
Before the Coffee Gets Cold
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Arina Ii
About this listen
Over One Million Copies Sold
Now an International Best Seller
If you could go back, who would you want to meet?
In a small back alley of Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than 100 years. Local legend says that this shop offers something else besides coffee - the chance to travel back in time.
Over the course of one summer, four customers visit the café in the hopes of making that journey. But time travel isn’t so simple, and there are rules that must be followed. Most important, the trip can last only as long as it takes for the coffee to get cold.
Heartwarming, wistful, mysterious, and delightfully quirky, Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s internationally best-selling novel explores the age-old question: What would you change if you could travel back in time?
©2020 Toshikazu Kawaguchi (P)2020 Harlequin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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What are you looking for? So asks Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian. For Sayuri Komachi is able to sense exactly what each visitor to her library is searching for and provide just the book recommendation to help them find it. A restless retail assistant looks to gain new skills, a mother tries to overcome demotion at work after maternity leave, a conscientious accountant yearns to open an antique store, a recently retired salaryman searches for newfound purpose. In Komachi’s unique book recommendations they will find just what they need to achieve their dreams.
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The power of honesty and an open mind
- By ili pika on 09-10-23
By: Michiko Aoyama
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The Parting Glass
- By: Gina Marie Guadagnino
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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By day, Mary Ballard is dutiful lady’s maid to Charlotte Walden, a wealthy and accomplished belle of New York City high society. But Charlotte would never trust Mary again if she knew the truth about her devoted servant’s past. On her nights off, Mary sheds her persona as prim and proper lady’s maid to reveal her true self - Irish exile Maire O’Farren. She finds release from her frustration in New York’s gritty underworld - in the arms of a prostitute and as drinking companion to a decidedly motley crew consisting of members of a dangerous secret society.
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"The Parting Glass"
- By elizabeth ann morgan on 08-08-22
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The Lagos Wife
- A Novel
- By: Vanessa Walters
- Narrated by: Dami Olukoya, Debra Michaels
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Nicole Oruwari has the perfect life: a handsome husband, a palatial house in the heart of Lagos, and a glamorous group of friends. She left gloomy London and a troubled family past behind for sunny Lagos, becoming part of the Nigerwives—a community of foreign women married to Nigerian men. But when Nicole disappears without a trace after a boat trip, the cracks in her alleged perfect life start to show. As the investigation turns up nothing but dead ends, her auntie Claudine decides to take matters into her own hands.
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COULD. NOT. PUT. IT. DOWN.
- By CHuggBK on 05-06-23
By: Vanessa Walters
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A Botanist's Guide to Parties and Poisons
- By: Kate Khavari
- Narrated by: Jodie Harris
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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London, 1923. Newly minted research assistant Saffron Everleigh is the first woman to hold the position at University College of London. When she attends a dinner party for the school, she expects to engage in conversations about the university's large expedition to the Amazon. What she doesn’t expect is for Mrs. Henry, one of the professors’ wives, to drop to the floor, poisoned by an unknown toxin. Dr. Maxwell, Saffron’s mentor, is the main suspect, and evidence quickly mounts.
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Clean cozy mystery
- By dubois940 on 08-21-22
By: Kate Khavari
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Sunflower Sisters
- A Novel
- By: Martha Hall Kelly
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld, Shayna Small, Jenna Lamia, and others
- Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Georgeanna “Georgey” Woolsey isn’t meant for the world of lavish parties and the demure attitudes of women of her stature. So when war ignites the nation, Georgey follows her passion for nursing during a time when doctors considered women on the battlefront a bother. In proving them wrong, she and her sister Eliza venture from New York to Washington, DC, to Gettysburg and witness the unparalleled horrors of slavery as they become involved in the war effort.
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It is a hard book to "listen" to.
- By Anna on 04-09-21
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The House on Tradd Street
- Tradd Street, Book 1
- By: Karen White
- Narrated by: Aimée Bruneau
- Length: 13 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Practical Melanie Middleton hates to admit she can see ghosts. But she's going to have to accept it. An old man she recently met has died, leaving her his historic Tradd Street home, complete with housekeeper, dog - and a family of ghosts anxious to tell her their secrets. Enter Jack Trenholm, a gorgeous writer obsessed with unsolved mysteries. He has reason to believe that diamonds from the Confederate Treasury are hidden in the house. So he turns the charm on with Melanie, only to discover he's the smitten one....
