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A Dark-Adapted Eye
- Narrated by: Harriet Walter
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
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Publisher's summary
Like most families, they had their secrets...
...and they hid them under a genteelly respectable veneer. No onlooker would guess that prim Vera Hillyard and her beautiful, adored younger sister, Eden, were locked in a dark and bitter combat over one of those secrets. England in the '50s was not kind to women who erred, so they had to use every means necessary to keep the truth hidden behind closed doors - even murder.
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Beginning of a journey
- By Jerri C on 11-04-16
By: Angela Thirkell, and others
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Cold Hand in Mine
- By: Robert Aickman
- Narrated by: Reece Shearsmith
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Cold Hand in Mine stands as one of Aickman's best collections and contains eight stories that show off his powers as a 'strange story' writer to the full. The listener is introduced to a variety of characters, from a man who spends the night in a Hospice to a German aristocrat and a woman who sees an image of her own soul. There is also a nod to the conventional vampire story ("Pages from a Young Girl's Journal") but all the stories remain unconventional and inconclusive, which perhaps makes them all the more startling and intriguing.
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Aickman is unique
- By Stark on 08-19-23
By: Robert Aickman
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Cover Her Face
- By: P. D. James
- Narrated by: Penelope Dellaporta
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Headstrong and beautiful, the young housemaid Sally Jupp is put rudely in her place, strangled in her bed behind a bolted door. Coolly brilliant policeman Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard must find her killer among a houseful of suspects, most of whom had very good reason to wish her ill. Cover Her Face is P. D. James' electric debut novel, an ingeniously plotted mystery that immediately placed her among the masters of suspense.
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OK but...
- By NoelleJ on 11-14-14
By: P. D. James
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Half a Lifelong Romance
- A Novel
- By: Eileen Chang
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 15 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Manzhen is a young worker in a Shanghai factory where she meets Shijun, the son of wealthy merchants. Despite family complications, they fall in love and begin to dream of a shared life together - until circumstances force them apart. When they are reunited after many years, can they start their relationship again? Or is it destined to be the romance of only half a lifetime?
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super
- By Marcus Aurelius on 10-05-17
By: Eileen Chang
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The Bad Seed
- By: William March
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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There's something special about eight-year-old Rhoda Penmark. With her carefully plaited hair and her sweet cotton dresses, she's the very picture of old-fashioned innocence. But when their neighborhood suffers a series of terrible accidents, her mother begins to wonder: Why do bad things seem to happen when little Rhoda is around?
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loved it
- By CoCo B.M.J on 07-23-19
By: William March
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The Last Summer
- By: Judith Kinghorn
- Narrated by: Jane Wymark
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Clarissa is almost 17 when the spell of her childhood is broken. It is 1914, the beginning of a blissful, golden summer - and the end of an era. Deyning Park is in its heyday, the large country house filled with the laughter and excitement of privileged youth preparing for a weekend party. When Clarissa meets Tom Cuthbert, home from university and staying with his mother, the housekeeper, she is dazzled.
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The Last Summer Delivers
- By Carmen dela Cruz on 05-22-16
By: Judith Kinghorn
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Staying On
- By: Paul Scott
- Narrated by: Paul Shelley
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Tusker and Lily Smalley stayed on in India. Given the chance to return ‘home’ when Tusker, once a Colonel in the British Army, retired, they chose instead to remain in the small hill town of Pankot, with its eccentric inhabitants and archaic rituals left over from the days of the Empire. Only the tyranny of their imposing landlady threatens to upset the quiet rhythm of their days.
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A Pleasant Meander
- By Ian C Robertson on 09-22-14
By: Paul Scott
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Bless This House
- By: Norah Lofts
- Narrated by: Michael Tudor Barnes, Nicolette McKenzie
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The house was built in the Old Queen's time: built for an Elizabethan pirate who was knighted for the plunder he brought home. It survived many eras, many reigns: it saw the passing of Cromwell and the Civil War. It became rich with an Indian Nabob and poor with a 20th century innkeeper. It saw wars, and lovers, and death. Children were born there, both heirs and bastards. It had ghosts and legends and a history that grew stranger with every generation.
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Bless This House - my take
- By Kalona1982 on 04-05-09
By: Norah Lofts
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My Real Children
- By: Jo Walton
- Narrated by: Alison Larkin
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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It's 2015, and Patricia Cowan is very old. "Confused today," read the notes clipped to the end of her bed. She forgets things she should know - what year it is, major events in the lives of her children. But she remembers things that don't seem possible. She remembers marrying Mark and having four children. And she remembers not marrying Mark and raising three children with Bee instead.
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A strange take on an otherwise simple story.
