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Alternate Side
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
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Publisher's summary
The tensions in a tight-knit neighborhood - and a seemingly happy marriage - are exposed by an unexpected act of violence in this provocative new novel from the number-one New York Times best-selling author of Miller’s Valley and Still Life with Bread Crumbs.
Some days Nora Nolan thinks that she and her husband, Charlie, lead a charmed life - except when there’s a crisis at work, a leak in the roof at home, or a problem with their twins at college. And why not? New York City was once Nora’s dream destination, and her clannish dead-end block has become a safe harbor, a tranquil village amid the urban craziness. Then one morning she returns from her run to discover that a terrible incident has shaken the neighborhood, and the fault lines begin to open: on the block, at her job, especially in her marriage. With humor, understanding, an acute eye, and a warm heart, Anna Quindlen explores what it means to be a mother, a wife, and a woman at a moment of reckoning.
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Clinton Kelly is probably best known for teaching women how to make their butts look smaller. But in I Hate Everyone, Except You, he reveals some heretofore unknown secrets about himself, like that he's a finicky connoisseur of 1980s pornography, a disillusioned critic of New Jersey's premier water parks, and perhaps the world's least enthused high school commencement speaker.
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Filthy language overshadowed stories
- By Doris on 04-29-17
By: Clinton Kelly
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Get Lucky
- By: Katherine Center
- Narrated by: Morgan Hallett
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Filled with wit and heart, Get Lucky by Katherine Center explores the deep bonds of sisterhood. Sarah Harper’s whole world revolved around her job at a New York advertising agency before an email snafu got her fired. Now she’s seeking refuge at her sister Mackie’s home in Houston. But Mackie, who’s unable to get pregnant, is also down-and-out these days. So Sarah decides to do something good and becomes a surrogate mother.
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Finding what matters most in life
- By bizymom7 on 10-12-24
By: Katherine Center
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Disgruntled
- By: Asali Solomon
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Kenya Curtis is only eight years old, but she knows that she's different, even if she can't put her finger on how or why. It's not because she's black - most of the other students in the fourth-grade class at her West Philadelphia elementary school are, too. Maybe it's because she calls her father - a housepainter-slash-philosopher - "Baba" or because her parents' friends gather to pour out libations "from the Creator, for the Martyrs" and discuss "the community".
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Loved It!!!
- By ayodele higgs on 05-20-15
By: Asali Solomon
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Saints for All Occasions
- A Novel
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Susan Denaker
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Nora and Theresa Flynn are 21 and 17 when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand.
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The narration ruined it
- By Janis Reynolds on 06-12-17
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My Lovely Wife
- By: Samantha Downing
- Narrated by: David Pittu
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Our love story is simple. I met a gorgeous woman. We fell in love. We had kids. We moved to the suburbs. We told each other our biggest dreams and our darkest secrets. And then we got bored. We look like a normal couple. We're your neighbors, the parents of your kid's friend, the acquaintances with whom you keep meaning to get dinner. We all have our secrets to keeping a marriage alive. Ours just happens to be getting away with murder.
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Great narrator! Crazy story!
- By EasyBreezySunflower on 03-28-19
By: Samantha Downing
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The Admissions
- A Novel
- By: Meg Mitchell Moore
- Narrated by: Allyson Ryan
- Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins
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The Hawthorne family has it all. Great jobs, a beautiful house in one of the most affluent areas of Northern California, and three charming kids whose sunny futures are all but assured. And then comes their eldest daughter's senior year of high school....
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Anything for success
- By JillHen on 09-13-15
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Chanel Bonfire
- By: Wendy Lawless
- Narrated by: Wendy Lawless
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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By the time Wendy Lawless turned 17, she'd known for quite some time that she didn't have a normal mother. But that didn't stop her from wanting one.... Georgann Rea didn't bake cookies or go to PTA meetings; she wore a mink coat and always had a lit Dunhill plugged into her cigarette holder. She went through men like Kleenex, and didn't like dogs or children. Georgann had the ice queen beauty of a Hitchcock heroine and the cold heart to match.
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Not an Engaging Listen
- By Sobriquet on 03-13-13
By: Wendy Lawless
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Baltimore Blues
- Tess Monaghan, Book 1
- By: Laura Lippman
- Narrated by: Deborah Hazlett
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Unemployed at 29, Tess Monaghan is willing to take any freelance job to pay the rent—including a bit of unorthodox snooping for her rowing buddy, Darryl "Rock" Paxton. In a city where someone is murdered almost every day, attorney Michael Abramowitz's death should be just another statistic. But the slain lawyer's notoriety—and his noontime trysts with Rock's fiancée—make the case front page news...and point to Rock as the likely murderer. But trying to prove her friend's innocence could prove costly to Tess.
