Birds of Paradise
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Narrated by:
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Tamara Marston
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By:
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Diana Abu-Jaber
About this listen
Avis Muir is a brilliant pastry chef, Brian Muir a corporate real estate attorney. Their son, Stanley, is the proprietor of a trendy food market. Their beautiful daughter, Felice, is missing. A runaway at 13, Felice has spent five years modeling tattoos, skateboarding, clubbing, and sleeping in a squat house or on the beach. She's about to turn 18. Soon all of the Muirs will be forced to confront their anguish, loss, and sense of betrayal. And Felice must reckon with the guilty secret that drove her away, then face her fear of losing her family and her sense of self forever.
Set against the vibrant backdrop of contemporary Miami, Birds of Paradise is filled with piercing insights into the politics of food and sugar, teen culture, and of the ebb and flow of marriage. The writing is sumptuous, the story moving, and the descriptions of food (one of Abu-Jaber's specialties) are mouth-watering.
©2011 Original material © 2011 Diana Abu-Jaber. Recorded by arrangement with W.W. Norton and Company, Inc. (P)2011 (p) 2011 HighBridge CompanyListeners also enjoyed...
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Olivia Limoges is the subject of constant gossip. Ever since her mysterious return to the small coastal town of Oyster Bay, North Carolina, Olivia has kept to herself, her dog, and her unfinished novel. With a little cajoling from charming writer Camden Ford, she agrees to join the Bayside Book Writers to break her writer's block and even make a few friends. But when townspeople start turning up dead with haiku poems left by the bodies, anyone with a flair for language is suddenly suspect.
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My new favorite Cozy Mystery Series!
- By Christina on 09-21-15
By: Ellery Adams
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The Invisible Circus
- By: Jennifer Egan
- Narrated by: Madeleine Lambert
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In Pulitzer Prize-winner Jennifer Egan's highly acclaimed first novel, set in 1978, the political drama and familial tensions of the 1960s form a backdrop for the world of Phoebe O'Connor, age eighteen. Phoebe is obsessed with the memory and death of her sister Faith, a beautiful idealistic hippie who died in Italy in 1970. In order to find out the truth about Faith's life and death, Phoebe retraces her steps from San Francisco across Europe, a quest which yields both complex and disturbing revelations about family, love, and Faith's lost generation.
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Too bad zero was not a choice...
- By IVAL on 04-28-13
By: Jennifer Egan
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Her Body and Other Parties
- Stories
- By: Carmen Maria Machado
- Narrated by: Amy Landon
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.
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Beautiful
- By Anonymous User on 11-17-17
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The Beach Trees
- By: Karen White
- Narrated by: Ki Gottberg, Gin Hammond
- Length: 15 hrs and 6 mins
- Abridged
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For Julie Holt, travelling to the beautiful but ravaged coast of Biloxi, Mississippi, is a journey into a secret past, and a life she never expected.... Julie first knew loss at the age of 12, when her sister disappeared, never to be found. As her once close-knit family grew apart, Julie's mother obsessively searched for the girl, and when her mother died, Julie took up the search, never letting go of the hope. Then, at an art exhibition in New York, she meets Monica....
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The ending was very weak
- By Missi Boyd on 10-31-16
By: Karen White
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The Mad Scientist's Daughter
- By: Cassandra Rose Clarke
- Narrated by: Kate Rudd
- Length: 12 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Finn looks and acts human, though he has no desire to be. He was programmed to assist his owners, and performs his duties to perfection. A billion-dollar construct, his primary task now is to tutor Cat. As she grows into a beautiful young woman, Finn is her guardian, her constant companion…and more. But when the government grants rights to the ever-increasing robot population, however, Finn struggles to find his place in the world, and in Cat’s heart.
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An Exquisite Tale of Transforming Love
- By JTF on 04-18-14
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Nothing but Trouble
- By: Susan May Warren
- Narrated by: Anne Pepperidge
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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In this lively tale by RITA and Christy Award finalist Susan May Warren, 28-year-old PJ Sugar wants to shed her reputation for being nothing but trouble. But her efforts to be the favorite daughter, best friend, perfect aunt, fetching beauty, and hometown hero - all at once - trigger both laughter and tears.
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There has to be more!!
- By Sally D Busekist on 03-27-19
By: Susan May Warren
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My Life Next Door
- By: Huntley Fitzpatrick
- Narrated by: Amy Rubinate
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The Garretts are everything the Reeds are not: loud, numerous, messy, affectionate. And every day from her balcony perch, 17-year-old Samantha Reed wishes she was one of them...until one summer evening, Jase Garrett climbs her terrace and changes everything. As the two fall fiercely in love, Jase's family makes Samantha one of their own. Then in an instant, the bottom drops out of her world and she is suddenly faced with an impossible decision. Which perfect family will save her? Or is it time she saved herself?
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A well written coming of age book
- By Ezinwanyi on 10-23-15
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Our Little Secret
- By: Roz Nay
- Narrated by: Erin Moon
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Angela is being held in a police interrogation room. Her ex's wife has gone missing, and Detective Novak is sure Angela knows something, despite her claim that she's not involved. At Novak's prodding, Angela tells a story going back 10 years, explaining how she met and fell in love with her high school friend HP. But as her past unfolds, she reveals a disconcerting love triangle and a dark, tangled web of betrayals. Is Angela a scorned ex-lover with criminal intent? Or a pawn in someone else's revenge scheme?
