-
Ducks, Newburyport
- Narrated by: Stephanie Ellyne
- Length: 45 hrs and 34 mins
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
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $38.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
Baking a multitude of tartes tatins for local restaurants, an Ohio housewife contemplates her four kids, husband, cats and chickens. Also, America's ignoble past, and her own regrets. She is surrounded by dead lakes, fake facts, open carry maniacs, and oodles of online advice about survivalism, veil toss duties, and how to be more like Jane Fonda.
But what do you do when you keep stepping on your son's toy tractors, your life depends on stolen land and broken treaties, and nobody helps you when you get a flat tire on the interstate, not even the Abominable Snowman? When are you allowed to start swearing?
With a torrent of consciousness and an intoxicating coziness, Ducks, Newburyport lays out a whole world for you to tramp around in, by turns frightening and funny. A heart-rending indictment of America's barbarity, and a lament for the way we are blundering into environmental disaster, this book is both heresy - and a revolution in the novel.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Recognitions
- By: William Gaddis
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 47 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wyatt Gwyon's desire to forge is not driven by larceny but from love. Exactingly faithful to the spirit and letter of the Flemish masters, he produces uncannily accurate "originals" - pictures the painters themselves might have envied. In an age of counterfeit emotion and taste, the real and fake have become indistinguishable; yet Gwyon's forgeries reflect a truth that others cannot touch - cannot even recognize.
-
-
Breathtaking, Dizzying, Stimulating, Funny
- By andrew on 11-17-10
By: William Gaddis
-
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
-
Pnin
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the best-loved of Nabokov's novels, Pnin features his funniest and most heart-rending character. Professor Timofey Pnin is a haplessly disoriented Russian emigre precariously employed on an American college campus in the 1950s. Pnin struggles to maintain his dignity through a series of comic and sad misunderstandings, all the while falling victim both to subtle academic conspiracies and to the manipulations of a deliberately unreliable narrator.
-
-
Why not leave their private sorrows to people?
- By Darwin8u on 01-13-20
By: Vladimir Nabokov
-
Washington Black
- A Novel
- By: Esi Edugyan
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eleven-year-old George Washington Black—or Wash—a field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is initially terrified when he is chosen as the manservant of his master’s brother. To his surprise, however, the eccentric Christopher Wilde turns out to be a naturalist, explorer, inventor, and abolitionist. Soon Wash is initiated into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky, where even a boy born in chains may embrace a life of dignity and meaning, and where two people, separated by an impossible divide, can begin to see each other as human.
-
-
Now what do I do?
- By Mary L. Doyle on 10-04-18
By: Esi Edugyan
-
The Books of Jacob
- A Novel
- By: Olga Tokarczuk, Jennifer Croft - translator
- Narrated by: Allen Lewis Rickman, Gilli Messer
- Length: 35 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the mid-18th century, as new ideas—and a new unrest—begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following.
-
-
Dense & Difficult But Rewarding
- By Nick O. on 02-28-22
By: Olga Tokarczuk, and others
-
The Man Without Qualities
- By: Robert Musil
- Narrated by: John Telfer
- Length: 60 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1913, the Viennese aristocracy is gathering to celebrate the 17th jubilee of the accession of Emperor Franz Josef, even as the Austro-Hungarian Empire is collapsing and the rest of Vienna is showing signs of rebellion. At the centre of this social labyrinth is Ulrich: a veteran, a seducer and a scientist, yet also a man 'without qualities' and therefore a brilliant and detached observer of his changing world.
-
-
An unmatched intellectual epic
- By Delano on 06-23-22
By: Robert Musil
-
The Recognitions
- By: William Gaddis
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 47 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wyatt Gwyon's desire to forge is not driven by larceny but from love. Exactingly faithful to the spirit and letter of the Flemish masters, he produces uncannily accurate "originals" - pictures the painters themselves might have envied. In an age of counterfeit emotion and taste, the real and fake have become indistinguishable; yet Gwyon's forgeries reflect a truth that others cannot touch - cannot even recognize.
-
-
Breathtaking, Dizzying, Stimulating, Funny
- By andrew on 11-17-10
By: William Gaddis
-
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
-
Pnin
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the best-loved of Nabokov's novels, Pnin features his funniest and most heart-rending character. Professor Timofey Pnin is a haplessly disoriented Russian emigre precariously employed on an American college campus in the 1950s. Pnin struggles to maintain his dignity through a series of comic and sad misunderstandings, all the while falling victim both to subtle academic conspiracies and to the manipulations of a deliberately unreliable narrator.
-
-
Why not leave their private sorrows to people?
- By Darwin8u on 01-13-20
By: Vladimir Nabokov
-
Washington Black
- A Novel
- By: Esi Edugyan
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eleven-year-old George Washington Black—or Wash—a field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is initially terrified when he is chosen as the manservant of his master’s brother. To his surprise, however, the eccentric Christopher Wilde turns out to be a naturalist, explorer, inventor, and abolitionist. Soon Wash is initiated into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky, where even a boy born in chains may embrace a life of dignity and meaning, and where two people, separated by an impossible divide, can begin to see each other as human.
-
-
Now what do I do?
- By Mary L. Doyle on 10-04-18
By: Esi Edugyan
-
The Books of Jacob
- A Novel
- By: Olga Tokarczuk, Jennifer Croft - translator
- Narrated by: Allen Lewis Rickman, Gilli Messer
- Length: 35 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the mid-18th century, as new ideas—and a new unrest—begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following.
