Don't Skip Out on Me
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Willy Vlautin
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By:
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Willy Vlautin
About this listen
A Finalist for the Pen/Faulkner Award
Horace Hopper is a half-Paiute, half-Irish ranch hand who wants to be somebody. He's spent most of his life on the ranch of his kindly guardians, Mr. and Mrs. Reese, herding sheep alone in the mountains. But while the Reeses treat him like a son, Horace can't shake the shame he feels from being abandoned by his parents. He decides to leave the only loving home he's known to prove his worth by training to become a boxer.
Mr. Reese is holding on to a way of life that is no longer sustainable. He's a 72-year-old rancher with a bad back. He's not sure how he'll keep things going without Horace but he knows the boy must find his own way.
Coming down from the mountains of Nevada to the unforgiving desert heat of Tucson, Horace finds a trainer and begins to get fights. His journey to become a champion brings him to boxing rings of Mexico and finally, to the seedy streets of Las Vegas, where Horace learns he can't change who he is or outrun his destiny.
Willy Vlautin writes from America's soul, chronicling the lives of those who are downtrodden and forgotten with profound tenderness. Don't Skip Out on Me is a beautiful, wrenching story about one man's search for identity and belonging that will make you consider those around you differently.
©2018 Willy Vlautin (P)2018 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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In Lydia Kiesling's razor-sharp debut novel, The Golden State, we accompany Daphne, a young mother on the edge of a breakdown, as she flees her sensible but strained life in San Francisco for the high desert of Altavista with her toddler Honey. Bucking under the weight of being a single parent - her Turkish husband is unable to return to the United States because of a "processing error" - Daphne takes refuge in a mobile home left to her by her grandparents in hopes that the quiet will bring clarity.
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Tedious read but delightful reader Amanda Dolan
- By Eric on 02-14-19
By: Lydia Kiesling
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This Dark Road to Mercy
- A Novel
- By: Wiley Cash
- Narrated by: Jenna Lamia, Erik Bergmann, Scott Sowers
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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This Dark Road to Mercy is a tale of love and atonement, blood and vengeance, a story that involves two young sisters, a wayward father, and an enemy determined to see him pay for his sins. When their mother dies unexpectedly, twelve-year-old Easter Quillby and her six-year-old sister, Ruby, are shuffled into the foster care system in Gastonia, North Carolina, a little town not far from the Appalachian Mountains. But just as they settle into their new life, their errant father, Wade, an ex-minor-league baseball player whom they haven't seen in years, suddenly reappears and steals them away in the middle of the night.
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Easter offers chance at redemption; but no spark
- By W Perry Hall on 01-31-14
By: Wiley Cash
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Factotum
- By: Charles Bukowski
- Narrated by: Christian Baskous
- Length: 5 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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One of Charles Bukowski's best, this beer-soaked, deliciously degenerate novel follows the wanderings of aspiring writer Henry Chinaski across World War II-era America. Deferred from military service, Chinaski travels from city to city, moving listlessly from one odd job to another, always needing money but never badly enough to keep a job. His day-to-day existence spirals into an endless litany of pathetic whores, sordid rooms, dreary embraces, and drunken brawls, as he makes his bitter, brilliant way from one drink to the next.
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Enjoyable
- By I Ate Your Pug For Lunch and It was Tasty on 12-26-13
By: Charles Bukowski
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Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?
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- By: Raymond Carver
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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With this, his first collection of stories, Raymond Carver breathed new life into the American short story and instantly became both the recognized master of the form and one of our best-loved fiction writers. Carver shows us the humor and tragedy that dwell in the hearts of ordinary people; his stories are the classics of our time.
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Humanity at the Breaking Point
- By Darwin8u on 03-31-19
By: Raymond Carver
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The Boy Kings of Texas
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A lyrical and authentic book that recounts the story of a border-town family in Brownsville, Texas in the 1980s, as each member of the family desperately tries to assimilate and escape life on the border to become "real" Americans, even at the expense of their shared family history. This is really un-mined territory in the memoir genre that gives in-depth insight into a previously unexplored corner of America.
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It was Okay
- By DebKoo on 05-17-13
By: Domingo Martinez
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We'll Fly Away
- By: Bryan Bliss
- Narrated by: James Fouhey
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Best friends since childhood, Luke and Toby have dreamed of one thing: getting out of their dead-end town. Soon they finally will, riding the tails of Luke's wrestling scholarship, never looking back. If they don't drift apart first. If Toby's abusive dad, or Luke's unreliable mom, or anything else their complicated lives throw at them doesn't get in the way. In a format that alternates between Luke's letters to Toby from death row and the events of their senior year, Bryan Bliss expertly unfolds the circumstances that led to Luke's incarceration.
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Great Story Except....
