-
A Simple Soul
- A French Short Story
- Narrated by: Paul Edwards
- Length: 1 hr and 19 mins
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
![Prime logo](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/01/Audible/Homestead/Prime_Logo_RGB.png)
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $6.86
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Emma Bovary is not content to be the mere dutiful wife of a French country doctor. She yearns for excitement and a sense of romance that pulls at her so strongly she is powerless to resist, even though pursuing her dreams will exact a terrible price. Learn why Gustave Flaubert's compelling heroine has enchanted and puzzled readers for centuries.
-
-
Now Here's a Story
- By P. Giorgio on 09-06-03
By: Gustave Flaubert
-
The Exiles
- A Novel
- By: Christina Baker Kline
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seduced by her employer’s son, Evangeline, a naïve young governess in early 19th-century London, is discharged when her pregnancy is discovered and sent to the notorious Newgate Prison. After months in the fetid, overcrowded jail, she learns she is sentenced to "the land beyond the seas", Van Diemen’s Land, a penal colony in Australia. Though uncertain of what awaits, Evangeline knows one thing: The child she carries will be born on the months-long voyage to this distant land.
-
-
Tragic
- By karis on 11-10-20
-
This Is Happiness
- By: Niall Williams
- Narrated by: Dermot Crowley
- Length: 14 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe is idling in the unexpected sunshine when Christy makes his first entrance into Faha, bringing secrets he needs to atone for. Though he can't explain it, Noel knows right then: something has changed. As the people of Faha anticipate the endlessly procrastinated advent of the electricity, and Noel navigates his own coming-of-age and his fallings in and out of love, Christy's past gradually comes to light, casting a new glow on a small world.
-
-
Poetry disguised as Prose
- By bobgreenberger on 09-26-20
By: Niall Williams
-
Alexander's Bridge
- By: Willa Cather
- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 2 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Willa Cather renders the tough inner terrain of a man in mid-life crisis. Bartley Alexander is a master bridge engineer. At 43 he is at the height of his power, comfortable with success and all it brings. Yet he yearns for the lost vibrancy of his youth. He leads a double life, veering between his beautiful, accomplished wife and his mistress, an actress he knew as a student in Paris. The conflict creates a crack in the structure of his life that ultimately undermines him.
-
-
Written with empathy and poetry
- By SHIRLEY R BARKER on 06-30-23
By: Willa Cather
-
Jacob's Room
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jacob's Room was the first of Virginia Woolf's novels to be published by the Hogarth Press, founded with her husband, Leonard Woolf, in their home at Hogarth House in Richmond in 1917. It is an episodic tale that attempts to evoke the inner life of Jacob Flanders and his social milieu during the first decade-and-a-half of the 20th century.
-
-
A good listen
- By Cecilie Malling on 03-21-05
By: Virginia Woolf
-
Bedtime Stories for Adults
- Relaxing Sleep Stories to Reduce Anxiety and Stress. A Mindfulness Guide to Help Adults Falling Asleep Fast & Deeply with Self-Hypnosis and Guided Self-Healing Meditation
- By: Winifred Campbell
- Narrated by: Jane Davies
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bedtime stories are part of the intimate and personal baggage of many adults who were once children. Even today, the value of the fictional stories is unchanged and fundamental for facing the small challenges of everyday life with serenity and courage. Through their heroes, a person learns to manage anxiety and not to fear difficulties. The stories remain etched in the mind of the adults and accompany them forever throughout their lives.
-
Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Emma Bovary is not content to be the mere dutiful wife of a French country doctor. She yearns for excitement and a sense of romance that pulls at her so strongly she is powerless to resist, even though pursuing her dreams will exact a terrible price. Learn why Gustave Flaubert's compelling heroine has enchanted and puzzled readers for centuries.
