
Catalina
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
About this listen
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • A year in the life of the unforgettable Catalina Ituralde, a wickedly wry and heartbreakingly vulnerable student at an elite college, forced to navigate an opaque past, an uncertain future, tragedies on two continents, and the tantalizing possibilities of love and freedom
“[A] sparkling fiction debut.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)
“[A] fresh and unflinching take on the campus novel.”—People (Ten Best Books of the Year)
“Diabolically charming and magnetic.”—Ira Glass
FINALIST FOR THE PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARD • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time, The Washington Post, NPR, The Boston Globe, them
When Catalina is admitted to Harvard, it feels like the fulfillment of destiny: a miracle child escapes death in Latin America, moves to Queens to be raised by her undocumented grandparents, and becomes one of the chosen. But nothing is simple for Catalina, least of all her own complicated, contradictory, ruthlessly probing mind. Now a senior, she faces graduation to a world that has no place for the undocumented; her sense of doom intensifies her curiosities and desires. She infiltrates the school’s elite subcultures—internships and literary journals, posh parties and secret societies—which she observes with the eye of an anthropologist and an interloper’s skepticism: she is both fascinated and repulsed. Craving a great romance, Catalina finds herself drawn to a fellow student, an actual budding anthropologist eager to teach her about the Latin American world she was born into but never knew, even as her life back in Queens begins to unravel. And every day, the clock ticks closer to the abyss of life after graduation. Can she save her family? Can she save herself? What does it mean to be saved?
Brash and daring, part campus novel, part hagiography, part pop song, Catalina is unlike any coming-of-age novel you’ve ever listened to—and Catalina, bright and tragic, circled by a nimbus of chaotic energy, driven by a wild heart, is a character you will never forget.
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Critic reviews
“[A] sparkling fiction debut . . . Cornejo Villavicencio’s prose seduces her readers. . . . With this story and character, Cornejo Villavicencio asks: Who’s the real meritocrat at Harvard, where corporate scions and children of celebrities rule? Students like Catalina don’t sit at the table, Cornejo Villavicencio suggests, until they do. The author’s voice is strong but the social critique is stronger. . . . Through this story line, Cornejo Villavicencio revisits themes she covered in her nonfiction work, the National Book Award finalist The Undocumented Americans, but here, in Catalina, she enlarges her canvas, luxuriating in the freedom found in fiction. This talky, shrewd, irresistible protagonist deepens our understanding of how small slights and epic challenges mold an immigrant’s life.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s debut work of fiction captures the paradox of immigrant identity in the United States. . . . Cornejo Villavicencio’s fluid, digressive prose shines brightest when Catalina’s theatrical self-presentation takes center stage. . . . Cornejo Villavicencio delivers irrefutable proof that, when it comes to depicting courtship, she is a worthy student of Gabriel García Márquez.”—The Atlantic
“[A] fresh and unflinching take on the campus novel.”—People
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- By: Chloe Benjamin
- Narrated by: Maggie Hoffman
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
It's 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children - four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness - sneak out to hear their fortunes, A sweeping novel of remarkable ambition and depth, The Immortalists probes the line between destiny and choice, reality and illusion, this world and the next. It is a deeply moving testament to the power of story, the nature of belief, and the unrelenting pull of familial bonds.
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Warning to animal lovers
- By Sarah on 02-02-18
By: Chloe Benjamin
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The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina
- A Novel
- By: Zoraida Córdova
- Narrated by: Frankie Corzo
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Montoyas are used to a life without explanations. They know better than to ask why the pantry never seems to run low, or why their matriarch won’t ever leave their home in Four Rivers - not for graduations, weddings, or baptisms. But when Orquídea Divina invites them to her funeral and to collect their inheritance, they hope to learn the secrets that she has held onto so tightly their whole lives. Instead, Orquídea is transformed into a ceiba tree, leaving them with more questions than answers.
