-
Bailey's Café
- Narrated by: Augustus Williamson, Medwin Johnson, Cedric Ward, Cheryl La Mar, Bonita Harvey
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 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
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $20.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
Welcome to Bailey's Café, the most mythically real diner you've ever walked into. Presided over by Bailey and his helpmate, Nadine, it is a magnet that draws a wide variety of the "colored" people of 1948, each with a story to tell. Bailey tells us about his love for his strong, quiet wife, and shares his haunting memories of World War II.
Then, one by one, we hear from the café's regulars. There is Sadie, whose addiction to alcohol is second only to her mania for cleanliness; the oddly maternal Eve, whose bordello accepts only fresh flowers as legal tender; Sweet Esther, who takes nothing but white roses for her particular favors; Peaches, whose badly mutilated face is a sharp contrast to her beautiful body; Jesse Bell, who cannot overcome her lust for heroin; Miss Maple (whose real name is Stanley); and Mariam, the Ethiopian child who may be the bearer of a miracle.
Gloria Naylor, author of Women of Brewster Place and Mama Day, has created perhaps her finest work in Bailey's Café. Her wonderful chorus of characters tell tales of woe and fortitude, prejudice and pride. Naylor has transformed the trials of these outcasts into timeless truths about the strengths of people everywhere.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Mama Day
- By: Gloria Naylor
- Narrated by: uncredited
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Miranda Day, known as "Mama Day", is the elderly matriarch of Willow Springs, a small sea island off the southeast coast of the United States. Mama Day finds herself pitted in mortal combat with dark forces that threaten the body and soul of her beloved great-niece, Cocoa, who has gone "mainside" and married an urban Northerner.
-
-
A Classic
- By Gina on 10-22-08
By: Gloria Naylor
-
Women of Brewster Place
- By: Gloria Naylor
- Narrated by: Tonya Pinkins
- Length: 3 hrs and 7 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her heralded first novel, Gloria Naylor weaves together the stories of seven women living in Brewster Place, a bleak-inner city sanctuary, creating a powerful, moving portrait of the strengths, struggles, and hopes of black women in America. Vulnerable and resilient, openhanded and openhearted, these women forge their lives in a place that in turn threatens and protects—a common prison and a shared home. Naylor renders both loving and painful human experiences with simple eloquence and uncommon intuition in this touching and unforgettable listen.
-
-
Abridged!
- By Annoyance on 11-07-17
By: Gloria Naylor
-
The House of Eve
- By: Sadeqa Johnson
- Narrated by: Ariel Blake, Nicole Lewis, Sadeqa Johnson
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1950s Philadelphia: fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright. Eleanor Quarles arrives in Washington, DC, with ambition and secrets. When she meets the handsome William Pride at Howard University, they fall madly in love. But William hails from one of DC’s elite wealthy Black families, and his parents don’t let just anyone into their fold.
-
-
This could've been good...
- By Speedreader on 10-13-23
By: Sadeqa Johnson
-
Black Candle Women
- A Novel
- By: Diane Marie Brown
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Generations of Montrose women—Augusta, Victoria, Willow—have lived together in their quaint two-story bungalow in California for years. They keep to themselves, never venture far from home, and their collection of tinctures and spells is an unspoken bond between them. But when seventeen-year-old Nickie Montrose brings home a boy for the first time, their quiet lives are thrown into disarray. For the other women have been withholding a secret from Nickie that will end her relationship before it’s even begun: the decades-old family curse that any person they fall in love with dies.
-
-
Easy Listen
- By Precious T. on 06-14-23
-
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.
-
-
Multiple Stories Obfuscate Narrative
- By Stephnsea on 08-12-23
By: James McBride
-
The Yellow Wife
- A Novel
- By: Sadeqa Johnson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Delores Brown has lived a relatively sheltered life. Shielded by her mother’s position as the estate’s medicine woman and cherished by the Master’s sister, she is set apart from the others on the plantation, belonging to neither world. She’d been promised freedom on her eighteenth birthday, but instead of the idyllic life she imagined with her true love, Essex Henry, Pheby is forced to leave the only home she has ever known. She unexpectedly finds herself thrust into the bowels of slavery at the infamous Devil’s Half Acre.
