Collection One (1973 - 1989) - Danielle Steel

Written by Danielle Steel
Read by Laura Lefkow, Jill Ferris, Lisa Ross, Lorelie King, Carol Marsh, Pamela Brown,
Format: MP3
Bitrate: Mixed
Unabridged

I have friends who are avid fans—and so are many of our downloaders. This collection is for them all. Many people think of her as a “romance writer” but she also does historic fiction, short stories, non-fiction.

Here are eighteen of the twenty-three books written by the author between 1973 and 1989. All but one of these recording was made for the blind by RNIB,/CNIB, NLS. WorldCat lists no other professional unabridged recordings for these books, except a few abridged. All are edited from torrent scrounged from every site I could find. Some are uploaded as found and others needed editing and cleaning. Sound varies from excellent to listen-able. Original bit-rate for some was as low as 16k.

Going Home (1973) – Pamela Brown - RNIB/CNIB – 9hrs 56min (32k)
The First Novel…..
After experiencing betrayal, Gillian flees to New York and discovers an exciting new career and an enveloping passion–only to have her new-found happiness shaken to its core. Now Gillian must choose between her past and her future to find the deepest desires of her heart.

The Promise (1978) – Jill Fox/NLS – 8hrs (40k)
For Michael, handsome heir to a business empire, and Nancy, beautiful young orphan, the carefree days of innocence were drawing to an end. That fateful day after graduation, they sealed a bond for the years to come - a vow of love that would have to prove itself in the face of terrible tragedy.

Season of Passion (1979) – Dorothy Hayward/CNIB - 12hrs 14min (48k)
Kate is only eighteen when she meets Tom Harper, one of America’s biggest pro-football stars. They share an idyllic and glamorous first love. But the bullet that suddenly ends Tom’s career also ends their life together. A failed suicide attempt will leave him mentally and physically disabled forever. Kate will be left alone, heartbroken, and pregnant with their son. Soon she will have another chance at love, but it will mean learning to let go of the past and learning to trust again.

Summer’s End (1979) – Lisa Ross/RNIB – 10hrs 15min (32)
Deanna was eighteen when she married a handsome Frenchman, attorney Marc-Edouard Duras. Now, at thirty-seven, she should be happy with Marc, her elegant home in San Francisco, and their teenage daughter, Pilar. But one summer changes it all when she realizes her failing marriage is a trap she must escape.

The Ring (1980) – Laura Lefkow/RNIB - 11hrs 2min (33k)
In the turbulent Germany of the 1930s, Kassandra von Gotthard met Dolff Sterne, the man who was to change her life. She was the beautiful wife of a wealthy Berlin banker, he a Jewish writer. Together they shared a love that happens only once in a lifetime, but it was fated to end in tragedy.

Palomino (1981) – Jil Ferris/NLS – 10hr 42min (40k)
After her husband leaves her, Samantha is torn between her high-powered New York career and a life of freedom in California with a passionate cowboy. Reckless and impulsive, she is prepared to risk everything she once thought mattered.

Remembrance (1981) – Helen Horton/RNIB - (32k)
Her beloved Italian homeland shattered in the wake of World War II, exquisite Serena, Principessa di San Tibaldo, has nothing left except her name, her ancestry… and her heart which she gives completely and forever to Major Brad Fullerton. But not even Brad’s ring—or his child—can protect her from the calculating wrath of the powerful Fullerton dynasty, and the woman who will become Serena’s bitter enemy (Chapter 21). Sweeping from the war-torn palazzos of Rome to the glittering avenues of Manhattan and the glamorous world of high fashion. Here is the vibrant story of one woman’s triumphant yet bittersweet journey of the heart….
The book is divided into parts: early years and the survival years. After so much pain and sorrow she’s had to get a job and watch her brother in law go to war. Each of the parts have traumatic things occur and it makes the characters stronger as their lives go on.

A Perfect Stranger (1982) – Laura Brock/RNIB – 10hrs 11min (32k)
Alex had given up all hope of finding the right woman until he saw the beautiful Raphaella - young, wealthy and desperately lonely. Trapped in an empty life by a sense of honour and duty to her elderly husband, she denied herself any right to personal happiness, until she met Alex.

Once in a Lifetime (1983) – Sharon Murray/NLS – 11hrs 34min (64k)
To the doctors the woman in the ambulance was just another casualty, just more beautiful than most, more badly hurt. She was Daphne Fields, a famous author whose stories were drawn from her own struggle; to choose between the two men she loved.

Thurston House (1983) – Lorelie King/CNIB – 15hrs 12min (40k)
When wealthy self-made Jeremiah married the much younger Camille, a spoilt little rich girl, he was looking not only for love, but a woman to found a great family. For that family he built Thurston House, a vast mansion symbolizing the greatness and power of the dynasty it was to house.

