BBC National Short Story Award 2010 (5 Shortlisted Titles)
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
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $7.26
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Emma Rydal
-
Ron Cook
-
Sirine Saba
-
Hugh Quarshie
-
Sian Thomas
About this listen
The 5 shortlisted titles for the BBC National Short Story Award 2010 administered in partnership with Booktrust, containing:
Tea at the Midland by David Constantine, David Constantine 2010
Haywards Heath by Aminatta Forna, Aminatta Forna 2010
Butcher’s Perfume by Sarah Hall, Sarah Hall 2010
If It Keeps on Raining by Jon McGregor, Jon McGregor 2010
My Daughter the Racist by Helen Oyeyemi, Helen Oyeyemi 2010
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Hired Man
- By: Aminatta Forna
- Narrated by: Mark Leadbetter
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The new novel from the winner of the Commonwealth Writer's Prize, The Hired Man, is a taut, powerful novel of a small town and its dark wartime secrets, unwittingly brought into the light by a family of outsiders. Aminatta Forna has established herself as one of our most perceptive and uncompromising chroniclers of war and the way it reverberates, sometimes imperceptibly, in the daily lives of those touched by it.
-
-
Great story , I really enjoyed listening to it
- By Susan on 06-10-24
By: Aminatta Forna
-
The Wolf Border
- By: Sarah Hall
- Narrated by: Louise Brealey
- Length: 13 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For almost a decade, Rachel Caine has turned her back on home, kept distant by family disputes and her work monitoring wolves on an Idaho reservation. But now, summoned by the eccentric Earl of Annerdale and his controversial scheme to reintroduce the grey wolf to the English countryside, she is back in the peat and wet light of the Lake District. The earl's project harks back to an ancient idyll of untamed British wilderness.
-
-
Marvelous.
- By V on 05-27-15
By: Sarah Hall
-
Into the Water
- A Novel
- By: Paula Hawkins
- Narrated by: Laura Aikman, Daniel Weyman, Imogen Church, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged. Left behind is a lonely 15-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother's sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from - a place to which she vowed she'd never return.
-
-
Don't Hold Your Breath
- By Mel on 05-07-17
By: Paula Hawkins
-
From a Low and Quiet Sea
- By: Donal Ryan
- Narrated by: Alana Kerr Collins, Gerard Doyle, Alan Smyth, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Three men search for some version of home; their lives move inexorably toward a reckoning that will draw them all together. For Farouk, family is all. He has protected his wife and daughter as best he can from the war and hatred that has torn Syria apart. If they stay, they will lose their freedom. Lampy is distracted; he has too much going on in his small town life in Ireland. He has the city girl for a bit of fun, but she's not Chloe. The game was always the lifeblood coursing through John's veins: manipulating people for his enjoyment. But it was never enough.
-
-
Deeply moving and beautifully written.
- By Kindle Customer on 07-18-18
By: Donal Ryan
-
The Light Between Oceans
- A Novel
- By: M. L. Stedman
- Narrated by: Noah Taylor
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1918, after four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia to take a job as the lighthouse keeper on remote Janus Rock. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes only four times a year and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Three years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel is tending the grave of her newly lost infant when she hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up on shore carrying a dead man and a living baby.
-
-
Wonderful story.....terrible narrator.
- By Sandra on 08-14-12
By: M. L. Stedman
-
Ireland
- By: Frank Delaney
- Narrated by: Frank Delaney
- Length: 19 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One evening in 1951, an itinerant storyteller arrives unannounced at a house in the Irish countryside. In exchange for a bed and a warm meal, he invites his hosts and their neighbors to join him by the wintry fireside and begins to tell formative stories of Ireland's history. Ronan, a nine-year-old boy, grows so entranced by the storytelling that, when the old man leaves abruptly under mysterious circumstances, the boy devotes himself to finding him again.