-
-
A Real page turner
- By Elizabeth Early on 01-19-21
By: Sadeqa Johnson
-
Mama Day
- By: Gloria Naylor
- Narrated by: uncredited
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Miranda Day, known as "Mama Day", is the elderly matriarch of Willow Springs, a small sea island off the southeast coast of the United States. Mama Day finds herself pitted in mortal combat with dark forces that threaten the body and soul of her beloved great-niece, Cocoa, who has gone "mainside" and married an urban Northerner.
-
-
A Classic
- By Gina on 10-22-08
By: Gloria Naylor
-
Women of Brewster Place
- By: Gloria Naylor
- Narrated by: Tonya Pinkins
- Length: 3 hrs and 7 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her heralded first novel, Gloria Naylor weaves together the stories of seven women living in Brewster Place, a bleak-inner city sanctuary, creating a powerful, moving portrait of the strengths, struggles, and hopes of black women in America. Vulnerable and resilient, openhanded and openhearted, these women forge their lives in a place that in turn threatens and protects—a common prison and a shared home. Naylor renders both loving and painful human experiences with simple eloquence and uncommon intuition in this touching and unforgettable listen.
-
-
Abridged!
- By Annoyance on 11-07-17
By: Gloria Naylor
-
The House of Eve
- By: Sadeqa Johnson
- Narrated by: Ariel Blake, Nicole Lewis, Sadeqa Johnson
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1950s Philadelphia: fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright. Eleanor Quarles arrives in Washington, DC, with ambition and secrets. When she meets the handsome William Pride at Howard University, they fall madly in love. But William hails from one of DC’s elite wealthy Black families, and his parents don’t let just anyone into their fold.
-
-
This could've been good...
- By Speedreader on 10-13-23
By: Sadeqa Johnson
-
Black Candle Women
- A Novel
- By: Diane Marie Brown
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Generations of Montrose women—Augusta, Victoria, Willow—have lived together in their quaint two-story bungalow in California for years. They keep to themselves, never venture far from home, and their collection of tinctures and spells is an unspoken bond between them. But when seventeen-year-old Nickie Montrose brings home a boy for the first time, their quiet lives are thrown into disarray. For the other women have been withholding a secret from Nickie that will end her relationship before it’s even begun: the decades-old family curse that any person they fall in love with dies.
-
-
Easy Listen
- By Precious T. on 06-14-23
-
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.
-
-
Multiple Stories Obfuscate Narrative
- By Stephnsea on 08-12-23
By: James McBride
-
The Yellow Wife
- A Novel
- By: Sadeqa Johnson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Delores Brown has lived a relatively sheltered life. Shielded by her mother’s position as the estate’s medicine woman and cherished by the Master’s sister, she is set apart from the others on the plantation, belonging to neither world. She’d been promised freedom on her eighteenth birthday, but instead of the idyllic life she imagined with her true love, Essex Henry, Pheby is forced to leave the only home she has ever known. She unexpectedly finds herself thrust into the bowels of slavery at the infamous Devil’s Half Acre.
-
-
A Real page turner
- By Elizabeth Early on 01-19-21
By: Sadeqa Johnson
-
The Color Purple
- By: Alice Walker
- Narrated by: Samira Wiley
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Celie has grown up poor in rural Georgia, despised by the society around her and abused by her own family. She strives to protect her sister, Nettie, from a similar fate, and while Nettie escapes to a new life as a missionary in Africa, Celie is left behind without her best friend and confidante, married off to an older suitor, and sentenced to a life alone with a harsh and brutal husband. In an attempt to transcend a life that often seems too much to bear, Celie begins writing letters directly to God.
-
-
Wow!
- By elizabeth h correa on 05-19-20
By: Alice Walker
-
The Davenports
- By: Krystal Marquis
- Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Davenports are one of the few Black families of immense wealth and status in a changing United States, their fortune made through the entrepreneurship of William Davenport, a formerly enslaved man who founded the Davenport Carriage Company years ago. Now it's 1910, and the Davenports live surrounded by servants, crystal chandeliers, and endless parties, finding their way and finding love—even where they’re not supposed to.
-
-
Giving Bridgerton Vibes
- By Danni B. on 03-11-23
By: Krystal Marquis
-
Their Eyes Were Watching God
- By: Zora Neale Hurston
- Narrated by: Ruby Dee
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Their Eyes Were Watching God, an American classic, is the luminous and haunting novel about Janie Crawford, a Southern Black woman in the 1930s, whose journey from a free-spirited girl to a woman of independence and substance has inspired writers and readers for close to 70 years.
