunlop, Mike Weber
- Narrated by: Andrea Dunlop
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No bond is more sacred than the one between a mother and child. And no figure is more sympathetic than a mother whose child faces a life-threatening illness. But what if the mother is the reason for the illness? What if the sympathy is the point? With help from some of the top MBP experts in the world, Dunlop and Weber uncover the complex maze of psychological, systemic, and cultural issues that compound MBP and offer solutions for how we might find our way out.
-
-
Excellent research and narration
- By Ashli_24 on 07-07-25
By: Andrea Dunlop, and others
-
The Dry Season
- A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex
- By: Melissa Febos
- Narrated by: Melissa Febos
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the wake of a catastrophic two-year relationship, Melissa Febos decided to take a break: For three months she would abstain from dating, relationships, and sex. Her friends were amused. Did she really think three months was a long time? But to Febos, it was. Ever since her teens, she had been in one relationship after another with men and women. As she puts it, she could trace a “daisy chain of romances” from her adolescence to her midthirties. Finally, she would carve out time to focus on herself and examine the patterns that had produced her midlife disaster.
-
-
Moving, impactful, and poetic
- By Amazon Customer on 07-03-25
By: Melissa Febos
-
The People's Hospital
- Hope and Peril in American Medicine
- By: Ricardo Nuila MD
- Narrated by: Ricardo Nuila MD
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Where does one go without health insurance, when turned away by hospitals, clinics, and doctors? In The People’s Hospital, physician Ricardo Nuila’s stunning debut, we follow the lives of five uninsured Houstonians as their struggle for survival leads them to a hospital where insurance comes second to genuine care.
-
-
Ben Taub Nurse
- By Patricia Gonzales on 05-11-23
By: Ricardo Nuila MD
-
The Aviator and the Showman
- Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage That Made an American Icon
- By: Laurie Gwen Shapiro
- Narrated by: Stefanie Powers
- Length: 22 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1928, a young social worker and hobby pilot named Amelia Earhart arrived in the office of George Putnam, heir to the Putnam & Sons throne and hitmaker, on the hunt for the right woman for a secret flying mission across the Atlantic. A partnership—professional and soon otherwise—was born.
-
My Good Bright Wolf
- A Memoir
- By: Sarah Moss
- Narrated by: Morven Christie
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A girl must watch her figure but never be vain. She must be intelligent but never a know-it-all. She must be ambitious, if she is clever, but not in a way that shows. She must cook and sew and make do and mend. She must know (but never say) that these skills are, in some fundamental way, flawed and frivolous—feminine. Girls must stay small, even as they grow. Women must show restraint. And yet. In books, in the landscape of imagination, a girl can run free.
-
-
A brilliant thinker.
- By Sarah Steinberg on 12-05-24
By: Sarah Moss
-
Daughters of the Bamboo Grove
- From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated Twins
- By: Barbara Demick
- Narrated by: Joy Osmanski
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a warm day in September 2000, a woman named Zanhua gave birth to twin girls in a small hut behind her brother’s home in China’s Hunan province. The twins, Fangfang and Shuangjie, were welcome additions to her family but also not her first children. Living under the shadow of China’s notorious one-child policy, Zanhua and her husband decided to leave one twin in the care of relatives, hoping each toddler on their own might stay under the radar. But, in 2002, Fangfang was violently snatched away.
-
-
This is a great book.
- By jaw1031 on 06-25-25
By: Barbara Demick
-
Notes to John
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Julianne Moore
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In November 1999, Joan Didion began seeing a psychiatrist because, as she wrote to a friend, her family had had “a rough few years.” She described the sessions in a journal she created for her husband, John Gregory Dunne. For several months, Didion recorded conversations with the psychiatrist in meticulous detail. The initial sessions focused on alcoholism, adoption, depression, anxiety, guilt, and the heartbreaking complexities of her relationship with her daughter, Quintana. The subjects evolved to include her work, which she was finding difficult to maintain for sustained periods.
-
-
This autobiography discusses notes from therapy regarding Joan’s daughter’s addiction. Very insightful!
- By Laura Borealis on 04-24-25
By: Joan Didion
-
Victorian Psycho
- By: Virginia Feito
- Narrated by: Anna Burnett
- Length: 4 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Grim Wolds, England: Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect governess—she’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But long, listless days spent within the estate’s dreary confines come with an intimate knowledge of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family—Mr. Pounds can’t keep his eyes off Winifred’s chest, and Mrs. Pounds takes a sickly pleasure in punishing Winifred for her husband’s wandering gaze.