Changes (1983) – Lisa Ross/RNIB – 12hrs 44min (32k)
Top TV anchorwoman Melanie Adams had given up on love after a failed marriage and an unhappy affair. With her two teenage children and her television news career, she had no room in her life for a man. Then she met famous heart surgeon Peter Hallam, a widower with three children of his own. Suddenly Melanie was experiencing feelings she thought were gone forever. But two families (one in New York and one in Los Angeles), two exciting careers, and two strong-willed people were too much to handle. And Melanie faced a painful choice between her glamorous life in the public eye, her private life, the needs of her family, and the new family she took on. Changes lead each of them to new places, new problems, new people, and the new life they begin.

Full Circle (1984) – Yvonne Fair Tessler/NLS – 13hrs 19min (32k)
The 1960s. Kennedy. Martin Luther King. Civil rights. Viet Nam. Tana Roberts comes of age in this turbulent decade, and begins a journey that will lead her from New York to the South during the heat of racial unrest. A thoroughly modern young woman, she yearns for a career and is willing to sacrifice everything to get it. And it’s only much later that Tana discovers that she can have it all…. career, love and peace of mind. as she comes of age, at last, and comes full circle.

Family Album (1985) – Carol Marsh/CNIB – 17hrs 21min (33k)
Follows the Thayer dynasty through generations of love, hope, of strife and passion, from Hollywood in the storm-torn political years and the turmoil of the Vietnam era up to the present.

Secrets (1985) – Pauline Munro/RNIB – 14hrs 19min (16k)
The stars of a new TV series called “Manhattan” share their secrets with millions. Offstage they are ordinary people with homes and dreams, lives and loves, every bit as real, and as the viewers watch the drama unfold the actors share their passion and pain in the performance of their lives.

Wanderlust (1986) – Carol McCartney/NLS – 15hrs 3min (32k)
Audrey Driscoll. Orphaned young has grown up caring for her eccentric millionaire grandfather and her demanding younger sister, Annabelle, who assume she will always be there for them. Sheltered yet restless, responsible beyond her years yet hungering for experience, Audrey is hopelessly bound until she herself makes the daring decision to leave. As the 1930s unfold, alone, camera in hand, she will shock friends and outrage family as she plunges headlong into the wider world.

Crossing the Atlantic aboard the luxurious Queen Mary, Audrey meets Charles Parker-Scott. Together they will spend an exquisite summer at Cap d’Antibes, then board the Orient Express on an adventure that will carry them to a remote outpost in China. But at the farthest reaches of this journey Aubrey must choose again. Japan has attacked China. Charles knows he must return to Europe at once. But Audrey becomes involved with a besieged orphanage and decides to remain in China without Charles, caring for the abandoned children until help arrives.

Kaleidoscope (1987) – Nora West/ISIS AudioBooks – 11hrs 41min (33k)
When a beautiful young Frenchwoman and a brilliant American actor meet in wartime Paris, their love begins like a fairy tale but ends in tragedy. Suddenly orphaned, their three children are cruelly separated. Megan, the baby, adopted by a family of comfortable means, becomes a doctor in the rural Appalachia. Alexandra, raised in lavish wealth, marries a powerful man whose pride is in his pedigree and who assumes that Alexandra is her parents’ natural offspring. Neither of them has the remotest suspicion that she is adopted, or what turbulent tragedy lurks in her past. And Hilary, oldest of the Walker children, remembers them all, and the grief that tore them apart and cast them into separate lives. Feeling the loss throughout her life, and unable to find her sisters, she builds an extraordinary career and has no personal life.

When John Chapman, lawyer and prestigious private investigator, is asked to find these three women, he wonders why.

Zoya (1988) – Carol Marsh/CNIB – 15hrs 9min (32k)
Zoya, a cousin of Tsar Nicholas of Russia, is made destitute in the Revolution. She flees to Paris, joins the Ballet Russe, and falls in love with a dashing American captain. But this is only the start of a dazzling and turbulent career.

Daddy (1989) abridged – Richard Thomas - 3hrs (64k)
Oliver Watson’s world suddenly dissolves around him when Sarah his wife of eighteen years, returns to Harvard to get her master’s degree. Oliver is left on his own, with three children and a freedom he never wanted and doesn’t completely understand. His family’s needs and demands suddenly consume his life.

When Oliver’s mother is diagnosed as having Alzheimer’s disease and dies soon thereafter, Oliver’s father’s life is changed as well. Braver than his son with less of a future before him, George Watson, at seventy-two, quickly embraces new relationships and, eventually, a new life. The sudden changes come as a shock to both father and son…

Will there be other collections? Maybe with the next pandemic…