-
-
perfection
- By Mel on 04-06-15
-
The Darkest Child
- By: Delores Phillips
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1958 Georgia, the shade of a 13-year-old black girl's skin can make the difference in her fate. Tangy Mae is the smartest of her mother's 10 children, but she is also the darkest complected. The Quinns - all different skin shades, all with unknown fathers - live with their charismatic, beautiful, and tyrannical mother, Rozelle, in poverty on the fringes of a Georgia town where Jim Crow rules. Rozelle's children live in fear of her mood swings and her violence, but they are devoted to her. Rozelle pulls her children out of school when they are 12 years old so that they can help support her by going to work.
-
-
The Darkest Child
- By Beguiling on 04-02-18
By: Delores Phillips
-
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
- By: Maya Angelou
- Narrated by: Maya Angelou
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age - and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. But years later, she learns about love for herself and the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors.
-
-
Emotional & Powerful
- By Miss Toni on 06-30-13
By: Maya Angelou
-
Let Us Descend
- A Novel
- By: Jesmyn Ward
- Narrated by: Jesmyn Ward
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Let Us Descend describes a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. A journey that is as beautifully rendered as it is heart wrenching, the novel is “[t]he literary equivalent of an open wound from which poetry pours” (NPR). Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the listener’s guide. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother.
-
-
Usually I enjoy an author reading…
- By Patio on 11-04-23
By: Jesmyn Ward
-
The Great Gatsby
- By: F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Narrated by: Jake Gyllenhaal
- Length: 4 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic American novel of the Roaring Twenties is beloved by generations of readers and stands as his crowning work. This new audio edition, authorized by the Fitzgerald estate, is narrated by Oscar-nominated actor Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain). Gyllenhaal's performance is a faithful delivery in the voice of Nick Carraway, the Midwesterner turned New York bond salesman, who rents a small house next door to the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby....
-
-
Simple, Beautiful, and Exquisitely Textured
- By Darwin8u on 04-09-13
-
Summer on the Bluffs
- A Novel (Oak Bluffs, Book 1)
- By: Sunny Hostin
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Thirty years ago, Amelia Vaux Tanner and her husband built a house high on the bluffs, a cottage they named Chateau Laveau. For decades, “Ama” played host to American presidents, Wall Street titans, and cultural icons. But her favorite guests have always been her three “goddaughters”: Esperanza “Perry” Soto, a beautiful, talented Afro-Latina lawyer with Ama’s strong, yet guarded personality; Olivia Jones, a gifted Wall Street analyst with Ama’s brilliant, logical mind; and Billie Hayden, a gifted marine biologist and rule-breaker with Ama’s courageous free spirit.
-
-
Sorry not for me
- By Kim P on 05-06-21
By: Sunny Hostin
-
Black Cake
- A Novel
- By: Charmaine Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Lynnette R. Freeman, Simone Mcintyre
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage and themselves.
-
-
Wonderful Listen
- By Regina on 02-04-22
-
Take My Hand
- By: Dolen Perkins-Valdez
- Narrated by: Lauren J. Daggett
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Montgomery, Alabama, 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend intends to make a difference, especially in her African American community. At the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, she hopes to help women shape their destinies, to make their own choices for their lives and bodies.
-
-
Page Turner Based off True Events
- By LATOYA LEWIS on 06-10-22
-
Mrs. Wiggins
- By: Mary Monroe
- Narrated by: Shari Peele
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The daughter of a prostitute mother and an alcoholic father, Maggie Franklin knew her only way out was to marry someone upstanding and church-going. Someone like Hubert Wiggins, the most eligible man in Lexington, Alabama - and the son of its most revered preacher. Proper and prosperous, Hubert is glad to finally have a wife, even one with Maggie's background. For Hubert has a secret he desperately needs to stay hidden. And Maggie's unexpected charm, elegance, and religious devotion makes her the perfect partner in lies....