-
-
Now Here's a Story
- By P. Giorgio on 09-06-03
By: Gustave Flaubert
-
The Exiles
- A Novel
- By: Christina Baker Kline
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seduced by her employer’s son, Evangeline, a naïve young governess in early 19th-century London, is discharged when her pregnancy is discovered and sent to the notorious Newgate Prison. After months in the fetid, overcrowded jail, she learns she is sentenced to "the land beyond the seas", Van Diemen’s Land, a penal colony in Australia. Though uncertain of what awaits, Evangeline knows one thing: The child she carries will be born on the months-long voyage to this distant land.
-
-
Tragic
- By karis on 11-10-20
-
This Is Happiness
- By: Niall Williams
- Narrated by: Dermot Crowley
- Length: 14 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe is idling in the unexpected sunshine when Christy makes his first entrance into Faha, bringing secrets he needs to atone for. Though he can't explain it, Noel knows right then: something has changed. As the people of Faha anticipate the endlessly procrastinated advent of the electricity, and Noel navigates his own coming-of-age and his fallings in and out of love, Christy's past gradually comes to light, casting a new glow on a small world.
-
-
Poetry disguised as Prose
- By bobgreenberger on 09-26-20
By: Niall Williams
-
Alexander's Bridge
- By: Willa Cather
- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 2 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Willa Cather renders the tough inner terrain of a man in mid-life crisis. Bartley Alexander is a master bridge engineer. At 43 he is at the height of his power, comfortable with success and all it brings. Yet he yearns for the lost vibrancy of his youth. He leads a double life, veering between his beautiful, accomplished wife and his mistress, an actress he knew as a student in Paris. The conflict creates a crack in the structure of his life that ultimately undermines him.
-
-
Written with empathy and poetry
- By SHIRLEY R BARKER on 06-30-23
By: Willa Cather
-
Jacob's Room
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jacob's Room was the first of Virginia Woolf's novels to be published by the Hogarth Press, founded with her husband, Leonard Woolf, in their home at Hogarth House in Richmond in 1917. It is an episodic tale that attempts to evoke the inner life of Jacob Flanders and his social milieu during the first decade-and-a-half of the 20th century.
-
-
A good listen
- By Cecilie Malling on 03-21-05
By: Virginia Woolf
-
Bedtime Stories for Adults
- Relaxing Sleep Stories to Reduce Anxiety and Stress. A Mindfulness Guide to Help Adults Falling Asleep Fast & Deeply with Self-Hypnosis and Guided Self-Healing Meditation
- By: Winifred Campbell
- Narrated by: Jane Davies
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bedtime stories are part of the intimate and personal baggage of many adults who were once children. Even today, the value of the fictional stories is unchanged and fundamental for facing the small challenges of everyday life with serenity and courage. Through their heroes, a person learns to manage anxiety and not to fear difficulties. The stories remain etched in the mind of the adults and accompany them forever throughout their lives.
-
Orlando
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Clare Higgins
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fantasy, love and an exuberant celebration of English life and literature, Orlando is a uniquely entertaining story. Originally conceived by Virginia Woolf as a playful tribute to the family of her friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West, Orlando's central character, a fictional embodiment of Sackville-West, changes sex from a man to a woman and lives throughout the centuries, whilst meeting historical figures of English literature.
-
-
Magical
- By Mayca on 05-31-05
By: Virginia Woolf
-
The Moon Is Down
- By: John Steinbeck
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 3 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat." This compelling, dignified and moving novel was inspired by and based upon the Nazi invasion of neutral Norway. Set in an imaginary European mining town, it shows what happens when a ruthless totalitarian power is up against an occupied democracy with an overwhelming desire to be free.
-
-
A beautiful piece of propaganda!
- By Kelly on 05-08-17
By: John Steinbeck
-
Les Misérables
- By: Victor Hugo
- Narrated by: Bill Homewood
- Length: 67 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Les Misérables is set in Paris after the French Revolution. In the sewers and backstreets, we encounter "the wolf-like tread of crime", and assassination for a few sous is all in a day's work. We weep with the unlucky and heart-broken Fantine, and we exult with the heroic revolutionaries of the barricades; but above all we thrill to the steadfast courage and nobility of soul of ex-convict Jean Valjean, always in danger from the relentless pursuit of the diabolical Inspector Javert.