-
-
Dense & Difficult But Rewarding
- By Nick O. on 02-28-22
By: Olga Tokarczuk, and others
-
The Man Without Qualities
- By: Robert Musil
- Narrated by: John Telfer
- Length: 60 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1913, the Viennese aristocracy is gathering to celebrate the 17th jubilee of the accession of Emperor Franz Josef, even as the Austro-Hungarian Empire is collapsing and the rest of Vienna is showing signs of rebellion. At the centre of this social labyrinth is Ulrich: a veteran, a seducer and a scientist, yet also a man 'without qualities' and therefore a brilliant and detached observer of his changing world.
-
-
An unmatched intellectual epic
- By Delano on 06-23-22
By: Robert Musil
-
The Bee Sting
- A Novel
- By: Paul Murray
- Narrated by: Heather O’Sullivan, Barry Fitzgerald, Beau Holland, and others
- Length: 26 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under—but Dickie is spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife, Imelda, is selling off her jewelry on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attention of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike, while their teenage daughter, Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge drink her way through her final exams. As for twelve-year-old PJ, he’s on the brink of running away.
-
-
Bone Clocks meets Jonathan Franzen
- By Cranson on 10-26-23
By: Paul Murray
-
Milkman
- By: Anna Burns
- Narrated by: Bríd Brennan
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this unnamed city, to be interesting is dangerous. Middle sister, our protagonist, is busy attempting to keep her mother from discovering her maybe-boyfriend and to keep everyone in the dark about her encounter with Milkman. But when first brother-in-law sniffs out her struggle and rumours start to swell, middle sister becomes "interesting" - the last thing she ever wanted to be. To be interesting is to be noticed, and to be noticed is dangerous. Milkman is a tale of gossip and hearsay, silence and deliberate deafness. It is a story of inaction with enormous consequences.
-
-
Like the writing, not the audio issues
- By Criticalthinker on 12-31-18
By: Anna Burns
-
Agape Agape
- By: William Gaddis
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 3 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For more than 50 years, William Gaddis collected notes for a book about the mechanization of the arts, told by way of a social history of the player piano in America. In the years before his death in 1998, he distilled the whole mass into a fiction, a dramatic monologue by an elderly man with a terminal illness. Continuing Gaddis's career - long reflection on those aspects of corporate technological culture that are uniquely destructive of the arts - Agape Agape is a stunning achievement from one of the indisputable masters of postwar American fiction.
-
-
PLEASE DO NOT SHOOT THE PIANIST
- By Darwin8u on 05-04-19
By: William Gaddis
-
JR
- By: William Gaddis
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 37 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Absurdly logical, mercilessly real, gathering it's own tumultuous momentum for the ultimate brush with commodity training, JR captures the listener in the cacophony of voices that revolves around this young captive of his own myths. The disturbing clarity with which this finished writer captures the ways in which we deal, dissemble, and stumble through our words - through our lives - while the real plans are being made elsewhere makes JR the extraordinary novel that it is.
-
-
Possibly superior as an audio book
- By Peregrine on 12-12-10
By: William Gaddis
-
The Girl Before
- By: Rena Olsen
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Clara Lawson is torn from her life in an instant. Without warning, her home is invaded by armed men, and she finds herself separated from her beloved husband and daughters. The last thing her husband yells to her is to say nothing. In chapters that alternate between past and present, the novel slowly unpeels the layers of Clara's fractured life. We see her growing up, raised with her sisters by the stern Mama and Papa G, becoming a poised and educated young woman, falling desperately in love with the forbidden son of her adoptive parents.
-
-
Darkness before the dawn
- By Janice on 09-26-16
By: Rena Olsen
-
Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
-
-
Wow! It’s a Masterpiece
- By Billy on 10-25-22
-
Against the Day
- A Novel
- By: Thomas Pynchon
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 53 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This novel spans the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I. With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.
-
-
brilliant!
- By Rebecca Lindroos on 01-28-07
By: Thomas Pynchon
-
2666
- By: Roberto Bolaño
- Narrated by: John Lee, Armando Durán, G. Valmont Thomas, and others
- Length: 39 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolaño's life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his highest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters includes academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student and her widowed, mentally unstable father. Their lives intersect in the urban sprawl of Santa Teresa - a fictional Juárez - on the U.S.-Mexico border.
-
-
The Best Book I Read or Listened to in 2009
- By William on 01-05-10
By: Roberto Bolaño
-
The Rural Diaries
- Love, Livestock, and Big Life Lessons Down on Mischief Farm
- By: Hilarie Burton
- Narrated by: Hilarie Burton
- Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The beloved actress and star of One Tree Hill, White Collar, and Lethal Weapon, Hilarie Burton, tells the inspiring story of leaving Hollywood for a radically different kind of life in upstate New York with her husband Jeffrey Dean Morgan - a celebration of community, family, and the value of hard work in small town America.
-
-
Enjoyed Her Story
- By julie on 05-11-20
By: Hilarie Burton
-
The Fifth Season: Booktrack Edition
- The Broken Earth, Book 1
- By: N. K. Jemisin
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 15 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is the way the world ends...for the last time. It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester. This is the Stillness, a land long familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy.
-
-
I would give this less than one star if I could.
- By Christin on 02-12-20
By: N. K. Jemisin
-
The Handmaid's Tale
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Claire Danes
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After a staged terrorist attack kills the President and most of Congress, the government is deposed and taken over by the oppressive and all-controlling Republic of Gilead. Offred is a Handmaid serving in the household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife. She can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost even her own name.