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I'm on #8 - This series is almost unique
- By connie on 02-19-12
By: Laura Lippman
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If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother
- By: Julia Sweeney
- Narrated by: Julia Sweeney
- Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Since her time on Saturday Night Live, where she created the infamous androgynous character "Pat", Julia Sweeney has gone on to establish herself as a witty, captivating performer of one-woman shows, like God Said Ha!, In the Family Way, and Letting Go of God. She gave a TED talk sharing how she explained the birds and the bees to her eight-year-old daughter, Mulan, which ignited an incredible response. Now, when it comes to talking about motherhood, people want to hear what Julia has to say.
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I Love Julia Sweeney
- By Lisa on 04-05-13
By: Julia Sweeney
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Stories I'd Tell in Bars
- By: Jen Lancaster
- Narrated by: Jen Lancaster, John Fletcher
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Unfiltered. Unapologetic. Older, but not wiser, Lancaster goes back to basics in this hilarious essay collection about everything from taking community policing classes to accidentally getting high with her waiter after a fancy dinner. These are the tales she'd tell if she met you in a bar... if she weren't too lazy to put on pants and go to a bar. Offering advice ranging from how to remain happily married to a man who refuses to blow his damn nose already to not creating An Incident at the cheese counter during an attempt at Whole30, she's you, only louder.
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self absorbed
- By D D H on 06-15-19
By: Jen Lancaster
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Mother, mother-in-law, grandmother - the Pulitzer-winning columnist and #1 bestselling author reflects on the roles we play throughout our lives, sharing personal stories and advice on the special joys and complexities of middle age. Before blogs even existed, Anna Quindlen became a go-to writer on the joys and challenges of family, motherhood, and modern life, in her nationally syndicated column. Now she’s taking the next step and going full Nana in this lively, beautiful, and moving book about being a grandmother, and much more.
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It's a winter evening in Boston and the temperature has drastically dropped as a blizzard approaches the city. On this fateful night, Bernard Doyle plans to meet his two adopted sons, Tip the older, and more serious and Teddy, the affectionate dreamer, at a Harvard auditorium to hear a speech given by Jesse Jackson. Doyle, an Irish Catholic and former Boston mayor, has done his best to keep his two sons interested in politics, from the day he and his now deceased wife became their parents, through their childhoods, and now in their lives as college students.
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Don't listen to the interview at the end.
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Research scientist Dr. Marina Singh is sent to Brazil to track down her former mentor, Dr. Annick Swenson, who seems to have disappeared in the Amazon while working on an extremely valuable new drug. The last person who was sent to find her died before he could complete his mission. Plagued by trepidation, Marina embarks on an odyssey into the insect-infested jungle in hopes of finding answers to the questions about her friend's death, her company's future, and her own past.
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St. Elizabeth's is a lovely old place in a small town in Kentucky that used to be the beautiful Hotel Louisa. In the 1960s, it is a home for unwed mothers run by nuns. Life at St. Elizabeth's is not unpleasant, but it is temporary. All the pregnant women who come there will go home within the year. Except for Rose, a beautiful, mysterious woman, who is neither unwed nor alone. She is simply pregnant and doesn't want her husband or her mother to know. She plans to give her baby up because she knows she cannot be the mother the baby needs.
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Incomplete
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As a panicked world goes into lockdown, Lucy Barton is uprooted from her life in Manhattan and bundled away to a small town in Maine by her ex-husband and on-again, off-again friend, William. For the next several months, it’s just Lucy, William, and their complex past together in a little house nestled against the moody, swirling sea. Rich with empathy and emotion, Lucy by the Sea vividly captures the fear and struggles that come with isolation, as well as the hope, peace, and possibilities that those long, quiet days can inspire.
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Narrator
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The Unseen World
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Ada Sibelius is raised by David, a single father and head of a computer science lab in Boston. Homeschooled, she accompanies her loving father - brilliant, eccentric, socially inept - to work every day. By 12 she is a painfully shy prodigy. At the same time that the lab begins to gain acclaim, David's mind begins to falter, and his mysterious past comes into question. When her father moves into a nursing home, Ada is taken in by one of David's colleagues. She embarks on a mission to uncover her father's secrets.
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Appreciated but Not Enjoyed
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What listeners say about Alternate Side
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Angelique G.
- 01-18-19
Best narrator!