-
-
Best Listen In A Quite While
- By John on 03-17-05
By: Frank Delaney
-
The Hired Man
- By: Aminatta Forna
- Narrated by: Mark Leadbetter
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The new novel from the winner of the Commonwealth Writer's Prize, The Hired Man, is a taut, powerful novel of a small town and its dark wartime secrets, unwittingly brought into the light by a family of outsiders. Aminatta Forna has established herself as one of our most perceptive and uncompromising chroniclers of war and the way it reverberates, sometimes imperceptibly, in the daily lives of those touched by it.
-
-
Great story , I really enjoyed listening to it
- By Susan on 06-10-24
By: Aminatta Forna
-
The Wolf Border
- By: Sarah Hall
- Narrated by: Louise Brealey
- Length: 13 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For almost a decade, Rachel Caine has turned her back on home, kept distant by family disputes and her work monitoring wolves on an Idaho reservation. But now, summoned by the eccentric Earl of Annerdale and his controversial scheme to reintroduce the grey wolf to the English countryside, she is back in the peat and wet light of the Lake District. The earl's project harks back to an ancient idyll of untamed British wilderness.
-
-
Marvelous.
- By V on 05-27-15
By: Sarah Hall
-
Into the Water
- A Novel
- By: Paula Hawkins
- Narrated by: Laura Aikman, Daniel Weyman, Imogen Church, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged. Left behind is a lonely 15-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother's sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from - a place to which she vowed she'd never return.
-
-
Don't Hold Your Breath
- By Mel on 05-07-17
By: Paula Hawkins
-
From a Low and Quiet Sea
- By: Donal Ryan
- Narrated by: Alana Kerr Collins, Gerard Doyle, Alan Smyth, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Three men search for some version of home; their lives move inexorably toward a reckoning that will draw them all together. For Farouk, family is all. He has protected his wife and daughter as best he can from the war and hatred that has torn Syria apart. If they stay, they will lose their freedom. Lampy is distracted; he has too much going on in his small town life in Ireland. He has the city girl for a bit of fun, but she's not Chloe. The game was always the lifeblood coursing through John's veins: manipulating people for his enjoyment. But it was never enough.
-
-
Deeply moving and beautifully written.
- By Kindle Customer on 07-18-18
By: Donal Ryan
-
The Light Between Oceans
- A Novel
- By: M. L. Stedman
- Narrated by: Noah Taylor
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1918, after four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia to take a job as the lighthouse keeper on remote Janus Rock. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes only four times a year and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Three years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel is tending the grave of her newly lost infant when she hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up on shore carrying a dead man and a living baby.
-
-
Wonderful story.....terrible narrator.
- By Sandra on 08-14-12
By: M. L. Stedman
-
Ireland
- By: Frank Delaney
- Narrated by: Frank Delaney
- Length: 19 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One evening in 1951, an itinerant storyteller arrives unannounced at a house in the Irish countryside. In exchange for a bed and a warm meal, he invites his hosts and their neighbors to join him by the wintry fireside and begins to tell formative stories of Ireland's history. Ronan, a nine-year-old boy, grows so entranced by the storytelling that, when the old man leaves abruptly under mysterious circumstances, the boy devotes himself to finding him again.
-
-
Best Listen In A Quite While
- By John on 03-17-05
By: Frank Delaney
-
Circling the Sun
- A Novel
- By: Paula McLain
- Narrated by: Katharine Lee McEwan
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This powerful novel transports listeners to the breathtaking world of Out of Africa—1920s Kenya—and reveals the extraordinary adventures of Beryl Markham, a woman before her time. Brought to Kenya from England by pioneering parents dreaming of a new life on an African farm, Beryl is raised unconventionally, developing a fierce will and a love of all things wild.
-
-
Pro: It made me want to read "West With the Night"
- By Ilana on 08-01-15
By: Paula McLain
-
Euphoria
- A Novel
- By: Lily King
- Narrated by: Simon Vance, Xe Sands
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
English anthropologist Andrew Bankson has been alone in the field for several years, studying the Kiona river tribe in the territory of New Guinea. Haunted by the memory of his brothers' deaths and increasingly frustrated and isolated by his research, Bankson is on the verge of suicide when a chance encounter with colleagues, the controversial Nell Stone and her wry and mercurial Australian husband, Fen, pulls him back from the brink. Nell and Fen have just fled the bloodthirsty Mumbanyo and, in spite of Nell's poor health, are hungry for a new discovery.
