
Blood Test
A Comedy
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Narrated by:
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Rob Shapiro
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By:
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Charles Baxter
About this listen
From the winner of the PEN/Malamud Award and “one of our most gifted writers” (Chicago Tribune) comes a comic novel about a divorced Midwestern dad who takes a cutting-edge medical test and learns that he has a predisposition to murder.
In this fresh take on love and trouble in America, Brock Hobson, an insurance salesman and Sunday-school teacher, finds his equilibrium disturbed by the results of a predictive blood test. Baxter, a master storyteller, brings us a gradually building rollercoaster narrative, and a protagonist who is impertinent, searching, and hilariously relatable. From his good-as-gold, gentle girlfriend to the macho subcontractor guy his ex-wife left him for, not to mention his well-raised teenage kids, now exploring sex and sexuality, the secondary characters in Brock's life all contribute meaningfully to the drama, as increasing challenges to his sense of self and purpose crash over him. The final battle—no spoilers, but there is one—couldn't be more delightful, as this quick and bracing novel reminds us to choose the best people to love, accept the ones we love even if we didn’t choose them, and love them all well.
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Critic reviews
“Riotously funny. . . . At its core, this is a disarmingly sweet novel about family, an entertainment with just the right amount of Midwestern menace.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Baxter’s sharp observations and ear for dialogue are on full display.” —Publishers Weekly
“Blood Test is a funny, morally luminous, altogether irresistible caper that somehow, wonderfully, calls to mind both Nietzsche and Charles Portis. What a maestro Charles Baxter is.” —Joseph O'Neill, author of Godwin
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September 1913. A young Pole suffering from tuberculosis arrives at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse for Gentlemen in the village of Görbersdorf, a health resort in the Silesian mountains. Every evening the residents gather to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur and debate the great issues of the day: Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women born inferior? War or peace? Meanwhile, disturbing things are happening in the guesthouse and the surrounding hills. Someone—or something—seems to be watching, attempting to infiltrate this cloistered world.
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Never ending Misogyny
- By Nina O on 10-11-24
By: Olga Tokarczuk
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Entitlement
- A Novel
- By: Rumaan Alam
- Narrated by: Nicole Lewis
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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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?
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so disappointing
- By K. Wagner on 09-22-24
By: Rumaan Alam
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My Darling Boy
- A Novel
- By: John Dufresne
- Narrated by: Kyle Snyder
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Known for his tragicomic voice and unforgettable characters, John Dufresne tells the story of Olney, whose beloved son, Cully, collapses into addiction and vanishes into the chaotic netherworld of southern Florida. Aided by his terminally ill girlfriend and the colorful inhabitants of a local motel—including a doomsday prepper, an ex-nun, a pair of blind twins with an acute sense of smell, and a devoutly Catholic shelter worker—Olney sets out to save his son.
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Ulny and Cully. a Father and his Son
- By QueeneB21 on 04-06-25
By: John Dufresne
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A Pair of Wings
- A Novel
- By: Carole Hopson
- Narrated by: Alaska Jackson
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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A few years after the Wright brothers’ first flight, Bessie was working the Texas cotton fields with her family when an airplane flew over their heads. It buzzed so low she thought she could catch it in her hands. Bessie was fearless. She knew there was freedom in those wings. The daughter of a woman born into slavery, Bessie answers the call of the Great Migration. She moves to Chicago, where she wins the backing of two wealthy, powerful Black men—Robert Abbott, creator and publisher of the Chicago Defender, and Jesse Binga, the founder of Chicago’s first Black bank.
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Wind beneath my wings
- By Patrice Hagans on 03-29-25
By: Carole Hopson
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The Impossible Man
- Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius
- By: Patchen Barss
- Narrated by: Jonathan Beville
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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When he was six years old, Roger Penrose discovered a sundial in a clearing near his house. Through that machine made of light, shadow, and time, Roger glimpsed a “world behind the world” of transcendently beautiful geometry. It spurred him on a journey to become one of the world’s most influential mathematicians, philosophers, and physicists. Penrose would prove the limitations of general relativity, set a new agenda for theoretical physics, and astound colleagues and admirers with the elegance and beauty of his discoveries.
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Flawed
- By Michael on 01-12-25
By: Patchen Barss
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Bright Objects
- By: Ruby Todd
- Narrated by: Casey Withoos
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Sylvia Knight is losing hope that the person who killed her husband will ever face justice. Since the night of the hit-and-run, her world has been shrouded in hazy darkness—until she meets Theo St. John, the discoverer of a rare comet soon to be visible to the naked eye. As the comet begins to brighten, Sylvia wonders what the apparition might signify. She is soon drawn into the orbit of local mystic Joseph Evans, who believes the comet’s arrival is nothing short of a divine message.
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what an incredible read
- By Ben Johnson on 09-26-24
By: Ruby Todd
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Lazarus Man
- A Novel
- By: Richard Price
- Narrated by: Robb Moreira
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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East Harlem, 2008. In an instant, a five-story tenement collapses into a fuming hill of rubble, pancaking the cars parked in front and coating the street with a thick layer of ash. As the city’s rescue services and media outlets respond, the surrounding neighborhood descends into chaos. At day’s end, six bodies are recovered, but many of the other tenants are missing. In Lazarus Man, Richard Price, one of the greatest chroniclers of life in urban America, creates intertwining portraits of a group of compelling and singular characters whose lives are permanently impacted by the disaster.