- By Lauren on 01-08-15
By: Jo Walton
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In the long, hot summer of 1976, a group of young people is camping in Wyvis Hall. Adam, Rufus, Shiva, Vivien and Zosie hardly ask why they are there or how they are to live; they scavenge, steal and sell the family heirlooms. Ten years later, the bodies of a woman and child are discovered in the Hall’s animal cemetery. Which woman? And whose child?
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Confusing, by it could just have been me
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As soon as Kerstin Kvist arrives at remote, ivy-covered Lydstep Old Hall in Essex, she feels like a character in a gothic novel. A young nurse fresh out of school, Kerstin has been hired for a position with the Cosway family, residents of the Hall for generations. She is soon introduced to her "charge", John Cosway, a 39-year-old man whose strange behavior is vaguely explained by his mother and sisters as part of the madness that runs in the family.
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Top notch Barbara Vine
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Senta Pelham is a mirror image of Flora, the lovely marble bust Philip fanaticized about for so long. But life, like art, is not always what its mere surface suggests. And Senta’s strange world of make-believe, where truth and falsehood are eerily interchangeable, soon draws Philip into a shadowy cloister of vague and uncertain terror.
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Well-written and creepy tale
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In a gloomy cellar, the figure of a beautiful, pale woman makes no move when the man advances on her from the shadows, puts his hands around her neck and strangles her. Arthur Johnson is a mild-mannered, shy man who has never known how to talk to women. His resulting loneliness has twisted his yearning for love and respect into a carefully constructed predilection for violence and control.
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Totally a Ruth Rendell read
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The Blood Doctor
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The First Lord Nanther, expert in blood diseases, particularly the royal disease of Heamophilia, and favoured physician to Queen Victoria, clearly hoped to be the subject of an admiring posthumous biography. But when his great-grandson, Martin Nanther begins to research his life for a biography, the Martin comes to suspect that his great-grandfather’s old records conceal more than they reveal.
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clever, excellent storytelling
- By connie on 07-09-11
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In the long, hot summer of 1976, a group of young people is camping in Wyvis Hall. Adam, Rufus, Shiva, Vivien and Zosie hardly ask why they are there or how they are to live; they scavenge, steal and sell the family heirlooms. Ten years later, the bodies of a woman and child are discovered in the Hall’s animal cemetery. Which woman? And whose child?
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Oh my!
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By: Barbara Vine
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Asta's Book
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It is 1905. Asta and her husband, Rasmus, have come to East London from Denmark with their two little boys. With Rasmus constantly away on business, Asta keeps loneliness and isolation at bay by writing a diary. These diaries, published over 70 years later, reveal themselves to be more than a mere journal. For they seem to hold the key to an unsolved murder and to the mystery of a missing child. It falls to Asta's granddaughter, Ann, to unearth the buried secrets of nearly a century before.
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Confusing, by it could just have been me
- By Ilana on 10-01-12
By: Barbara Vine
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The Minotaur
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- Narrated by: Rosalyn Landor
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
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As soon as Kerstin Kvist arrives at remote, ivy-covered Lydstep Old Hall in Essex, she feels like a character in a gothic novel. A young nurse fresh out of school, Kerstin has been hired for a position with the Cosway family, residents of the Hall for generations. She is soon introduced to her "charge", John Cosway, a 39-year-old man whose strange behavior is vaguely explained by his mother and sisters as part of the madness that runs in the family.
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Top notch Barbara Vine
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Senta Pelham is a mirror image of Flora, the lovely marble bust Philip fanaticized about for so long. But life, like art, is not always what its mere surface suggests. And Senta’s strange world of make-believe, where truth and falsehood are eerily interchangeable, soon draws Philip into a shadowy cloister of vague and uncertain terror.
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Well-written and creepy tale
- By Kitty Kat on 11-13-20
By: Ruth Rendell
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A Demon in My View
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In a gloomy cellar, the figure of a beautiful, pale woman makes no move when the man advances on her from the shadows, puts his hands around her neck and strangles her. Arthur Johnson is a mild-mannered, shy man who has never known how to talk to women. His resulting loneliness has twisted his yearning for love and respect into a carefully constructed predilection for violence and control.
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Totally a Ruth Rendell read
- By Dottie B. on 08-08-12
By: Ruth Rendell
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The Blood Doctor
- By: Barbara Vine
- Narrated by: Robert Powell
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The First Lord Nanther, expert in blood diseases, particularly the royal disease of Heamophilia, and favoured physician to Queen Victoria, clearly hoped to be the subject of an admiring posthumous biography. But when his great-grandson, Martin Nanther begins to research his life for a biography, the Martin comes to suspect that his great-grandfather’s old records conceal more than they reveal.
