
Bear
A Novel
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
3 months free
Buy for $18.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Sophie Amoss
-
By:
-
Julia Phillips
About this listen
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the celebrated author of Disappearing Earth comes a tale of family, obsession, and a mysterious creature in the woods—“a mesmerizing story about hope, sisterhood, and survival with a truly shocking twist at the end” (People, Book of the Week).
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BUZZ PICK!
FINALIST FOR THE JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE CAROL SHIELDS PRIZE FOR FICTION • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, Vulture, Chicago Public Library
“Thrilling and propulsive, glorious and terrifying. Julia Phillips is a brilliant writer.”—Ann Patchett
“Beautiful and haunting . . . this is brilliant.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
They were sisters and they would last past the end of time.
Sam and Elena dream of another life. On the island off the coast of Washington where they were born and raised, they and their mother struggle to survive. Sam works on the ferry that delivers wealthy mainlanders to their vacation homes while Elena bartends at the local golf club, but even together they can’t earn enough to get by, stirring their frustration about the limits that shape their existence.
Then one night on the boat, Sam spots a bear swimming the dark waters of the channel. Where is it going? What does it want? When the bear turns up by their home, Sam, terrified, is more convinced than ever that it’s time to leave the island. But Elena responds differently to the massive beast. Enchanted by its presence, she throws into doubt the desire to escape and puts their long-held dream in danger.
A story about the bonds of sisterhood and the mysteries of the animals that live among us—and within us—Bear is a propulsive, mythical, richly imagined novel from one of the most acclaimed young writers in America.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Disappearing Earth
- A novel
- By: Julia Phillips
- Narrated by: Ilyana Kadushin
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the Kamchatka peninsula at the northeastern edge of Russia, two girls - sisters, eight and 11 - go missing. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women. Taking us through a year in Kamchatka, Disappearing Earth enters with astonishing emotional acuity the worlds of a cast of richly drawn characters, all connected by the crime: a witness, a neighbor, a detective, a mother.
-
-
The setting is completely unique!
- By Kelly on 06-25-19
By: Julia Phillips
-
A Shining
- By: Jon Fosse, Damion Searls - translator
- Narrated by: Steve Hendrickson
- Length: 1 hr and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fosse was awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature. His Septology sequence was a finalist for the National Book Award and the International Booker Prize. This slim volume would be an ideal entry point for new audiences of Fosse and an eagerly anticipated work for Fosse fans.
-
-
Unlike Anything Else
- By Nathan J. Norman on 04-01-24
By: Jon Fosse, and others
-
Tilt
- A Novel
- By: Emma Pattee
- Narrated by: Ariel Blake
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA when a massive earthquake hits Portland, Oregon. With no way to reach her husband, no phone or money, and a city left in chaos, there’s nothing to do but walk.
-
-
Over enthusiastic, snarky narrator who can't...
- By NMwritergal on 03-27-25
By: Emma Pattee
-
Western Lane
- By: Chetna Maroo
- Narrated by: Maya Soroya
- Length: 4 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a quietly brutal training regimen, and the game becomes her world. Slowly, she grows apart from her sisters. Her life is reduced to the sport, guided by its rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot and its echo. But on the court, she is not alone. She is with her pa. She is with Ged, a thirteen-year-old boy with his own formidable talent. She is with the players who have come before her. She is in awe.
-
-
Quiet story that is really interesting
- By Garth on 06-11-23
By: Chetna Maroo
-
Is a River Alive?
- By: Robert Macfarlane
- Narrated by: Robert Macfarlane
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. Macfarlane takes listeners on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people, stories, and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada.
-
-
Beautiful
- By Emily D. on 06-18-25
-
Long Island Compromise
- A Novel
- By: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Taffy Brodesser-Akner
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, brutalized, and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, only slightly the worse, and the family moves on with their lives, resuming their prized places in the saga of the American dream, comforted in the realization that though their money may have been what endangered them, it is also what assured them their safety.
-
-
We need more from Taffy Brodesser-Akner!
- By Ximena Enriquez on 08-31-24
-
Disappearing Earth
- A novel
- By: Julia Phillips
- Narrated by: Ilyana Kadushin
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the Kamchatka peninsula at the northeastern edge of Russia, two girls - sisters, eight and 11 - go missing. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women. Taking us through a year in Kamchatka, Disappearing Earth enters with astonishing emotional acuity the worlds of a cast of richly drawn characters, all connected by the crime: a witness, a neighbor, a detective, a mother.
