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Extenuating Circumstances
- A Treasury of Crime & Suspense Fiction
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 16 hrs and 58 mins
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Publisher's summary
Two hitmen in a depressed rust belt town struggle with a job gone wrong. A girl witnesses a horrifying accident and carries it with her for the rest of her life. Medical students bring a severed foot to a college party. Five-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Joyce Carol Oates has made a career of exploring the forbidden corners of human experience, and the stories collected here, spanning her first three decades as a writer, are among her most unsettling and unforgettable works to date.
Originally published in long out-of-print volumes, these tales have not appeared in any form this century—until now; formally fresh and endlessly experimental, they show a writer boldly engaging with disturbing truths and terrifying possibilities, and deconstructing the tropes and expectations of traditional prose writing as she does so. But beyond their stylistic ingenuity, these are creepy, suspenseful stories that cut straight to the bone; their darkness will linger long after the book's conclusion.
A must-listen for long-time fans of Joyce Carol Oates and an excellent introduction for the uninitiated, the twenty-two tales included in Extenuating Circumstances exemplify the author's idiosyncratic spookiness, "visceral, psychologically involving, and socially astute" (Booklist).
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- By Cariola on 04-14-13
By: Elif Shafak
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Shadow Show
- All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury
- By: Sam Weller - editor, Mort Castle - editor
- Narrated by: George Takei, Edward Herrmann, Kate Mulgrew, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Ray Bradbury - peerless storyteller, poet of the impossible, and one of America's most beloved authors - is a literary giant whose remarkable career spanned seven decades. Now 26 of today's most diverse and celebrated authors offer new short works in honor of the master; stories of heart, intelligence, and dark wonder from a remarkable range of creative artists.
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THE MAN WHO FORGOT RAY BRADBURY
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 05-27-17
By: Sam Weller - editor, and others
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The Confessions of Max Tivoli
- By: Andrew Sean Greer
- Narrated by: Brian Keeler
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Max Tivoli is uniquely cursed. His mind ages normally, but he is born with the withered body of a 70-year-old man, and his body ages in reverse. Despite this torment, Max manages three times to cross paths with Alice, the woman who captures his heart. Because he appears to be a different person each time they meet, Max has three chances for true love.
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odd premise, but it works!
- By Sean Dunnahoo on 03-03-04
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One Last Dance
- By: Eileen Goudge
- Narrated by: Sandra Burr
- Length: 14 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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On the eve of their 40th wedding anniversary, the Seagraves are among the most envied couples in their community, and still deeply in love - until the night Lydia Seagrave picks up a gun and shoots her husband. Confronting a tangle of family lies in the wake of this shocking tragedy are the three Seagrave sisters.
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Sit it out
- By Laurie on 08-29-08
By: Eileen Goudge
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Rush Home Road
- By: Lori Lansens
- Narrated by: Ruby Dee
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Abridged
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When a 70-year-old woman finds a five-year-old girl abandoned on her doorstep, she is thrust into a sorrowful past that can only be conquered with the help of the girl who opened her memory - the very girl she is trying to save. This first novel, according to author Jacquelyn Mitchard, is one of "exquisite power, honesty, and conviction...quite nearly without flaws."
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filthy language and violent content
- By Anna on 12-16-11
By: Lori Lansens
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One Summer
- By: Karen Robards
- Narrated by: Kate Fleming
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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hnny Harris is home again, his too-tight jeans and damn-your-eyes belligerence honed to perfection by a ten-year stretch in federal prison for murder. Now he’s out on parole and ready for the job Rachel Grant has promised him to help him begin a new life. Unlike the rest of the town, Rachel has always believed in her former student’s innocence. But one thing has changed. The sullenly handsome boy she remembers is still sullen, still handsome - but no longer a boy.
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A Classic Robards! A must buy
- By Empress Karen on 02-10-14
By: Karen Robards
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The Vine of Desire
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Anju and Sudha formed an astounding, almost psychic connection during their childhood in India. When Anju invites Sudha, a single mother in Calcutta, to come live with her and her husband, Sunil, in California, Sudha foolishly accepts, knowing full well that Sunil has long desired her. As Sunil's attraction rises to the surface, the trio must struggle to make sense of the freedoms of America - and of the ties that bind them to India and to one another.
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Vine of desire
- By Mz Shantay on 03-27-21
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Bullet in the Brain
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Anders is an angry, cynical man. A book critic known for his scathing reviews, he finds any excuse to dismiss, belittle, or insult. This afternoon is no more agitating than the next. Angers finds himself in a long line at the bank, waiting to reach a teller. Even after two men - wearing masks and carrying guns - take control of the building, Anders is unfazed. It's this behavior that lands him with a pistol against his stomach and a man screamingin his face. And when the bank robber, indignant over Anders' behavior, shoots the book critic in the head, his mind floats through the memories of his life, settling on one particular event....
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The Perfect Example
- By Sarah on 08-01-17
By: Tobias Wolff
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Lolita
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Jeremy Irons
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Awe and exhilaration—along with heartbreak and mordant wit—abound in Lolita, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsession for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America.
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An Absolutely Gorgeous Audible Experience
- By Jim on 10-26-05
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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In the title story, a young boy becomes obsessed with his cousin's doll after she tragically passes away from leukemia. As he grows older, he begins to collect "found dolls" from the surrounding neighborhoods and stores his treasures in the abandoned carriage house on his family's estate. But just what kind of dolls are they?In The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror, Joyce Carol Oates evokes the “fascination of the abomination” that is at the core of the most profound, the most unsettling, and the most memorable of dark mystery fiction.