-
-
meh
- By Pamela Y. S. on 02-13-25
By: Virginia Feito
-
A Devil in the Valley
- By: Paul Holes, Peter McDonnell
- Narrated by: Jim Clemente, Paul Holes
- Length: 4 hrs and 36 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1994, an aspiring young cold-case investigator in California’s East Bay, Paul Holes, puts aside trying to solve the Golden State Killer case as he waits for science to catch up. Paul returns to an old file cabinet at the back of the forensic lab to look for another cold case he can work—something with DNA. He finds one. The 1978 murder of a married mother who went for a morning jog in a nearby park. The original investigators believed that a serial killer named Phillip Hughes was responsible; they just couldn’t prove it.
-
-
Excellent!!!
- By Nick on 08-05-21
By: Paul Holes, and others
-
Fosse
- By: Sam Wasson
- Narrated by: Jim Meskimen
- Length: 21 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The only person ever to win Oscar, Emmy, and Tony awards in the same year, Bob Fosse revolutionized nearly every facet of American entertainment. His signature style would influence generations of performing artists. Yet in spite of Fosse’s innumerable—including Cabaret, Pippin, All That Jazz, and Chicago, one of the longest-running Broadway musicals ever—his offstage life was shadowed by deep wounds and insatiable appetites.
-
-
Amazing!
- By Helen on 11-06-24
By: Sam Wasson
Critic reviews
"Pagan Kennedy’s book is astonishing in every way that matters. The Secret History of the Rape Kit is the story of hidden genius and the centuries-long fight for women to simply be recognized and heard. Marty Goddard as a footnote in history takes her rightful place as a visionary thanks to Kennedy’s relentless investigation. This book is gripping, vulnerable, assured and way overdue.” —Rachel Louise Snyder, author of Women We Buried, Women We Burned and No Visible Bruises
“The Secret History of the Rape Kit” is a relatively slender book, but it packs a punch. It’s an important investigation of a complex inventor, her flawed but revolutionary technology, and how it has never been allowed to live up to her hopes for it.”—The Washington Post
“In The Secret History of the Rape Kit, Pagan Kennedy deftly weaves genres to create an absolutely compelling book that melds true crime, memoir, biography, social history and a personal, impassioned quest. I raced through it, gripped from start to finish.”—Kate Moore, New York Times bestselling author of The Radium Girls and The Woman They Could Not Silence
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Sinners All Bow
- Two Authors, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne
- By: Kate Winkler Dawson
- Narrated by: Kate Winkler Dawson
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a cold winter day in 1832, Sarah Maria Cornell was found dead in a quiet farmyard in a small New England town. When her troubled past and a secret correspondence with charismatic Methodist minister Reverend Ephraim Avery was uncovered, more questions emerged. Was Sarah’s death a suicide...or something much darker? Determined to uncover the real story, Victorian writer Catharine Read Arnold Williams threw herself into the investigation as the trial was unfolding and wrote what many claim to be the first American true-crime narrative, Fall River.
-
-
2 authors, 100 years apart.
- By b. ritt on 06-17-25
-
Inventology
- How We Dream Up Things That Change the World
- By: Pagan Kennedy
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A father cleans up after his toddler and imagines a cup that won't spill. An engineer watches people using walkie-talkies and has an idea. A doctor figures out how to deliver patients to the operating room before they die. By studying inventions like these—the sippy cup, the cell phone, and an ingenious hospital bed—we can learn how people imagine their way around "impossible" problems to discover groundbreaking answers. Pagan Kennedy reports on how these enduring methods can be adapted to the twenty-first century.
By: Pagan Kennedy
-
Killer Story
- The Truth Behind True Crime Television
- By: Claire St. Amant
- Narrated by: Claire St. Amant
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Follow a journalist and TV producer from 48 Hours and 60 Minutes as she carves out a career in the ruthless, knives-out world of true crime television . . . one killer story at a time.
-
-
I hope it’s not her only book
- By Rebulon on 02-19-25
By: Claire St. Amant
-
The Dry Season
- A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex
- By: Melissa Febos
- Narrated by: Melissa Febos
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the wake of a catastrophic two-year relationship, Melissa Febos decided to take a break: For three months she would abstain from dating, relationships, and sex. Her friends were amused. Did she really think three months was a long time? But to Febos, it was. Ever since her teens, she had been in one relationship after another with men and women. As she puts it, she could trace a “daisy chain of romances” from her adolescence to her midthirties. Finally, she would carve out time to focus on herself and examine the patterns that had produced her midlife disaster.
