
A Lesser Light
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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A.W. Miller
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By:
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Peter Geye
About this listen
It's 1910, and Theodulf Sauer has finally achieved a position befitting his ego: master lighthouse keeper at a newly commissioned station towering above Lake Superior. When his new wife, Willa, arrives on the first spring ferry, it's clear her life has taken the opposite turn: after being summoned home from college to Duluth when her father dies, she and her scheming mother find themselves destitute, and Willa is rushed into this ill-suited arranged marriage.
As the lighthouse station establishes, the new relationship teeters between tense and hostile. Willa takes solace in her fascination with the cosmos, especially in viewing Halley's Comet. Theodulf stands sentry over the lake, clinging to long-ago and faraway memories of happiness that fill him with longing and shame. Into this impasse, a clairvoyant girl and her resolute uncle emerge from across the cove. They see through the Sauers' façade and convey promise, sympathy, and insight that counter Willa's despair. Armed with renewed self-determination, Willa forges a path to happiness. But before she can grasp it, tragedy comes, and her future plunges toward a dark unknown.
A Lesser Light is a story about industry and calamity, science versus superstition, patriarchy's corrosive power—and the consequences when these forces collide in the wilderness of rapid social change.
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Story
After suffering her first big heartbreak two years earlier, Penelope Lin has built a quiet life with no romantic entanglements. She spends her days cataloging a museum's vast collection of Qing Dynasty bound-foot shoes and in the comfortable company of close friends. One day, she happens to meet Hoang, who confesses to releasing mice from the cancer research lab where he works. Hoang's openness catches Penelope off guard; from then on, she finds her carefully constructed life slowly start to unravel.
By: Naomi Xu Elegant
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The Fire Concerto
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Landenwich
- Narrated by: Katrina Lenk
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Clara Bishop hasn’t touched a piano since a concert hall fire nearly took her life a decade ago, ending her career as a rising star in the world of classical music. Significantly scarred and unable to play, she has turned away from everything and everyone associated with music, especially her ruthless mentor Madame, whom Clara blames for her injuries. Her life is upended when Madame dies, leaving Clara an unexpected inheritance: an ornate nineteenth-century metronome with a cryptic message hidden inside.
By: Sarah Landenwich
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The Slip
- By: Lucas Schaefer
- Narrated by: Shaun Taylor-Corbett, Renata Friedman
- Length: 17 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Bobbing and weaving across the ever-shifting canvas of a changing country, The Slip is an audacious, daring look at sex and race in America that builds to an unforgettable collision in the center of the ring.
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Wholly original and laugh out loud funny
- By Amazon Customer on 06-27-25
By: Lucas Schaefer
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The Last Illusion of Paige White
- A Novel
- By: Vanessa McCausland
- Narrated by: Ella Le Fournour, Eva Seymour, Hannah Fredericksen, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Gorgeous, charismatic Paige White has always lived a picture-perfect life. Her meticulously curated social pages exude an old-fashioned, wholesome lifestyle set against a picturesque town in Australia. Images of breakfasts lakeside with her daughter, sunny afternoons in the family van, and romantic picnics with her husband are the envy of her thousands of followers. But when a dark, brooding image pops up on Paige’s page, where she appears waterlogged and disheveled–and shortly after she’s discovered drowned–alarm bells go off.
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Heart, Be at Peace
- A Novel
- By: Donal Ryan
- Narrated by: Anne Marie Ryan, Ciaran O'Brien, Donal Ryan, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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From one of the most acclaimed Irish writers today, a new novel about smalltown Ireland that explores a community on the mend and the power of love and trauma to both bring people together and divide them
By: Donal Ryan
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The Catch
- A Novel
- By: Yrsa Daley-Ward
- Narrated by: Yrsa Daley-Ward
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Twin sisters Clara and Dempsey have always struggled to relate, their familial bond severed after their mother vanished into the Thames. In adulthood, they are content to be all but estranged, until Clara sees a woman who looks exactly like their mother on the streets of London. The catch: this version of Serene, aged not a day, has enjoyed a childless life.
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Too obscure
- By marty reinhardt on 06-27-25
By: Yrsa Daley-Ward
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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
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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.
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This is a great book.
- By jaw1031 on 06-25-25
By: Barbara Demick
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The Man Made of Smoke
- A Novel
- By: Alex North
- Narrated by: Shane Zaza
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Dan Garvie’s life has been haunted by the crime he witnessed as a child—narrowly escaping an encounter with a notorious serial killer. He has dedicated his life since to becoming a criminal profiler, eager to seek justice for innocent victims. So when his father passes away under suspicious circumstances, Dan revisits his small island community, determined to uncover the truth about his death. Is it possible that the monster he remembers from his childhood nightmares has returned after all these years?
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TERRIFIC
- By Ann Gallegos on 05-22-25
By: Alex North
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What Kind of Paradise
- A Novel
- By: Janelle Brown
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim, Helen Laser
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Growing up in an isolated cabin in Montana in the mid-1990s, Jane knows only the world that she and her father live in: the woodstove that heats their home, the vegetable garden where they try to eke out a subsistence, the books of nineteenth-century philosophy that her father gives her to read in lieu of going to school. Her father is elusive about their pasts, giving Jane little beyond the facts that they once lived in the Bay Area and that her mother died in a car accident, the crash propelling him to move Jane off the grid to raise her in a Waldenesque utopia.
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What a great story!
- By Jeannine on 06-22-25
By: Janelle Brown
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Mother Emanuel
- Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church
- By: Kevin Sack
- Narrated by: William DeMeritt
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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A sweeping history of one of the nation’s most important African American churches and a profound story of courage and grace amid the fight for racial justice—from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Kevin Sack.
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Fascinating stories, extraordinary writing
- By kentbale on 06-16-25
By: Kevin Sack
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The Spinach King
- The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty
- By: John Seabrook
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The patriarch, C. F. Seabrook, was hailed as the "Henry Ford of Agriculture." His son Jack, a keen businessman, was poised to take over what Life called "the biggest vegetable factory on earth." But the carefully cultivated facade—glamorous outings by horse-drawn carriage, hidden wine cellars, and movie star girlfriends—hid dark secrets that led to the implosion of the family business. A compelling tale of class and privilege, betrayal and revenge three decades in the making, The Spinach King explores the author's complicated family legacy and the dark corners of the American Dream.
By: John Seabrook
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Harmattan Season
- A Novel
- By: Tochi Onyebuchi
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Veteran and private eye Boubacar doesn’t need much—least of all trouble—but trouble always seems to find him. Work has dried up, and he’d rather be left alone to deal with his bills as the Harmattan rolls in to coat the city in dust, but Bouba is a down on his luck deux fois, suspended between two cultures and two worlds.
By: Tochi Onyebuchi
Best read of the year.
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