
Big Machine
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Sean Crisden
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By:
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Victor LaValle
About this listen
Ricky Rice is a middling hustler with a lingering junk habit, a bum knee, and a haunted mind. A survivor of a suicide cult, he scrapes by as a porter at a bus depot in Utica, New York, until one day a mysterious letter arrives, summoning him to enlist in a band of paranormal investigators comprised of former addicts and petty criminals, all of whom had at some point in their wasted lives heard what may have been the voice of God.
Infused with the wonder of a disquieting dream and laced with Victor LaValle's fiendish comic sensibility, Big Machine is a mind-rattling mystery about doubt, faith, and the monsters we carry within us.
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When it comes to horror, there’s no shortage of unique tales. Horror authors have a talent for mining our deepest fears and insecurities, then using them to tell fascinating, engaging, and horrifying stories. While there are so many classic horror authors to explore, this list focuses on a selection of current, contemporary writers whose works are as enthralling as they are terrifying.
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Story
Pain, horror, fear - these are the things that have comprised best-selling novelist Lance Metzger's life. His childhood remains a riddled wasteland of abuse by a sadistic father and abandonment by an apathetic mother. In turn his only refuge became his writing. When Lance loses his ability to write and becomes haunted by a nightmare that he'd thought was buried, he is drawn inexplicably to a house on the shores of Lake Superior, where he finds his muse once again - but something is waiting for him when he arrives.
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Loved it!
- By Lauren on 07-18-16
By: Joe Hart
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Experimental Film
- By: Gemma Files
- Narrated by: Morgan Hallett
- Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Fired at almost the same time as her son, Clark, is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, former film critic turned teacher Lois Cairns is caught in a depressive downward spiral, convinced she's a failure who's spent half her adult life writing about other people's dreams without ever seeing any of her own come true.
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Smartly done and well written.
- By Bill on 06-27-17
By: Gemma Files
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The Morning Star
- By: Karl Ove Knausgaard
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan, Edoardo Ballerini, Elisabeth Rodgers, and others
- Length: 23 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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It's a normal night in August. Literature professor Arne and artist Tove are with their children at the resort in Sørlandet. Their friend, Egil, a driver by day, is staying in a cabin nearby. Kathrine, a priest, is on her way home from a seminar; the journalist Jostein is out on the town; and his wife, Turid, who is an assistant nurse, has a night shift. Above them all, a huge star suddenly appears in the sky. No one, not even the astronomers, knows for sure what kind of phenomenon it is.
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Great read for religious scholars
- By matt m on 01-13-22
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Meat
- By: Joseph D'Lacey
- Narrated by: Chris Coxon
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In Abyrne, a strange town surrounded by a wasteland, the eating of meat is a sacred obligation. The town’s strict laws are brutally enforced by a ruthless Baron and a merciless Bishop. Adored by the townsfolk is Richard Shanti, Abyrne’s famous bolt-gunner – the most efficient slaughterhouse worker in living memory. In private, however, Shanti is a gentle man; a husband, and father to twin girls. The growing guilt about his murderous job weighs him down. Beguiled by a rebellious heretic, Shanti uncovers the harrowing truth behind Abyrne’s history.
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Holy Cow!!!
- By Michael on 12-30-19
By: Joseph D'Lacey
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American Elsewhere
- By: Robert Jackson Bennett
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 22 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Some places are too good to be true. Under a pink moon, there is a perfect little town not found on any map. In that town, there are quiet streets lined with pretty houses, houses that conceal the strangest things. After a couple years of hard traveling, ex-cop Mona Bright inherits her long-dead mother's home in Wink, New Mexico. And the closer Mona gets to her mother's past, the more she understands that the people of Wink are very, very different....
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You are entering the twighlight zone
- By Lisa on 07-29-13
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The Haunted Forest Tour
- By: Jeff Strand, James A. Moore
- Narrated by: Joe Hempel
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Haunted Forest Tour! Sit back, and enjoy a smooth ride in air-conditioned comfort as your heavily armored tram takes you through nature's most astonishing creation. The forest is packed to capacity with dangerous and terrifying creatures of all shapes, sizes, and hunger levels, and you'll get to observe these wonders in complete safety.
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WOW, just WOW. Great book!!!!
- By Jason on 09-07-18
By: Jeff Strand, and others
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The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies
- By: John Langan
- Narrated by: Eric Martin
- Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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John Langan has, in the last few years, established himself as one of the leading voices in contemporary horror literature. Gifted with a supple and mellifluous prose style, an imagination that can conjure up clutching terrors with seeming effortlessness, and a thorough knowledge of the rich heritage of weird fiction, Langan has already garnered his share of accolades. This new collection includes nine of his substantial stories.
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Forgot the Horror
- By Dylan on 10-04-18
By: John Langan
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Lone Women
- A Novel
- By: Victor LaValle
- Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Adelaide Henry carries an enormous steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It’s locked at all times. Because when the trunk opens, people around Adelaide start to disappear. The year is 1915, and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret sin killed her parents, forcing her to flee California in a hellfire rush and make her way to Montana as a homesteader.
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Amazing story, Phenomenal Narration
- By Frugalshopper on 04-02-23
By: Victor LaValle
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The Good House
- By: Tananarive Due
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 21 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Tananarive Due, author of The Living Blood won the American Book Award and is praised as Stephen King's equal by Publishers Weekly. In The Good House, Due sets a story of ancient powers and modern retribution in a small Pacific Northwest town. When a young woman returns to her grandmother's empty mansion, she is pitted against demonic forces that have poisoned her family for generations.
