Beautiful Children
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Mark Deakins
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By:
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Charles Bock
About this listen
The New York Times best seller by the author of the forthcoming novel Alice & Oliver
Winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
A New York Times Notable Book
“One word: bravo.” (The New York Times Book Review)
“Truly powerful...Beautiful Children dazzles its readers on almost every page....[Charles Bock] knows how to tug at your heart, and he knows how to make you laugh out loud, often on the same page, sometimes in the same sentence.” (Newsweek)
One Saturday night in Las Vegas, 12-year-old Newell Ewing goes out with a friend and doesn’t come home. In the aftermath of his disappearance, his mother, Lorraine, makes daily pilgrimages to her son’s room and tortures herself with memories. Equally distraught, the boy’s father, Lincoln, finds himself wanting to comfort his wife even as he yearns for solace, a loving touch, any kind of intimacy.
As the Ewings navigate the mystery of what’s become of their son, the circumstances surrounding Newell’s vanishing and other events on that same night reverberate through the lives of seemingly disconnected strangers: a comic book illustrator in town for a weekend of debauchery; a painfully shy and possibly disturbed young artist; a stripper who imagines moments from her life as if they were movie scenes; a bubbly teenage wiccan anarchist; a dangerous and scheming gutter punk; a band of misfit runaways. The people of Beautiful Children are “urban nomads,” each with a past to hide and a pain to nurture, every one of them searching for salvation and barreling toward destruction, weaving their way through a neon underworld of sex, drugs, and the spinning wheels of chance.
In this masterly debut novel, Charles Bock mixes incandescent prose with devious humor to capture Las Vegas with unprecedented scope and nuance and to provide a glimpse into a microcosm of modern America. Beautiful Children is an odyssey of heartache and redemption heralding the arrival of a major new writer.
Praise for Beautiful Children
“Exceptional...This novel deserves to be read more than once because of the extraordinary importance of its subject matter.” (The Washington Post Book World)
“Magnificent...a hugely ambitious novel that succeeds...Beautiful Children manages to feel completely of its moment while remaining unaffected by literary trends.... Charles Bock is the real thing.” (The New Republic)
“A wildly satisfying and disturbing literary journey, led by an author of blazing talent.” (The Dallas Morning News)
“Wholly original - dirty, fast, and hypnotic. The sentences flicker and skip and whirl.” (Esquire)
“An anxious, angry, honest first novel filled with compassion and clarity...The language has a rhythm wholly its own - at moments it is stunning, near genius.” (A. M. Homes)
“From start to finish, Bock never stops tantalizing the reader.” (San Francisco Chronicle)
“Rich and compelling...captures the hallucinogenic setting like a fever dream.” (Los Angeles Times)
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I wish I could give this audiobook 1,000 stars
- By Kari Delaney on 02-01-23
By: David Crabb
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Breaking Night
- A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard
- By: Liz Murray
- Narrated by: Liz Murray
- Length: 14 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Liz Murray was born to loving but drug-addicted parents in the Bronx. In school she was taunted for her dirty clothing and lice-infested hair, eventually skipping so many classes that she was put into a girls' home. At age 15, Liz found herself on the streets when her family finally unraveled. She learned to scrape by, foraging for food and riding subways all night to have a warm place to sleep. Then, when Liz's mother died of AIDS, she decided to take control of her own destiny.
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unbelievably inspiring
- By Amazon Customer on 03-17-12
By: Liz Murray
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A Nail Through The Heart
- A Poke Rafferty Thriller
- By: Timothy Hallinan
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Poke Rafferty was writing offbeat travel guides for the young and terminally bored when Bangkok stole his heart. Now the American expat is assembling a new family with Rose, the former go-go dancer he wants to marry, and Miaow, the tiny, streetwise urchin he wants to adopt. But trouble in the guise of good intentions comes calling just when everything is beginning to work out.
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Ever been to Bangkok?
- By Richard Delman on 12-11-11
By: Timothy Hallinan
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Private Citizens
- By: Tony Tulathimutte
- Narrated by: Pete Cross
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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The story's four whip-smart narrators - idealistic Cory, Internet-lurking Will, awkward Henrik, and vicious Linda - are torn between fixing the world and cannibalizing it. In boisterous prose that ricochets between humor and pain, the four estranged friends stagger through the Bay Area's maze of tech startups, protestors, gentrifiers, karaoke bars, house parties, and cultish self-help seminars, washing up in each other's lives once again.
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Too dour and cynical.
- By Zanriel on 01-18-17
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Darling Days
- A Memoir
- By: iO Tillett Wright
- Narrated by: iO Tillett Wright
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Born into the beautiful bedlam of downtown New York in the eighties, iO Tillett Wright came of age at the intersection of punk, poverty, heroin, and art. This was a world of self-invented characters, glamorous superstars, and strung-out sufferers, ground zero of drag and performance art. Still, no personality was more vibrant and formidable than iO's mother's. Rhonna, a showgirl and young widow, was a mercurial, erratic glamazon. She was iO's fiercest defender and only authority in a world with few boundaries and even fewer indicators of normal life.
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Can’t wait for more from this Author!