-
-
Use earphones that are light on bass
- By Tad Davis on 11-08-15
By: Victor Hugo
-
The Widow's War
- A Novel
- By: Sally Cabot Gunning
- Narrated by: Kate Udall
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Lyddie Berry’s husband is lost in a storm at sea, she finds that her status as a widow is vastly changed from that of respectable married woman. Now she is the “dependent” of her nearest male relative - her son-in-law. Refusing to bow to societal pressure that demands she cede everything that she and her husband worked for, Lyddie becomes an outcast from family, friends, and neighbors - yet ultimately discovers a deeper sense of self and, unexpectedly, love.
-
-
A peak into life during 1760’s
- By Deborah Perkins on 02-21-21
-
Exile and the Kingdom
- By: Albert Camus
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From a variety of masterfully rendered perspectives, these six stories depict people at painful odds with the world around them. A wife can only surrender to a desert night by betraying her husband. An artist struggles to honor his own aspirations as well as society's expectations of him. A missionary brutally converted to the worship of a tribal fetish is left with but an echo of his identity. Whether set in North Africa, Paris, or Brazil, the stories in Exile and the Kingdom are probing portraits of spiritual exile, and man's perpetual search for an inner kingdom.
-
-
Short Stories
- By Sergen on 08-28-24
By: Albert Camus
-
Tsarina
- A Novel
- By: Ellen Alpsten
- Narrated by: Anna Krippa
- Length: 18 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
St. Petersburg, 1725. Peter the Great lies dying in his magnificent Winter Palace. The weakness and treachery of his only son has driven his father to an appalling act of cruelty and left the empire without an heir. Russia risks falling into chaos. Into the void steps the woman who has been by his side for decades: his second wife, Catherine Alexeyevna, as ambitious, ruthless, and passionate as Peter himself.
-
-
Russian History for the Win!
- By HistoryNerd on 04-01-21
By: Ellen Alpsten
-
Wakenhyrst
- By: Michelle Paver
- Narrated by: Juanita McMahon
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Edwardian Suffolk, a manor house stands alone in a lost corner of the Fens: a glinting wilderness of water whose whispering reeds guard ancient secrets. Maud is a lonely child growing up without a mother, ruled by her repressive father. When he finds a painted medieval devil in a graveyard, unhallowed forces are awakened. Maud's battle has begun. She must survive a world haunted by witchcraft, the age-old legends of her beloved fen - and the even more nightmarish demons of her father's past.
-
-
Strangely compelling
- By B. Coleman on 02-23-20
By: Michelle Paver
-
The Apothecary's Daughter
- By: Charlotte Betts
- Narrated by: Anne Dover
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Susannah Leyton has grown up behind the counter of her father's apothecary shop in bustling Fleet Street. A skilled student, her father has granted her the freedom to pursue her considerable talents. But Susannah is dealt a shocking blow when her widowed father marries again, and her stepmother seems determined to remove her from the apothecary shop. A proposal of marriage from the charming Henry Savage seems to offer Susannah an escape. But as the plague sweeps through London, tragedy strikes, and dark secrets from her husband's past begin to unfold.
-
-
Keeping my attention
- By Rachel on 06-04-15
By: Charlotte Betts
-
Flush
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Prunella Scales
- Length: 3 hrs and 11 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the most famous of all literary dogs, Flush was the golden cocker spaniel belonging to Elizabeth Barrett. In this charming and heartfelt biography, Viginia Woolf tells his story: his early days as Miss Mitford's puppy running across the fields in wild abandon and fathering another, then the years spent in his invalid mistress' bedroom in Wimpole Street.