-
-
My Top Pick for 2012
- By Em on 11-30-12
By: Margaret Atwood
-
Slaughterhouse-Five
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: James Franco
- Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).
-
-
Don't Quit Your Daytime Job, James
- By Keith on 11-20-15
By: Kurt Vonnegut
Related to this topic
-
The Story of Arthur Truluv
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth Berg
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Berg
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Three people find their way back from loss and loneliness to a different kind of belonging in this deeply moving novel. Arthur, an old widower struggling to overcome his grief, meets Maddy, a troubled teenage girl who avoids school by hiding out where Arthur goes every day for lunch. The two strike up a friendship that draws them out of isolation.
-
-
Sickly Sweet
- By Amazon Customer on 01-19-18
By: Elizabeth Berg
-
Autobiography of a Fat Bride
- True Tales of a Pretend Adulthood
- By: Laurie Notaro
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Autobiography of a Fat Bride, Laurie Notaro tries painfully to make the transition from all-night partyer and bar-stool regular to mortgagee with plumbing problems and no air conditioning. Laurie finds grown-up life just as harrowing as her reckless youth, as she meets Mr. Right, moves in, settles down, and crosses the toe-stubbing threshold of matrimony.
-
-
Hilarious
- By MissSusie66 on 05-10-12
By: Laurie Notaro
-
A Little Christmas Spirit
- By: Sheila Roberts
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Gideon
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Single mom Lexie Bell hopes to make this first Christmas in their new home special for her six-year-old son, Brock. Festive lights and homemade fudge, check. Friendly neighbors? Uh, no. Stanley Mann lost his Christmas spirit when he lost his wife and he sees no point in looking for it. Until she shows up in his dreams and informs him it's time to ditch his scroogey attitude. Stanley digs in his heels, but she's determined to haunt him until he wakes up and rediscovers the joys of the season. He can start by being a little more neighborly to the single mom next door.
-
-
Heartwarming
- By Bette Hansen on 10-07-21
By: Sheila Roberts
-
Is This Anything?
- By: Jerry Seinfeld
- Narrated by: Jerry Seinfeld
- Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since his first performance at the legendary New York nightclub “Catch a Rising Star” as a 21-year-old college student in fall of 1975, Jerry Seinfeld has written his own material and saved everything. “Whenever I came up with a funny bit, whether it happened on a stage, in a conversation, or working it out on my preferred canvas, the big yellow legal pad, I kept it in one of those old school accordion folders,” Seinfeld writes. “So I have everything I thought was worth saving from 45 years of hacking away at this for all I was worth.”
-
-
Joke, joke, joke. Boring, boring, boring.
- By ECMILLER on 10-11-20
By: Jerry Seinfeld
-
The Bitter and Sweet of Cherry Season
- By: Molly Fader
- Narrated by: Nancy Peterson
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everything Hope knows about the Orchard House is from the stories of her late mother. So when she arrives at the northern Michigan family estate late one night with a terrible secret and her 10-year-old daughter in tow, she’s not sure if she’ll be welcomed or turned away with a shotgun by the aunt she has never met.
-
-
Really Enjoyed It
- By Kathryn @theBookDate on 03-30-21
By: Molly Fader
-
The Midwest Survival Guide
- How We Talk, Love, Work, Drink, and Eat... Everything with Ranch
- By: Charlie Berens
- Narrated by: Charlie Berens
- Length: 6 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Have you ever had a goodbye lasting more than four hours? Do you lack the emotional capacity to say “I love you” so you just tell your loved ones to “watch out for deer”? Have you apologized to a stranger because she stepped on your foot? If you answered yes to any of these questions, there’s a good chance you’re a Midwesterner - or a Midwesterner at heart.
-
-
Perfect for the Long Drive to WI
- By Amazon Customer on 01-24-22
By: Charlie Berens
-
The Story of Arthur Truluv
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth Berg
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Berg
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Three people find their way back from loss and loneliness to a different kind of belonging in this deeply moving novel. Arthur, an old widower struggling to overcome his grief, meets Maddy, a troubled teenage girl who avoids school by hiding out where Arthur goes every day for lunch. The two strike up a friendship that draws them out of isolation.
-
-
Sickly Sweet
- By Amazon Customer on 01-19-18
By: Elizabeth Berg
-
Autobiography of a Fat Bride
- True Tales of a Pretend Adulthood
- By: Laurie Notaro
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Autobiography of a Fat Bride, Laurie Notaro tries painfully to make the transition from all-night partyer and bar-stool regular to mortgagee with plumbing problems and no air conditioning. Laurie finds grown-up life just as harrowing as her reckless youth, as she meets Mr. Right, moves in, settles down, and crosses the toe-stubbing threshold of matrimony.
-
-
Hilarious
- By MissSusie66 on 05-10-12
By: Laurie Notaro
-
A Little Christmas Spirit
- By: Sheila Roberts
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Gideon
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Single mom Lexie Bell hopes to make this first Christmas in their new home special for her six-year-old son, Brock. Festive lights and homemade fudge, check. Friendly neighbors? Uh, no. Stanley Mann lost his Christmas spirit when he lost his wife and he sees no point in looking for it. Until she shows up in his dreams and informs him it's time to ditch his scroogey attitude. Stanley digs in his heels, but she's determined to haunt him until he wakes up and rediscovers the joys of the season. He can start by being a little more neighborly to the single mom next door.