-
-
The setting is completely unique!
- By Kelly on 06-25-19
By: Julia Phillips
-
A Shining
- By: Jon Fosse, Damion Searls - translator
- Narrated by: Steve Hendrickson
- Length: 1 hr and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fosse was awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature. His Septology sequence was a finalist for the National Book Award and the International Booker Prize. This slim volume would be an ideal entry point for new audiences of Fosse and an eagerly anticipated work for Fosse fans.
-
-
Unlike Anything Else
- By Nathan J. Norman on 04-01-24
By: Jon Fosse, and others
-
Tilt
- A Novel
- By: Emma Pattee
- Narrated by: Ariel Blake
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA when a massive earthquake hits Portland, Oregon. With no way to reach her husband, no phone or money, and a city left in chaos, there’s nothing to do but walk.
-
-
Over enthusiastic, snarky narrator who can't...
- By NMwritergal on 03-27-25
By: Emma Pattee
-
Western Lane
- By: Chetna Maroo
- Narrated by: Maya Soroya
- Length: 4 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a quietly brutal training regimen, and the game becomes her world. Slowly, she grows apart from her sisters. Her life is reduced to the sport, guided by its rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot and its echo. But on the court, she is not alone. She is with her pa. She is with Ged, a thirteen-year-old boy with his own formidable talent. She is with the players who have come before her. She is in awe.
-
-
Quiet story that is really interesting
- By Garth on 06-11-23
By: Chetna Maroo
-
Is a River Alive?
- By: Robert Macfarlane
- Narrated by: Robert Macfarlane
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. Macfarlane takes listeners on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people, stories, and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada.
-
-
Beautiful
- By Emily D. on 06-18-25
-
Long Island Compromise
- A Novel
- By: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Taffy Brodesser-Akner
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, brutalized, and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, only slightly the worse, and the family moves on with their lives, resuming their prized places in the saga of the American dream, comforted in the realization that though their money may have been what endangered them, it is also what assured them their safety.
-
-
We need more from Taffy Brodesser-Akner!
- By Ximena Enriquez on 08-31-24
-
My Name Is Lucy Barton
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth Strout
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 4 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken for many years, comes to see her. Gentle gossip about people from Lucy’s childhood in Amgash, Illinois, seems to reconnect them, but just below the surface lie the tension and longing that have informed every aspect of Lucy’s life: her escape from her troubled family, her desire to become a writer, her marriage, her love for her two daughters. Knitting this powerful narrative together is the brilliant storytelling voice of Lucy herself.
-
-
Because we all love imperfectly.
- By Bonny on 01-15-16
By: Elizabeth Strout
-
Heartwood
- By: Amity Gaige
- Narrated by: Justine Lupe, Alma Cuervo, Rebecca Lowman, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping. At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground.
-
-
The suspense
- By Amy B. McVey on 04-11-25
By: Amity Gaige
-
We Might Just Make It After All
- By: Elyce Arons
- Narrated by: Elyce Arons
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We Might Just Make It After All brings us on the rollercoaster of adventures (and misadventures) that the best friends embarked on, from transferring colleges on a whim, to falling in and out of love with suitors, cramming into roach-infested Hell’s Kitchen apartments, and eventually designing the chic, simple bag that would launch the pair to global fame. Through it all, Katy and Elyce’s friendship remained unshakeable.
-
-
Beautiful book-Beautiful friendship!
- By Francis K on 06-18-25
By: Elyce Arons
-
The Nature of Disappearing
- A Novel
- By: Kimi Cunningham Grant
- Narrated by: Emily Pike Stewart
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Emlyn doesn't let herself think about the past. How she and her best friend, Janessa, barely speak anymore. How Tyler, the love of her life, left her half dead on the side of the road three years ago. Her new life is simple and safe. She lives alone in her Airstream trailer and works as a fishing and hunting guide in scenic Idaho. Her closest friends are the community's makeshift reverend and a handsome Forest Service ranger who took her in at her lowest.
-
-
Loved the details until the end!
- By Ashley M. on 05-24-25
-
Night Watch
- A Novel
- By: Jayne Anne Phillips
- Narrated by: Karissa Vacker, Theo Stockman, Maggi-Meg Reed
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From one of our most accomplished novelists, a mesmerizing story about a mother and daughter seeking refuge in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War.