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Magical Realism Weirdness
- By @abagoflit on 09-08-21
By: Zoraida Córdova
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Cackle
- By: Rachel Harrison
- Narrated by: Dylan Moore
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
All her life, Annie has played it nice and safe. After being unceremoniously dumped by her longtime boyfriend, Annie seeks a fresh start. She accepts a teaching position that moves her from Manhattan to a small village upstate. She’s stunned by how perfect and picturesque the town is. The people are all friendly and warm. Her new apartment is dreamy too, minus the oddly persistent spider infestation. Then Annie meets Sophie. Beautiful, charming, magnetic Sophie, who takes a special interest in Annie, who wants to be her friend.
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Enjoyed it so much, I bought it twice.
- By Shayla Williams on 10-08-21
By: Rachel Harrison
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The Seventh Veil of Salome
- By: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
- Narrated by: Caitlin Kelly, Atlanta Amado, Victoria Villarreal, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
1950s Hollywood: Every actress wants to play Salome, the star-making role in a big-budget movie about the legendary woman whose story has inspired artists since ancient times. So when the film’s mercurial director casts Vera Larios, an unknown Mexican ingenue, in the lead role, she quickly becomes the talk of the town. Vera also becomes an object of envy for Nancy Hartley, a bit player whose career has stalled, and who will do anything to win the fame she believes she richly deserves.
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Well-told story, fantastic narration
- By A. Hernandez on 09-01-24
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Motherthing
- By: Ainslie Hogarth
- Narrated by: Adina Verson
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Ralph and Abby Lamb move in with Ralph’s mother, Laura, Abby hopes it’s just what she and her mother-in-law need to finally connect. After a traumatic childhood, Abby is desperate for a mother figure, especially now that she and Ralph are trying to become parents themselves. Abby just has so much love to give—to Ralph, to Laura, and to Mrs. Bondy, her favorite resident at the long-term care home where she works. But Laura isn’t interested in bonding with her daughter-in-law. She’s venomous and cruel, especially to Abby, and life with her is hellish.
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A great story with horrible narration
- By Calliope on 09-18-23
By: Ainslie Hogarth
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Blue Ruin
- A Novel
- By: Hari Kunzru
- Narrated by: Hari Kunzru
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Once, Jay was an artist. Shortly after graduating from his London art school, he was tipped for greatness, a promising career already taking shape before him. Now, undocumented in the United States, he lives out of his car and makes a living as an essential worker, delivering groceries in a wealthy area of upstate New York. The pandemic is still at its height—the greater public panicked in quarantine—and though he has returned to work, Jay hasn’t recovered from the effects of a recent COVID case.
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An excellent dead ringer of the ridiculous depths of the art world
- By JLB on 11-15-24
By: Hari Kunzru
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The Rich People Have Gone Away
- A Novel
- By: Regina Porter
- Narrated by: William DeMeritt, Shayna Small
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Brooklyn, 2020. Theo Harper and his pregnant wife, Darla, head upstate to their summer cottage to wait out the lockdown. Not everyone in their upscale Park Slope building has this privilege: not Xavier, the teenager in the Cardi B T-shirt, nor Darla’s best friend, Ruby, and her partner, Katsumi, who stay behind to save their Michelin-starred restaurant. During an upstate hike on the aptly named Devil’s Path, Theo divulges a long-held secret—and when Darla disappears after the ensuing argument, he finds himself the prime suspect.
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descriptions of food
- By Lilly Daniel on 08-16-24
By: Regina Porter
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The Bandit Queens
- A Novel
- By: Parini Shroff
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 13 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Five years ago, Geeta lost her no-good husband. As in, she actually lost him—he walked out on her and she has no idea where he is. But in her remote village in India, rumor has it that Geeta killed him. And it’s a rumor that just won’t die.
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Not great
- By Brandy T on 01-09-23
By: Parini Shroff
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Flights
- By: Olga Tokarczuk, Jennifer Croft - translator
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Chopin's heart is carried back to Warsaw in secret by his adoring sister. A woman must return to her native Poland in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart, and a young man slowly descends into madness when his wife and child mysteriously vanish during a vacation and just as suddenly reappear. Through these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time.
