
Cinema Love
A Novel
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $18.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Samantha Tan
-
By:
-
Jiaming Tang
About this listen
Winner of the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction
Winner of the Ferro-Grumley award for LGBTQ Fiction
Finalist for the 2025 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
Longlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award
A Dakota Johnson x TeaTime Book Club Pick
“Part ghost story, part love story, and part tale of hardscrabble immigrant life.” —The New Yorker
A staggering, tender epic about gay men in rural China and the women who marry them.
For over thirty years, Old Second and Bao Mei have cobbled together a meager existence in New York City’s Chinatown. But unlike other couples, these two share an unusual past. In rural Fuzhou, before they emigrated, they frequented the Workers’ Cinema: a theater where gay men cruised for love.
While classic war films played, Old Second and his countrymen found intimacy in the screening rooms. In the box office, Bao Mei sold movie tickets to closeted men, guarding their secrets and finding her own happiness with the projectionist. But when Old Second’s passion for his male lover is revealed, a series of haunting events unfold, propelling these characters toward an uncertain future in America.
Spanning three timelines—post-socialist China, 1980s Chinatown, and contemporary New York—Cinema Love is an “exceptional" and "moving” (Alice Hoffman) epic about men and women who find themselves in forbidden relationships; the weight of secrets; and the way memory forever haunts the present.©2024 Jiaming Tang (P)2024 Penguin Audio
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Loves of My Life
- A Sex Memoir
- By: Edmund White
- Narrated by: Joel Froomkin
- Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Written with White’s signature honesty, irreverence, and wit, The Loves of My Life is the culmination of a legend's life and work, a delightful and moving tour of over seventy years of being unabashedly gay and in love with love in all its forms.
-
-
Does not compare favorably to White's other books
- By Reader X on 04-03-25
By: Edmund White
-
Headshot
- A Novel
- By: Rita Bullwinkel
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An unexpected tragedy at a community pool. A family’s unrelenting expectation of victory. The desire to gain or lose control; to make time speed up or stop; to be frighteningly, undeniably good at something. Each of the eight teenage girl boxers in this blistering debut novel has her own reasons for the sacrifices she has made to come to Reno, Nevada, to compete to be named the best in the country.
-
-
Wonderful Narrator
- By love it on 08-09-24
By: Rita Bullwinkel
-
Some Strange Music Draws Me In
- A Novel
- By: Griffin Hansbury
- Narrated by: Petey Gibson
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s the summer of 1984 in Swaffham, Massachusetts, when Mel (short for Melanie) meets Sylvia, a tough-as-nails trans woman whose shameless swagger inspires Mel’s dawning self-awareness. But Sylvia’s presence sparks fury among her neighbors and throws Mel into conflict with her mother and best friend. Decades later, in 2019, Max (formerly Mel) is on probation from his teaching job for, ironically, defying speech codes around trans identity. Back in Swaffham, he must navigate life as part of a fractured family and face his own role in the disasters of the past.
-
-
A must read
- By Amazon Customer on 06-21-25
By: Griffin Hansbury
-
The Anthropologists
- By: Aysegül Savas
- Narrated by: Kathryn Aboya
- Length: 4 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Asya and Manu are looking at apartments, envisioning their future in a foreign city. What should their life here look like? What rituals will structure their days? Whom can they consider family? As the young couple dreams about the possibilities of each new listing, Asya, a documentarian, gathers footage from the neighborhood like an anthropologist observing local customs. “Forget about daily life,” chides her grandmother on the phone. “We named you for a whole continent and you’re filming a park.”
-
-
Can't say it's good
- By Moraz on 12-22-24
By: Aysegül Savas
-
Hombrecito
- A Novel
- By: Santiago Jose Sanchez
- Narrated by: André Santana
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this groundbreaking novel, Santiago Jose Sanchez plunges us into the heart of one boy’s life. His mother takes him and his brother from Colombia to America, leaving their absent father behind but essentially disappearing herself once they get to Miami. In America, his mother works as a waitress when she was once a doctor. The boy embraces his queer identity as wholeheartedly as he embraces his new home, but not without a sense of loss.