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Deeply Satisfying
- By Lee on 05-08-08
By: Tananarive Due
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Model Home
- A Novel
- By: Rivers Solomon
- Narrated by: Gabby Beans
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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The three Maxwell siblings keep their distance from the lily-white gated enclave outside Dallas where they grew up. When their family moved there, they were the only Black family in the neighborhood. The neighbors acted nice enough, but right away bad things, scary things—the strange and the unexplainable—began to happen in their house. Maybe it was some cosmic trial, a demonic rite of passage into the upper-middle class. Whatever it was, the Maxwells, steered by their formidable mother, stayed put, unwilling to abandon their home, terrors and trauma be damned.
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Wandering around my house in a daze
- By Rebecca Henson on 04-30-25
By: Rivers Solomon
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My Soul to Keep
- By: Tananarive Due
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James
- Length: 18 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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When Jessica marries David, he is everything she wants in a family man: brilliant, attentive, ever youthful. Yet she still feels something about him is just out of reach. Soon, as people close to Jessica begin to meet violent, mysterious deaths, David makes an unimaginable confession: More than 400 years ago, he and other members of an Ethiopian sect traded their humanity so they would never die, a secret he must protect at any cost.
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A Book I Can't Keep
- By Mistsofjade on 07-19-20
By: Tananarive Due
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Written in Bone
- Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind
- By: Sue Black
- Narrated by: Sue Black
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In her memoir All That Remains, internationally renowned forensic anthropologist and human anatomist Dame Sue Black recounted her life lived eye to eye with the Grim Reaper. During the course of it, she offered a primer on the basics of identifying human remains, plenty of insights into the fascinating processes of death, and a sober, compassionate understanding of its inescapable presence in our existence. Now in this book, Black builds on that memoir, taking us on a guided tour of the human skeleton and explaining how each person's life history is revealed in their bones.
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A very human story by a very believable human
- By Gary on 09-21-21
By: Sue Black
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- las
- 04-29-25
Really enjoyed this narrator !
Will take awhile of mulling it over before I decide about the book - overall it is a great story and kept me listening! The narration is good- well paced, great voice!
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- Blanco 716
- 03-04-20
Peters out at the end
The story had me fully engaged until the end. I was ultimately left with frustration, due to loose plot threads.
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- Bill
- 02-14-18
Victor LaValle is good. Real good.
Have you ever known failure so deep, it feels biological?”
I like Victor LaValle. The dude is crazy good. I didn’t read anything about this one prior to picking and digging right in. I don’t really need to with LaValle. I know it is going to be weird, interesting, entertaining and smart. I also know that most of the time I won’t know wtf is going on or where it’s going. The only thing I’ll know for sure is that it won’t be what I think it is…and that’s a good thing.
Cockeyed gospels, soul eating cats, chaffing nipples, heavenly voices, churches made from Clay and an epic road trip with the Grey Lady.
There were elements and concepts here that were truly superb and others that felt a little forced and flat. I still liked it though. Not my favorite of Victor’s, but even that is better than a lot of guys (gals) can do.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Jared Landberg
- 10-25-23
Great work by an amazing author
I do love this piece. Not quite as much as some of his later works, but this one is solid. The character development is thorough and some of the twists are alluding plot lines are downright surprising. Those washer women…
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- D
- 12-11-23
No more
This is the last Victor Lavalle book I will read for a while. Amazing writer. The plot just doesn’t quite do it for me though. It feels like a huge build up into … nothing really special in the end. Too many unaddressed points and questions. Was not a fulfilling read.
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- Cii'Em
- 03-05-24
Another Good One From Mr. Lavalle
TBH, took me more than a few tries to get into this one. I love Lavalle's work but I do feel like he likes a good slow burn beginning. However, once I felt things started to pick up, I found myself engaged. Weirdly, it wasn't the central/main story that I was invested in. It was the flashbacks/"How we got here" b stories that held my interest more than anything. There was a point where I was only listening to the central story so I could get back to the flashbacks.
Overall though, I liked this book. The narrator's reading & performance were superb. I liked it, not loved it like I did "The Changeling" but it was good & I loved the very deep & thought provoking sentiments surrounding the topics of trauma, religion/faith, redemption, recovery, & second chances.
I just hate that it ends on something of a cliffhanger and I'm pretty certain that from when the book was published, there doesn't seem to be a sequel in the works. So I'll just have to sit with that I guess.
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- Victoria
- 05-06-25
Great narrator
solid book but they just kinda Yada Yada the ending. the book as a whole is good though. the ending feels rushed and unfulfilled
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- LT Cooks
- 07-10-22
Weird but amazing!
Although there are some mixed reviews for this book, I found it to be absolutely delicious! If you enter this book expecting it to be a run of the mill mystery or thriller, you will be unhappy. This book is magical and confusing, so leave your preconceived notions at the door. It is weird, tragic, horrifying, endearing, and ends in a way that does not resolve ALL of the questions that are introduced. However, this is what makes the book so wonderful! The biting wit of the main character made me lol many times during this story, which was read by the perfect narrator. I mistakenly thought the book was narrated by the author because the voice matches so well with the main character. My only complaint is that I did not love this narrator's voicing of the female characters. A minor issue, really. Also, I found the book to be unnecessarily long, but I definitely enjoyed it. If you are looking for a very different, weird, and thought-provoking story, give this one a try! I'm now a fan of this author and will definitely explore his other books. This one is not your regular cup of tea, folks! Try something new and savor every minute!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Joshua
- 04-22-19
Doubt is a big machine.
Really enjoyed this. Reminded me a lot at points of Murakami's, "Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World." Kind of wacky at points, but very good.
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- Lauren
- 04-02-25
My favorite by this author!
Victor is amazing author but I wished he always wrote something longer, this book covers that! There is plenty to digest between each chapter and character. I’m hoping there is a second book coming or a series of his anytime soon! All his books leave you wanting more. From the changling, to Ballad of Black Tom, this book is no different and leaves you wanting more.
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