-
-
Anthropologists in Love
- By David on 08-21-14
By: Lily King
-
Holding
- A Novel
- By: Graham Norton
- Narrated by: Graham Norton
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The remote Irish village of Duneen has known little drama, but when human remains are discovered on an old farm, suspected to be those of Tommy Burke - a former lover of two different inhabitants - the village's dark past begins to unravel. As the frustrated sergeant PJ Collins struggles to solve a genuine case for the first time in his life, he unearths a community's worth of anger and resentments, secrets and regret.
-
-
Loved it!
- By Myra on 04-01-18
By: Graham Norton
-
The God of Small Things
- By: Arundhati Roy
- Narrated by: Sneha Mathan
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Likened to the works of Faulkner and Dickens when it was first published 20 years ago, this extraordinarily accomplished debut novel is a brilliantly plotted story of forbidden love and piercing political drama, centered on the tragic decline of an Indian family in the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India. Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, the twins Rahel and Esthappen fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family.
-
-
Worthy Booker winner!
- By Saman on 08-10-17
By: Arundhati Roy
-
The Thing about December
- By: Donal Ryan
- Narrated by: Wayne Farrell
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
While the Celtic Tiger rages, and greed becomes the norm, Johnsey Cunliffe desperately tries to hold on to the familiar, even as he loses those who all his life have protected him from a harsh world. Following the deaths first of his father and then his mother, Johnsey inherits the family farm, and a healthy bank account, both of which he proves incapable of managing on his own. Village bullies and scheming land-grabbers stand in his way, no matter where he turns.
-
-
Inner Thoughts of a Mentally Challenged Man
- By asassyvic on 01-21-15
By: Donal Ryan
-
The Turning
- By: Tim Winton
- Narrated by: Humphrey Bower, Caroline Lee
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here are turnings of all kinds - changes of heart, nasty surprises, slow awakenings, sudden detours - where people struggle against the terrible weight of the past and challenge the lives they have made for themselves. Beautifully crafted, and as tender as they are confronting, these elegiac stories examine the darkness and frailty of ordinary people and celebrate the moments when the light shines through.
-
-
It just got better and better
- By Karen Campbell on 03-02-12
By: Tim Winton
-
All We Shall Know
- A Novel
- By: Donal Ryan
- Narrated by: Sonya Macari
- Length: 6 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Melody Shee is alone and in trouble. At 33 years old, she finds herself pregnant with the child of a 17-year-old Traveler boy, Martin Toppy, and not by her husband, Pat. Melody was teaching Martin to read, but now he's gone, and Pat leaves, too, full of rage. She's trying to stay in the moment, but the future is looming, while the past won't let her go. It's a good thing that she meets Mary Crothery when she does.
-
-
Breathtakingly beautiful writing.
- By Vistarina on 07-28-17
By: Donal Ryan
-
A Change of Climate
- A Novel
- By: Hilary Mantel
- Narrated by: Sandra Duncan
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ralph and Anna Eldred are an exemplary couple, devoting themselves to doing good. 30 years ago as missionaries in Africa, the worst that could happen did. Shattered by their encounter with inexplicable evil, they returned to England, never to speak of it again. But when Ralph falls into an affair, Anna finds no forgiveness in her heart, and 30 years of repressed rage and grief explode, destroying not only a marriage but also their love, their faith, and everything they thought they were.
-
-
Beautifully written
- By Patricia S. on 10-11-15
By: Hilary Mantel
-
A Long Way from Home
- By: Peter Carey
- Narrated by: Colin McPhillamy, Craig Baldwin, Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Irene Bobs loves fast driving. Her husband is the best car salesman in southeastern Australia. Together they enter the Redex Trial, a brutal race around the ancient continent, over roads no car will ever quite survive. With them is their lanky, fair-haired navigator, Willie Bachhuber, a quiz show champion and failed schoolteacher who calls the turns and creeks crossings on a map that will remove them, without warning, from the white Australia they all know so well. This is a thrilling high-speed story that starts in one way and then takes you someplace else. It is often funny, more so as the world gets stranger, and always compelling, even as you learn a history these characters never knew themselves.