-
-
Really enjoyed
- By avidreader on 04-07-21
By: Mary Monroe
-
Delicate Condition
- By: Danielle Valentine
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 11 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anna Alcott is desperate to have a family. But as she tries to balance her increasingly public life as an indie actress with a grueling IVF journey, she starts to suspect that someone is going to great lengths to make sure that never happens. Crucial medicines are lost. Appointments get swapped without her knowledge. Cryptic warnings have her jumping at shadows. And despite everything she's gone through to make this pregnancy a reality, not even her husband is willing to believe that someone is playing twisted games with her.
-
-
Awful story
- By SLW on 10-27-23
Related to this topic
-
This Side of the Sky
- By: Elyse Singleton
- Narrated by: Myra Taylor, Sharon Washington, Richard Ferrone
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Award-winning journalist Elyse Singleton delivers what Essence calls “a gem - the perfect book to curl up with.”
Best friends Lilian and Myraleen, two African American women from rural Mississippi, travel to Europe during World War II to act as members of the Women’s Army Corps. During this time of segregation and destruction, both women discover love and heartbreak, triumph and defeat.
-
-
A Breath of Fresh Air
- By Adina Andreu on 07-19-12
By: Elyse Singleton
-
Paradise
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Paradise - her first novel since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature - Toni Morrison gives us a bravura performance. As the book begins deep in Oklahoma early one morning in 1976, nine men from Ruby (pop. 360), in defense of "the one all-black town worth the pain", assault the nearby Convent and the women in it. From the town's ancestral origins in 1890 to the fateful day of the assault, Paradise tells the story of a people ever mindful of the relationship between their spectacular history and a void.
-
-
MORRISON AT HER MOST COMPLEX
- By Kennedi Hill on 11-07-19
By: Toni Morrison
-
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
- By: Maya Angelou
- Narrated by: Maya Angelou
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age - and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. But years later, she learns about love for herself and the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors.
-
-
Emotional & Powerful
- By Miss Toni on 06-30-13
By: Maya Angelou
-
Tar Baby
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Desiree Coleman
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jadine Childs is a Black fashion model with a white patron, a white boyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son is a Black fugitive who embodies everything she loathes and desires. As Morrison follows their affair, which plays out from the Caribbean to Manhattan and the deep South, she charts all the nuances of obligation and betrayal between Blacks and whites, masters and servants, and men and women.
-
-
So good that I'm writing my first Audible review!
- By BL on 12-10-11
By: Toni Morrison
-
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
- By: Betty Smith
- Narrated by: Kate Burton
- Length: 14 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A moving coming-of-age story set in the 1900s, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn follows the lives of 11-year-old Francie Nolan, her younger brother Neely, and their parents, Irish immigrants who have settled in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Johnny Nolan is as loving and fanciful as they come, but he is also often drunk and out of work, unable to find his place in the land of opportunity.
-
-
Book: flawless. SKIP THE RECORDED INTRO!!
- By Wild Wise Woman on 09-04-11
By: Betty Smith
-
Pearl in a Cage
- By: Joy Dettman
- Narrated by: Deidre Rubenstein
- Length: 20 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a balmy midsummer's evening in 1923, a young woman - foreign, dishevelled and heavily pregnant - is found unconscious just off the railway tracks in the tiny logging community of Woody Creek. The town midwife, Gertrude Foote, is roused from her bed when the woman is brought to her door. Try as she might, Gertrude is unable to save her, but the baby lives.
-
-
Pearl in a Cage
- By Verita on 06-16-17
By: Joy Dettman
-
This Side of the Sky
- By: Elyse Singleton
- Narrated by: Myra Taylor, Sharon Washington, Richard Ferrone
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Award-winning journalist Elyse Singleton delivers what Essence calls “a gem - the perfect book to curl up with.”
Best friends Lilian and Myraleen, two African American women from rural Mississippi, travel to Europe during World War II to act as members of the Women’s Army Corps. During this time of segregation and destruction, both women discover love and heartbreak, triumph and defeat.
-
-
A Breath of Fresh Air
- By Adina Andreu on 07-19-12
By: Elyse Singleton
-
Paradise
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Paradise - her first novel since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature - Toni Morrison gives us a bravura performance. As the book begins deep in Oklahoma early one morning in 1976, nine men from Ruby (pop. 360), in defense of "the one all-black town worth the pain", assault the nearby Convent and the women in it. From the town's ancestral origins in 1890 to the fateful day of the assault, Paradise tells the story of a people ever mindful of the relationship between their spectacular history and a void.