-
-
More of Woman's Best Friend
- By Aaron Elliott on 04-23-07
By: Virginia Woolf
-
Of Love and Other Demons
- By: Gabriel García Márquez
- Narrated by: Christopher Salazar
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On her 12th birthday, Sierva Maria - the only child of a decaying noble family in an 18th-century South American seaport - is bitten by a rabid dog. Believed to be possessed, she is brought to a convent for observation. And into her cell stumbles Father Cayetano Delaura, who has already dreamed about a girl with hair trailing after her like a bridal train. As he tends to her with holy water and sacramental oils, Delaura feels something shocking begin to occur.
-
-
Love/Religion/Family: Making people nuts for years
- By Darwin8u on 09-04-23
-
The Abolitionist's Daughter
- By: Diane C. McPhail
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a Mississippi morning in 1859, Emily Matthews begs her father to save a slave, Nathan, about to be auctioned away from his family. Judge Matthews is an abolitionist who runs an illegal school for his slaves, hoping to eventually set them free. One, a woman named Ginny, has become Emily's companion and often her conscience - and understands all too well the hazards an educated slave must face. Yet even Ginny could not predict the tangled, tragic string of events set in motion as Nathan's family arrives at the Matthews farm.
-
-
Excellent, compelling, thought provoking
- By Amazon Customer on 03-13-20
By: Diane C. McPhail
-
The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted
- By: Robert Hillman
- Narrated by: Daniel Lapaine
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is 1968 in rural Australia and lonely Tom Hope can't make heads or tails of Hannah Babel. Newly arrived from Hungary, Hannah is unlike anyone he's ever met - she's passionate, artistic, and fiercely determined to open sleepy Hometown's first bookshop. Despite the fact that Tom has only read only one book in his life, the two soon discover an astonishing spark. Recently abandoned by an unfaithful wife - and still missing her sweet son, Peter - Tom dares to believe that he might make Hannah happy.
-
-
Listener beware
- By Little old lady from Iowa on 06-11-23
By: Robert Hillman
Publisher's summary
Gustave Flaubert is one of the major figures of French literature. He was known for his scrupulous devotion to his style, sometimes working for a whole week to achieve a single page; he was made famous by his first novel, Madame Bovary. A Simple Soul, sometimes translated as A Simple Heart, is a short story containing a lifetime of human emotions. After her one and only love purportedly marries a well-to-do woman to avoid conscription, the simple servant Félicité picks up work in a widow's house. There, she lives a lifetime of servitude, rarely leaving the home and devoting herself to others; but despite her life being seemingly pointless, her selflessness lead her to almost angelic heights. It has been said that no other author has imparted so much beauty and integrity to so modest an existence. This short story is utterly poignant and will change your definition of what it means to be simple.
Related to this topic
-
Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Elaine Wise
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Though he embodies neither wealth nor a lavish persona, Charles Bovary - a somewhat established doctor - takes a chance in marrying the young, vibrant, and ambitious farm girl Emma Rouault. At first, Emma is delighted to be married and away from her father's farm, but her thirst for the rich and ornate lifestyle that she witnesses other people living soon drives her away from her husband and into the arms of various suitors.
-
-
Madame Bovary doesn't disappoint
- By Arlene Olsen on 12-11-16
By: Gustave Flaubert
-
Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories
- By: Isaac Bashevis Singer
- Narrated by: Theodore Bikel
- Length: 2 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
These 4 stories are infused with the wit and imagination, the humor and wisdom, that characterizes all of Isaac Bashevis Singer's work. Theodore Bikel reads these wise and funny tales in classic Yiddish storyteller cadence, injecting special warmth and resonance. The tales include "Gimpel the Fool," "Esther Kreindel the Second," "The Spinoza of Market Street," and "The Black Wedding."