-
-
Beautifully written historical novel
- By shastamax on 01-14-24
-
Sleep
- A Novel
- By: Honor Jones
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From a dazzling new talent, the story of a newly divorced young mother forced to reckon with the secrets of her own childhood when she brings her daughters back to the big house where she was raised.
-
-
Best “literary fiction” book in years
- By Lydia Paddon on 05-30-25
By: Honor Jones
-
Dirtbag Queen
- By: Andy Corren
- Narrated by: Andy Corren
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“Because she was my mother, the death of zaftig good-time gal Renay Corren is newsworthy to me, and I treat it with the same respect and reverence she had for, well, nothing. A more disrespectful, trash talking woman was not to be found.” So began Andy Corren's unforgettable obituary for his mother, Renay Mandel Corren, in her hometown paper The Fayetteville Observer, a tribute that went on to touch the hearts of millions around the globe. In his brief telling of the life and legend that was Renay, Andy captured only a slice of his loving and fabulously unconventional mother.
-
-
Oh, Mama!
- By Placeholder on 02-11-25
By: Andy Corren
-
Audition
- A Novel
- By: Katie Kitamura
- Narrated by: Traci Kato-Kiriyama
- Length: 4 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She’s an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He’s attractive, troubling, young—young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day–partner, parent, creator, muse–and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us most intimately.
-
-
Bizarre
- By Kevin on 04-23-25
By: Katie Kitamura
-
Martyr!
- A Novel
- By: Kaveh Akbar
- Narrated by: Arian Moayed
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest.
-
-
One of the best novels I have ever read/heard.
- By James on 04-06-24
By: Kaveh Akbar
-
Speak to Me of Home
- A Novel
- By: Jeanine Cummins
- Narrated by: Almarie Guerra
- Length: 15 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On her wedding day in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1968, Rafaela Acuña y Daubón has mild misgivings, but she marries Peter Brennan Jr. anyway in a blaze of romantic optimism. She has no way of knowing how dramatically her life will change when she uproots her young family to start over in the American Midwest, unleashing a fleet of disappointments. In the 1980s, against the backdrop of her mother’s isolation in St. Louis, Missouri, Rafaela’s daughter, Ruth, wants only to belong. Eager to fit in, Ruth lets go of her language, habits, and childhood memories of Puerto Rico. I
-
-
I enjoyed the story. It was good but slower paced and not as wonderful as American Dirt.
- By Julie Krow on 06-06-25
By: Jeanine Cummins
-
This Strange Eventful History
- By: Claire Messud
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state—separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family's strangeness; of François's union with Barbara; of Chloe, the result of that union.
-
-
Be Prepared for a Jarring Narration
- By Thomp/Suis on 05-17-24
By: Claire Messud
-
Women and Children First
- A Novel
- By: Alina Grabowski
- Narrated by: Abigail Reno, EJ Lavery, Maria McCann, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nashquitten, MA, is a decaying coastal enclave that not even tourist season can revive, full of locals who have run the town’s industries for generations. When a young woman dies at a house party, the circumstances around her death suspiciously unclear, the tight-knit community is shaken. As a mother grieves her daughter, a teacher her student, a best friend her confidante, the events around the tragedy become a lightning rod: blame is cast, secrets are buried deeper.
-
-
The Relationships of Mother’s & Daughters!
- By Amazon Customer on 06-30-24
By: Alina Grabowski
Critic reviews
“Phillips smartly keeps us guessing whether the fantastical creature ultimately sees Elena as friend or feast…Bear ends with a bang, and with the intriguing notion that sisterhood (or sisters?) may be as unknowable and unpredictable as anything else in nature.”—New York Times Book Review
“Bear may remind readers of Alice Hoffman’s fantasy-flecked novels, and Phillips sprinkles around the fairy dust liberally in some sections. But she’s actually working closer to the realm of Henry James’s ‘Turn of the Screw,’ in which the central character blankets the story with her distorting anxieties.”—The Washington Post
“This mythical novel of obsession, moral reckoning, and aspiration glows with fairy tale magic.”—The Boston Globe
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Disappearing Earth
- A novel
- By: Julia Phillips
- Narrated by: Ilyana Kadushin
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the Kamchatka peninsula at the northeastern edge of Russia, two girls - sisters, eight and 11 - go missing. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women. Taking us through a year in Kamchatka, Disappearing Earth enters with astonishing emotional acuity the worlds of a cast of richly drawn characters, all connected by the crime: a witness, a neighbor, a detective, a mother.