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Did not hold together
- By M. Wagstaff on 12-02-24
By: Richard Price
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The Repeat Room
- A Novel
- By: Jesse Ball
- Narrated by: Erik Bloomquist
- Length: 4 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In a speculative future, Abel, a menial worker, is called to serve in a secretive and fabled jury system. At the heart of this system is the repeat room, where a single juror, selected from hundreds of candidates, is able to inhabit the defendant's lived experience, to see as if through their eyes.
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kept me engaged
- By Nia S on 04-07-25
By: Jesse Ball
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Curdle Creek
- A Novel
- By: Yvonne Battle-Felton
- Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Welcome to Curdle Creek, a place just dying to make you feel at home. Osira, a forty-five-year-old widow, is an obedient follower of the strict conventions of Curdle Creek, an all-Black town in rural America stuck in the past and governed by a tradition of ominous rituals. Osira is considered blessed, but her luck changes when her children flee, she comes second to last in the Running of the Widows and her father flees when his name is called in the annual Moving On ceremony.
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depressing
- By Lydia Granda on 01-28-25
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Fire Exit
- By: Morgan Talty
- Narrated by: Darrell Dennis
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Wonderful story about love, family , truth and deception and identity
- By ReallyNelie on 06-23-24
By: Morgan Talty
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Caledonian Road
- A Novel
- By: Andrew O'Hagan
- Narrated by: Michael Abubakar
- Length: 22 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Campbell Flynn, art historian, professor, and fêted fixture of the literati, always knew that when his life came crashing down, it would happen in public—yet he never imagined that a single year in London would expose so much. He’s never taken other people half as seriously as they take themselves, which is the first of his mistakes. The second is a new project: opportunistic and precisely calibrated to rake in a fortune.
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The best audiobook I have ever listened to
- By Samuel Barker on 07-31-24
By: Andrew O'Hagan
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Life as No One Knows It
- The Physics of Life's Emergence
- By: Sara Imari Walker
- Narrated by: Sara Imari Walker
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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What is life? This is among the most difficult open problems in science, right up there with the nature of consciousness and the existence of matter. All the definitions we have fall short. None help us understand how life originates or the full range of possibilities for what life on other planets might look like. In Life as No One Knows It, physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker argues that solving the origin of life requires radical new thinking and an experimentally testable theory for what life is.
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Fascinating thought patterns
- By John linden on 09-10-24
What listeners say about Blood Test
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Ron Rude
- 03-14-25
I didn’t hate it, but don’t recommend it
The reader is good, performing the different characters using consistent tones of voice. The story meanders and never really goes anywhere. I know it’s supposed to be a commentary on something - the way we live or what is truly important, I don’t know - but this style didn’t resonate with me. It was not funny, as reviewed, and there were many parts that were too long and it skipped around, as if the author got tired of writing one part, so just moved to something else. I finished it, but I don’t recommend it. Time is finite - spend it listening to something more enjoyable.
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- Berbee
- 11-17-24
Lack of story progression
I found this a disjointed and poorly developed storyline. Characters were not relatable and showed no growth. A waste of time and money for me. I certainly wouldn’t call it a comedy.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Benjamin Self
- 02-28-25
A funny, weird, satire with heart
Baxter is a very clever, skillful writer and storyteller, and much of this story feels tongue-in-cheek. He definitely leaves you guessing about how you should actually feel about the narrator and about where the story is going. I was worried it was going to end in a bloodbath like The Bee Sting, but thankfully it did not. If anything the ending feels oddly hopeful. The narrator is basically a self-righteous, tight-assed douchebag who, over the course of the story, you actually learn to love and root for. Which is often how I feel about myself, so the fact that it ends more in family farce than tragedy feels somehow both encouraging and heartwarming.
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- BallerinaAstronaut
- 10-31-24
Creepy.. and also boring as hell
in a starting chapter main character in the first person is too creepy, commenting on specific sounds his teen daughter makes frequently during sex in his house, What “Dad” character does anyone want to hear saying that sort of thing. Trudged thru 7 chapters so far and while it is less creepy it is more dull. Never going to listen to NPR recommendations for books again. 2nd time I wasted money on something that they labelled as “comedic” that has no joy,
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2 people found this helpful
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- Kristen Finley
- 11-21-24
Read only if you don’t want to like one single character
I saw this recommended in a readers digest as something funny. It is not. I could not identify with any character. They were not amusing or interesting or in the least bit likable. I feel like I wasted my money and my time with this one. This is probably the first book review I’ve ever done, but it has weighed on my conscience that I need to put this review out there so no one else foolishly purchases this book in any format.
And I normally love most books that fall into a humor or comedy category. I would not recommend this book to a soul. Steer clear and save your money.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Philip K. Edwards
- 03-13-25
Terrible book
One of the worst books I've ever tried to read. Comedy? No. If the story were to work at all, and it doesn't, it might work as a cautionary tale. How this got touted as something I, or anybody, might enjoy is a travesty of rating.
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