-
-
Incredible narration
- By Frances on 01-10-19
-
The Wapshot Chronicle
- By: John Cheever
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Based in part on Cheever's adolescence in New England, the novel follows the destinies of the impecunious and wildly eccentric Wapshots of St. Botolphs, a quintessential Massachusetts fishing village. Here are the stories of Captain Leander Wapshot, venerable sea dog and would-be suicide; of his licentious older son, Moses; and of Moses' adoring and errant younger brother, Coverly.
-
-
Beautiful 1950s Great Expectations-like Novel
- By Darwin8u on 05-31-13
By: John Cheever
-
Shadows on the Rock
- By: Willa Cather
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Lee
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1697, Quebec is an island of French civilization perched on a bare gray rock amid a wilderness of trackless forests. For many of its settlers, Quebec is a place of exile, so remote that an entire winter passes without a word from home. But to 12-year-old Cécile Auclair, the rock is home, where even the formidable Governor Frontenac entertains children in his palace and beavers lie beside the lambs in a Christmas créche.
-
-
wonderful
- By carol perez on 05-18-21
By: Willa Cather
-
Death Comes to the Village
- Kurland St. Mary Mystery Series, Book 1
- By: Catherine Lloyd
- Narrated by: Susannah Tyrrell
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Major Robert Kurland has returned to the quiet vistas of Kurland St. Mary to recuperate from the horrors of Waterloo. However injured his body may be, his mind is as active as ever. Too active, perhaps. When he glimpses a shadowy figure from his bedroom window struggling with a heavy load, the tranquil façade of the village begins to loom sinister....
-
-
Starts slowly, gets better
- By TabithaD on 02-16-24
By: Catherine Lloyd
-
Girl in Hyacinth Blue
- By: Susan Vreeland
- Narrated by: Loren Lester, Sheryl Bernstein
- Length: 5 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A professor shows a colleague a painting that he has kept secret for decades. The professor swears it is a Vermeer - but why has he hidden this important work for so long? The reasons unfold in a series of stories that trace ownership of the painting back to World War II and Amsterdam, and still further back to the moment of the work's inspiration.
-
-
wonderful
- By Sybil on 04-07-03
By: Susan Vreeland
-
Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Elaine Wise
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Though he embodies neither wealth nor a lavish persona, Charles Bovary - a somewhat established doctor - takes a chance in marrying the young, vibrant, and ambitious farm girl Emma Rouault. At first, Emma is delighted to be married and away from her father's farm, but her thirst for the rich and ornate lifestyle that she witnesses other people living soon drives her away from her husband and into the arms of various suitors.
-
-
Madame Bovary doesn't disappoint
- By Arlene Olsen on 12-11-16
By: Gustave Flaubert
-
Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories
- By: Isaac Bashevis Singer
- Narrated by: Theodore Bikel
- Length: 2 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
These 4 stories are infused with the wit and imagination, the humor and wisdom, that characterizes all of Isaac Bashevis Singer's work. Theodore Bikel reads these wise and funny tales in classic Yiddish storyteller cadence, injecting special warmth and resonance. The tales include "Gimpel the Fool," "Esther Kreindel the Second," "The Spinoza of Market Street," and "The Black Wedding."
-
-
Incredible narration
- By Frances on 01-10-19
-
The Wapshot Chronicle
- By: John Cheever
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Based in part on Cheever's adolescence in New England, the novel follows the destinies of the impecunious and wildly eccentric Wapshots of St. Botolphs, a quintessential Massachusetts fishing village. Here are the stories of Captain Leander Wapshot, venerable sea dog and would-be suicide; of his licentious older son, Moses; and of Moses' adoring and errant younger brother, Coverly.
-
-
Beautiful 1950s Great Expectations-like Novel
- By Darwin8u on 05-31-13
By: John Cheever
-
Shadows on the Rock
- By: Willa Cather
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Lee
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1697, Quebec is an island of French civilization perched on a bare gray rock amid a wilderness of trackless forests. For many of its settlers, Quebec is a place of exile, so remote that an entire winter passes without a word from home. But to 12-year-old Cécile Auclair, the rock is home, where even the formidable Governor Frontenac entertains children in his palace and beavers lie beside the lambs in a Christmas créche.