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Wonderfully Written
- By Nila on 01-09-19
By: Karen White
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The Wives
- A Memoir
- By: Simone Gorrindo
- Narrated by: Simone Gorrindo
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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This profoundly intimate memoir about marriage, friendship, and the power of human connection tells the story of one woman’s experience of joining a community of army wives after leaving her New York City job. When her new husband joins an elite Army unit, Simone Gorrindo is uprooted from New York City and dropped into Columbus, Georgia. With her husband frequently deployed, Simone is left to find her place in this new world, alone—until she meets the wives.
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Really well done
- By Anonymous User on 04-25-24
By: Simone Gorrindo
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The Book of the Unnamed Midwife
- The Road to Nowhere, Book 1
- By: Meg Elison
- Narrated by: Angela Dawe
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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When she fell asleep, the world was doomed. When she awoke, it was dead. In the wake of a fever that decimated the earth's population - killing women and children and making childbirth deadly for the mother and infant - the midwife must pick her way through the bones of the world she once knew to find her place in this dangerous new one. Gone are the pillars of civilization. All that remains is power - and the strong who possess it.
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"Equals" = "Annoying"
- By Lulu on 12-26-16
By: Meg Elison
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Secrets, Lies, and Consequences
- A Great Scholar's Hidden Past and His Protégé's Unsolved Murder
- By: Bruce Lincoln
- Narrated by: Tom Beyer
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1991, Ioan Culianu was on the precipice of a brilliant academic career. Culianu had fled his native Romania and established himself as a widely admired scholar at just forty-one years old. He was teaching at the University of Chicago Divinity School where he was seen as the heir apparent to his mentor, Mircea Eliade, a fellow Romanian expatriate and the founding father of the field of religious studies, who had died a few years earlier.
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Scholarship and politics
- By Anonymous User on 06-27-24
By: Bruce Lincoln
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Magic Lessons
- A Prequel to Practical Magic
- By: Alice Hoffman
- Narrated by: Sutton Foster
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Where does the story of the Owens bloodline begin? With Maria Owens, in the 1600s, when she’s abandoned in a snowy field in rural England as a baby. Under the care of Hannah Owens, Maria learns about the “Nameless Arts". Hannah recognizes that Maria has a gift and she teaches the girl all she knows. It is here that she learns her first important lesson: Always love someone who will love you back.
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Alice Hoffman Never Disappoints
- By Elle Estee on 10-07-20
By: Alice Hoffman
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School for Psychics, Book 1
- By: K.C. Archer
- Narrated by: Madeleine Maby
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Teddy Cannon isn’t your typical 20-something woman. She’s resourceful. She’s bright. She’s scrappy. She can also read people with uncanny precision. What she doesn’t realize: She’s actually psychic. When a series of bad decisions leads Teddy to a run-in with the police, a mysterious stranger intervenes. He invites her to apply to the School for Psychics, a facility hidden off the coast of San Francisco where students are trained like Delta Force operatives: It’s competitive, cutthroat, and highly secretive.
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From fun to addictive
- By Mia on 04-17-18
By: K.C. Archer
What listeners say about Before the Coffee Gets Cold
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- cqgraphicdesign
- 11-24-20
An Enjoyable Cup of Coffee Awaits
This was very good. I wasn’t sure what to expect but found myself captivated by the character’s stories and the setting. This also shows that our assumptions or judgments of people and situations can be wildly off mark. Very thought provoking. The narration seemed a bit slower than what I am used to and while one can speed things up, I ended up feeling that it helped to draw me into the story more. Well done. Don’t expect a fast pace sci-fi time travel story. This is one you will want to take your time to enjoy and have a cup of coffee with.
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76 people found this helpful
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- JustGiveMeCoffee
- 04-12-21
Unnecessarily Frustrating
This collection of stories left me unsatisfied. It didn't live up to its potential. I liked the characters, and the premise was promising, but it needed to be fleshed out more. I have unanswered questions, such as (spoiler alert)...
Why couldn't they have refilled the cup? ...or used a different one that would cool more slowly? ...or covered it?