-
-
Moving, impactful, and poetic
- By Amazon Customer on 07-03-25
By: Melissa Febos
-
Hometown Betrayal
- A Tragic Story of Secrecy and Sexual Abuse in Mormon Country
- By: Emily Benedek
- Narrated by: Maria Mcann
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Valarie Clark Miller seemed to have it all. Smart and beautiful with a wealthy, successful husband and growing family, Valarie appeared to be the picture-perfect Mormon wife. But it was all a façade. Inside, she was crumbling from the pressures of long-repressed memories of a childhood filled with sexual and physical abuse.
-
-
Well written and very eye-opening
- By Eliza on 06-07-25
By: Emily Benedek
-
Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng
- By: Kylie Lee Baker
- Narrated by: Natalie Naudus
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cora Zeng is a crime scene cleaner, washing away the remains of brutal murders and suicides in Chinatown. But none of that seems so terrible when she’s already witnessed the most horrific thing possible: her sister, Delilah, being pushed in front of a train. Before fleeing the scene, the murderer shouted two words: bat eater. So the bloody messes don’t really bother Cora—she’s more bothered by the germs on the subway railing, the bare hands of a stranger, the hidden viruses in every corner, and the bite marks on her coffee table.
-
-
Brilliant
- By Kate S on 06-29-25
By: Kylie Lee Baker
-
The Sinners All Bow
- Two Authors, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne
- By: Kate Winkler Dawson
- Narrated by: Kate Winkler Dawson
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a cold winter day in 1832, Sarah Maria Cornell was found dead in a quiet farmyard in a small New England town. When her troubled past and a secret correspondence with charismatic Methodist minister Reverend Ephraim Avery was uncovered, more questions emerged. Was Sarah’s death a suicide...or something much darker? Determined to uncover the real story, Victorian writer Catharine Read Arnold Williams threw herself into the investigation as the trial was unfolding and wrote what many claim to be the first American true-crime narrative, Fall River.
-
-
2 authors, 100 years apart.
- By b. ritt on 06-17-25
-
Inventology
- How We Dream Up Things That Change the World
- By: Pagan Kennedy
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A father cleans up after his toddler and imagines a cup that won't spill. An engineer watches people using walkie-talkies and has an idea. A doctor figures out how to deliver patients to the operating room before they die. By studying inventions like these—the sippy cup, the cell phone, and an ingenious hospital bed—we can learn how people imagine their way around "impossible" problems to discover groundbreaking answers. Pagan Kennedy reports on how these enduring methods can be adapted to the twenty-first century.
By: Pagan Kennedy
-
Killer Story
- The Truth Behind True Crime Television
- By: Claire St. Amant
- Narrated by: Claire St. Amant
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Follow a journalist and TV producer from 48 Hours and 60 Minutes as she carves out a career in the ruthless, knives-out world of true crime television . . . one killer story at a time.
-
-
I hope it’s not her only book
- By Rebulon on 02-19-25
By: Claire St. Amant
-
The Dry Season
- A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex
- By: Melissa Febos
- Narrated by: Melissa Febos
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the wake of a catastrophic two-year relationship, Melissa Febos decided to take a break: For three months she would abstain from dating, relationships, and sex. Her friends were amused. Did she really think three months was a long time? But to Febos, it was. Ever since her teens, she had been in one relationship after another with men and women. As she puts it, she could trace a “daisy chain of romances” from her adolescence to her midthirties. Finally, she would carve out time to focus on herself and examine the patterns that had produced her midlife disaster.
-
-
Moving, impactful, and poetic
- By Amazon Customer on 07-03-25
By: Melissa Febos
-
Hometown Betrayal
- A Tragic Story of Secrecy and Sexual Abuse in Mormon Country
- By: Emily Benedek
- Narrated by: Maria Mcann
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Valarie Clark Miller seemed to have it all. Smart and beautiful with a wealthy, successful husband and growing family, Valarie appeared to be the picture-perfect Mormon wife. But it was all a façade. Inside, she was crumbling from the pressures of long-repressed memories of a childhood filled with sexual and physical abuse.