-
-
MORRISON AT HER MOST COMPLEX
- By Kennedi Hill on 11-07-19
By: Toni Morrison
-
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
- By: Maya Angelou
- Narrated by: Maya Angelou
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age - and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. But years later, she learns about love for herself and the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors.
-
-
Emotional & Powerful
- By Miss Toni on 06-30-13
By: Maya Angelou
-
Tar Baby
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Desiree Coleman
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jadine Childs is a Black fashion model with a white patron, a white boyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son is a Black fugitive who embodies everything she loathes and desires. As Morrison follows their affair, which plays out from the Caribbean to Manhattan and the deep South, she charts all the nuances of obligation and betrayal between Blacks and whites, masters and servants, and men and women.
-
-
So good that I'm writing my first Audible review!
- By BL on 12-10-11
By: Toni Morrison
-
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
- By: Betty Smith
- Narrated by: Kate Burton
- Length: 14 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A moving coming-of-age story set in the 1900s, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn follows the lives of 11-year-old Francie Nolan, her younger brother Neely, and their parents, Irish immigrants who have settled in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Johnny Nolan is as loving and fanciful as they come, but he is also often drunk and out of work, unable to find his place in the land of opportunity.
-
-
Book: flawless. SKIP THE RECORDED INTRO!!
- By Wild Wise Woman on 09-04-11
By: Betty Smith
-
Pearl in a Cage
- By: Joy Dettman
- Narrated by: Deidre Rubenstein
- Length: 20 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a balmy midsummer's evening in 1923, a young woman - foreign, dishevelled and heavily pregnant - is found unconscious just off the railway tracks in the tiny logging community of Woody Creek. The town midwife, Gertrude Foote, is roused from her bed when the woman is brought to her door. Try as she might, Gertrude is unable to save her, but the baby lives.
-
-
Pearl in a Cage
- By Verita on 06-16-17
By: Joy Dettman
-
Caramelo
- By: Sandra Cisneros
- Narrated by: Sandra Cisneros
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lala Reyes’ grandmother is descended from a family of renowned rebozo, or shawl-makers. The striped (caramelo) is the most beautiful of all, and the one that makes its way, like the family history it has come to represent, into Lala’s possession. The novel opens with the Reyes’ annual car trip - a caravan overflowing with children, laughter, and quarrels - from Chicago to “the other side”, Mexico City. It is there, each year, that Lala hears her family’s stories, separating the truth from the “healthy lies” that have ricocheted from one generation to the next.
-
-
Love, family, history, and fantasy, Caramelo
- By Michele on 08-07-20
By: Sandra Cisneros
-
Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
- By: Allan Gurganus
- Narrated by: Barbara McCulloh
- Length: 49 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Allan Gurganus's Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All became an instant classic upon its publication. Critics and fans alike fell in love with the voice of 99-year-old Confederate widow Lucy Marsden, one of the most entertaining and loquacious heroines in American literature. Lucy married at the turn of the 20th century, when she was 15 and her husband was 50. If Colonel William Marsden was a veteran of the "War for Southern Independence", Lucy became a "veteran of the veteran" with a unique perspective on Southern history and Southern manhood.
-
-
Dated.
- By edie butler on 04-06-21
By: Allan Gurganus
-
The Plague of Doves
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James, Kathleen McInerney
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation.
-
-
Avoid this Plague
- By Andre on 05-16-08
By: Louise Erdrich
-
Angel of Harlem
- By: Kuwanna Haulsey
- Narrated by: Brenda Pressley
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inspired by the extraordinary events of Dr. May Chinn’s life, Angel of Harlem is a deeply affecting story of love and transcendence. Weaving seamlessly scenes from the battlefields of the Civil War, during which her father escaped from slavery, to the Harlem living rooms and kitchen tables where May is sometimes forced to operate on her patients, this fascinating novel lays bare the heart of a woman who changed the face of medicine.
-
-
Really Enjoyed!