Why was it necessary to drink it at all, if leaving the seat would return you to the present just as well? I kept waiting for someone to outsmart the system.
Why didn't they always use the thermometer? What temperature was the official boundary for "cool?"
Why didn't anyone plan better before time-traveling?
What was the deal with the ghost lady? And the 3 clocks? And the fact that it was always climate-controlled without the need for an a/c unit?
If it's a cheap ploy to get me to read the sequel, I feel manipulated.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Nick
- 12-09-22
Disappointed
The ending is the only reason this isn't 1 star. The story line had potential, but I was gravely disappointed with the rest of the book.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Rocky Sunico
- 06-29-22
Quaint and Charming, If a Bit Strange
TL;DR: There is no cat prominently featured in this book despite one being on the cover, but it's still a charming read.
I had been curious about this title for a while and when the audiobooks went on sale on Audible, I went for it. I figured that my love for the writings of Haruki Murakami would make it easier to appreciate this title.
Before the Coffee Gets Cold is more of an anthology of stories set in this particular cafe. They are told in an order that is roughly chronological with many characters featured in earlier stories coming back in later chapters.
What makes this cafe a worthy place to set all these stories is the fact that people are able to travel back to the past at this cafe. There are many limitations to this time travel including only being able to meet people who had ever been at the cafe, not being able to get up from a particular seat during this visit, and the titular constraint where one can only stay in the past for as long as the coffee hasn't gone cold. It's a little funny (and sometimes annoying) how the narrator repeatedly stresses how annoying all these rules are, but it does provide a very specific framework for the type of stories told.
On the whole, the stories are generally interesting but do take a bit of time to set up. There's a LOT of back story we end up covering for each new character whose time travel adventure we end up following with a number of details repeated across the tales. I haven't looked into it, but I can see the shape of things such that each story can stand on its own given the repetition of things like the rules and the fact that the cafe has multiple clocks that don't show the same time.
The narrator selected for this book was also okay but not necessarily great. I know it's partly my unfamiliarity with Japanese names, but the narration also didn't help in terms of better differentiating the characters, which made it a little harder to keep track of everyone. And as these stories are set in a cafe, there are a fair number of characters that get pulled into each story.
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2 people found this helpful
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- flick
- 01-29-24
Beautiful Story
The arc of this story is beautifully developed with masterful skill and performed/read with the simple straightforward manner that makes it come alive for the listener. Great listen!
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- Jazmine Carter
- 06-02-24
Such Beautiful Stories
The stories are so sweet and touching it’s hard not to say it’s a five star just due to the topics and tears shed lol What I will say is my friends physically read the book, and didn’t have the same experience I had. This is definitely the type of story that needs to be told to you rather then read to yourself in your head if that makes sense? But i loved it. 5/5
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- Book Cook
- 12-05-24
Do you want to see?
Enjoyable listen. Healthy way of looking at traveling in time to see and have a glimpse at an experience from your own secondary perspective.
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- xoxoFika
- 02-24-21
Wonderful! Beautiful and heart warming story!
I listened to this book while commuting. I love how the premise of the book is sort of bizarre and I got so drawn into the story. The café is a curious place and the characters are an unusual bunch. The story was woven around all these characters so beautifully. The bonds formed between the characters and how their experiences in the café changed them in unexpected ways is truly heart warming.
But I have to ask...
Who is that woman with the novel? I would love to know more than what was written but I guess we’ll never know?
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43 people found this helpful
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- Gregory L. Glover
- 12-03-23
An Interior and Relational Drama
I thought the story well done; very simply told. I did wish for greater depth and liveliness of plot, but what is here is very good. The confinement of the story to the cafe mostly worked, but I found myself chafing a bit at the constraints and hoping that the rules would change or that there would be some clever breaking of the rules. The worst part was the difference between the audio and the published novel. Some of it may have been the correction of errors (or simply errors in the audio), but some of it also clearly related to matters of translation and the differences between American and British English.
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1 person found this helpful
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- T. Brown Price
- 01-25-22
EMOTIONALLY SATISFYING!
Enjoyed this book immensely. Gently paced, wonderful, relatable characters and a riveting story in each chapter. I'm going to miss these folks but I will never forget them.
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