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Amazing
- By lisa on 12-31-19
By: Roz Nay
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The Good Goodbye
- By: Carla Buckley
- Narrated by: Ali Ahn, Suzy Jackson, Eva Kaminsky
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Two cousins, Rory and Arden, lie unconscious in a hospital burn unit. The fire, which broke out in their shared college dorm room, killed another student, and the police want answers. Tension between Rory and Arden's parents was already at an all-time high before the fire, owing to a recent financial crisis and the decline of the family business. As the parents huddle anxiously in the waiting room, carefully avoiding the subject of their own unraveling relationships, disturbing truths come to light.
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I could not stop listening.
- By Amy Davis on 05-29-16
By: Carla Buckley
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Black & White
- By: Dani Shapiro
- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Clara Brodeur has spent her entire adult life pulling herself away from her famous mother, the renowned and controversial photographer Ruth Dunne, whose towering reputation rests on the unsettling nude portraits she took of her young daughter from the ages of three to 14. As Clara charts a path connecting her childhood with her adult life, Shapiro's novel weaves together past and present in images as stark and intense as the photographs that tore the Dunnes apart.
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It was okay
- By Lucy7 on 02-13-19
By: Dani Shapiro
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Pies and Prejudice
- Charmed Pie Shoppe Mystery Series #1
- By: Ellery Adams
- Narrated by: C. S. E Cooney
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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When the going gets tough, Ella Mae LaFaye bakes pies. So when she catches her husband cheating in New York, she heads back home to Havenwood, Georgia, where she can drown her sorrows in fresh fruit filling and flaky crust. But her pies aren't just delicious. They're having magical effects on the people who eat them, and the public is hungry for more. Discovering her hidden talent for enchantment, Ella Mae makes her own wish come true by opening the Charmed Pie Shoppe.
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A real treat!
- By Christina on 04-08-16
By: Ellery Adams
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The Garden of Happy Endings
- A Novel
- By: Barbara O'Neal
- Narrated by: Tanya Eby
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In Barbara O’Neal’s novel of hope and renewal, two very different sisters discover that life is like a garden: Tend to it daily, nourish it with patience and optimism, and then watch the beauty unfold. After tragedy shatters her small community in Seattle, the Reverend Elsa Montgomery has a crisis of faith. Returning to her hometown of Pueblo, Colorado, she seeks work in a local soup kitchen. Preparing nourishing meals for folks in need, she keeps her hands busy while her heart searches for understanding. Meanwhile, her sister, Tamsin, as colorful as Elsa is unadorned and steadfast, finds her perfect life shattered when she learns that her husband is a criminal.
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Spiritually Stunted
- By Dina on 01-28-14
By: Barbara O'Neal
What listeners say about Birds of Paradise
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Pamela Harvey
- 02-22-12
Familia Tropica
I am giving this book a "4" overall, because even with its faults, bottom line I thought the story (a "3") was only about 70% well-conceived but the writing was polished, lyrical and nuanced, and for the most part I enjoyed reading this. I am usually not one to emphasize story over writing style, but the elegant, polished narrations of mood, weather, tropical urban ambiance, even the author's delicate, precise, baroque, completely mouth-watering descriptions of food and pastry could not overcome some serious flaws in the story.
Much of the reason I kept reading in the slow-going first part of this book was because I wanted to know why the 13-yr-old left her privileged life in suburban Miami to become a street kid, or one of the "beach kids". I recognized this as a narrative technique which in a less talented hand would seem cheap. When the reveal finally came, it did not ring true, and seemed excessive for a 13-year-old, especially someone from an advantaged background. There were also digressions in other story arcs, such as the father's business life as a real-estate attorney which became too byzantine and not compelling nor intriguing enough to sustain my interest, and then the son's life with his girlfriend, who seemed insipid on the one hand, yet inappropriately aggressive (way beyond "assertive") on the other. The resolution of the primary plot lines at the end was only partial and left me wondering "Seriously??".
On the other hand, the characterization of Avis (wife/mother/professional baker) was completely fleshed out and I think the reader could connect with the turbulent emotions regarding her marriage, her missing daughter, as well as with her work ethic and professionalism.
That said, the book is highly listenable, especially with the narrator's flexible style. She sounded neutral and evenly paced (never too much drama) when needed, yet masterful in rendering local dialect and regional accents, creating the perfect "melting pot" ambience of a borderline area such as Miami, with its residents from such divergent backgrounds. An added plus is that both writer and narrator have an excellent feel for dialogue.There was one line (not spoiling) that I would like to print and frame on my wall.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Rachel Anderson
- 11-02-13
Beautiful atmosphere, as ever
Any additional comments?
If you've read the author's novel, Crescent, you won't be disappointed; the atmosphere and food descriptions are as decadent and surrounding as before. It didn't suck me in right away but I was glad I stuck with it, the story gathers momentum, Avis, Brian, Felice, and Stanley's POVs twining together tighter and tighter, like hurricanes do. There are some difficult moments, of course, but they're done with careful treatment. I sped up the narration a few times, the narration getting a little too languorous, like the Miami heat was weighing down the pacing. Probably not for listening to with younger kids, there's some coarse language appropriate to the situations.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Julie
- 07-13-23
It was a great book
I truly hope the author writes another book in sequence to this one. I would love see the daughter turn her life around in the book! Just saying! Great book!
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