-
-
Beautifully written! 😍
- By Dan DuPraw on 04-29-25
-
The Scapegoat
- The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham
- By: Lucy Hughes-Hallett
- Narrated by: Lucy Hughes-Hallett
- Length: 25 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As King James I’s favorite, Buckingham was also his confidant, gatekeeper, advisor and lover. When Charles I succeeded his father, he was similarly enthralled and made Buckingham his best friend and mentor. A dazzling figure on horseback and a skilful player of the political game, Buckingham rapidly transformed the influence his beauty gave him into immense wealth and power. He became one of the most flamboyant and enigmatic Englishmen at the heart of seventeenth-century royal and political life.
-
-
Perfect
- By Greg Murphy on 03-13-25
-
The Loves of My Life
- A Sex Memoir
- By: Edmund White
- Narrated by: Joel Froomkin
- Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Written with White’s signature honesty, irreverence, and wit, The Loves of My Life is the culmination of a legend's life and work, a delightful and moving tour of over seventy years of being unabashedly gay and in love with love in all its forms.
-
-
Does not compare favorably to White's other books
- By Reader X on 04-03-25
By: Edmund White
-
Headshot
- A Novel
- By: Rita Bullwinkel
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An unexpected tragedy at a community pool. A family’s unrelenting expectation of victory. The desire to gain or lose control; to make time speed up or stop; to be frighteningly, undeniably good at something. Each of the eight teenage girl boxers in this blistering debut novel has her own reasons for the sacrifices she has made to come to Reno, Nevada, to compete to be named the best in the country.
-
-
Wonderful Narrator
- By love it on 08-09-24
By: Rita Bullwinkel
-
Some Strange Music Draws Me In
- A Novel
- By: Griffin Hansbury
- Narrated by: Petey Gibson
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s the summer of 1984 in Swaffham, Massachusetts, when Mel (short for Melanie) meets Sylvia, a tough-as-nails trans woman whose shameless swagger inspires Mel’s dawning self-awareness. But Sylvia’s presence sparks fury among her neighbors and throws Mel into conflict with her mother and best friend. Decades later, in 2019, Max (formerly Mel) is on probation from his teaching job for, ironically, defying speech codes around trans identity. Back in Swaffham, he must navigate life as part of a fractured family and face his own role in the disasters of the past.
-
-
A must read
- By Amazon Customer on 06-21-25
By: Griffin Hansbury
-
The Anthropologists
- By: Aysegül Savas
- Narrated by: Kathryn Aboya
- Length: 4 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Asya and Manu are looking at apartments, envisioning their future in a foreign city. What should their life here look like? What rituals will structure their days? Whom can they consider family? As the young couple dreams about the possibilities of each new listing, Asya, a documentarian, gathers footage from the neighborhood like an anthropologist observing local customs. “Forget about daily life,” chides her grandmother on the phone. “We named you for a whole continent and you’re filming a park.”
-
-
Can't say it's good
- By Moraz on 12-22-24
By: Aysegül Savas
-
Hombrecito
- A Novel
- By: Santiago Jose Sanchez
- Narrated by: André Santana
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this groundbreaking novel, Santiago Jose Sanchez plunges us into the heart of one boy’s life. His mother takes him and his brother from Colombia to America, leaving their absent father behind but essentially disappearing herself once they get to Miami. In America, his mother works as a waitress when she was once a doctor. The boy embraces his queer identity as wholeheartedly as he embraces his new home, but not without a sense of loss.
-
-
Beautifully written! 😍
- By Dan DuPraw on 04-29-25
-
The Scapegoat
- The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham
- By: Lucy Hughes-Hallett
- Narrated by: Lucy Hughes-Hallett
- Length: 25 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As King James I’s favorite, Buckingham was also his confidant, gatekeeper, advisor and lover. When Charles I succeeded his father, he was similarly enthralled and made Buckingham his best friend and mentor. A dazzling figure on horseback and a skilful player of the political game, Buckingham rapidly transformed the influence his beauty gave him into immense wealth and power. He became one of the most flamboyant and enigmatic Englishmen at the heart of seventeenth-century royal and political life.
