2007 Audie Award Winner for Unabridged Fiction

List $34.99

Written by Anna Quindlen - Audio book performed by Carol Monda - Unabridged Fiction - 9 COMPACT DISCS - 11 hours

Publisher, Recorded Books (August 2006)

“If literature were judged solely by its ability to elicit strong emotions, columnist-cum-novelist Anna Quindlen would win another Pulitzer.” --Kirkus Reviews

It’s Monday morning when Meghan Fitzmaurice blows her perfect life to bits. The host of “Rise and Shine,” the country’s highest rated morning talk show, Meghan cuts to a commercial break, but not before she mutters two forbidden words into her open mike. It’s the end of an era, not only for Meghan, a household face who is not equipped to deal with disgrace, but for her younger sister Bridget, a social worker in the Bronx who has lived always in Meghan’s long shadow. The effect of Meghan’s on-air profanity—and truth telling—is felt by her son, her husband, her friends, her fans and even the city of New York, the capitol of appearance over reality. But above all it transforms the sister with whom she’s shared everything, even the mixed blessings of fame. What follows is a story about a city big enough to hold prep school rappers, rich poseurs, familiar strangers, and autograph seekers in the ladies room at black tie balls. But ultimately it’s about how, in very different ways, the Fitzmaurice girls whip the place into shape. Meghan and Bridget, Bridget and Meghan. They share smart mouths, a fractured childhood, and a powerful connection that even the worst tragedy can’t rupture.

About the Author: Over the last 25 years, Quindlen’s work has appeared in some of America’s most influential newspapers, many of its best-known magazines, and on both fiction and non-fiction best seller lists. A columnist at The New York Times from 1981 to 1994, in 1990 Quindlen became only the third woman in the paper’s history to write a regular column for its influential Op-Ed page when she began the nationally syndicated “Public and Private.” A collection of those columns, Thinking Out Loud, was published by Random House in 1993 and was on The New York Times Best Seller List for more than three months. In 1992 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. She was a Poynter Fellow in Journalism at Yale University and a Victoria Fellow in Contemporary Issues at Rutgers. Glamour magazine named her one of its 10 Outstanding Women of the Year in 1991.

About the Performer: Narrator Carol Monda is a veteran stage, film, and voiceover performer and Audie Award®-winning reader. She is a member of Emerging Artists Theatre, and her credentials include the title role in The Snow Queen at The Kennedy Center, Celimene in Roundhouse’s The Misanthrope, and Limer in Morticians in Love, for which she received a Helen Hayes Award nomination. Monda is featured in the films Out of Season and The Gentleman.