What a voice talent! I was able to easily keep track of all of the colorful characters because of the distinctive voices they were given.
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- AlexWals
- 11-09-18
Besides not knowing what year 9-11 happened, and a very slow beginning, this was an poignant look at evolution of “normal” lives
Maybe I’m sensitive, and I’m definitely detail-oriented—that a proofreader or anyone didn’t fix the part where she refers to 9-11 then 2002 appalled me...but as for a review:
I’d purchased this a while before listening, didn’t remember the premise, and didn’t look it up. Without knowing at all what the book was leading to, and the narrator going on and on about completely mundane realities, I wanted to just delete it. There is way too much unnecessary detail in the first few chapters; after finishing the book, I still feel that way. My only other issue is that the daughter and son are so unrealistically stereotypical- “boys act like this, and girls act like that,” I wanted to show my own kids to make them laugh. I’ve spent time around my own and many other kids; NONE are this stereotypical, and using that style seems like a cheap shortcut on developing a character to me).
As the book finally began to get into the event that the rest of the book evolves from, the details, and the characters, were more focused and relevant. The author skillfully made the event as shocking as it should be, but presented it, realistically, as we’d see it in our own paper, to a city and society that has developed powerful shock absorbers. The event didn’t overtake the novel, and didn’t create the turns that followed; characters just seemed to unknowingly get it into their systems and allow it to force to light what had been going on all along. No shocking murder, no deep, dark secrets -just normal people who’s lives were provided a shake-up that, in many cases, led them to realize they needed change. Some of them, including the main character, might not have followed through with those changes, even if staying the same never proved fulfilling or “right,” if the event hadn’t forced them to think differently.
So-get through the first chapters-you don’t need 80% of that info to understand the characters. Forgive the lack of editing that I found somewhat offensive and ignorant (and if anyone hears it differently—that she isn’t referring to cancellation of a party in 2002 due to 9-11—message me and set me straight!). It’s a good listen-just a well-written, honest insight into a person’s life that might make you take a closer look at your own reality.
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- Ann McFall
- 05-31-18
Quindlen’s best yet?!
Anna Quindlen knows relationships and human behavior and weaves these observations into compelling plot lines throughout a stunning work reflecting life and relevant issues in modern day New York City. Highly recommend for those trudging through mid life or for people of any age looking for a very relatable, wickedly smart but easy to read work of fiction.
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- Denise
- 04-18-18
If you’ve ever lived in NYC...
I loved this, but maybe in part because the plot line mirrors my experience. It brought back my block on the Upper West Side, the births of my kids, the aging of my marriage etc. As always the author draws many vivid images, and captures real relationships. The narrator is great too!
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- Rosemary Wells
- 04-25-18
Really wise and well written and brilliantly narrated
This is a complex very contemporary story of New York City, a small street of upper middle class residents and their families as only Anna Quindlen can tell it. In other hands, less sure the story would fall apart. In other voices it might not be so compelling. But you have both here. Don’t miss it
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- Theodore Howard
- 03-06-22
Hilarious exciting and unfortunately true to the life
The storyline is a microcosm of any neighborhood or community. “The Karens” self serving self appointed “sheriffs” Who from “block associations”simply to promote their own agenda. I see it on my block, The creeps who liked to point fingers are Depicted in Annas book. The parking lot that she speaks about ironically is probably an illegal parking lot to begin with. The people who complain loudest are more often than not the biggest offenders. This book is on point. The setting could be any city any neighborhood. The neighbors discuss gossip, pediatricians, dermatologist, while the guys discuss their real estate, their infidelities, and their prostrate problems. One of the characters, Jack actually attacks a blue-collar worker. This book will keep you mesmerized. You’ll see neighborhood bullies like schoolyard bullies acting like that community caring people Ha. Insightful
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- s.miller
- 03-27-19
My first Quindlen
With all the titles by this author, I was looking forward to this book and more to follow, The author jumped around a lot and didn't really get a solid story going. Very wordy and too many metaphors and opinions of life. I was disappointed overall with what could have been a good story line. I grew VERY weary of the narrator- she didn't do male voices well.
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- Johnny Kibler
- 05-21-18
Boring and predictable
The moneyed meet the help. Upstairs Downstairs on a dead end street in Manhattan minus the humor, pathos and relationships. Boring to its essence.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Leslie Ridley
- 05-19-19
Alternate Side review
I struggled to finish this book.
It was not one of her best books !
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- Adele Marshall
- 08-05-22
Not my favorite
This is not my favorite book that she has written but it does have some redeeming qualities.
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