-
-
Over hyped
- By Richard on 08-21-18
By: Peter Carey
-
Elmet
- By: Fiona Mozley
- Narrated by: Gareth Bennett Ryan
- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this atmospheric and profoundly moving debut, Cathy and Daniel live with their father, John, in the remote woods of Yorkshire, in a house the three of them built themselves. John is a gentle brute of a man, a former enforcer who fights for money when he has to, but who otherwise just wants to be left alone to raise his children. When a local landowner shows up on their doorstep, their precarious existence is threatened, and a series of actions is set in motion that can only end in violence.
-
-
Strains credibility
- By DM on 01-06-18
By: Fiona Mozley
-
Now & Then
- By: Jacqueline Sheehan
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anna O’Shea has failed at marriage, shed her job at a law firm, and she’s trying to re-create herself when she and her recalcitrant nephew are summoned to the past in a manner that nearly destroys them. Her twenty-first-century skills pale as she struggles to find her nephew in nineteenth-century Ireland. For one of them, the past is brutally difficult, filled with hunger and struggle. For the other, the past is filled with privilege, status, and a reprieve from the crushing pain of present-day life. For both Anna and her nephew, the past offers them a chance at love.
-
-
Loved This Book
- By Janina on 03-07-17
-
Lies the Mushroom Pickers Told
- A Novel
- By: Tom Phelan
- Narrated by: Jack Reynolds
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Part human comedy and part mystery, Lies the Mushroom Pickers Told is an enthralling, masterful story about what holds a village together and what keeps people apart. When journalist Patrick Bracken returns to Gohen, the Irish village where he was born, he knows the eyes of the townspeople are on him. He has come home to investigate two deaths that happened decades earlier when he was a child, deaths that were ruled accidental.
-
-
It's... Fine.
- By Kolika S. on 02-18-21
By: Tom Phelan
Related to this topic
-
A Change of Climate
- A Novel
- By: Hilary Mantel
- Narrated by: Sandra Duncan
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ralph and Anna Eldred are an exemplary couple, devoting themselves to doing good. 30 years ago as missionaries in Africa, the worst that could happen did. Shattered by their encounter with inexplicable evil, they returned to England, never to speak of it again. But when Ralph falls into an affair, Anna finds no forgiveness in her heart, and 30 years of repressed rage and grief explode, destroying not only a marriage but also their love, their faith, and everything they thought they were.
-
-
Beautifully written
- By Patricia S. on 10-11-15
By: Hilary Mantel
-
Elmet
- By: Fiona Mozley
- Narrated by: Gareth Bennett Ryan
- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this atmospheric and profoundly moving debut, Cathy and Daniel live with their father, John, in the remote woods of Yorkshire, in a house the three of them built themselves. John is a gentle brute of a man, a former enforcer who fights for money when he has to, but who otherwise just wants to be left alone to raise his children. When a local landowner shows up on their doorstep, their precarious existence is threatened, and a series of actions is set in motion that can only end in violence.
-
-
Strains credibility
- By DM on 01-06-18
By: Fiona Mozley
-
Now & Then
- By: Jacqueline Sheehan
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anna O’Shea has failed at marriage, shed her job at a law firm, and she’s trying to re-create herself when she and her recalcitrant nephew are summoned to the past in a manner that nearly destroys them. Her twenty-first-century skills pale as she struggles to find her nephew in nineteenth-century Ireland. For one of them, the past is brutally difficult, filled with hunger and struggle. For the other, the past is filled with privilege, status, and a reprieve from the crushing pain of present-day life. For both Anna and her nephew, the past offers them a chance at love.