-
-
Heartwarming
- By Bette Hansen on 10-07-21
By: Sheila Roberts
-
Is This Anything?
- By: Jerry Seinfeld
- Narrated by: Jerry Seinfeld
- Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since his first performance at the legendary New York nightclub “Catch a Rising Star” as a 21-year-old college student in fall of 1975, Jerry Seinfeld has written his own material and saved everything. “Whenever I came up with a funny bit, whether it happened on a stage, in a conversation, or working it out on my preferred canvas, the big yellow legal pad, I kept it in one of those old school accordion folders,” Seinfeld writes. “So I have everything I thought was worth saving from 45 years of hacking away at this for all I was worth.”
-
-
Joke, joke, joke. Boring, boring, boring.
- By ECMILLER on 10-11-20
By: Jerry Seinfeld
-
The Bitter and Sweet of Cherry Season
- By: Molly Fader
- Narrated by: Nancy Peterson
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everything Hope knows about the Orchard House is from the stories of her late mother. So when she arrives at the northern Michigan family estate late one night with a terrible secret and her 10-year-old daughter in tow, she’s not sure if she’ll be welcomed or turned away with a shotgun by the aunt she has never met.
-
-
Really Enjoyed It
- By Kathryn @theBookDate on 03-30-21
By: Molly Fader
-
The Midwest Survival Guide
- How We Talk, Love, Work, Drink, and Eat... Everything with Ranch
- By: Charlie Berens
- Narrated by: Charlie Berens
- Length: 6 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Have you ever had a goodbye lasting more than four hours? Do you lack the emotional capacity to say “I love you” so you just tell your loved ones to “watch out for deer”? Have you apologized to a stranger because she stepped on your foot? If you answered yes to any of these questions, there’s a good chance you’re a Midwesterner - or a Midwesterner at heart.
-
-
Perfect for the Long Drive to WI
- By Amazon Customer on 01-24-22
By: Charlie Berens
-
What I Carry
- By: Jennifer Longo
- Narrated by: Reba Buhr
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Growing up in foster care, Muir has lived in many houses. And if she's learned one thing, it is to Pack. Light. Carry only what fits in a suitcase. Toothbrush? Yes. Socks? Yes. Emotional attachment to friends? Foster families? A boyfriend? Nope! There's no room for any additional baggage. Muir has just one year left before she ages out of the system. One year before she's free. One year to avoid anything - or anyone - that could get in her way. Then she meets Francine. And Kira. And Sean. And everything changes.
-
-
Enlightening
- By Kindle Customer on 06-09-21
By: Jennifer Longo
-
Earthly Delights
- By: Kerry Greenwood
- Narrated by: Louise Siversen
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Baking is an alchemical process for Corinna Chapman. At four am she starts work at Earthly Delights, her bakery in Calico Alley. But one morning Corinna receives a threatening note saying 'The wages of sin is death' and finds a syringe in her cat's paw. A blue-faced junkie has collapsed in the dark alley and a mysterious man with beautiful eyes appears with a plan for Corinna and her bread. Then it is Goths, dead drug addicts, witchcraft, a homeless boy and a missing girl and it seems she will never get those muffins cooked in time.
-
-
Don't know why I waited so long.
- By S. Sarabasha on 09-13-13
By: Kerry Greenwood
-
Summer at Willow Lake
- The Lakeshore Chronicles, Book 1
- By: Susan Wiggs
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Real estate expert Olivia Bellamy reluctantly trades a trendy Manhattan summer for her family's old resort camp in the Catskills, where her primary task will be renovating the bungalow colony for her grandparents, who want one last summer together filled with fun, friends and family. A posh resort in its heyday, the camp is now in disarray and Olivia is forced to hire contractor Connor Davis - a still-smoldering flame from her own summers at camp.
-
-
Finding Love at Summer Camp
- By Pamela Dale Foster on 02-13-15
By: Susan Wiggs
-
Murder, She Barked
- Paws & Claws Mystery, Book 1
- By: Krista Davis
- Narrated by: Jeanie Kanaley
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Holly Miller's life has gone to the dogs. She has no job, her boyfriend's former flame is sniffing around, and a scruffy but lovable Jack Russell terrier is scattering crumbs all over her borrowed car. Just when she thought things couldn't get worse, a troubling phone call about her grandmother sends her rushing home to the family inn on Wagtail Mountain.
-
-
A Decent Cozy Mystery
- By InnerVoice on 01-20-16
By: Krista Davis
-
Labor Day
- By: Joyce Maynard
- Narrated by: Wilson Bethel
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a manner evoking Ian McEwan's Atonement and Nick Hornby's About a Boy, acclaimed author Joyce Maynard weaves a beautiful, poignant tale of love, sex, adolescence, and devastating treachery as seen through the eyes of a young teenage boy - and the man he later becomes - looking back at an unexpected encounter that begins one single, long, hot, life-altering weekend.
-
-
Good story but anti clamatic
- By Nana on 11-25-13
By: Joyce Maynard
-
June Bug
- By: Chris Fabry
- Narrated by: Chris Fabry
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For as long as she can remember, June Bug and her father have traveled the back roads of the country in their beat-up RV, spending many nights parked at Walmart. One morning, as she walks past the greeter at the front of the store, her eyes are drawn to the pictures of missing children, where she is shocked to see herself. This discovery begins a quest for the truth about her father, the mother he rarely speaks about, and ultimately herself.
