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An Only Child and Her Sister
- A Memoir
- Narrated by: Donna Postel
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
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Publisher's summary
Casey and her little sister, Christine, started off with what looked like a good beginning. But looks can be deceiving. Their mother, Eve Whitney, a stunning Hollywood beauty, didn't much care for children. Their father, Eddie Maxwell, was a successful songwriter and gag man; he was a brilliant, handsome, hugely charismatic man, but he had a secret drug habit that sent him careening between warm and loving parent one day, to hair-trigger monster the next.
If Casey got only sporadic moments of love and caring, Chris got nothing. Neither Eddie nor Eve ever had a kind thought for their youngest child. And so the sisters were forced to find their own paths through this horrific excuse of a childhood, each making choices that pulled them farther and farther apart when the one thing they needed was each other.
Told without an ounce of self-pity or bitterness, this story is unique as well as universal. The scenes of pain and incredible neglect live side by side with amazing moments of humor, courage, and triumph.
Contains mature themes.
For more information on the author and her work, visit caseymaxwellclair.com.
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- By Lauren on 03-10-20
By: Maddie Dawson
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Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self
- By: Danielle Evans
- Narrated by: Daniel Deadwyler, Jeanette Illidge, Je Nie Fleming, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Striking in their emotional immediacy, the stories in Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self are based in a world where inequality is reality but where the insecurities of adolescence and young adulthood, and the tensions within family and the community, are sometimes the biggest complicating forces in one's sense of identity and the choices one makes.
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things we do to oursekves
- By Jamintel on 02-06-23
By: Danielle Evans
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Chasing Perfect
- Fool's Gold, Book 1
- By: Susan Mallery
- Narrated by: Tanya Eby
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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There is only one thing wrong with the charming community of Fool’s Gold, California: the men don’t stick around! This problem has to be fixed, fast, and Charity Jones may be just the city planner up to the challenge. Charity immediately falls in love with all the storybook town has to offer – except its sexy, famous, world-class cyclist Josh Golden. With her long list of romantic disasters, she’s not about to take a chance on another bad boy…but it may just be what they both need!
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Awful narration
- By Kimberly on 05-17-10
By: Susan Mallery
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Drinking and Tweeting
- And Other Brandi Blunders
- By: Brandi Glanville, Leslie Bruce
- Narrated by: Brandi Glanville
- Length: 5 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Fans have been waiting for Brandi’s scoop on one of the biggest divorces of the decade since her husband of eight years abandoned her and their two sons to marry country singer LeAnn Rimes. Not only does Brandi spill the beans about her side of the split, but the lovable housewife also shares the incredible wild ride that took her from a life in the ghetto to Hollywood’s most elite circles.
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Who edited this?
- By Jessica on 11-02-20
By: Brandi Glanville, and others
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Confessions from the Quilting Circle
- By: Maisey Yates
- Narrated by: Samantha Cook
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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When Lark Ashwood's beloved grandmother dies, she and her sisters are bequeathed an unfinished quilt. Finishing it could be the reason Lark's been looking for to stop running from the past. Hannah can't believe she's back in Bear Creek, the tiny town she sacrificed everything to escape from. But the driven musician's plan is to renovate her grandmother's house and leave as fast as humanly possible. Stay-at-home mom Avery has built her perfect life, but at a cost. This summer, the Ashwood women must lean on each other like never before if they are to stitch their family back together.
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Great read!
- By Amazon Customer on 05-17-21
By: Maisey Yates
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Summer at Willow Lake
- The Lakeshore Chronicles, Book 1
- By: Susan Wiggs
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
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Real estate expert Olivia Bellamy reluctantly trades a trendy Manhattan summer for her family's old resort camp in the Catskills, where her primary task will be renovating the bungalow colony for her grandparents, who want one last summer together filled with fun, friends and family. A posh resort in its heyday, the camp is now in disarray and Olivia is forced to hire contractor Connor Davis - a still-smoldering flame from her own summers at camp.