-
-
Perfect
- By Greg Murphy on 03-13-25
-
The Boy in the Rain
- By: Stephanie Cowell
- Narrated by: Philip Battley
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is 1903 in the English countryside when Robbie, a shy young art student, meets the twenty-nine-year-old Anton who is running from memories of his brutal childhood and failed marriage. Within months, they begin a love affair that will never let them go. Robbie grows into an accomplished portraitist in the vivid London art world with the help of Anton's enchanting former wife, while Anton turns from his inherited wealth and connections to improve the conditions of the poor.
-
-
An entrancing, unforgettable journey into the past
- By echolocation345 on 09-08-23
By: Stephanie Cowell
-
The Emperor of Gladness
- A Novel
- By: Ocean Vuong
- Narrated by: James Aaron Oh
- Length: 14 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak.
-
-
Compelling characters, hopeful and sad
- By MB on 05-20-25
By: Ocean Vuong
-
Solenoid
- By: Mircea Cărtărescu, Sean Cotter - translator
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 34 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Based on Cartarescu's own role as a high school teacher, Solenoid begins with the mundane details of a diarist's life and quickly spirals into a philosophical account of life, history, philosophy, and mathematics. One character asks another: when you rush into the burning building, will you save the newborn or the artwork? On a broad scale, the novel's investigations of other universes, dimensions, and timelines reconcile the realms of life and art.
-
-
Our Universal Phantasmagoria
- By Isaac Linder on 03-11-24
By: Mircea Cărtărescu, and others
-
A Wrinkle in Time Archival Edition: Read by the Author
- A Wrinkle in Time Quintet, Book 1
- By: Madeleine L'Engle
- Narrated by: Madeleine L'Engle
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In honor of Madeleine L'Engle's 100th birthday, fans are invited to enjoy this archival audiobook, originally recorded in 1993 and newly restored! Listen to the voice of the author as Madeleine L'Engle reads her Newbery Medal-winning novel A Wrinkle in Time.
-
-
Waiting a long time
- By Rj on 08-30-20
-
You Dreamed of Empires
- A Novel
- By: Álvaro Enrigue, Natasha Wimmer - translator
- Narrated by: Gabriel Porras
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés enters the city of Tenochtitlan – today's Mexico City. Later that day, he will meet the emperor Moctezuma in a collision of two worlds, two empires, two languages, two possible futures.
-
-
Confusing and Difficult to Understand
- By francine steelman on 03-02-24
By: Álvaro Enrigue, and others
-
Arthur and Teddy Are Coming Out
- By: Ryan Love
- Narrated by: Bruce Alexander, Caius Nicholas
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When 79-year-old Arthur Edwards gathers his family together to share some important news, no one is prepared for the bombshell he drops: he's gay, and after a lifetime in the closet, he's finally ready to come out. Arthur's 21-year-old grandson, Teddy, has a secret of his own: he's also gay, and developing serious feelings for his colleague Ben. But Teddy doesn't feel ready to come out yet – especially when Arthur’s announcement causes shockwaves in the family.
-
-
Unique and Lovely Story
- By Kevin LS on 08-30-24
By: Ryan Love
-
Beautyland
- By: Marie-Helene Bertino
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she's different: she possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of earthlings.
-
-
Unforgettable
- By Amazon Customer on 02-04-24
-
Go Tell It on the Mountain
- A Novel (Vintage International)
- By: James Baldwin, Roxane Gay - introduction
- Narrated by: Roxane Gay, Joe Morton
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Originally published in 1953, Go Tell It on the Mountain was James Baldwin's first major work, based in part on his own childhood in Harlem. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a Pentecostal storefront church in Harlem.