-
-
Get Out The Box Of Tissues
- By 20eagle16 on 07-03-21
By: Chris Fabry
-
Snap Out of It
- A Novel
- By: Maddie Dawson
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After three marriages and a lot of living, resilient Billie Slate knows exactly what trouble love can bring. Now she’s reinvented herself as the Heartbreak Bunny, an on-call performance artist who can heal anyone who’s been burned by that four-letter word, LOVE, by hopping about and whisking away sad mementos from their past relationships. Call it magic. Call it peculiar. But her bunny costume is as perfect as her breakup mantra: SNAP OUT OF IT.
-
-
REFRESHINGLY WONDERFUL
- By Iteachart on 03-07-23
By: Maddie Dawson
-
Nothing to See Here
- By: Kevin Wilson
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lillian and Madison were unlikely roommates and yet inseparable friends at their elite boarding school. But then, Lillian had to leave the school unexpectedly in the wake of a scandal, and they’ve barely spoken since. Until now, when Lillian gets a letter from Madison pleading for her help. Madison’s twin stepkids are moving in with her family, and she wants Lillian to be their caretaker. However, there’s a catch: The twins spontaneously combust when they get agitated, flames igniting from their skin in a startling but beautiful way.
-
-
Elevated art form.
- By KayMac on 10-30-19
By: Kevin Wilson
-
The Seekers
- The Amish Cooking Class, Book 1
- By: Wanda E. Brunstetter
- Narrated by: Rebecca Gallagher
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Married for eight years, with no children to help fill her days, Heidi Troyer cooks up the idea of teaching classes in the art of Amish cuisine in her home in Holmes County, Ohio. But it is a recipe for drama when five very different men and women answer the advertisement.
-
-
Multi-characters story
- By J. on 04-21-18
-
Isle of Palms
- A Lowcountry Tale, Book 3
- By: Dorothea Benton Frank
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 18 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dorothea Benton Frank is a treasure of American letters with numerous New York Times best-sellers to her credit and a portfolio full of critical acclaim. “Mixing high drama and high jinks” ( Booklist), her third Lowcountry novel follows the fortunes of the dysfunctional Abbot family. Looking to set her life aright, Anna Lutz Abbot returns to her South Carolina lowcountry hometown. And as she attempts to right past wrongs, Anna receives help and support from a quirky cast of lovable locals sure to endear themselves to listeners.
-
-
A feel good story
- By Sheryl on 02-04-13
-
Hey Mom
- By: Louie Anderson
- Narrated by: Louie Anderson
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Louie Anderson has been channeling his beloved mom in his iconic stand-up comedy for decades - but she passed away before getting to see him reach new heights with his breakout role. Hey Mom is Louie's way of catching Ora Zella Anderson up on everything that has been going on in his life, including his continued struggles with food and family, but also how so much has changed for the better. He also has plenty of laugh-out-loud stories about his incredibly resilient mother and his 10 siblings, as well as observations on the absurdities of life.
-
-
I love Louie even more now
- By Candace on 05-02-18
By: Louie Anderson
-
Goodbye, Vitamin
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Khong
- Narrated by: Therese Plummer
- Length: 4 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Freshly disengaged from her fiancé and feeling that life has not turned out quite the way she planned, 30-year-old Ruth quits her job, leaves town, and arrives at her parents' home to find that situation more complicated than she'd realized. Her father, a prominent history professor, is losing his memory and is only erratically lucid. Ruth's mother, meanwhile, is lucidly erratic.
-
-
Hello Sweet Sweet Book
- By Syd Young on 08-06-17
By: Rachel Khong
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
JR
- By: William Gaddis
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 37 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Absurdly logical, mercilessly real, gathering it's own tumultuous momentum for the ultimate brush with commodity training, JR captures the listener in the cacophony of voices that revolves around this young captive of his own myths. The disturbing clarity with which this finished writer captures the ways in which we deal, dissemble, and stumble through our words - through our lives - while the real plans are being made elsewhere makes JR the extraordinary novel that it is.
-
-
Possibly superior as an audio book
- By Peregrine on 12-12-10
By: William Gaddis
-
The Old Drift
- A Novel
- By: Namwali Serpell
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh, Richard E. Grant, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
- Length: 24 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The year 1904. On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there is a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. In a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. This sets off a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families (black, white, brown) as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond.
-
-
A saga of Africa and African immigrants
- By Books on our Brains Society/ Barbara on 08-02-19
By: Namwali Serpell
-
The Dying Grass
- A Novel of the Nez Perce War
- By: William T. Vollmann
- Narrated by: Henry Strozier
- Length: 53 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this new installment in his acclaimed series of novels examining the collisions between Native Americans and European colonizers, William T. Vollmann tells the story of the Nez Perce War, with flashbacks to the Civil War. Defrauded and intimidated at every turn, the Nez Perces finally went on the warpath in 1877, subjecting the US Army to its greatest defeat since Little Big Horn as they fled from Northeast Oregon across Montana to the Canadian border.
-
-
It is all the same. Let us kill, die or ride away
- By Darwin8u on 05-24-17
-
A Brief History of Seven Killings
- By: Marlon James
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean, Cherise Boothe, Dwight Bacquie, and others
- Length: 26 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner, The Man Booker Prize, 2015 Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters - assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts - A Brief History of Seven Killings is the fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time and its bloody aftermath, from the streets and slums of Kingston in the 1970s, to the crack wars in 1980s New York, to a radically altered Jamaica in the 1990s.