-
-
Loved This Book
- By Janina on 03-07-17
-
The Wild Hunt
- By: Emma Seckel
- Narrated by: Ruth Urquhart
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Leigh Welles has not set foot in on the island in years, but when she finds herself called home from a disappointing life on the Scottish mainland by her father's unexpected death, she is determined to forget the sorrows of the past and start fresh. Fellow islander Iain MacTavish, a RAF veteran with his eyes on the sky and his head in the past, is also in desperate need of a new beginning. A young widower, Iain struggles to return to the normal life he knew before the war. But this October is anything but normal. This October, the sluagh are restless.
-
-
one of my favorite books ever
- By Cait on 11-02-24
By: Emma Seckel
-
The Pearl Thief
- By: Elizabeth Wein
- Narrated by: Maggie Service
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the internationally acclaimed best-selling author of Code Name Verity comes a stunning new story of pearls, love and murder. Sixteen-year-old Julie Beaufort-Stuart is returning to her family's ancestral home in Perthshire for one last summer. It is not an idyllic return to childhood. Her grandfather's death has forced the sale of the house and estate, and this will be a summer of good-byes. Not least to the McEwen family - Highland travellers who have been part of the landscape for as long as anyone can remember.
-
-
Freshwater Pearls and Scottish Plaid
- By Cynthia on 08-14-17
By: Elizabeth Wein
-
Our Story Begins
- New and Selected Stories
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wolff here returns with fresh revelations - about biding one's time, or experiencing first love, or burying one's mother - that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary. A retired Marine enrolls in college while her son trains for Iraq. A lawyer takes a difficult deposition. An American in Rome indulges the Gypsy who's picked his pocket.
-
-
Great
- By chris on 04-11-08
By: Tobias Wolff
-
A Change of Climate
- A Novel
- By: Hilary Mantel
- Narrated by: Sandra Duncan
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ralph and Anna Eldred are an exemplary couple, devoting themselves to doing good. 30 years ago as missionaries in Africa, the worst that could happen did. Shattered by their encounter with inexplicable evil, they returned to England, never to speak of it again. But when Ralph falls into an affair, Anna finds no forgiveness in her heart, and 30 years of repressed rage and grief explode, destroying not only a marriage but also their love, their faith, and everything they thought they were.
-
-
Beautifully written
- By Patricia S. on 10-11-15
By: Hilary Mantel
-
Elmet
- By: Fiona Mozley
- Narrated by: Gareth Bennett Ryan
- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this atmospheric and profoundly moving debut, Cathy and Daniel live with their father, John, in the remote woods of Yorkshire, in a house the three of them built themselves. John is a gentle brute of a man, a former enforcer who fights for money when he has to, but who otherwise just wants to be left alone to raise his children. When a local landowner shows up on their doorstep, their precarious existence is threatened, and a series of actions is set in motion that can only end in violence.
-
-
Strains credibility
- By DM on 01-06-18
By: Fiona Mozley
-
Now & Then
- By: Jacqueline Sheehan
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anna O’Shea has failed at marriage, shed her job at a law firm, and she’s trying to re-create herself when she and her recalcitrant nephew are summoned to the past in a manner that nearly destroys them. Her twenty-first-century skills pale as she struggles to find her nephew in nineteenth-century Ireland. For one of them, the past is brutally difficult, filled with hunger and struggle. For the other, the past is filled with privilege, status, and a reprieve from the crushing pain of present-day life. For both Anna and her nephew, the past offers them a chance at love.
-
-
Loved This Book
- By Janina on 03-07-17
-
The Wild Hunt
- By: Emma Seckel
- Narrated by: Ruth Urquhart
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Leigh Welles has not set foot in on the island in years, but when she finds herself called home from a disappointing life on the Scottish mainland by her father's unexpected death, she is determined to forget the sorrows of the past and start fresh. Fellow islander Iain MacTavish, a RAF veteran with his eyes on the sky and his head in the past, is also in desperate need of a new beginning. A young widower, Iain struggles to return to the normal life he knew before the war. But this October is anything but normal. This October, the sluagh are restless.