-
-
Well written and very eye-opening
- By Eliza on 06-07-25
By: Emily Benedek
-
Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng
- By: Kylie Lee Baker
- Narrated by: Natalie Naudus
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cora Zeng is a crime scene cleaner, washing away the remains of brutal murders and suicides in Chinatown. But none of that seems so terrible when she’s already witnessed the most horrific thing possible: her sister, Delilah, being pushed in front of a train. Before fleeing the scene, the murderer shouted two words: bat eater. So the bloody messes don’t really bother Cora—she’s more bothered by the germs on the subway railing, the bare hands of a stranger, the hidden viruses in every corner, and the bite marks on her coffee table.
-
-
Brilliant
- By Kate S on 06-29-25
By: Kylie Lee Baker
-
The Mother Next Door
- Medicine, Deception, and Munchausen by Proxy
- By: Andrea Dunlop, Mike Weber
- Narrated by: Andrea Dunlop
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No bond is more sacred than the one between a mother and child. And no figure is more sympathetic than a mother whose child faces a life-threatening illness. But what if the mother is the reason for the illness? What if the sympathy is the point? With help from some of the top MBP experts in the world, Dunlop and Weber uncover the complex maze of psychological, systemic, and cultural issues that compound MBP and offer solutions for how we might find our way out.
-
-
Excellent research and narration
- By Ashli_24 on 07-07-25
By: Andrea Dunlop, and others
-
Propaganda Girls
- The Secret War of the Women in the OSS
- By: Lisa Rogak
- Narrated by: Samara Naeymi
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Betty MacDonald was a 28-year-old reporter from Hawaii. Zuzka Lauwers grew up in a tiny Czechoslovakian village and knew five languages by the time she was 21. Jane Smith-Hutton was the wife of a naval attaché living in Tokyo. Marlene Dietrich, the German-American actress and singer, was of course one of the biggest stars of the 20th century. These four women, each fascinating in her own right, together contributed to one of the most covert and successful military campaigns in WWII.
-
-
fascinating
- By Debra Clinton on 04-07-25
By: Lisa Rogak
-
Raised by a Serial Killer
- Discovering the Truth About My Father
- By: April Balascio
- Narrated by: April Balascio
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One evening in 2009, April Balascio was searching online, as she had been every night, for unsolved murders in the towns her family had lived growing up, when she stumbled across the latest investigations into the “Sweetheart Murders” cold case. All at once, the buried memories of her father’s dark history were awakened, and she knew she had to take action. She picked up the phone to call a detective and the rest is infamous true crime history. In her unflinching memoir, Balascio bravely reveals an astonishing tale of a lifetime of manipulation, unexplained upheavals, and silent fear.
-
-
Good story, narration is elementary
- By AMarie on 12-19-24
By: April Balascio
-
Cleavage
- Men, Women, and the Space Between Us
- By: Jennifer Finney Boylan
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman, Jennifer Finney Boylan
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What is the difference between men and women? Jennifer Finney Boylan, bestselling author of She’s Not There and co-author of Mad Honey with Jodi Picoult, examines the divisions—as well as the common ground—between the genders, and reflects on her own experiences, both difficult and joyful, as a transgender American.
-
-
A marvelous kaleidoscope
- By James Quinn on 02-15-25
-
The Road to Tender Hearts
- A Novel
- By: Annie Hartnett
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At sixty-three years old, million-dollar lottery winner PJ Halliday would be the luckiest man in Pondville, Massachusetts, if it weren’t for the tragedies of his life: the sudden death of his eldest daughter and the way his marriage fell apart after that. Since then, PJ spends both his money and his time at the bar, and he probably doesn’t have much time left—he’s had three heart attacks already. But when PJ reads the obituary of his old romantic rival, he realizes his high school sweetheart, Michelle Cobb, is finally single again.
-
-
Heartwarming
- By AmazonPrimeAddict on 05-29-25
By: Annie Hartnett
-
Hidden Histories with Nova Reid
- By: Nova Reid
- Narrated by: Nova Reid
- Length: 4 hrs and 19 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nova Reid, author of The Good Ally, delves into the untold stories of extraordinary, unsung Black women who created and shaped pivotal moments in world history, British culture and society. Through powerful storytelling, personal insights and new research, Nova delves into the lives of pioneers, journalists and rule-breakers who made vital contributions to civil rights, yet have been mythologised, are unknown or erased from history.
-
-
Do you want to know upon whose shoulders you stand?