-
-
Haunting
- By DAN on 08-22-24
By: James Baldwin, and others
-
Mothers and Sons
- A Novel
- By: Adam Haslett
- Narrated by: Andrew Gibson, Janet Metzger
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At forty, Peter, an asylum lawyer in New York City, is overworked and isolated. He spends his days immersed in the struggles of immigrants only to return to an empty apartment and occasional hook-ups with a man who wants more than Peter can give. But when the asylum case of a young gay man pierces Peter's numbness, the event that he has avoided for twenty years returns to haunt him. Ann, his mother, who runs a women's retreat center she founded after leaving his father, is wounded by the estrangement from Peter but cherishes the world she has built.
-
-
Good multiple narrators. Tiresome characters.
- By CoastalReader on 02-20-25
By: Adam Haslett
-
Didion and Babitz
- By: Lili Anolik
- Narrated by: Lili Anolik, Emma Roberts
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Could you write what you write if you weren’t so tiny, Joan? —Eve Babitz, in a letter to Joan Didion, 1972. Joan Didion, revealed at last… Eve Babitz died on December 17, 2021. Found in the wrack, ruin, and filth of her apartment, a stack of boxes packed by her mother decades before. The boxes were pristine, the seals of duct tape unbroken. Inside, a lost world. This world turned for a certain number of years in the late sixties and early seventies, and centered on a two-story rental in a down-at-heel section of Hollywood.
-
-
I’m still Team Joan
- By Dorothy L. Lipman on 11-16-24
By: Lili Anolik
-
My Friends
- A Novel
- By: Hisham Matar
- Narrated by: Hisham Matar
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One evening, as a young boy growing up in Benghazi, Khaled hears a bizarre short story read aloud on the radio, about a man being eaten alive by a cat, and has the sense that his life has been changed forever. Obsessed by the power of those words—and by their enigmatic author, Hosam Zowa—Khaled eventually embarks on a journey that will take him far from home, to pursue a life of the mind at the University of Edinburgh.
-
-
Beautifully written
- By Anonymous User on 06-24-24
By: Hisham Matar
-
Our Evenings
- A Novel
- By: Alan Hollinghurst
- Narrated by: Prasanna Puwanarajah
- Length: 16 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dave Win, the son of a Burmese man he’s never met and a British dressmaker, is thirteen years old when he gets a scholarship to a top boarding school. With the doors of elite English society cracked open for him, heady new possibilities emerge, even as Dave is exposed to the envy and viciousness of his wealthy classmates.
-
-
Sublime Collaboration
- By Phip Herrick on 11-20-24
Critic reviews
Most Anticipated by Read Between the Spines, Book Riot, LGBTQ Reads, Debutiful, SheKnows, and Write or Die
A Library Journal Editors' Pick
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Dominoes
- A Novel
- By: Phoebe McIntosh
- Narrated by: Phoebe McIntosh
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dominoes opens in London, twenty-nine days before a young couple’s wedding. Layla is a mixed-race woman—with a Black, Jamaican mother, and a white father she’s never met—and Andy is a white man of Scottish descent. When they first meet at a party, they can’t believe how instant their chemistry is, and how quickly their relationship unfolds. Funnily enough, they even share a last name: McKinnon.
-
-
Good storyline, character development, and author reading.
- By Cammy Charcoal on 09-04-24
By: Phoebe McIntosh
-
The Spoiled Heart
- A Novel
- By: Sunjeev Sahota
- Narrated by: Esh Alladi
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nayan Olak keeps seeing Helen Fletcher around town. She’s returned with her teenage son to live in the run-down house at the end of the lane, and—though she’s strangely guarded—Nayan can’t help but be drawn to her. He hasn’t risked love since losing his young family in a terrible accident twenty years earlier.
-
-
The Political Gets Personal
- By David on 09-20-24
By: Sunjeev Sahota
-
Whoever You Are, Honey
- A Novel
- By: Olivia Gatwood
- Narrated by: Olivia Gatwood
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the Santa Cruz, California, waterfront, every house is a flawless glass monolith. Except for one. In a dilapidated bungalow, Mitty and her elderly roommate, Bethel, are the oddball pair who represent the last vestiges of a free-spirited town taken over by the tech elite. But their lives are about to be forever changed when a new couple, Sebastian and Lena, move in next door. Sebastian is a renowned tech founder and Lena is his girlfriend. But Lena has secrets; she feels uneasy about her oddly spotty memory and is growing increasingly wary of the way Sebastian controls their relationship.