-
-
one of my favorite books ever
- By Cait on 11-02-24
By: Emma Seckel
-
The Pearl Thief
- By: Elizabeth Wein
- Narrated by: Maggie Service
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the internationally acclaimed best-selling author of Code Name Verity comes a stunning new story of pearls, love and murder. Sixteen-year-old Julie Beaufort-Stuart is returning to her family's ancestral home in Perthshire for one last summer. It is not an idyllic return to childhood. Her grandfather's death has forced the sale of the house and estate, and this will be a summer of good-byes. Not least to the McEwen family - Highland travellers who have been part of the landscape for as long as anyone can remember.
-
-
Freshwater Pearls and Scottish Plaid
- By Cynthia on 08-14-17
By: Elizabeth Wein
-
Our Story Begins
- New and Selected Stories
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wolff here returns with fresh revelations - about biding one's time, or experiencing first love, or burying one's mother - that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary. A retired Marine enrolls in college while her son trains for Iraq. A lawyer takes a difficult deposition. An American in Rome indulges the Gypsy who's picked his pocket.
-
-
Great
- By chris on 04-11-08
By: Tobias Wolff
-
The Canal Bridge
- A Novel of Ireland, Love, and the First World War
- By: Tom Phelan
- Narrated by: Paul Nugent
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1913, before there is a rumor of war in Europe, Matthias Wrenn and Con Hatchel, lifelong friends from Ballyrannel in the Irish midlands, decide to see the world at the expense of the king of England and join the British army. A year later, while en route to India, their troop ship is recalled and they soon find themselves in the European slaughterhouse that was World War I.
-
-
Beautiful, disturbing and unforgettable
- By Kathy on 05-25-16
By: Tom Phelan
-
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle
- By: Monique Roffey
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A beautifully written, unforgettable novel of a troubled marriage, set against the lush landscape and political turmoil of Trinidad. Monique Roffey's Orange Prize-shortlisted novel is a gripping portrait of post-colonialism that stands among great works by Caribbean writers like Jamaica Kincaid and Andrea Levy. When George and Sabine Harwood arrive in Trinidad from England, George is immediately seduced by the beguiling island, while Sabine feels isolated, heat-fatigued, and ill-at-ease.
-
-
Disappointing.
- By Crystal on 10-31-12
By: Monique Roffey
-
A Golden Age
- A Novel
- By: Tahmima Anam
- Narrated by: Madhur Jaffrey
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As young widow Rehana Haque awakes one March morning, she might be forgiven for feeling happy. Today she will throw a party for her son and daughter. In the garden of the house she has built, her roses are blooming, her children are almost grown, and beyond their doorstep, the city is buzzing with excitement after recent elections. Change is in the air.
-
-
sad, poignant, thought-provoking, beautiful
- By Rio Delta Wild on 06-04-08
By: Tahmima Anam
-
Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories
- By: Kelly Link - editor, Gavin J. Grant - editor
- Narrated by: Sarah Coomes, Nico Evers-Swindell, Shannon McManus, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Imagine an alternate universe where romance and technology reign. Where tinkerers and dreamers craft and recraft a world of automatons, ornate clockworks, calculating machines, and other marvels that. Where scientists and schoolgirls, fair folk and Romans, intergalactic bandits, and intrepid orphans - decked out in corsets, clockwerk suits, and tall black boots - solve dastardly crimes, escape from monstrous predicaments, consult oracles, and hover over volcanoes in steam-powered airships.
-
-
MMMM, Orca Bacon
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 09-14-13
By: Kelly Link - editor, and others
-
Some Kind of Fairy Tale
- A Novel
- By: Graham Joyce
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twenty years ago, 16-year-old Tara Martin disappeared from a small town in the heart of England. Now, her sudden return and the mind-bending tale of where she’s been will challenge our very perception of the truth. For 20 years after Tara Martin disappeared, her parents and her brother, Peter, lived in denial of the grim fact that she was gone for good. Then suddenly on Christmas Day, the doorbell rings at her parents’ home, and there, dishevelled and slightly peculiar looking, Tara stands. It’s a miracle, but alarm bells are ringing for Peter. Tara’s story just does not add up.