-
-
A Tough Read
- By KP on 05-07-16
By: Marlon James
-
The Executioner's Song
- By: Norman Mailer
- Narrated by: Maxwell Hamilton
- Length: 42 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Norman Mailer's Pulitzer Prize-winning and unforgettable classic about convicted killer Gary Gilmore now in audio. Arguably the greatest book from America's most heroically ambitious writer, The Executioner's Song follows the short, blighted life of Gary Gilmore who became famous after he robbed two men in 1976 and killed them in cold blood. After being tried and convicted, he immediately insisted on being executed for his crime. To do so, he fought a system that seemed intent on keeping him alive long after it had sentenced him to death.
-
-
Pulitzer-winner spoiled by numskulled narration
- By W Perry Hall on 05-21-18
By: Norman Mailer
-
A Naked Singularity
- By: Sergio De La Pava
- Narrated by: Luis Moreno
- Length: 27 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Naked Singularity tells the story of Casi, a child of Colombian immigrants who lives in Brooklyn and works in Manhattan as a public defender - one who, tellingly, has never lost a trial. Never. In the book we hear what happens when his sense of justice and even his sense of self begin to crack - and how his world then slowly devolves. It's a huge, ambitious novel clearly in the vein of DeLillo, Foster Wallace, Pynchon, and even Melville, and it's told in a distinct, frequently hilarious voice, with a striking human empathy at its center.
-
-
This book isn't for everyone! But it is quite good
- By Matthew Dakus on 07-25-16
-
JR
- By: William Gaddis
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 37 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Absurdly logical, mercilessly real, gathering it's own tumultuous momentum for the ultimate brush with commodity training, JR captures the listener in the cacophony of voices that revolves around this young captive of his own myths. The disturbing clarity with which this finished writer captures the ways in which we deal, dissemble, and stumble through our words - through our lives - while the real plans are being made elsewhere makes JR the extraordinary novel that it is.
-
-
Possibly superior as an audio book
- By Peregrine on 12-12-10
By: William Gaddis
-
The Old Drift
- A Novel
- By: Namwali Serpell
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh, Richard E. Grant, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
- Length: 24 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The year 1904. On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there is a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. In a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. This sets off a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families (black, white, brown) as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond.
-
-
A saga of Africa and African immigrants
- By Books on our Brains Society/ Barbara on 08-02-19
By: Namwali Serpell
-
The Dying Grass
- A Novel of the Nez Perce War
- By: William T. Vollmann
- Narrated by: Henry Strozier
- Length: 53 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this new installment in his acclaimed series of novels examining the collisions between Native Americans and European colonizers, William T. Vollmann tells the story of the Nez Perce War, with flashbacks to the Civil War. Defrauded and intimidated at every turn, the Nez Perces finally went on the warpath in 1877, subjecting the US Army to its greatest defeat since Little Big Horn as they fled from Northeast Oregon across Montana to the Canadian border.
-
-
It is all the same. Let us kill, die or ride away
- By Darwin8u on 05-24-17
-
A Brief History of Seven Killings
- By: Marlon James
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean, Cherise Boothe, Dwight Bacquie, and others
- Length: 26 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner, The Man Booker Prize, 2015 Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters - assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts - A Brief History of Seven Killings is the fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time and its bloody aftermath, from the streets and slums of Kingston in the 1970s, to the crack wars in 1980s New York, to a radically altered Jamaica in the 1990s.
-
-
A Tough Read
- By KP on 05-07-16
By: Marlon James
-
The Executioner's Song
- By: Norman Mailer
- Narrated by: Maxwell Hamilton
- Length: 42 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Norman Mailer's Pulitzer Prize-winning and unforgettable classic about convicted killer Gary Gilmore now in audio. Arguably the greatest book from America's most heroically ambitious writer, The Executioner's Song follows the short, blighted life of Gary Gilmore who became famous after he robbed two men in 1976 and killed them in cold blood. After being tried and convicted, he immediately insisted on being executed for his crime. To do so, he fought a system that seemed intent on keeping him alive long after it had sentenced him to death.
-
-
Pulitzer-winner spoiled by numskulled narration
- By W Perry Hall on 05-21-18
By: Norman Mailer
-
A Naked Singularity
- By: Sergio De La Pava
- Narrated by: Luis Moreno
- Length: 27 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Naked Singularity tells the story of Casi, a child of Colombian immigrants who lives in Brooklyn and works in Manhattan as a public defender - one who, tellingly, has never lost a trial. Never. In the book we hear what happens when his sense of justice and even his sense of self begin to crack - and how his world then slowly devolves. It's a huge, ambitious novel clearly in the vein of DeLillo, Foster Wallace, Pynchon, and even Melville, and it's told in a distinct, frequently hilarious voice, with a striking human empathy at its center.
-
-
This book isn't for everyone! But it is quite good
- By Matthew Dakus on 07-25-16
-
The Man Without Qualities
- By: Robert Musil
- Narrated by: John Telfer
- Length: 60 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1913, the Viennese aristocracy is gathering to celebrate the 17th jubilee of the accession of Emperor Franz Josef, even as the Austro-Hungarian Empire is collapsing and the rest of Vienna is showing signs of rebellion. At the centre of this social labyrinth is Ulrich: a veteran, a seducer and a scientist, yet also a man 'without qualities' and therefore a brilliant and detached observer of his changing world.
-
-
An unmatched intellectual epic
- By Delano on 06-23-22
By: Robert Musil
-
The Deluge
- By: Stephen Markley
- Narrated by: Corey Brill, Danny Campbell, Gibson Frazier, and others
- Length: 40 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the first decades of the 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock while a patient but unrelenting ecological crisis looms. America is in upheaval, battered by violent weather and extreme politics. In California in 2013, Tony Pietrus, a scientist studying deposits of undersea methane, receives a death threat.
