Collected Early Works (AmazonClassics Edition)
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Narrated by:
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Bahni Turpin
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Kenya Brome
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Cary Hite
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full cast
About this listen
Zora Neale Hurston is best remembered today for her work as a novelist, but she was also an accomplished dramatist, short story writer, and folklorist. That range of interests and styles is on full display in this collection.
In “Drenched in Light,” Hurston tells the tale of a plucky, life-affirming African American girl at odds with her irritable grandmother; “Spunk” follows the conflict between two men involved in a deadly love triangle; the prize-winning play “Color Struck” tracks the impact of colorism on a group of cakewalk competitors in the Jim Crow South; and “Sweat” portrays a woman in an abusive marriage who finds deliverance through a karmic twist of fate.
With their explorations of class, racism, family dysfunction, and female empowerment, these works beautifully represent both the energy of the Harlem Renaissance and the unique voice of one of its most influential contributors.
Revised edition: Previously published as Drenched in Light, Spunk, Color Struck, Sweat, this edition of Collected Early Works (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.
Full Cast for Color Struck:
Narrator: Tasha Johnson
John: Anthony S. Goolsby
Emmaline: Jeanette Illidge
Wesley: Enoch A. King
Emmaline’s Daughter, Lou Lillian: Tasha Johnson
Effie: Raven Brown
A Railway Conductor: Geoffrey D. Williams
The Doctor: Enoch A. King
The Man, Dinky: Enoch A. King
Man: Enoch A. King
Chorus: Tasha Johnson
Ada, Dinky’s Girl: Jeanette Illidge
Joe Clarke: Geoffrey D. Williams
Lizziemore: Geoffrey D. Williams
Directed by Cynthia D. Barker
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Critic reviews
“Zora Neale Hurston's range as an author is showcased by some supremely talented narrators whose voices radiate innocence, experience, and all the stops in between. Bahni Turpin's skills are at their best in ‘Drenched in Light’ as she repeatedly transitions between grandmother and granddaughter without missing a beat. ‘Spunk’ features Cary Hite's capable rendition of a tense love triangle. While the full-cast performance of ‘Color Struck’ is absorbing and well done, it is Kenya Brome's treatment of ‘Sweat’ that will keep listeners on the edge of their seats.”—AudioFile Magazine
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The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character’s voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.
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Hang in
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By: William Faulkner
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Ironweed
- By: William Kennedy
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Francis Phelan, ex-ballplayer, part-time gravedigger, full-time drunk, has hit bottom. Years ago he left Albany in a hurry after killing a scab during a trolley workers' strike; he ran away again after accidentally – and fatally – dropping his infant son. Now, in 1938, Francis is back in town, roaming the old familiar streets with his hobo pal, Helen, trying to make peace with the ghosts of the past and the present.
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Darkly Lovely
- By Michael on 07-22-17
By: William Kennedy
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Horseman, Pass By
- By: Larry McMurtry
- Narrated by: Kerin McCue
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Cattleman Homer Bannon is a walking advertisement for traditional, old-frontier morals—in contrast to his stepson, Hud. Homer’s grandson Lonnie is torn between emotions for his father and grandfather as he struggles to define his own identity.
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Early book by McMurtry and it shows it.
- By lee on 02-19-11
By: Larry McMurtry
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To Kill a Mockingbird
- By: Harper Lee
- Narrated by: Sissy Spacek
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Harper Lee’s Pulitzer prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep south - and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred, available now for the first time as a digital audiobook. One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than 40 languages, sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the 20th century by librarians across the country.
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A gift to be treasured
- By David Shear on 07-09-14
By: Harper Lee
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Bullwhip Days
- The Slaves Remember: An Oral History
- By: James Mellon
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards, Brad Sanders
- Length: 15 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration commissioned an oral history of the remaining former slaves. Bullwhip Days is a remarkable compendium of selections from these extraordinary interviews, providing an unflinching portrait of the world of government-sanctioned slavery of Africans in America. Here are 29 full narrations, as well as nine sections of excerpts related to particular aspects of slave life, from religion to plantation life to the Reconstruction era.
