
A Ladder to the Sky
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Richard E. Grant
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Richard Cordery
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Nina Sosanya
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Laurence Kennedy
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By:
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John Boyne
About this listen
"A satire of writerly ambition wrapped in a psychological thriller... An homage to Patricia Highsmith, Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allan Poe, but its execution is entirely Boyne’s own." (Ron Charles, The Washington Post)
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post and Minneapolis Star Tribune
Maurice Swift is handsome, charming, and hungry for fame. The one thing he doesn’t have is talent - but he’s not about to let a detail like that stand in his way. After all, a would-be writer can find stories anywhere. They don’t need to be his own.
Working as a waiter in a West Berlin hotel in 1988, Maurice engineers the perfect opportunity: a chance encounter with celebrated novelist Erich Ackermann. He quickly ingratiates himself with the powerful - but desperately lonely - older man, teasing out of Erich a terrible, long-held secret about his activities during the war. Perfect material for Maurice’s first novel.
Once Maurice has had a taste of literary fame, he knows he can stop at nothing in pursuit of that high. Moving from the Amalfi Coast, where he matches wits with Gore Vidal, to Manhattan and London, Maurice hones his talent for deceit and manipulation, preying on the talented and vulnerable in his cold-blooded climb to the top. But the higher he climbs, the further he has to fall....
Sweeping across the late 20th century, A Ladder to the Sky is a fascinating portrait of a relentlessly immoral man, a tour de force of storytelling, and the next great novel from an acclaimed literary virtuoso.
Praise for A Ladder to the Sky
"Boyne's mastery of perspective, last seen in The Heart's Invisible Furies, works beautifully here.... Boyne understands that it's far more interesting and satisfying for a reader to see that narcissist in action than to be told a catchall phrase. Each step Maurice Swift takes skyward reveals a new layer of calumny he's willing to engage in, and the desperation behind it...so dark it seems almost impossible to enjoy reading A Ladder to the Sky as much as you definitely will enjoy reading it." (NPR)
"Delicious...spins out over several decades with thrilling unpredictability, following Maurice as he masters the art of co-opting the stories of others in increasingly dubious ways. And while the book reads as a thriller with a body count that would make Highsmith proud, it is also an exploration of morality and art: Where is the line between inspiration and thievery? To whom does a story belong?" (Vanity Fair)
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Critic reviews
"Maurice has the heart of a sniper...marvelously engaging, barbed and witty." (The New York Times Book Review)
"A darkly funny novel that races like a beating heart." (People)
"Maurice Swift may not be much of a novelist, but he inhabits a literary tradition going to back to Patricia Highsmith. Boyne’s protagonist is Tom Ripley as literary climber.... Boyne’s novel is about high literature but has lower, juicier ambitions, at which it wildly succeeds." (Vulture)
Editorial Review
A literary psychodrama A Ladder to the Sky is set in the supposedly genteel world of writers. But where do writers get their ideas from? For one particularly dark, ambitious, and cunning writer who has skill but lacks imagination...he steals them. The story is told is three distinct parts, each wonderfully performed by a different narrator and from the perspective of three separate characters: the successful author with a secret past who takes on a young Maurice as a protégé, Maurice's author-wife, and finally from an aged Maurice himself. It's a full-circle reveal of a very bad man. —Tricia F., Audible Editor
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- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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It is September 1919: Twenty-one-year-old Tristan Sadler takes a train from London to Norwich to deliver a package of letters to the sister of Will Bancroft, the man he fought alongside during the Great War. But the letters are not the real reason for Tristan's visit. He can no longer keep a secret and has finally found the courage to unburden himself of it. As Tristan recounts the horrific details of what to him became a senseless war, he also speaks of his friendship with Will - from their first meeting on the training grounds at Aldershot to their farewell in the trenches of northern France.
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Love, War, and Guilt
- By Cariola on 01-27-13
By: John Boyne
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Stay Where You Are and Then Leave
- By: John Boyne
- Narrated by: Euan Morton
- Length: 5 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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The day the First World War broke out, Alfie Summerfield's father promised he wouldn't go away to fight - but he broke that promise the following day. Four years later, Alfie doesn't know where his father might be, other than that he's away on a special, secret mission. Then, while shining shoes at King's Cross Station, Alfie unexpectedly sees his father's name on a sheaf of papers belonging to a military doctor. Bewildered and confused, Alfie realizes his father is in a hospital close by - a hospital treating soldiers with shell shock.
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WWI Coming of Age Story
- By tooonce72 on 04-26-14
By: John Boyne
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The Boy at the Top of the Mountain
- By: John Boyne
- Narrated by: Alex Wyndham
- Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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When Pierrot becomes an orphan, he must leave his home in Paris for a new life with his aunt Beatrix, a servant in a wealthy Austrian household. But this is no ordinary time, for it is 1935 and the Second World War is fast approaching; and this is no ordinary house, for this is the Berghof, the home of Adolf Hitler. Pierrot is quickly taken under Hitler's wing and thrown into an increasingly dangerous new world: a world of terror, secrets, and betrayal from which he may never be able to escape.
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Excellent story
- By Sandy Horwitz on 09-13-23
By: John Boyne
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A Traveler at the Gates of Wisdom
- A Novel
- By: John Boyne
- Narrated by: Tim McInnerny
- Length: 15 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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This story starts with a family. For now, it is a father and a mother with two sons, one with his father’s violence in his blood, one with his mother’s artistry. One leaves. One stays. They will be joined by others whose deeds will determine their fate. It is a beginning. Their stories will intertwine and evolve over the course of 2,000 years. They will meet again and again at different times and in different places. From Palestine at the dawn of the first millennium and journeying across 50 countries to a life among the stars, their destinies remain the same....