-
-
The setting is completely unique!
- By Kelly on 06-25-19
By: Julia Phillips
-
Women and Children First
- A Novel
- By: Alina Grabowski
- Narrated by: Abigail Reno, EJ Lavery, Maria McCann, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nashquitten, MA, is a decaying coastal enclave that not even tourist season can revive, full of locals who have run the town’s industries for generations. When a young woman dies at a house party, the circumstances around her death suspiciously unclear, the tight-knit community is shaken. As a mother grieves her daughter, a teacher her student, a best friend her confidante, the events around the tragedy become a lightning rod: blame is cast, secrets are buried deeper.
-
-
The Relationships of Mother’s & Daughters!
- By Amazon Customer on 06-30-24
By: Alina Grabowski
-
Rouge
- A Novel
- By: Mona Awad
- Narrated by: Sophie Amoss
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For as long as she can remember, Belle has been insidiously obsessed with her skin and skincare videos. When her estranged mother Noelle mysteriously dies, Belle finds herself back in Southern California, dealing with her mother’s considerable debts and grappling with lingering questions about her death. The stakes escalate when a strange woman in red appears at the funeral, offering a tantalizing clue about her mother’s demise, followed by a cryptic video about a transformative spa experience.
-
-
What a fun romp!
- By Barbara S on 10-10-23
By: Mona Awad
-
Liars
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Manguso
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Jane, an aspiring writer, meets filmmaker John Bridges, they both want the same things: to be in love, to live a successful, creative life, and to be happy. When they marry, Jane believes she has found everything she was looking for, including—a few years later—all the attendant joys and labors of motherhood. But it’s not long until Jane finds herself subsumed by John’s ambitions, whims, and ego; in short, she becomes a wife.
-
-
Beautiful
- By Heather Demeter on 08-05-24
By: Sarah Manguso
-
Fire Exit
- By: Morgan Talty
- Narrated by: Darrell Dennis
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the porch of his home, Charles Lamosway has watched the life he might have had unfold across the river on Maine’s Penobscot Reservation. On the far bank, he caught brief moments of Roger and Mary raising their only child, Elizabeth from the day she came home from the hospital to her early twenties. But there’s always been something deeper and more dangerous than the river that divides him from this family and the rest of the tribal community. It’s the secret that Elizabeth is his daughter, a secret Charles is no longer willing to keep.
-
-
Wonderful story about love, family , truth and deception and identity
- By ReallyNelie on 06-23-24
By: Morgan Talty
-
Entitlement
- A Novel
- By: Rumaan Alam
- Narrated by: Nicole Lewis
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Brooke wants. She isn’t in need, but there are things she wants. A sense of purpose, for instance. She wants to make a difference in the world, to impress her mother along the way, to spend time with friends and secure her independence. Her job assisting an octogenarian billionaire in his quest to give away a vast fortune could help her achieve many of these goals. It may inspire new desires as well: proximity to wealth turns out to be nothing less than transformative. What is money, really, but a kind of belief?
-
-
so disappointing
- By K. Wagner on 09-22-24
By: Rumaan Alam
-
Disappearing Earth
- A novel
- By: Julia Phillips
- Narrated by: Ilyana Kadushin
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the Kamchatka peninsula at the northeastern edge of Russia, two girls - sisters, eight and 11 - go missing. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women. Taking us through a year in Kamchatka, Disappearing Earth enters with astonishing emotional acuity the worlds of a cast of richly drawn characters, all connected by the crime: a witness, a neighbor, a detective, a mother.
-
-
The setting is completely unique!
- By Kelly on 06-25-19
By: Julia Phillips
-
Women and Children First
- A Novel
- By: Alina Grabowski
- Narrated by: Abigail Reno, EJ Lavery, Maria McCann, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nashquitten, MA, is a decaying coastal enclave that not even tourist season can revive, full of locals who have run the town’s industries for generations. When a young woman dies at a house party, the circumstances around her death suspiciously unclear, the tight-knit community is shaken. As a mother grieves her daughter, a teacher her student, a best friend her confidante, the events around the tragedy become a lightning rod: blame is cast, secrets are buried deeper.
-
-
The Relationships of Mother’s & Daughters!