-
-
Interesting…..but kept me listening
- By Kate on 04-10-25
By: Olivia Gatwood
-
Ex Libris
- 100+ Books to Read and Reread
- By: Michiko Kakutani
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“Books can connect people across time zones and zip codes, across cultures, national boundaries, and historical eras”, Kakutani writes in her introduction to Ex Libris. Here listeners will discover novels and memoirs by some of the most gifted writers working today; favorite classics worth listening or relistening; and nonfiction works, both old and new, that illuminate our social and political landscape and some of today’s most pressing issues, from climate change to medicine to the consequences of digital innovation.
By: Michiko Kakutani
-
Shiner
- A Novel
- By: Amy Jo Burns
- Narrated by: Catherine Taber
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An hour from the closest West Virginia mining town, 15-year-old Wren Bird lives in a cloistered mountain cabin with her parents. Every Sunday, Wren's father delivers winding sermons in an abandoned gas station. But over the course of one summer, a miracle performed by Wren's father quickly turns to tragedy. As the order of her world begins to shatter, Wren must uncover the truth of her father's mysterious legend and her mother's harrowing history and complex bond with her best friend.
-
-
Victim complexes extraordinaire
- By Dora on 08-21-20
By: Amy Jo Burns
-
The Tie That Binds
- By: Kent Haruf
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Colorado, January 1977. Eighty-year-old Edith Goodnough lies in a hospital bed, IV taped to the back of her hand, police officer at her door. She is charged with murder. The clues: a sack of chicken feed slit with a knife, a milky-eyed dog tied outdoors one cold afternoon. The motives: the brutal business of farming and a family code of ethics as unforgiving as the winter prairie itself.
-
-
Sad, No Real Conclusion and Pointless
- By Debbie on 03-28-24
By: Kent Haruf
-
Dominoes
- A Novel
- By: Phoebe McIntosh
- Narrated by: Phoebe McIntosh
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dominoes opens in London, twenty-nine days before a young couple’s wedding. Layla is a mixed-race woman—with a Black, Jamaican mother, and a white father she’s never met—and Andy is a white man of Scottish descent. When they first meet at a party, they can’t believe how instant their chemistry is, and how quickly their relationship unfolds. Funnily enough, they even share a last name: McKinnon.
-
-
Good storyline, character development, and author reading.
- By Cammy Charcoal on 09-04-24
By: Phoebe McIntosh
-
The Spoiled Heart
- A Novel
- By: Sunjeev Sahota
- Narrated by: Esh Alladi
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nayan Olak keeps seeing Helen Fletcher around town. She’s returned with her teenage son to live in the run-down house at the end of the lane, and—though she’s strangely guarded—Nayan can’t help but be drawn to her. He hasn’t risked love since losing his young family in a terrible accident twenty years earlier.
-
-
The Political Gets Personal
- By David on 09-20-24
By: Sunjeev Sahota
-
Whoever You Are, Honey
- A Novel
- By: Olivia Gatwood
- Narrated by: Olivia Gatwood
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the Santa Cruz, California, waterfront, every house is a flawless glass monolith. Except for one. In a dilapidated bungalow, Mitty and her elderly roommate, Bethel, are the oddball pair who represent the last vestiges of a free-spirited town taken over by the tech elite. But their lives are about to be forever changed when a new couple, Sebastian and Lena, move in next door. Sebastian is a renowned tech founder and Lena is his girlfriend. But Lena has secrets; she feels uneasy about her oddly spotty memory and is growing increasingly wary of the way Sebastian controls their relationship.
-
-
Interesting…..but kept me listening
- By Kate on 04-10-25
By: Olivia Gatwood
-
Ex Libris
- 100+ Books to Read and Reread
- By: Michiko Kakutani
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“Books can connect people across time zones and zip codes, across cultures, national boundaries, and historical eras”, Kakutani writes in her introduction to Ex Libris. Here listeners will discover novels and memoirs by some of the most gifted writers working today; favorite classics worth listening or relistening; and nonfiction works, both old and new, that illuminate our social and political landscape and some of today’s most pressing issues, from climate change to medicine to the consequences of digital innovation.