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AD 2016
- By Warren on 08-24-20
By: John Boyne
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The Heart's Invisible Furies
- A Novel
- By: John Boyne
- Narrated by: Stephen Hogan
- Length: 21 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Cyril Avery is not a real Avery - or at least that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.
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Outstanding. A Must listen.
- By Keith G on 09-04-17
By: John Boyne
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The Elements
- A Novel
- By: John Boyne
- Narrated by: Anna Friel, Colin Morgan, Dane Whyte O’Hara, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Elements, acclaimed Irish novelist John Boyne has created an epic saga that weaves together four interconnected narratives, each representing a different perspective on crime: the enabler, the accomplice, the perpetrator, and the victim.
By: John Boyne
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Noah Barleywater Runs Away
- By: John Boyne
- Narrated by: Andrew Sachs
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Eight-year-old Noah's problems seem easier to deal with if he doesn't think about them. So he runs away, taking an untrodden path through the forest. Before long, he comes across a shop. But this is no ordinary shop: It's a toyshop, full of the most amazing toys, and brimming with the most wonderful magic. And here Noah meets a very unusual toymaker. The toymaker has a story to tell, and it's a story of adventure and wonder, and broken promises. He takes Noah on a journey. A journey that will change his life.
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Brilliant Funny Magical Story
- By Kirk A Mann on 04-29-19
By: John Boyne
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Barriers to Entry
- Blaze Collection
- By: Ariel Lawhon
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 1 hr and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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You will have ninety minutes to solve the murder. A startling declaration by a new Harvard instructor: sixty-seven-year-old Frances Glessner Lee. It’s 1945. Before her, six wary male students given to assumptions—especially when it comes to women without a formal education—are challenged to solve a real-life whodunit using Mrs. Lee’s creation, the crime scene diorama. Every detail is accurate. And every detail matters when solving a crime with no survivors…
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Whodunit?!
- By EJ on 02-25-24
By: Ariel Lawhon
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As Bright as Heaven
- By: Susan Meissner
- Narrated by: Cassandra Morris, Tavia Gilbert, Jorjeana Marie, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1918, Philadelphia was a city teeming with promise. Even as its young men went off to fight in the Great War, there were opportunities for a fresh start on its cobblestone streets. Into this bustling town came Pauline Bright and her husband, filled with hope that they could now give their three daughters - Evelyn, Maggie, and Willa - a chance at a better life. But just months after they arrive, the Spanish flu reaches the shores of America.
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As Bright as Heaven
- By Amazon Customer on 05-03-18
By: Susan Meissner
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Trust (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
- By: Hernan Diaz
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Jonathan Davis, Mozhan Marnò, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
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Before Purchasing
- By JLDLOfficial on 08-13-22
By: Hernan Diaz
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The Dutch House
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Tom Hanks
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother.
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Not my favorite Patchett
- By Regina on 12-07-19
By: Ann Patchett
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The Last Dress from Paris
- By: Jade Beer
- Narrated by: Tamsin Topolski
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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London, 2017. There’s no one Lucille adores more than her grandmother. So when her beloved Granny Sylvie asks for Lucille’s assistance with a small matter, she’s happy to help. The next thing she knows, Lucille is on a train to Paris, tasked with retrieving a priceless Dior dress. But not everything is as it seems, and what Lucille finds in a small Parisian apartment will have her scouring the city for answers to a question that could change her entire life.
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The Last Dress from Paris
- By Mona-Alisa on 07-01-22
By: Jade Beer
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The Things We Cannot Say
- By: Kelly Rimmer
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Gideon, Nancy Peterson
- Length: 13 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Since she was nine years old, Alina Dziak knew she would marry her best friend, Tomasz. Now 15 and engaged, Alina is unconcerned by reports of Nazi soldiers at the Polish border, believing her neighbors that they pose no real threat, and dreams instead of the day Tomasz returns from college in Warsaw so they can be married. But little by little, injustice by brutal injustice, the Nazi occupation takes hold, and Alina’s tiny rural village, its families, are divided by fear and hate. Then, as the fabric of their lives is slowly picked apart, Tomasz disappears.
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Don’t Miss This One!
- By Mary Smiroldo on 08-06-19
By: Kelly Rimmer
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The Phoenix Crown
- A Novel
- By: Kate Quinn, Janie Chang
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld, Katharine Chin
- Length: 11 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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San Francisco, 1906. In a city bustling with newly minted millionaires and scheming upstarts, two very different women hope to change their fortunes: Gemma, a golden-haired, silver-voiced soprano whose career desperately needs rekindling, and Suling, a petite and resolute Chinatown embroideress who is determined to escape an arranged marriage. Their paths cross when they are drawn into the orbit of Henry Thornton, a charming railroad magnate whose extraordinary collection of Chinese antiques includes the fabled Phoenix Crown, a legendary relic of Beijing’s fallen Summer Palace.
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A Queen of the Night
- By Syd Young on 02-15-24
By: Kate Quinn, and others
sour story of unmitigated literary ambition
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It’s a very long book and at times, confusing. Especially towards the end, when a lot is going on.
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enjoyable but predictable
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Non Stop
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Interesting but not a must read
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Loved it!
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Absolutely wonderful
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Chilling from the get go,blossoming of a psychotic
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Absolutely perfect
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couldn't stop listening..
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