-
-
Extremely Well Done
- By Amanda on 07-11-12
By: Graham Joyce
-
Bullet in the Brain
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anders is an angry, cynical man. A book critic known for his scathing reviews, he finds any excuse to dismiss, belittle, or insult. This afternoon is no more agitating than the next. Angers finds himself in a long line at the bank, waiting to reach a teller. Even after two men - wearing masks and carrying guns - take control of the building, Anders is unfazed. It's this behavior that lands him with a pistol against his stomach and a man screamingin his face. And when the bank robber, indignant over Anders' behavior, shoots the book critic in the head, his mind floats through the memories of his life, settling on one particular event....
-
-
The Perfect Example
- By Sarah on 08-01-17
By: Tobias Wolff
-
The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 4
- By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, Stephen King, Peter Straub
- Narrated by: Meredith Mitchell, Rebecca Mitchell, Michael Healy, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, and featuring Datlow’s comprehensive overview of the year in horror, now, more than ever, The Best Horror of the Year provides the petrifying horror fiction readers have come to expect - and enjoy.
-
-
Only a few decent stories in this bunch.
- By Jerry on 12-06-14
By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, and others
-
The Wolf Border
- By: Sarah Hall
- Narrated by: Louise Brealey
- Length: 13 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For almost a decade, Rachel Caine has turned her back on home, kept distant by family disputes and her work monitoring wolves on an Idaho reservation. But now, summoned by the eccentric Earl of Annerdale and his controversial scheme to reintroduce the grey wolf to the English countryside, she is back in the peat and wet light of the Lake District. The earl's project harks back to an ancient idyll of untamed British wilderness.
-
-
Marvelous.
- By V on 05-27-15
By: Sarah Hall
-
The Wicked Girls
- By: Alex Marwood
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 14 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a fateful summer morning in 1986, two 11-year-old girls meet for the first time. By the end of the day, they will both be charged with murder. Twenty-five years later, journalist Kirsty Lindsay is reporting on a series of sickening attacks on young female tourists in a seaside vacation town when her investigation leads her to interview carnival cleaner Amber Gordon. For Kirsty and Amber, it's the first time they've seen each other since that dark day so many years ago.
-
-
I didn't want to like these girls...
- By Lesley on 08-30-13
By: Alex Marwood
-
Lighthouse Bay
- By: Kimberley Freeman
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 16 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This breathtaking novel travels more than a century between two love stories set in the Australian seaside town of Lighthouse Bay. In 1901, a ship sinks off the coast of Lighthouse Bay in Australia. The only survivor is Isabella Winterbourne - escaping her loveless marriage and the devastating loss of her son - who clutches a priceless gift meant for the Australian Parliament. Suddenly, this gift could be her ticket to a new life, free from the bonds of her husband and his overbearing family.
-
-
Excellent story!
- By Kate B. on 11-30-17
-
Gypsy Boy
- By: Mikey Walsh
- Narrated by: Mikey Walsh
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mikey's family were Gypsies. They live in a closed community and little is known about their way of life. As he didn't go to school, the caravan became his world. But although Mikey inherited a vibrant culture, his family had a dark hidden history. Eventually Mikey was forced to make a decision – to stay and keep secrets, or escape and find somewhere to belong.
-
-
Beaten up
- By Bel on 06-10-21
By: Mikey Walsh
-
Augustown
- By: Kei Miller
- Narrated by: Dona Croll
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ma Taffy may be blind, but she sees everything. So when her great-nephew Kaia comes home from school in tears, what she senses sends a deep fear running through her. While they wait for his mama to come home from work, Ma Taffy recalls the story of the flying preacherman and a great thing that did not happen. A poor suburban sprawl in the Jamaican heartland, Augustown is a place where many things that should happen don't, and plenty of things that shouldn't happen do.
-
-
SUPERB
- By ** on 06-25-17
By: Kei Miller