- By Anonymous User on 07-04-25
By: Nova Reid
-
Mary Jane
- By: Amy Herzog
- Narrated by: Rachel McAdams, April Matthis, Brenda Wehle, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 16 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Academy Award nominee Rachel McAdams stars in Mary Jane, a poignant and intimate drama following a single mother’s journey caring for her chronically ill young son. Set in New York City, the play unfolds in two parts—Mary Jane's small Queens apartment and a pediatric hospital. With unflinching honesty and unexpected humor, we witness Mary Jane's tireless devotion, her interactions with medical professionals, and her struggle to maintain her sense of self.
-
-
Amazing performance
- By Andrew Reynolds on 12-28-24
By: Amy Herzog
-
Free
- My Search for Meaning
- By: Amanda Knox
- Narrated by: Amanda Knox
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Amanda Knox spent nearly four years in prison and eight years on trial for a murder she didn’t commit—and became a notorious tabloid story in the process. Though she was exonerated, it’s taken more than a decade for her to reclaim her identity and truly feel free. Free recounts how Knox survived incarceration, the mistakes she made, the misadventures she had reintegrating into society, and culminates in the untold story of her return to Italy—and the extraordinary relationship she's built with the man who sent her to prison.
-
-
Amanda walks her talk.
- By Nikki Lee on 04-09-25
By: Amanda Knox
-
Eve
- How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution
- By: Cat Bohannon
- Narrated by: Cat Bohannon
- Length: 15 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why do women live longer than men? Why do women have menopause? Why are women more likely to get Alzheimer’s? Why do girls score better at every academic subject than boys until puberty, when suddenly their scores plummet? And does the female brain really exist? In Eve, Cat Bohannon answers questions scientists should have been addressing for decades. With boundless curiosity and sharp wit, she covers the past 200 million years to explain the specific science behind the development of the female sex.
-
-
Stronger on reproductive bio, flimsy on sexuality
- By curiouscolugo on 12-20-23
By: Cat Bohannon
-
American Predator
- The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century
- By: Maureen Callahan
- Narrated by: Amy Landon
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The names of notorious serial killers are usually well-known; they echo in the news and in public consciousness. But most people have never heard of Israel Keyes, one of the most ambitious and terrifying serial killers in modern history American Predator is the ambitious culmination of years of interviews with key figures in law enforcement and in Keyes's life, and research uncovered from classified FBI files. Callahan takes us on a journey into the chilling, nightmarish mind of a relentless killer, and to the limitations of traditional law enforcement.
-
-
Why you shouldn’t listen to Reviews
- By jofi00 on 10-23-19
By: Maureen Callahan
-
Murder in the Dollhouse
- The Jennifer Dulos Story
- By: Rich Cohen
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rich Cohen’s Murder in the Dollhouse is the chilling story of Jennifer Dulos, a beautiful, rich suburban mother who dropped her kids off at the New Canaan Country School one morning and vanished. Her body has never been found. Dulos was in the midst of an ugly divorce—one of the most contentious in Connecticut state history. The couple, a beautiful, highly connected pair, met at Brown University, had five children, and led what appeared to be a charmed life. In the wake of her disappearance, Dulos’s husband and his girlfriend were arrested.
-
-
Thorough
- By Cathryn K Farnsworth on 07-08-25
By: Rich Cohen
-
I See You've Called in Dead
- A Novel
- By: John Kenney
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bud Stanley is an obituary writer who is afraid to live. Yes, his wife recently left him for a “far more interesting” man. Yes, he goes on a particularly awful blind date with a woman who brings her ex. And yes, he has too many glasses of Scotch one night and proceeds to pen and publish his own obituary. The newspaper wants to fire him. But now the company’s system has him listed as dead. And the company can’t fire a dead person. The ensuing fallout forces him to realize that life may be actually worth living.
-
-
wonderful book. Comic edge but full of heart
- By Amazon Customer on 04-10-25
By: John Kenney
A Crucial Book
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Love hidden history
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Fascinating
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Pagan Kennedy also tells a broader and complex story of how violence against women had received little attention even up to today.
And finally, the narrator, Claire Danes, does a impressive job telling this wonderfully researched story.
The Hidden Story of the Rape Kit and It’s Creator is Finally Told
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Sad truth and it’s needs attention
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Remarkable history
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Fascinating
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
What an incredible story
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Long Overdue …
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Best true crime story I’ve heard in a while
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.