- By Amazon Customer on 08-08-19
By: Kuwanna Haulsey
-
Mudbound
- By: Hillary Jordan
- Narrated by: Ezra Knight, Kate Forbes, Joseph Collins, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hillary Jordan's mesmerizing debut novel won the Bellwether Prize for fiction. A powerful piece of Southern literature, Mudbound takes on prejudice in its myriad forms on a Mississippi Delta farm in 1946. City girl Laura McAllen attempts to raise her family despite questionable decisions made by her husband. Tensions continue to rise when her brother-in-law and the son of a family of sharecroppers both return from WWII as changed men bearing the scars of combat.
-
-
May this South never rise again.
- By Betty on 03-25-12
By: Hillary Jordan
-
Rush Home Road
- By: Lori Lansens
- Narrated by: Ruby Dee
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When a 70-year-old woman finds a five-year-old girl abandoned on her doorstep, she is thrust into a sorrowful past that can only be conquered with the help of the girl who opened her memory - the very girl she is trying to save. This first novel, according to author Jacquelyn Mitchard, is one of "exquisite power, honesty, and conviction...quite nearly without flaws."
-
-
filthy language and violent content
- By Anna on 12-16-11
By: Lori Lansens
-
Ironweed
- By: William Kennedy
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Francis Phelan, ex-ballplayer, part-time gravedigger, full-time drunk, has hit bottom. Years ago he left Albany in a hurry after killing a scab during a trolley workers' strike; he ran away again after accidentally – and fatally – dropping his infant son. Now, in 1938, Francis is back in town, roaming the old familiar streets with his hobo pal, Helen, trying to make peace with the ghosts of the past and the present.
-
-
Darkly Lovely
- By Michael on 07-22-17
By: William Kennedy
-
In the Country
- Stories
- By: Mia Alvar
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu, Don Castro
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
These nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora. Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere - and sometimes turning back again.
-
-
My introduction to Filipino literature and culture
- By Amazon Customer on 03-28-16
By: Mia Alvar
-
Fallen Angels
- By: Patricia Hickman
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
During the Great Depression, Jeb Nubey is running from the law when he meets three abandoned children. With nowhere else to go the group passes a stormy night in a comforting church. When they are discovered, a case of mistaken identity ensues. It seems the congregation has been waiting for their new pastor, a widower with three kids. Looks like more trouble for Jeb. Yet the chance for a steady job and three squares a day is too good to turn down.
-
-
Touching
- By Christina on 11-11-04
By: Patricia Hickman
-
Beyond the Pale
- By: Elana Dykewomon
- Narrated by: Elana Dykewomon
- Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beyond the Pale - winner of the Lambda Literary Award - tells the stories of two Jewish women living through times of darkness and inhumanity in the early 20th century, capturing their undaunted love and courage in luminous and moving prose. The richly textured novel details Gutke Gurvich's odyssey from her apprenticeship as a midwife in a Russian shtetl to her work in the suffrage movement in New York.
-
-
great historical fiction with a lesbian twist
- By Kelly on 11-25-13
By: Elana Dykewomon
-
The Twelve-Mile Straight
- A Novel
- By: Eleanor Henderson
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 17 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cotton County, Georgia, 1930: In a house full of secrets, two babies - one light-skinned, the other dark - are born to Elma Jesup, a white sharecropper's daughter. Accused of her rape, field hand Genus Jackson is lynched and dragged behind a truck down the Twelve-Mile Straight, the road to the nearby town. In the aftermath, the farm's inhabitants are forced to contend with their complicity in a series of events that left a man dead and a family irrevocably fractured.
-
-
Great read!
- By S. Clay on 11-01-17
-
The Blind Assassin
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Margot Dionne
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious. The novel opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental.
-
-
Good book, TERRIBLE audio!
- By Whitney on 04-27-09
By: Margaret Atwood
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Mama Day
- By: Gloria Naylor
- Narrated by: uncredited
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Miranda Day, known as "Mama Day", is the elderly matriarch of Willow Springs, a small sea island off the southeast coast of the United States. Mama Day finds herself pitted in mortal combat with dark forces that threaten the body and soul of her beloved great-niece, Cocoa, who has gone "mainside" and married an urban Northerner.