-
-
wonderful
- By carol perez on 05-18-21
By: Willa Cather
-
Death Comes to the Village
- Kurland St. Mary Mystery Series, Book 1
- By: Catherine Lloyd
- Narrated by: Susannah Tyrrell
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Major Robert Kurland has returned to the quiet vistas of Kurland St. Mary to recuperate from the horrors of Waterloo. However injured his body may be, his mind is as active as ever. Too active, perhaps. When he glimpses a shadowy figure from his bedroom window struggling with a heavy load, the tranquil façade of the village begins to loom sinister....
-
-
Starts slowly, gets better
- By TabithaD on 02-16-24
By: Catherine Lloyd
-
Girl in Hyacinth Blue
- By: Susan Vreeland
- Narrated by: Loren Lester, Sheryl Bernstein
- Length: 5 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A professor shows a colleague a painting that he has kept secret for decades. The professor swears it is a Vermeer - but why has he hidden this important work for so long? The reasons unfold in a series of stories that trace ownership of the painting back to World War II and Amsterdam, and still further back to the moment of the work's inspiration.
-
-
wonderful
- By Sybil on 04-07-03
By: Susan Vreeland
-
Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert, Lydia Davis - translator
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Emma Bovary is the original desperate housewife. Beautiful but bored, she is married to the provincial doctor Charles Bovary yet harbors dreams of an elegant and passionate life. Escaping into sentimental novels, she finds her fantasies dashed by the tedium of her days. Motherhood proves to be a burden; religion is only a brief distraction. In an effort to make her life everything she believes it should be, she spends lavishly on clothes and on her home and embarks on two disappointing affairs.
-
-
Ironic, humorous, and restrained
- By Esther on 05-13-13
By: Gustave Flaubert, and others
-
Fifty-Two Stories
- 1883-1898
- By: Anton Chekhov, Richard Pevear - translator, Larissa Volokhonsky - translator
- Narrated by: Jim Frangione
- Length: 20 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the celebrated, award-winning translators of Anna Karenina and War and Peace: a lavish, masterfully rendered volume of stories by one of the most influential short fiction writers of all time.
-
-
Better alternatives for Chekhov
- By Carol V. Macvey on 03-04-21
By: Anton Chekhov, and others
-
Les Misérables
- By: Victor Hugo
- Narrated by: Bill Homewood
- Length: 67 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Les Misérables is set in Paris after the French Revolution. In the sewers and backstreets, we encounter "the wolf-like tread of crime", and assassination for a few sous is all in a day's work. We weep with the unlucky and heart-broken Fantine, and we exult with the heroic revolutionaries of the barricades; but above all we thrill to the steadfast courage and nobility of soul of ex-convict Jean Valjean, always in danger from the relentless pursuit of the diabolical Inspector Javert.
-
-
Use earphones that are light on bass
- By Tad Davis on 11-08-15
By: Victor Hugo
-
The King in Yellow
- By: Robert W. Chambers
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki, Gabrielle de Cuir
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There is a book that is shrouded in mystery. Some even say it's a myth. Within its pages is a play - one that brings madness and despair to all who read it. It is the play of the King in Yellow, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days. The King in Yellow is a collection of stories interwoven loosely by the elements of the play, including the central figure himself.
-
-
Great Introduction to Robert Chambers
- By David S. Mathew on 11-23-16
-
Jacob's Room
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jacob's Room was the first of Virginia Woolf's novels to be published by the Hogarth Press, founded with her husband, Leonard Woolf, in their home at Hogarth House in Richmond in 1917. It is an episodic tale that attempts to evoke the inner life of Jacob Flanders and his social milieu during the first decade-and-a-half of the 20th century.