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clever, excellent storytelling
- By connie on 07-09-11
By: Barbara Vine
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Grasshopper
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Young Clodagh Brown loves to climb, especially the giant electrical pylons that form a neat row outside her parents’ home. When this obsession breeds tragedy, her shamed family sends her to London for college. As a respite from insufferable classes, she begins climbing atop the local houses with her unique band of friends. But it is a practice that lands the group in a kidnapping scandal - and leads to a terrifying climax on the rooftops. Grasshopper is a meticulously crafted novel - a sharp and textured thriller....
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Creepy - literally
- By Lynn on 04-13-24
By: Barbara Vine
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The Brimstone Wedding
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Overall
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Unlike the other residents of Middleton Hall, Stella is elegant, smart and in control. Only Jenny, her care assistant, knows that she harbours a painful secret, and only she can prevent Stella from carrying it to the grave. As the women talk, Jenny pieces together the answers to many questions that arise: Why has she kept possession of a house that her family don’t know about? What happened there that holds the key to a distant tragedy?
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Amazing reader elevates book to a higher level
- By Doggy Bird on 10-04-14
By: Barbara Vine
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The Birthday Present
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Ivor Tesham is a handsome, single, young Member of Parliament whose political star is on the rise. When he meets a woman in a chance encounter–a beautiful, married woman named Hebe–the two become lovers, obsessed with their illicit and adventurous trysts. But when Ivor plans for a surprise daring sexual adventure as a birthday present for Hebe, things take a disastrous turn it's late spring of 1990 and a love affair is flourishing.
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Social Crime
- By Lesley on 05-02-09
By: Barbara Vine
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King Solomon's Carpet
- By: Barbara Vine
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- Unabridged
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Eccentric Jarvis lives in a crumbling schoolhouse overlooking the tube line, compiling his obsessive history of the Underground. A group of misfits are also drawn towards his strange house: Alice, who has run away from her husband and baby; Tom, the busker who rescues her; truant Jasper who finds his terrifying thrills on the tube; and enigmatic Axel, whose deadly secret casts a shadow over all their lives.
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Fascinating
- By Pat on 04-04-11
By: Barbara Vine
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The Great Fortune
- By: Olivia Manning
- Narrated by: Harriet Walter
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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It was a strange, uncertain world that Harriet entered when she married Guy Pringle. Guy taught English at the university at Bucharest, a city of vivid contrasts, where professional beggars exist alongside the excesses of mid-European royalty and expatriate journalists with a taste for truffles and quails in aspic. Underlying this is a fitful awareness of the proximity of the Nazi threat to a Romania which is enjoying an uneasy peace.
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Great book, best audio performance I've heard
- By Clay on 09-03-17
By: Olivia Manning
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The Child's Child
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Vine
- Narrated by: Sarah Coomes
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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When their grandmother dies, Grace and Andrew Easton inherit her sprawling, book-filled London home, Dinmont House. Rather than sell it, the adult siblings move in together, splitting the numerous bedrooms and studies. The arrangement is unusual, but ideal for the affectionate pair - until the day Andrew brings home a new boyfriend. A devilishly handsome novelist, James Derain resembles Cary Grant, but his strident comments about Grace’s doctoral thesis soon puncture the house’s idyllic atmosphere. When he and Andrew witness their friend’s murder outside a London nightclub, James begins to unravel.
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Wha?
- By Yennta on 06-15-13
By: Barbara Vine
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The House of Stairs
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Annie Wauters
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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When Elizabeth Vetch spots Bell for the first time in 17 years, she chases her down in order to learn why her old friend committed a terrible murder all those years ago. Bell has been in prison ever since the mysterious events that took place at the House of Stairs, a London mansion full of over-privileged, overstuffed, and somewhat sinister boarders, landed her there. Now it’s up to Lizzie to put together the pieces of her friend’s - and her own - fateful past.
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Such an irritating reader
- By bonnie m hascup on 04-24-13
By: Ruth Rendell
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The Water's Lovely
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Siân Thomas
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The man who had died was Ismay's stepfather, Guy. Nine years on, she and her sister, Heather, still live in the same house in Clapham. But it has been divided into two self-contained flats. Their mother lives upstairs with her sister, Pamela. And the bathroom, where Guy drowned, has disappeared. Ismay works in public relations, and Heather in catering. They get on well. They always have. They never discuss the changes to the house, still less what happened that August day.
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Not my favorite RR
- By wobbly on 05-08-14
By: Ruth Rendell
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The Keys to the Street
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Simon Russell Beale
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Mary Jago had donated her own bone marrow to save the life of someone she didn’t know. And this generous act led directly to the bitter break-up of her affair with Alistair. For him, it was as though her beauty had been plundered. But the man whose life she had saved would change Mary’s life in a way she could never have imagined.