By: Michiko Kakutani
-
Shiner
- A Novel
- By: Amy Jo Burns
- Narrated by: Catherine Taber
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An hour from the closest West Virginia mining town, 15-year-old Wren Bird lives in a cloistered mountain cabin with her parents. Every Sunday, Wren's father delivers winding sermons in an abandoned gas station. But over the course of one summer, a miracle performed by Wren's father quickly turns to tragedy. As the order of her world begins to shatter, Wren must uncover the truth of her father's mysterious legend and her mother's harrowing history and complex bond with her best friend.
-
-
Victim complexes extraordinaire
- By Dora on 08-21-20
By: Amy Jo Burns
-
The Tie That Binds
- By: Kent Haruf
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Colorado, January 1977. Eighty-year-old Edith Goodnough lies in a hospital bed, IV taped to the back of her hand, police officer at her door. She is charged with murder. The clues: a sack of chicken feed slit with a knife, a milky-eyed dog tied outdoors one cold afternoon. The motives: the brutal business of farming and a family code of ethics as unforgiving as the winter prairie itself.
-
-
Sad, No Real Conclusion and Pointless
- By Debbie on 03-28-24
By: Kent Haruf
-
Four Squares
- By: Bobby Finger
- Narrated by: David Pittu
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1992, on his thirtieth birthday, Artie Anderson meets the man who will change his life. Artie spends his days at a tedious advertising job, finding relief in the corner of New York City he can call his own, even as the queer community is still being ravaged by HIV. But when his birthday celebration brings Artie and his friends to his favorite bar, a chance encounter with Abe, an uptight lawyer and Artie’s opposite in almost every way, pushes Artie to want, and to ask for, more for himself.
-
-
Subtle, heart wrenching, excellent writing
- By Anonymous User on 07-09-24
By: Bobby Finger
-
Real Life
- A Novel
- By: Brandon Taylor
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Almost everything about Wallace is at odds with the Midwestern university town where he is working uneasily toward a biochem degree. An introverted young man from Alabama, black and queer, he has left behind his family without escaping the long shadows of his childhood. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends—some dating each other, some dating women, some feigning straightness.
-
-
Not My Gay Real Life
- By Haynes on 02-29-20
By: Brandon Taylor
-
12 to 22
- POV You Wake Up in the Future!
- By: Jen Calonita
- Narrated by: Ellen Quay
- Length: 5 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Turning 12 1/2 shouldn't be the most exciting birthday in the world. It's a half birthday after all. But Harper is thrilled because she is getting the biggest gift of all: her parent's approval to finally get social media accounts.
-
-
It’s amazing
- By amy on 05-04-25
By: Jen Calonita
-
The Borrower
- A Novel
- By: Rebecca Makkai
- Narrated by: Kristen Sieh
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lucy Hull, a young children's librarian in Hannibal, Missouri, finds herself both a kidnapper and kidnapped when her favorite patron, 10-year-old Ian Drake, runs away from home. The precocious Ian is addicted to reading but needs Lucy's help to smuggle books past his overbearing mother, who has enrolled Ian in weekly antigay classes with celebrity Pastor Bob. Lucy stumbles into a moral dilemma when she finds Ian camped out in the library after hours with a knapsack of provisions and an escape plan.
-
-
Great story and great performance!
- By Anonymous User on 01-29-21
By: Rebecca Makkai
-
Say Hello to My Little Friend
- By: Jennine Capó Crucet
- Narrated by: Krizia Bajos
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Failed Pitbull impersonator Ismael Reyes—you can call him Izzy—might not be the Scarface type, but why should that keep him from trying? Growing up in Miami has shaped him into someone who dreams of being the King of the 305, with the money, power, and respect he assumes comes with it. After finding himself at the mercy of a cease-and-desist letter from Pitbull’s legal team and living in his aunt’s garage, Izzy embarks on an absurd quest to turn himself into a modern-day Tony Montana.