-
-
A good listen
- By Cecilie Malling on 03-21-05
By: Virginia Woolf
-
The Magician of Lublin
- By: Isaac Bashevis Singer
- Narrated by: Larry Keith
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Magician can dazzle the crowds with his sleight of hand, climb to any height, open any lock. Fearlessly, he does death-defying tricks in theaters all over Poland. At home, his sweet Jewish wife waits for him to return from the city. In the city, his adoring mistresses wait for him to return from home. He holds the key to all hearts, but his own is beset with confusion.
-
-
Complex Masterpiece
- By Evan on 09-11-08
-
The First Man
- By: Albert Camus
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The First Man, Albert Camus tells the story of Jacques Cormery, a boy who lived a life much like his own. Camus summons up the sights, sounds, and textures of a childhood circumscribed by poverty and a father's death yet redeemed by the austere beauty of Algeria and the boy's attachment to his nearly deaf-mute mother. The result is a moving journey through the lost landscape of youth that also discloses the wellsprings of Camus's aesthetic powers and moral vision.
-
-
Great Narration by Jefferson Mays
- By Sean Patrick Stevens on 07-31-21
By: Albert Camus
-
Lark Rise
- By: Flora Thompson
- Narrated by: Karen Cass
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lark Rise is Flora Thompson's childhood memories of a north Oxfordshire village, the people who lived and worked in it, and a way of life that has totally disappeared. The story is built around Laura and her brother Edmund, through whose eyes are seen 'old Sally', whose grandfather built the house she lived in before the enclosure of the heathland, children's games, the interaction of village and gentry, and the way in which the seasons governed life.
-
-
A glimpse...
- By Roses Revealing Reviews on 05-31-20
By: Flora Thompson
-
Summer
- By: Edith Wharton
- Narrated by: Grace Conlin
- Length: 5 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wharton's most erotic and lyrical novel, Summer explores a daring theme for 1917, a woman's awakening to her sexuality. Eighteen-year-old Charity Royall lives in the small town of North Dormer, ignorant of desire until the arrival of architect Lucius Harney. Like the succulent summer landscape in the Berkshires around them, Charity's romance is lush and picturesque, but its consequences are harsh and real.
-
-
Excellent first audible purchase!
- By lilyglint on 08-23-04
By: Edith Wharton
-
Wessex Tales
- By: Thomas Hardy
- Narrated by: Neville Jason
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wessex Tales, a collection of short stories including "The Three Strangers", "The Withered Arm", and "The Distracted Preacher", deals with a number of timeless themes seen so often in Hardy’s work: marriage, class, revenge, and disappointed love. Many of the tales have a supernatural tinge, and all are set around Hardy’s much loved homeland.
-
-
A Sampler
- By Tad Davis on 06-08-14
By: Thomas Hardy
-
Tess of the D'urbervilles
- By: Thomas Hardy
- Narrated by: Jennifer Dixon
- Length: 17 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tess of the d'Urbervilles is the 19th century novel lately thought to be one of the inspirations of E .L.James' Fifty Shades of Grey. It depicts the life of an impressionable, naive, somewhat educated young woman who yearns to be free to live her own life, but finds herself constricted by the bonds of the sexual, religious and socially hypocritical customs that have surrounded her from birth.
-
-
Jenny Dixon
- By Amazon Customer on 08-09-15
By: Thomas Hardy
-
Orlando
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Veronika Hyks
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Virginia Woolf's semi-biographical novel, inspired by her life changing love affair with Vita Sackville-West, takes us on an exhilarating, fantastical roller coaster, tracing 400 years of English history, in the company of her shape-shifting, gender-bending, time-travelling hero Orlando, whose inner conflicts and triumphs challenge our preconceptions of the nature of love, the battle of the sexes, posing socal and metaphysical questions including what we now call climate change.
-
-
A Strange Inexplicable Tale, Beautifully Narrated.
- By Ilana on 07-24-15
By: Virginia Woolf