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Finding Love at Summer Camp
- By Pamela Dale Foster on 02-13-15
By: Susan Wiggs
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Shyima Hall was born in Egypt on September 29, 1989, the seventh child of desperately poor parents. When she was eight, her parents sold her into slavery. Shyima then moved two hours away to Egypt's capitol city of Cairo to live with a wealthy family and serve them eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. When she was ten, her captors moved to Orange County, California, and smuggled Shyima with them. Two years later, an anonymous call from a neighbor brought about the end of Shyima's servitude - but her journey to true freedom was far from over.
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Kristina, the second of four children, begins by telling how a little sip of vodka sipped secretly at a party her parents were giving started her on a pathway to addiction. In that instant, alcohol became her pathway to comfort. Over the next eight years, she sank further into addiction, moving on to cocaine and methamphetamines. In telling her story, she gives a brutally honest description of her addiction and crimes.
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well-written, accessible, with odd Narrator Choice
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The Asylum
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Couldn’t stop listening
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What listeners say about An Only Child and Her Sister
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Malika Bell
- 04-16-22
Positive spin on her childhood
I loved the story and the humor amidst hardship. The ready did a good job and I couldn’t stop listening. Finished the book in two sittings.
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- VR Campbell
- 07-28-23
An amazing story
This was a wonderful book and wonderful writer. I am sharing it with my 17-year-old son to show him what he can do even though you think that your life is very small you can expand it and do those things that you don’t think you can do. Thank you for sharing this with us.
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- Julie Curtis
- 02-25-24
Incredible resilience
What a journey! Being born in the 70s I can understand how biased people can be, but hearing the author’s experience with the school system, social services, and community is absolutely shocking. Thank you for being vulnerable enough to share your story. So incredible to see from where you started to where you are today. Loved your book. Thank you.
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- Pink
- 03-08-24
Outstanding
I felt that the book was beautifully written and engaging and the narration was wonderful.
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- chris mcclelland
- 03-28-23
Excellent Narration
The narration made this story all the more real. You could feel how uninterested the world around was to this character. Thank you so much to the author for sharing this. Very relatable and inspiring
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- Mary E.
- 04-26-23
Excellent
There wasn't a dry moment in this book from start to finish.
Well written, well narrated.
The end gives me a lot of hope!
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- Anonymous User
- 08-19-23
Tough story of growing up with dysfunctional parents
This memoir is written with such incredible fortitude. Casey Maxwell Clair’s inspirational humour and determination to succeed in her life is exceptional, her forgiveness eternal, the narrator’s voice was perfect.
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- Christian Oliva
- 04-16-23
A Dysfunctional & Unconventional Family's Story
I loved this book from start to finish. I highly recommend it. It's a poignant story of a daughter and the most important people in her life. It is a meaningful and familiar, but not predictable story. A good solid read!
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- J
- 12-12-23
Unexpected Therapy Session
I wasn’t entirely sure what I was getting into when I started this book, finding myself quickly relating to similarities and understanding the struggles of being an adult trying to cope with childhood trauma. Getting insight into things that hadn’t occurred to me yet, and validation for the things I had already been treading through. By the end of the book, I found myself shedding tears and smiling about the raw truth and understanding from someone who went through a difficult childhood, different than my own, but just as real.
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- cotswoldrose
- 08-01-24
Inspiring tale of survival
Both fascinating and revolting, this is an almost unbelievable tale of survival. When I say "almost unbelievable", I mean it, too. What Clair went through in her youth is a good example of how truth is often stranger than fiction, and her triumph over her adversities is the stuff of outlandish movies, which ironically is the world in which she grew up--Hollywood of yesteryear. Much of her tale of childhood neglect is unbearably heart-breaking, especially the side story about her poor sister.
My emotions were all over the place but mostly hovered over shock, sorrow, and horror. I also found it difficult to listen to her spin her parents' narcissism and neglect into something positive. While I knew she was trying to draw what good from them that she could without going so far as to excuse them, I had a hard time accepting some of it as an outsider looking in. Overall, though, the whole memoir is a reminder of how important love, kindness, nurturing, and parental self-sacrifice are to the healthy development of a human being. May similarly awful parents read this book and get the wake-up call they need to make changes and save their children before it's too late!
As a side note, the narrator was excellent; I often forgot she was a hired actress, not the author herself.
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