-
-
Solid weird book
- By D B on 02-21-25
-
Between You and Us
- A Novel
- By: Kendra Broekhuis
- Narrated by: Anna Caputo
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Leona Warlon heads across the city to meet her husband, David, for a rare dinner out, she hopes they can share a moment of relief after their year of loss. But Leona quickly realizes this is no ordinary date night. She hasn’t just stepped into an upscale ristorante; she’s stepped into a different version of her life. One in which her marriage is no longer tender, in which her days are pressured by her powerful in-laws, and in which her precious baby girl lived.
-
-
Such a great book!!
- By Mykayla Johnson on 10-10-24
By: Kendra Broekhuis
-
Swimming in Paris
- A Life in Three Stories
- By: Colombe Schneck, Lauren Elkin - translator, Natasha Lehrer - translator
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 5 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Seventeen, Friendship, and Swimming, Colombe Schneck orchestrates a coming-of-age in three movements. Beautiful, masterfully controlled, yet filled with pathos, they invite the listener into a decades-long evolution of sexuality, bodily autonomy, friendship, and loss.
-
-
a chronicle of transitions
- By Amazon Customer on 05-30-24
By: Colombe Schneck, and others
-
The Old Place
- By: Bobby Finger
- Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Billington, Texas, is a place where nothing changes. Well, almost nothing. For the first time in nearly four decades, Mary Alice Roth is not getting ready for the first day of school at Billington High. A few months into her retirement—or, district mandated exile as she calls it—Mary Alice does not know how to fill her days.
-
-
I heard the author on a podcast and...
- By Brenda on 10-01-22
By: Bobby Finger
-
The Book of Fire
- A Novel
- By: Christy Lefteri
- Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In present-day Greece, deep in an ancient forest, lives a family: Irini, a musician, who teaches children to read and play music; her husband, Tasso, who paints pictures of the forest, his greatest muse; and Chara, their young daughter, whose name means joy. On the fateful day that will forever alter the trajectory of their lives, flames chase fleeing birds across the sky. The wildfire that will consume their home, and their lives as they know it, races toward them.
-
-
Disappointment
- By Anonymous User on 01-27-24
By: Christy Lefteri
-
Holler, Child
- Stories
- By: LaToya Watkins
- Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Aaron Goodson, JD Jackson, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Holler, Child’s eleven brilliant stories, LaToya Watkins presses at the bruises of guilt, love, and circumstance. Each story introduces us to a character irrevocably shaped by place and reaching toward something—hope, reconciliation, freedom. In “Cutting Horse,” the appearance of a horse in a man’s suburban backyard places a former horse breeder in trouble with the police. In “Holler, Child,” a mother is forced into an impossible position when her son gets in a kind of trouble she knows too well from the other side.
-
-
Great book and readers
- By Paula C. Brancato on 08-10-24
By: LaToya Watkins
-
I Will Greet the Sun Again
- A Novel
- By: Khashayar J. Khabushani
- Narrated by: Sean Rohani
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Growing up in the San Fernando Valley with his two brothers, all K wants is to be “a boy from L.A.,” all American. But K—the youngest, named after a Persian king—knows there’s something different about himself. Like the way he feels about his closest friend, Johnny, a longing that he can’t share with anyone.
-
-
A slice of humanity
- By Amazon Customer on 07-06-24
-
The Sweet Taste of Muscadines
- A Novel
- By: Pamela Terry
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lila Bruce Breedlove never quite felt at home in Wesleyan, Georgia, especially after her father’s untimely demise when she was a child. Both Lila and her brother, Henry, fled north after high school, establishing fulfilling lives of their own. In contrast, their younger sister, Abigail, opted to remain behind to dote on their domineering, larger-than-life mother, Geneva. When their elderly mother dies suddenly and suspiciously in the muscadine arbor behind the family estate, Lila and Henry return to the town that essentially raised them.
-
-
Absolutely LOVED it!
- By Kenny Cook on 07-07-21
By: Pamela Terry
Just a beautiful novel. Well written, touching, heartbreaking and funny. A must-read.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
An Interesting Idea
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.