-
-
Couldn’t get into it.
- By Review Reviewer on 01-20-23
By: Stephen Markley
-
The Far Pavilions
- By: M. M. Kaye
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 48 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When The Far Pavilions was first published 19 years ago, it moved the critic Edmund Fuller to write this: "Were Miss Kaye to produce no other book, The Far Pavilions might stand as a lasting accomplishment in a single work comparable to Margaret Mitchell's achievement in Gond With the Wind." From its beginning in the foothills of the towering Himalayas, M. M. Kaye's masterwork is a vast, rich, and vibrant tapestry of love and war that ranks with the greatest panoramic sagas of modern fiction.
-
-
Heroism, adventure, sadistic cruelty, and love.
- By Velan on 02-19-13
By: M. M. Kaye
-
The Books of Jacob
- A Novel
- By: Olga Tokarczuk, Jennifer Croft - translator
- Narrated by: Allen Lewis Rickman, Gilli Messer
- Length: 35 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the mid-18th century, as new ideas—and a new unrest—begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following.
-
-
Dense & Difficult But Rewarding
- By Nick O. on 02-28-22
By: Olga Tokarczuk, and others
-
The Hemingses of Monticello
- An American Family
- By: Annette Gordon-Reed
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 30 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This epic work tells the story of the Hemingses, whose close blood ties to our third president had been systematically expunged from American history until very recently. Now, historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family's dispersal after Jefferson's death in 1826. It brings to life not only Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson but also their children and Hemings's siblings, who shared a father with Jefferson's wife, Martha.
-
-
Worried at first
- By Phillip Goodson on 12-13-08
-
Bubblegum
- A Novel
- By: Adam Levin
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins, Michael Crouch, Julia Whelan
- Length: 39 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bubblegum is set in an alternate present-day world in which the internet does not exist and has never existed. Rather, a wholly different species of interactive technology - a "flesh-and-bone robot" called the Curio - has dominated both the market and the cultural imagination since the late 1980s. Belt Magnet, who as a boy in greater Chicago became one of the lucky first adopters of a Curio, is now writing his memoir, and through it we follow a singular man out of sync with the harsh realities of a world he feels alien to but must find a way to live in.
-
-
Beware! This Audiobook Doesn't Want you to Buy it
- By Joel K. on 05-01-20
By: Adam Levin
-
P. G. Wodehouse Volume 2
- The Blandings Collection
- By: P. G. Wodehouse
- Narrated by: Stephen Fry
- Length: 45 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Audible Studios presents the second volume of the best-selling PG Wodehouse collection. In this volume, Stephen Fry lends his voice to the Blandings stories. This collection contains: Summer Lightning, Heavy Weather, Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, Lord Emsworth and Others, Uncle Fred in the Spring Time.
-
-
Volume 1 is not sold in US
- By NJ on 01-21-22
By: P. G. Wodehouse
-
Kristin Lavransdatter (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
- The Kristin Lavransdatter Trilogy
- By: Sigrid Undset, Tiina Nunnally - editor translator, Brad Leithauser - introduction
- Narrated by: Nina Yndis, Stephen Graybill
- Length: 47 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her great historical epic Kristin Lavransdatter, set in fourteenth-century Norway, Nobel laureate Sigrid Undset tells the life story of one passionate and headstrong woman. Painting a richly detailed backdrop, Undset immerses audiences in the day-to-day life, social conventions, and political and religious undercurrents of the period. Now in one volume, Tiina Nunnally’s award-winning definitive translation brings this remarkable work to life with clarity and lyrical beauty.
-
-
Ridiculous, excessive, relentless guilt.
- By Amazon Customer on 07-11-24
By: Sigrid Undset, and others
-
1Q84
- By: Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin - translator, Philip Gabriel - translator
- Narrated by: Allison Hiroto, Marc Vietor, Mark Boyett
- Length: 46 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.
A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver's enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 - "Q" is for "question mark". A world that bears a question....
-
-
WOW, WOW, WOW.
- By Amanda on 11-06-11
By: Haruki Murakami, and others
-
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
-
The Magic Mountain
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 37 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hans Castorp is, on the face of it, an ordinary man in his early 20s, on course to start a career in ship engineering in his home town of Hamburg, when he decides to travel to the Berghof Santatorium in Davos. The year is 1912 and an oblivious world is on the brink of war. Castorp’s friend Joachim Ziemssen is taking the cure and a three-week visit seems a perfect break before work begins. But when Castorp arrives he is surprised to find an established community of patients, and little by little, he gets drawn into the closeted life and the individual personalities of the residents.
-
-
A Magical Journey
- By Paul on 08-20-20
By: Thomas Mann
-
The David Foster Wallace Reader
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff, David Foster Wallace, Sally Foster Wallace, and others
- Length: 48 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Where do you begin with a writer as original and brilliant as David Foster Wallace? Here - with a carefully considered selection of his extraordinary body of work, chosen by a range of great writers, critics, and those who worked with him most closely. This volume presents his most dazzling, funniest, and most heartbreaking work.
-
-
Impossible to use without Chapter Names
- By Ethan Klitzke on 12-04-21
What listeners say about Ducks, Newburyport
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jeff Koeppen
- 05-29-20
Unlike Any Other Book I've Ever Read
I went in to Ducks, Newburyport totally blind. It was the choice for the Reading Envy read-along so I decided to drop an Audible credit and jump in. I had no idea what it was about, I just new that the audio book was 45 hours loooooooong and there was a duck on the cover.