-
-
A Classic
- By Gina on 10-22-08
By: Gloria Naylor
-
Women of Brewster Place
- By: Gloria Naylor
- Narrated by: Tonya Pinkins
- Length: 3 hrs and 7 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her heralded first novel, Gloria Naylor weaves together the stories of seven women living in Brewster Place, a bleak-inner city sanctuary, creating a powerful, moving portrait of the strengths, struggles, and hopes of black women in America. Vulnerable and resilient, openhanded and openhearted, these women forge their lives in a place that in turn threatens and protects—a common prison and a shared home. Naylor renders both loving and painful human experiences with simple eloquence and uncommon intuition in this touching and unforgettable listen.
-
-
Abridged!
- By Annoyance on 11-07-17
By: Gloria Naylor
-
Sophie's World
- A Novel About the History of Philosophy
- By: Jostein Gaarder
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 16 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One day, 14-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find two notes in her mailbox, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl.
-
-
Sophies world
- By Daryl on 10-23-07
By: Jostein Gaarder
-
Chicago
- A Novel
- By: Brian Doyle
- Narrated by: Wayne Mitchell
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the last day of summer, a young college grad moves to Chicago and rents a small apartment on the north side of the city, by the lake. This is the story of the five seasons he lives there. A love letter to Chicago, the Great American City, and a wry account of a young man's coming-of-age during the one summer in White Sox history when they had the best outfield in baseball, Chicago is a novel that will plunge you into a city you will never forget and may well wish to visit for the rest of your days.
-
-
A fine, entertaining book, very well read.
- By Richard Delman on 09-28-19
By: Brian Doyle
-
Hush Little Baby
- By: J A Baker
- Narrated by: Janine Birkett
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Melissa Crawford snatches a crying baby from outside a house, she knows she's done the right thing. She can't bear to see the baby suffer one more day in that house, with those people. With her, baby Gabriel will be safe and loved. She is his grandmother after all...But as Melissa is making her escape, she is involved in a terrible accident which forces her into hiding. She can't believe she's been so careless - now she has to lay low and let the dust settle. Gabriel's parents won't care where he is, they'll be glad he's gone but if she goes to prison who will care for the little baby?
By: J A Baker
-
Crudo
- A Novel
- By: Olivia Laing
- Narrated by: Olivia Laing
- Length: 3 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kathy is a writer. Kathy is getting married. It’s the summer of 2017 and the whole world is falling apart. Fast-paced and frantic, Crudo unfolds in real time from the full-throttle perspective of a commitment-phobic artist who may or may not be Kathy Acker. From a Tuscan hotel for the super-rich to a Brexit-paralyzed UK, Kathy spends the first summer of her 40s adjusting to the idea of a lifelong commitment. But it’s not only Kathy who’s changing. Fascism is on the rise, truth is dead, the planet is heating up, and Trump is tweeting the world ever-closer to nuclear war.
-
-
rumbelino and glissando in one sandwich
- By a. mcnaught on 06-12-21
By: Olivia Laing
-
Mama Day
- By: Gloria Naylor
- Narrated by: uncredited
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Miranda Day, known as "Mama Day", is the elderly matriarch of Willow Springs, a small sea island off the southeast coast of the United States. Mama Day finds herself pitted in mortal combat with dark forces that threaten the body and soul of her beloved great-niece, Cocoa, who has gone "mainside" and married an urban Northerner.
-
-
A Classic
- By Gina on 10-22-08
By: Gloria Naylor
-
Women of Brewster Place
- By: Gloria Naylor
- Narrated by: Tonya Pinkins
- Length: 3 hrs and 7 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her heralded first novel, Gloria Naylor weaves together the stories of seven women living in Brewster Place, a bleak-inner city sanctuary, creating a powerful, moving portrait of the strengths, struggles, and hopes of black women in America. Vulnerable and resilient, openhanded and openhearted, these women forge their lives in a place that in turn threatens and protects—a common prison and a shared home. Naylor renders both loving and painful human experiences with simple eloquence and uncommon intuition in this touching and unforgettable listen.
-
-
Abridged!
- By Annoyance on 11-07-17
By: Gloria Naylor
-
Sophie's World
- A Novel About the History of Philosophy
- By: Jostein Gaarder
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 16 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One day, 14-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find two notes in her mailbox, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl.
-
-
Sophies world
- By Daryl on 10-23-07
By: Jostein Gaarder
-
Chicago
- A Novel
- By: Brian Doyle
- Narrated by: Wayne Mitchell
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the last day of summer, a young college grad moves to Chicago and rents a small apartment on the north side of the city, by the lake. This is the story of the five seasons he lives there. A love letter to Chicago, the Great American City, and a wry account of a young man's coming-of-age during the one summer in White Sox history when they had the best outfield in baseball, Chicago is a novel that will plunge you into a city you will never forget and may well wish to visit for the rest of your days.