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Excellent
- By Norficia Overton on 10-23-17
By: James Mellon
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Sula
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 5 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Nel and Sula's devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayal—or does it end? Terrifying, comic, ribald and tragic, Sula is a work that overflows with life.
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Good against evil and a riotous story to boot
- By Karen on 04-11-11
By: Toni Morrison
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Some Sing, Some Cry
- By: Ntozake Shange, Ifa Bayeza
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 26 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Audible presents the multigenerational epic Some Sing, Some Cry. Created by Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza, this audiobook takes listeners on a journey through Reconstruction, two world wars, the Harlem renaissance, and Vietnam to modern day America.Some Sing, Some Cry begins at the threshold of one family’s freedom. We meet Betty Mayfield, newly emancipated from Sweet Tamarind, a lush and haunted rice plantation off the Carolina coast.
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I Sang, I Cried
- By Jo on 09-29-10
By: Ntozake Shange, and others
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As I Lay Dying
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman, Robertson Dean, Lina Patel, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
One of William Faulkner’s finest novels, As I Lay Dying, originally published in 1930, remains a captivating and stylistically innovative work. The story revolves around a grim yet darkly humorous pilgrimage, as Addie Bundren’s family sets out to fulfill her last wish: to be buried in her native Jefferson, Mississippi, far from the miserable backwater surroundings of her married life.
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Faulkner's As I Lay Dying review
- By Kristina on 11-12-08
By: William Faulkner
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The Moonflower Vine
- A Novel
- By: Jetta Carleton
- Narrated by: Natalie Ross
- Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
On a farm in western Missouri, during the first half of the twentieth century, Matthew and Callie Soames create a life for themselves and raise four headstrong daughters. Jessica will break their hearts. Leonie will fall in love with the wrong man. Mary Jo will escape to New York. And wild child Mathy’s fate will be the family’s greatest tragedy. Over the decades they will love, deceive, comfort, forgive - and, ultimately, they will come to cherish all the more fiercely the bonds of love that hold the family together.
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I didn't want it to end!!!
- By Amanda H. on 01-20-21
By: Jetta Carleton
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Ruth's Journey
- The Authorized Novel of Mammy from Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind
- By: Donald McCaig
- Narrated by: Cherise Boothe
- Length: 13 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
On the Caribbean island of Saint Domingue, an island consumed by the flames of revolution, a senseless attack leaves only one survivor - an infant girl. She falls into the hands of two French émigrés, Henri and Solange Fournier, who take the beautiful child they call Ruth to the bustling American city of Savannah. What follows is the sweeping tale of Ruth's life as shaped by her strong-willed mistress and other larger-than-life personalities she encounters in the South.
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Disappointing
- By June McCall on 01-26-17
By: Donald McCaig
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The Ponder Heart
- By: Eudora Welty
- Narrated by: Sally Darling
- Length: 4 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Originally published in The New Yorker in 1954, The Ponder Heart is easily Eudora Welty’s most comic novel, a lighthearted burlesque that rivals Caldwell’s Tobacco Road for capturing rural idioms, and the novels of Mark Twain for high farce.
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Great reader
- By Patricia B. on 03-12-17
By: Eudora Welty
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The Homeplace
- Singing River, Book 1
- By: Gilbert Morris
- Narrated by: Judith West
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
As the year 1928 begins, 14-year-old Lanie Belle Freeman of Fairhope, Arkansas, has bright hopes for the future. Her father has launched a new business, and her mother is expecting her fifth baby. Lanie has dreams of going to college and being a writer. Then tragedy strikes.
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Slow to start. But hang in there. It’s worth it
- By paula wright on 02-24-19
By: Gilbert Morris
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