- By Team Hobson on 07-24-19
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Make Something Up
- Stories You Can't Unread
- By: Chuck Palahniuk
- Narrated by: Chuck Palahniuk, Scott Sowers, Rich Orlow, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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For years Chuck Palahniuk has reserved his best storytelling for his readings, often choosing to read a new short story instead of whatever novel he is supposed to be promoting. Make Something Up compiles these previously unpublished tales for the very first time, plus the Byliner social media insta-classic "Phoenix" and Palahniuk's most notable pieces from Playboy.
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Plenty of shock, just not enough Palahniuk awe
- By Darwin8u on 06-10-15
By: Chuck Palahniuk
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Rats Saw God
- By: Rob Thomas
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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By his senior year, Steve York has come through the worst two years of his life. His parents have divorced, and his girlfriend has betrayed him. Worse yet, after running away to live with his mother in San Diego, forays into the drug culture have turned his A-average into a thing of the past. Steve's only hope to graduate on time and avoid summer school is to write a 100-page paper for his guidance counselor. Unfortunately, he has to write about something he knows, and all he knows well are the last two years of his life.
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Real
- By Mary on 06-26-09
By: Rob Thomas
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I Am Not Myself These Days
- A Memoir
- By: Josh Kilmer-Purcell
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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I Am Not Myself These Days follows a glittering journey through Manhattan's dark underbelly---a shocking and surreal world where alter egos reign and subsist (barely) on dark wit and chemicals...a tragic romantic comedy where one begins by rooting for the survival of the relationship and ends by hoping someone simply survives.
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depressing
- By Barry Morrison on 08-02-16
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All We Ever Wanted Was Everything
- By: Janelle Brown
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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A smart, comic pause-resister about a Silicon Valley family in free fall over the course of one eventful summer from the author of Watch Me Disappear and Pretty Things. When Paul Miller’s pharmaceutical company goes public, making his family IPO millionaires, his wife, Janice, is sure this is the windfall she’s been waiting years for - until she learns, via messengered letter, that her husband is divorcing her (for her tennis partner!) and cutting her out of the new fortune.
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The Perfect Life Ain't So Perfect
- By Theresa on 12-28-08
By: Janelle Brown
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City of the Sun
- A Novel
- By: David Levien
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Jamie Gabriel gets on his bike before dawn to deliver newspapers in his suburban Indianapolis neighborhood. He is 12 years old. Somewhere en route, he vanishes without a trace. Crushed by frustrating dead ends and exhausted by a police force that cannot (or will not) find their son, the Gabriels finally stumble upon a name - an elusive private investigator who may represent their last chance for answers.
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Workmanlike thriller. Scott Brick is annoying.
- By Richard Delman on 01-13-13
By: David Levien
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Loving Day
- By: Mat Johnson
- Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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On his first night in his new home, Warren spies two figures in the grass outside; when he screws up the nerve to confront them, they disappear. The next day he encounters ghosts of a different kind: In the face of the teenage girl he meets at a comics convention, he sees the mingled features of his white father and his black mother, both now dead. The girl is his daughter, and she thinks she's white.
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Teen lit with heavy erotic imagery
- By Itinerant T on 08-26-15
By: Mat Johnson
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Excavation
- A Memoir
- By: Wendy C. Ortiz
- Narrated by: Bonne Kramer
- Length: 5 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Wendy C. Ortiz was an only child and a bookish, insecure girl living with alcoholic parents in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Her relationship with a charming and deeply flawed private school teacher 15 years her senior appeared to give her the kind of power teenagers wish for, regardless of consequences.
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Too Much About Not Much
- By Lifeisshort on 12-22-14
By: Wendy C. Ortiz
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The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes
- By: Marcus Sakey
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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The only sign of life for miles is an empty BMW. Inside the expensive car he finds clothes that fit perfectly, shoes for his tattered feet, a Rolex, and an auto registration in the name of Daniel Hayes, resident of Malibu, California. None of it is familiar. How did he get here? Who is he? Who was he? While he searches for answers, the world searches for him - beginning with the cops that kick in the door of his dingy motel with guns drawn. Lost and alone, the man who might be Daniel Hayes flees into the night. All he remembers is a woman’s face, so he sets off for the only place he might find her.
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A Never Ending Soap Opera
- By Lu on 06-20-11
By: Marcus Sakey
What listeners say about Beautiful Children
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Morris
- 02-08-08
Poor Ending
As usual authors these days spending years creating and developing characters and only what seems like a few minutes writing the ending. The characters and Las Vegas details are rich and engrossing as was the narration. But I would have very much enjoyed following Newell as he disappears into the desert. Unfortunately the book abuptly ends leaving everyone hanging. Perhaps a sequel in seven more years.
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9 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Andre
- 03-07-08
Brilliant - Challenging - Impressionistic
More impressionistic than old master, Bock paints a vivid, disturbing, compassionate, compelling tableau. This is not an 'easy' book to love -- exuberant writing feels a bit undisciplined at times, many characters are from the seamier side -- yet that author does a great job pulling everything together just as the work seems to be at risk of fraying apart. Provocative to be sure. If you are looking for a fresh new voice, this is certainly worth a listen.
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3 people found this helpful