-
-
A fine, entertaining book, very well read.
- By Richard Delman on 09-28-19
By: Brian Doyle
-
Hush Little Baby
- By: J A Baker
- Narrated by: Janine Birkett
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Melissa Crawford snatches a crying baby from outside a house, she knows she's done the right thing. She can't bear to see the baby suffer one more day in that house, with those people. With her, baby Gabriel will be safe and loved. She is his grandmother after all...But as Melissa is making her escape, she is involved in a terrible accident which forces her into hiding. She can't believe she's been so careless - now she has to lay low and let the dust settle. Gabriel's parents won't care where he is, they'll be glad he's gone but if she goes to prison who will care for the little baby?
By: J A Baker
-
Crudo
- A Novel
- By: Olivia Laing
- Narrated by: Olivia Laing
- Length: 3 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kathy is a writer. Kathy is getting married. It’s the summer of 2017 and the whole world is falling apart. Fast-paced and frantic, Crudo unfolds in real time from the full-throttle perspective of a commitment-phobic artist who may or may not be Kathy Acker. From a Tuscan hotel for the super-rich to a Brexit-paralyzed UK, Kathy spends the first summer of her 40s adjusting to the idea of a lifelong commitment. But it’s not only Kathy who’s changing. Fascism is on the rise, truth is dead, the planet is heating up, and Trump is tweeting the world ever-closer to nuclear war.
-
-
rumbelino and glissando in one sandwich
- By a. mcnaught on 06-12-21
By: Olivia Laing
What listeners say about Bailey's Café
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Letitia Hill
- 01-06-21
Fabulous!
This is my Favorite Book! I've read it once a year since it came out. To hear it has been Amazing! The Cast did a Wonderful Job, and created a New experience for me!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
- RoxAnne
- 03-18-10
Bailey's Cafe
This is a wonderfully told stories within a story that takes one on a journey through the turn of the century. I loved it --a very visual narrative. Each individual story as rich, sad,and deep as the one that came before. Ms. Naylor has captivated me just as she'd done with The Women of Brewster Place. This book was worth every penny spent.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Newarkborn
- 09-28-19
wonderful production. reads like a play.
Stanley's (Ms. Maple's) and Eve's characters were read so well, one would think. he, or she, was listening to non -fiction... as if their stories really happened.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Africa
- 02-12-17
Great Read!!
Naylor tells an interesting tale grounded in historical facts surrounded by fantasy. Bailey's Cafe is a stopping point between here and there.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Racheal Backers
- 09-21-23
Love it!
This is a great story by a great cast! I was sad when it ended!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Sagashus
- 12-10-12
Gloria Naylor's Bailey's Cafe...Wow!
What made the experience of listening to Bailey's Café the most enjoyable?
Gloria Naylor wrote an amazing book. She captured the nuances of people's struggles and turned them into art. This book is well written, emotionally intelligent and complex. It's smart and beautiful. It has added to my life.
What did you like best about this story?
THE STORY!
What about the narrators’s performance did you like?
I like that the book had multiple narrators. It made it easy to follow.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
YES!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Celeste
- 04-15-10
Pure Poetry
Gloria Naylor writes prose with the cadence of the Blues. She introduces characters that we prefer to overlook on the street, and allows the reader a glimpse into who they are deep inside.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Tanaia White
- 06-20-22
A Decent Read
I liked the book. I wouldn't say I fell in love with the story or anything, but it was okay. It kinda fell off towards the end. The narrators were great.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Harlem Renaissance Woman
- 01-20-22
Very upsetting
I don’t know what I was expecting but it was not that. I’m going to have nightmares. I wasn’t expecting that.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- EileenT
- 05-29-17
my favorite audiobook yet!
do not miss this one. I already loved gloria Naylor from reading mama day, so I figured this would be good. it was even better than I'd hoped. lots of sad in it, but it has a bigger story to tell than sorrow. Naylor was the real deal. she was a genius & will be missed. great cast of narrators. my favorite ensemble audiobook, and I've enjoyed others.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!