- By Amazon Customer on 06-30-24
By: Alina Grabowski
-
Rouge
- A Novel
- By: Mona Awad
- Narrated by: Sophie Amoss
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For as long as she can remember, Belle has been insidiously obsessed with her skin and skincare videos. When her estranged mother Noelle mysteriously dies, Belle finds herself back in Southern California, dealing with her mother’s considerable debts and grappling with lingering questions about her death. The stakes escalate when a strange woman in red appears at the funeral, offering a tantalizing clue about her mother’s demise, followed by a cryptic video about a transformative spa experience.
-
-
What a fun romp!
- By Barbara S on 10-10-23
By: Mona Awad
-
Liars
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Manguso
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Jane, an aspiring writer, meets filmmaker John Bridges, they both want the same things: to be in love, to live a successful, creative life, and to be happy. When they marry, Jane believes she has found everything she was looking for, including—a few years later—all the attendant joys and labors of motherhood. But it’s not long until Jane finds herself subsumed by John’s ambitions, whims, and ego; in short, she becomes a wife.
-
-
Beautiful
- By Heather Demeter on 08-05-24
By: Sarah Manguso
-
Fire Exit
- By: Morgan Talty
- Narrated by: Darrell Dennis
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the porch of his home, Charles Lamosway has watched the life he might have had unfold across the river on Maine’s Penobscot Reservation. On the far bank, he caught brief moments of Roger and Mary raising their only child, Elizabeth from the day she came home from the hospital to her early twenties. But there’s always been something deeper and more dangerous than the river that divides him from this family and the rest of the tribal community. It’s the secret that Elizabeth is his daughter, a secret Charles is no longer willing to keep.
-
-
Wonderful story about love, family , truth and deception and identity
- By ReallyNelie on 06-23-24
By: Morgan Talty
-
Entitlement
- A Novel
- By: Rumaan Alam
- Narrated by: Nicole Lewis
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Brooke wants. She isn’t in need, but there are things she wants. A sense of purpose, for instance. She wants to make a difference in the world, to impress her mother along the way, to spend time with friends and secure her independence. Her job assisting an octogenarian billionaire in his quest to give away a vast fortune could help her achieve many of these goals. It may inspire new desires as well: proximity to wealth turns out to be nothing less than transformative. What is money, really, but a kind of belief?
-
-
so disappointing
- By K. Wagner on 09-22-24
By: Rumaan Alam
-
Hum
- By: Helen Phillips
- Narrated by: Ariel Blake
- Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a near-future world addled by climate change and inhabited by intelligent robots called “hums,” May loses her job to artificial intelligence. Desperate to resolve her family’s debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance. Seeking reprieve from her recent hardships and her family’s addiction to their devices, May splurges on passes for her family to spend three nights respite in the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams, and animals still thrive.
-
-
Why Literary "Speculative Fiction" Doesn't Work
- By NMwritergal on 08-06-24
By: Helen Phillips
-
This Strange Eventful History
- By: Claire Messud
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state—separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family's strangeness; of François's union with Barbara; of Chloe, the result of that union.
-
-
Be Prepared for a Jarring Narration
- By Thomp/Suis on 05-17-24
By: Claire Messud
-
Creation Lake
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Kushner
- Narrated by: Rachel Kushner
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A thirty-four-year-old American woman—a secret agent—is sent to do dirty work in France. “Sadie Smith” is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader. Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by “cold bump”—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her “contacts”—shadowy figures in business and government—instruct.
-
-
Author should not have been the reader
- By Raj A. on 09-11-24
By: Rachel Kushner
-
Swift River
- By: Essie Chambers
- Narrated by: Shayna Small, Janina Edwards, Robin Miles
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s the summer of 1987 in Swift River, and Diamond Newberry is learning how to drive. Ever since her Pop disappeared seven years ago, she and her mother hitchhike everywhere they go. But that’s not the only reason Diamond stands out: she’s teased relentlessly about her weight, and since Pop’s been gone, she is the only Black person in all of Swift River. This summer, Ma is determined to declare Pop legally dead so that they can collect his life insurance money, get their house back from the bank, and finally move on.
-
-
Boring
- By Foxm004 on 05-14-25
By: Essie Chambers
-
Colored Television
- A Novel
- By: Danzy Senna
- Narrated by: Kristen Ariza
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she, her painter husband, Lenny, and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home high in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane’s sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu, the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her “mulatto War and Peace,” she’ll have tenure and some semblance of stability and success within her grasp. But things don’t work out quite as hoped.