Upon commencing, I wondered what I got myself in to. It is a stream of consciousness style narrative, with the thoughts we listening in on being than of a middle-aged Ohio woman with four kids, a nice husband, and a pie-making business. In one long sentence! I wondered how this could possibly go on for 45 hours?!
It didn't take me long to become fully immersed - thoughts and ideas flew by at a blink of an eye, and if you didn't find the thought of the moment particularly interesting, just wait a few seconds for something else. Is there a subject she doesn't touch on in the 45 hours? Eventually, a plot (actually two parallel plots) *sort of* form and the novel becomes a bit more linear as it gets closer to the end.
The main themes in the woman's inner monologue are how screwed up and dysfunctional humanity is and how we've damaged the natural world. Similar ideas are are expressed through the thoughts of a non-speaking secondary character (no spoilers here). It's not all gloom and doom though, I found myself laughing quite often.
The audio book was narrated perfectly by Stephanie Ellyne. She was just spot on and brought the woman to life. I can't imagine narrating a book that jumps around such as this with barely time to catch a breath.
I wasn't keen on the ending, which I thought was a bit too dramatic. There was also a stretch in the middle of the book where the author switches things up and recites a list for I don't know how long. I could't wait for that to be over with.
Overall, I really enjoyed this. I've never read anything like it before. It's definitely not for everyone, but if you give it a try and can make it past the first 30 minutes I think you'll get in to a nice groove.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Christopher J. Grano
- 03-29-20
Indescribable....
Must be listened to at 1.40x speed for the full effect of the main character's incessant stream-of-consciousness narration raging at the incredulity of current society. This isn't going to be everyone's cup of pepper pot soup, but for those it speaks to, I'll see you all in Newburyport.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
8 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- AFaceInTheCrowd
- 08-26-21
Why not live in this woman’s mind?
If one doesn’t expect an elaborate plot and just listens to her inner monologue, it’s not often that one can get into someone else’s head so fully. There is _some_ plot development there. And the reading is terrific. I would never be able to read this book, only to listen, with long pauses.
I have consumed many other books in the interim, coming back to this one for a few chapters at a time. But the image of the woman, her kids, husband and other characters remained with me, so it wasn’t hard to resume listening. Not to mention all the pies and other recipes. Sugar gets onion smell out of your hands and other useful stuff ;-)
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Nana Landgraf
- 08-27-20
Amazing book
Tour de force of author and reader (performer). Excellent insights into life and the various characters. Plot was such a twist, I wouldn’t dream of giving any clues. Having parallel plot line with bobcat was stroke of genius. I can’t say enough praise. I’m still amazed at the whole thing.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Celtic Snake
- 07-22-20
An incredible journey
Ms. Ellman’s novel is brilliant in both its conception and its execution; and Ms. Ellyne’s performance captures every last minute perfectly. (Also, as a comparative literature major myself, I am absolutely blown away by how the Federal Highway Administration’s “structurally deficient” and “functionally obsolete” bridge ratings and the inimitable Shirley Jackson could fit so seamlessly into the ramblings of a pie-baking homemaker.)
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kevin__Sudsy
- 07-31-22
fantastic performance of a difficult novel
THIS is how "Ducks" should be experienced to truly get the full effect of the stream-of-consciousness, intrusive thought style.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Joseph
- 07-07-23
An experience like no other.
This novel took me over eight months to complete, but was worth every bit of time I spent on it, given that this is one of the best books I have ever read. The plot unwinds very, very slowly, and doesn't even become apparent until page 700 or so. The prose is unusual to say the least, bombarding you with lists and references to things that seem to appear out of the blue. Most of its thousand pages take the form of a single sentence, broken up into small clauses beginning with the phrase "the fact that." Although this novel takes a while to get used to, don't give up and your patience will pay off. I listened to the second half on the audiobook version, which I highly recommend due to the skill of the narrator in conveying accurately the emotion present in the story, especially at times where it may be hard to notice while simply reading.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 05-01-20
The Fact Is That . . .
The fact is that I never imagined I would enjoy a
1,000 pages of stream of consciousness. The fact is that I absolutely loved this book. The fact is that the narration is the best I have heard as yet.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- EllieBK
- 05-26-20
Immersive, accessible, intimate and original.
I was intimidated to start such a long journey but I loved this audio book. I think I'll listen again in a few months as the world of the nameless narrator was so exquisitely intimate. It's a stream of concious exploration of our time and place through the smart but anxious mind of an Ohio housewife, mother of 4. Through, memory, shopping lists, recipes, news headlines and reflections on life unfolding around her, she reveals character, backstory, relationship and plot just like any novel, but with a structure that hangs by a thread as tenuously as the world around her. You'll probably know in 15 minutes if it's for you. For me, Lucy Ellman has advanced the craft of fiction writing.
The narrator was wonderful on the whole; she brought humor and clarity in welcome proportions. I did listen at 1.10 speed. Some narrators I slow down instead as reference.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Danny Carlisle
- 08-07-20
The fact that
I don’t know if there are awards for audiobook narration, but the reader of this book surely deserves best performance. The book itself is pretty much beyond description. Totally alluring and satisfying and brilliant and the reader, my God! Unsurpassable! (I’m only about 5 hours in, but looking forward to listening to this for a LONG time:)
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!