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Mystery with humor and insight
- By Ida Hagman on 10-02-12
By: Ruth Rendell
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A Sight for Sore Eyes
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Jenny Sterlin
- Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Having published 45 books, Ruth Rendell is an internationally popular mystery writer. She has won four Gold Dagger and three Edgar awards. She has been presented with the Commander of the British Empire honor, and named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. In A Sight For Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell’s exceptional literary talent shines from each word. Teddy Brex is a handsome young man. Raised by parents who never loved him, he has grown to put his trust in objects.
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Reader emits noises that are distracting
- By Teresa on 06-14-12
By: Ruth Rendell
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Gallowglass
- By: Barbara Vine
- Narrated by: Dermot Crowley
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Sandor is a wonderful storyteller and little Joe is ready to listen. The power of the educated over the simple is horribly clear in this disturbing and unusual relationship. As Sandor’s motivation both for rescuing little Joe and then for weaving his spell of words becomes clear, the darkness surrounding him is too much for them both, and for the beautiful ex-model sequestered in her Suffolk mansion by an obsessive husband.
By: Barbara Vine
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No Night Is Too Long
- By: Barbara Vine
- Narrated by: Alex Jennings, Shelley Thomson, Samuel West
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Tim Cornish thought he'd gotten away with murder. For months after he'd killed his lover off the Alaskan coast, there hadn't been a word. But then the letters started to arrive. It seems that someone knows what Tim has done.... This compelling thriller delivers such a dark picture of romantic love that murder seems its natural mate. Frightening, suspenseful, and deeply unsettling, No Night Is Too Long is a modern crime masterpiece and will be enjoyed by readers of P. D. James and Ian Rankin.
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Well done
- By SB on 03-30-22
By: Barbara Vine
What listeners say about A Dark-Adapted Eye
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- N. K. Marks
- 05-17-20
Amazing Masterpiece Theatre miniseries, book is even better
Classic British mystery with characters to love and love to hate! The mystery unfolds to the reader through the eyes of the intrepid narrator...many twists and turns and the sense of place and time are outstanding!
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- Bonny
- 02-08-15
Well-written, absorbing psychological mystery
I bought this on the basis of audible reviews and was not disappointed. This is not an edge-of-your-seat mystery. It unfolds slowly and moves deeper and deeper into the characters, their histories and their motivations. It is beautifully narrated by Harriet Walter. If you're looking for something to lose yourself in and spend some time with, I recommend it.
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10 people found this helpful
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- Scheri
- 08-04-16
Keep Going
I found the beginning of this book boring but I stayed the course and glad I did.
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- eclectic reader
- 01-10-24
Family history containing murder
Family history containing murder. Only at the end does it become clear who was murderer. The uncertainty of the why: craziness or child taking and that question is left to the reader’s imagination. It is a story of the English countryside in the World War Two era.
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- Jennifer
- 08-20-11
Even better in audio form
This has long been one of my favorite books. I've read it many times and recommended it to many other people. But it has been a few years since I last read it, and the narration, which I listened to while driving to and from NYC is wonderfully excellent.
This book requires a lot of thought, and is a perfect match for the audio format. Having the extra time to really appreciate the subtleties, mysteries, and deep character development is the strength of this format. You'd miss much of this when only reading. The narrator is top knotch, nailing the nuances and exploring the maturation of the main character over time. I can't recommend this one enough.
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22 people found this helpful
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- Tana
- 03-25-15
Winding story.
Love the title. Convoluted. Enticing. Puzzle of characters and events wrought to a final twist.
Wonderful, rich voice of narrator.
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- Yankee Bookworm
- 02-02-17
Top drawer psychological novel
One of my favorite novels of all time. The writing is superb and the chosen narrator is as well. Chills and shivers are no better delivered by situations such as those that can be imagined as real, that are in a sense no more than everyday tragedies. The author also imparts a wonderful sense of time and place. Just read it!
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3 people found this helpful
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- Calliope
- 05-21-15
fascinating family intrigue
This is more an interesting and complicated look at the psychological workings of a family divided than it is a mystery.......though there are and remain several mysterious parts to the whole. It takes a while to get into the story, but as it continually unrolls it is more and more intriguing, drawing the listener deeper and deeper into the family machinations. The continuing family revelations experienced by the protagonist make sense of the title....A "Dark Adapted Eye" can see things that were formerly hidden in the darkness.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Colleen Kellogg
- 06-17-20
Terrific
My first Barbara Vine novel. She also writes under the name Ruth Rendell. I loved it. Beautifully written, some of the best narration In the 100 audible books I have listened to. I'm thrilled to have a new author whose works I can explore.
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1 person found this helpful
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- pamakarma
- 08-14-18
Best of Ruth R endell's (Vines) novels
Depiction of a fascinating, tragic. tale that could probably only have happened at that time and place. In 1940s England-- with a description of place and character as perfect in each detail as. ever done.
The author here is at the height of her power-- which is saying a lot!
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1 person found this helpful