- By Willizz on 05-18-18
By: Bryan Bliss
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Rolling Nowhere
- Riding the Rails with America's Hoboes
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- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
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Riding the rails, Ted Conover tasted the life of a tramp with companions like Pistol Pete, BB, and Sheba Sheila Sheils. From them he learned survival skills - how to "read" a freight train, scavenge for food and clothing, avoid the railroad "bulls." He was initiated into the customs of their unique, shadowy society - men and women bound together by a mutual bond of failure, camaraderie, and distrust.
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Had potential, but fell short.
- By Evan on 01-06-12
By: Ted Conover
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The Monkey's Raincoat
- An Elvis Cole and Joe Pike Novel, Book 1
- By: Robert Crais
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Meet Elvis Cole, L.A. private eye.... He quotes Jiminy Cricket and carries a .38. He's a literate, wisecracking Vietnam vet who is determined never to grow up.
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Slaughtered by sickeningly awful reader
- By Lehua of Pacifica on 06-11-09
By: Robert Crais
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Please Ignore Vera Dietz
- By: A. S. King
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- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Vera’s spent her whole life secretly in love with her best friend, Charlie Kahn. And over the years she’s kept a lot of his secrets. Even after he betrayed her. Even after he ruined everything. So when Charlie dies in dark circumstances, Vera knows a lot more than anyone - the kids at school, his family, even the police. But will she emerge to clear his name? Does she even want to? Edgy and gripping, Please Ignore Vera Dietz is an unforgettable novel: Smart, funny, dramatic, and always surprising.
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Moving, disturbing, and humorous
- By Julie on 08-26-11
By: A. S. King
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Mecca
- By: Susan Straight
- Narrated by: Patricia R. Floyd, Frankie Corzo, Shaun Taylor-Corbett
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Johnny Frías has California in his blood. A descendant of the state’s indigenous people and Mexican settlers, he has Southern California’s forgotten towns and canyons in his soul. He spends his days as a highway patrolman pulling over speeders, ignoring their racist insults, and pushing past the trauma of his rookie year, when he killed a man assaulting a young woman named Bunny, who ran from the scene, leaving Johnny without a witness.
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An eye opening read
- By Anonymous User on 10-10-22
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Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See
- By: Juliann Garey
- Narrated by: Dan Butler
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
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In her tour-de-force first novel, Juliann Garey takes us inside the restless mind, ravaged heart, and anguished soul of Greyson Todd, a successful Hollywood studio executive who leaves his wife and young daughter and for a decade travels the world giving free reign to the bipolar disorder he's been forced to keep hidden for almost 20 years.
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Psychosis or Syphilis?
- By Vira on 04-02-13
By: Juliann Garey
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What listeners say about Don't Skip Out on Me
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Cheryl A. Shroy
- 01-06-21
Entertaining
Hard time getting interested but once I did really enjoyed it. loved the narration.
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- BENJAMIN
- 05-31-18
Brilliantly humble
Consistent with everything WV has produced. I recommend this book and all his books and music to anyone with a heart.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Mark
- 03-03-18
Best book I have ever heard!
I have been an audible member for five years and this book is the best I have listened too. The bond between the two main characters is so beautiful.
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4 people found this helpful
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- JKC
- 10-23-20
A punch in the gut
This novel fits me particularly well. It travels roads I am familiar with, from Tucson, to Tonopah, to lonely ranches in Ralston Valley, to the messy bustle of Monterey Mexico. It is peopled by people I know. Not so much the boxers, but the others: earnest, hard-working young farmhands, exiled Peruvian sheepherders on H-2 visas, mean drunks seeking day labor at county employment agencies, used tire merchants trading on the lowest tier of commerce. And even, perhaps especially, Mr. Reese, the aging rancher slowly losing his battle against time and the harsh Nevada desert. He seems too sensitive and noble to be true, but in my experience, he is closer to type than Cliven Bundy; I have met him, in various guises, on ranches throughout Nevada.
And, to some extent, all of us resemble Horace Hopper/Hector Hidalgo, confused about who we are, about who we were meant to be, about how to traverse the gulf from here to there.
Chris Arnade’s book, Dignity, has received a lot of well-deserved admiration for opening our eyes to the limitations that overwhelm and demoralize the “back-row” denizens of our modern economy. But sometimes fiction can hit closer to emotional truth than documentary. I admire both books, but I read Don’t Skip Out On Me much more avidly.
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- Amanda Earle Ciccarelli
- 01-18-21
Perfect!
This book is exquisite: exquisitely written, exquisitely heartbreaking, and exquisitely powerful! Horace Hopper and Mr. Reese will stay with you long after you finish reading. Simply perfect!
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- Chris O.
- 10-29-24
I wish I could have some answers
why did the author create these characters? I was just starting to like them. Damm I am left in a bit of a fog. what happened to Ely the dog?
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