-
-
Frustrating
- By Carolyn White on 12-12-24
By: Danzy Senna
-
It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over
- By: Anne de Marcken
- Narrated by: Jessica Preddy
- Length: 3 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Traveling across the landscapes of time and of space, heading always west, and carrying a dead but laconically opinionated crow in her chest, our undead narrator encounters and loses parts of her body and her self in one terrifying, hilarious, and heartbreaking situation after another.
-
-
The manner of which this book was written
- By Vanessa on 03-31-25
By: Anne de Marcken
-
The Book of Love
- A Novel
- By: Kelly Link
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 23 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the acclaimed first novel from short story virtuoso and Pulitzer Prize finalist Kelly Link, three teenagers become pawns in a supernatural power struggle.
-
-
Great book.
- By T on 04-06-25
By: Kelly Link
-
Catalina
- A Novel
- By: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
- Narrated by: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Catalina is admitted to Harvard, it feels like the fulfillment of destiny: a miracle child escapes death in Latin America, moves to Queens to be raised by her undocumented grandparents, and becomes one of the chosen. But nothing is simple for Catalina, least of all her own complicated, contradictory, ruthlessly probing mind. Now a senior, she faces graduation to a world that has no place for the undocumented; her sense of doom intensifies her curiosities and desires. She infiltrates the school’s elite subcultures—internships and literary journals, posh parties and secret societies.
-
-
Monotone delivery
- By Patricia M Hart on 11-01-24
-
Mothers and Sons
- A Novel
- By: Adam Haslett
- Narrated by: Andrew Gibson, Janet Metzger
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At forty, Peter, an asylum lawyer in New York City, is overworked and isolated. He spends his days immersed in the struggles of immigrants only to return to an empty apartment and occasional hook-ups with a man who wants more than Peter can give. But when the asylum case of a young gay man pierces Peter's numbness, the event that he has avoided for twenty years returns to haunt him. Ann, his mother, who runs a women's retreat center she founded after leaving his father, is wounded by the estrangement from Peter but cherishes the world she has built.
-
-
Good multiple narrators. Tiresome characters.
- By CoastalReader on 02-20-25
By: Adam Haslett
-
Earthlings
- A Novel
- By: Sayaka Murata
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a child, Natsuki doesn’t fit into her family. Her parents favor her sister, and her best friend is a plush toy hedgehog named Piyyut who has explained to her that he has come from the planet Popinpobopia on a special quest to help her save the Earth.
-
-
Intriguing but disturbing
- By C. Parham on 01-01-21
By: Sayaka Murata
-
Little Rot
- A Novel
- By: Akwaeke Emezi
- Narrated by: Adepero Oduye, Chukwudi Iwuji
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Aima and Kalu are a longtime couple who have just split. When Kalu, reeling from the breakup, visits an exclusive sex party hosted by his best friend, Ahmed, he makes a decision that will plunge them all into chaos, brutally and suddenly upending their lives. Ola and Souraya, two Nigerian sex workers visiting from Kuala Lumpur, collide into the scene just as everything goes to hell. Sucked into the city’s corrupt and glittering underworld, they’re all looking for a way out, fueled by a desperate need to escape the dangerous threat that looms over them.
-
-
Hated the story but 5/5
- By Jacob on 06-04-25
By: Akwaeke Emezi
-
The Cliffs: Reese's Book Club
- A Novel
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr, Tanis Parenteau, Emily Lawrence, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a secluded bluff overlooking the ocean sits a Victorian house, lavender with gingerbread trim, a home that contains a century’s worth of secrets. By the time Jane Flanagan discovers the house as a teenager, it has long been abandoned. The place is an irresistible mystery to Jane. There are still clothes in the closets, marbles rolling across the floors, and dishes in the cupboards, even though no one has set foot there in decades. The house becomes a hideaway for Jane, a place to escape her volatile mother.
-
-
Reese Witherspoon choice
- By L. T. Gerhardt on 07-06-24
Keep looking for another book
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Long Trot Down a Single Path
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Engaging story of sisters
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Has a lot of sadness and longing. And escape at the end.
Story of survival
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Lovely writing. Dreadful Sam.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Many, if not most, listeners seem to enjoy this style . I don’t.
Narration Didn’t Work For Me
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The Bear
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Not A Fairy Tale
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A bit far fetched and happily ever after ending felt discordant.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Meh.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.