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Curious and beautifully written
- By Alejandra on 10-24-18
By: Olga Tokarczuk, and others
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Human Acts
- A Novel
- By: Han Kang, Deborah Smith
- Narrated by: Sandra Oh, Deborah Smith - introduction, Greta Jung, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Amid a violent student uprising in South Korea, a young boy named Dong-ho is shockingly killed. The story of this tragic episode unfolds in a sequence of interconnected chapters as the victims and the bereaved encounter suppression, denial, and the echoing agony of the massacre. From Dong-ho’s best friend; to an editor struggling against censorship; to a prisoner and a factory worker, each suffering from traumatic memories; and to Dong-ho's own grief-stricken mother; and through their collective heartbreak and acts of hope is the tale of a brutalized people in search of a voice.
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Watchout for female reading the boy's part ch. 1!!
- By Kais on 03-23-25
By: Han Kang, and others
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Loneliness & Company
- By: Charlee Dyroff
- Narrated by: Annalyse McCoy
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Lee knows she’s the best. A professor favorite and fellowship winner, there’s no doubt she’ll land one of the coveted jobs at a Big Five corporation. So when, upon graduating, Lee is instead assigned to an unknown company in the dead city of New York, her life goals are completely upended. In this new role, Lee’s task is to gather enough research to train an AI how to be a friend. She begins online and by studying the social circle of her clueless, outgoing roommate Veronika.
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Hang in there a bit if you're tempted to DNF
- By NMwritergal on 09-21-24
By: Charlee Dyroff
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Liars
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Manguso
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Jane, an aspiring writer, meets filmmaker John Bridges, they both want the same things: to be in love, to live a successful, creative life, and to be happy. When they marry, Jane believes she has found everything she was looking for, including—a few years later—all the attendant joys and labors of motherhood. But it’s not long until Jane finds herself subsumed by John’s ambitions, whims, and ego; in short, she becomes a wife.
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Beautiful
- By Heather Demeter on 08-05-24
By: Sarah Manguso
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The Undocumented Americans
- By: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
- Narrated by: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
- Length: 4 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Writer Karla Cornejo Villavicencio was on DACA when she decided to write about being undocumented for the first time using her own name. It was right after the election of 2016, the day she realized the story she'd tried to steer clear of was the only one she wanted to tell. So she wrote her immigration lawyer's phone number on her hand in Sharpie and embarked on a trip across the country to tell the stories of her fellow undocumented immigrants—and to find the hidden key to her own.
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Raw, heartbreaking - we can do better by others
- By RapaciousReader on 04-11-20
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Greenwood
- A Novel
- By: Michael Christie
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 18 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
It's 2038 and Jacinda (Jake) Greenwood is a storyteller and a liar, an overqualified tour guide babysitting ultra-rich vacationers in one of the world's last remaining forests. It's 2008 and Liam Greenwood is a carpenter, sprawled on his back after a workplace fall, calling out from the concrete floor of an empty mansion. It's 1974 and Willow Greenwood is out of jail, free after being locked up for one of her endless series of environmental protests: attempts at atonement for the sins of her father's once vast and violent timber empire.
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tedious boring trite
- By Marc Buchalter on 11-19-21
By: Michael Christie
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The House Is on Fire
- By: Rachel Beanland
- Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Andi Arndt, Michael Crouch, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Richmond, Virginia 1811. It’s the height of the winter social season, the General Assembly is in session, and many of Virginia’s gentleman planters, along with their wives and children, have made the journey to the capital. On the night after Christmas, the city's only theater is packed with holiday revelers. In the middle of a performance, the theater goes up in flames. Based on the true story of Richmond’s theater fire, The House Is on Fire offers proof that sometimes, in the midst of great tragedy, we are offered our most precious—and fleeting—chances at redemption.
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I learned a lot
- By Jane Perkins on 04-24-23
By: Rachel Beanland
Absolutely unforgettable experience!
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Brilliant
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Frivolity and nuance
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A splendid read on Audible
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Monotone delivery
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