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Cardiff, by the Sea
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All stories in collection
- By Betsy Ross on 12-10-22
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The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares
- Novellas and Stories of Unspeakable Dread
- By: Joyce Carol Oates
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- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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An incomparable master storyteller in all forms, in The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares Joyce Carol Oates spins six imaginative tales of suspense. The Corn Maiden is the gut-wrenching story of Marissa, a beautiful and sweet, but somewhat slow, eleven-year-old girl with hair the color of corn silk. Her single mother comes home one night to find her missing and panics, frantically knocking on the doors of her neighbors.
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Very Unsettling
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High Crime Area
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- By: Joyce Carol Oates
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In the title story, a white aspiring professor is convinced she is being followed. No need to panic - she has a handgun stowed away in her purse, just in case. But when she turns to confront her black male shadow, the situation isn't what she expects. In "The Rescuer" a promising graduate student detours to inner-city Trenton, New Jersey, to save her brother from a downward spiral. But she soon finds out there may be more to his world than to hers.
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Dark, Disturbing, Thought provoking.
- By Matthew S. Hill on 03-18-17
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Evil Eye
- Four Novellas of Love Gone Wrong
- By: Joyce Carol Oates
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Listeners know that few authors are able to create an atmosphere of unease and terror as well as Oates, a fact confirmed by the four novellas presented here. All the novellas in this collection revolve around the theme of love gone wrong - horribly, shockingly wrong.
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Some of the stories are excellent!
- By Matthew S. Hill on 03-29-17
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Bellefleur
- Gothic Saga Series, Book 1
- By: Joyce Carol Oates
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 27 hrs and 28 mins
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A wealthy and notorious clan, the Bellefleurs live in a region not unlike the Adirondacks, in an enormous mansion on the shores of mythic Lake Noir. They own vast lands and profitable businesses, they employ their neighbors, and they influence the government. A prolific and eccentric group, they include several millionaires, a mass murderer, a spiritual seeker who climbs into the mountains looking for God, a wealthy noctambulist who dies of a chicken scratch.
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Old School Gothic Literature (Not a beach read)
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The Doll-Master
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- By: Joyce Carol Oates
- Narrated by: Robert Fass, Kirsten Potter
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In the title story, a young boy becomes obsessed with his cousin's doll after she tragically passes away from leukemia. As he grows older, he begins to collect "found dolls" from the surrounding neighborhoods and stores his treasures in the abandoned carriage house on his family's estate. But just what kind of dolls are they?In The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror, Joyce Carol Oates evokes the “fascination of the abomination” that is at the core of the most profound, the most unsettling, and the most memorable of dark mystery fiction.
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Boring
- By Kelly on 10-17-19
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Cardiff, by the Sea
- Four Novellas of Suspense
- By: Joyce Carol Oates
- Narrated by: Lauren Ezzo
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In these psychologically daring, chillingly suspenseful pieces, the author of We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde writes about women facing threats past and present, once again cementing her reputation for "great intelligence and dead-on imaginative powers" (Los Angeles Times Book Review).
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All stories in collection
- By Betsy Ross on 12-10-22
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The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares
- Novellas and Stories of Unspeakable Dread
- By: Joyce Carol Oates
- Narrated by: Adam Verner, Christine Williams
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
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An incomparable master storyteller in all forms, in The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares Joyce Carol Oates spins six imaginative tales of suspense. The Corn Maiden is the gut-wrenching story of Marissa, a beautiful and sweet, but somewhat slow, eleven-year-old girl with hair the color of corn silk. Her single mother comes home one night to find her missing and panics, frantically knocking on the doors of her neighbors.
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Very Unsettling
- By Michael on 07-03-12
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High Crime Area
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- By: Joyce Carol Oates
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan, Ray Chase, Donna Postel, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In the title story, a white aspiring professor is convinced she is being followed. No need to panic - she has a handgun stowed away in her purse, just in case. But when she turns to confront her black male shadow, the situation isn't what she expects. In "The Rescuer" a promising graduate student detours to inner-city Trenton, New Jersey, to save her brother from a downward spiral. But she soon finds out there may be more to his world than to hers.
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Dark, Disturbing, Thought provoking.
- By Matthew S. Hill on 03-18-17
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Evil Eye
- Four Novellas of Love Gone Wrong
- By: Joyce Carol Oates
- Narrated by: Donna Postel, Luci Christian, Chris Patton, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Listeners know that few authors are able to create an atmosphere of unease and terror as well as Oates, a fact confirmed by the four novellas presented here. All the novellas in this collection revolve around the theme of love gone wrong - horribly, shockingly wrong.
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Some of the stories are excellent!
- By Matthew S. Hill on 03-29-17
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Bellefleur
- Gothic Saga Series, Book 1
- By: Joyce Carol Oates
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 27 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
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A wealthy and notorious clan, the Bellefleurs live in a region not unlike the Adirondacks, in an enormous mansion on the shores of mythic Lake Noir. They own vast lands and profitable businesses, they employ their neighbors, and they influence the government. A prolific and eccentric group, they include several millionaires, a mass murderer, a spiritual seeker who climbs into the mountains looking for God, a wealthy noctambulist who dies of a chicken scratch.
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Old School Gothic Literature (Not a beach read)
- By Keijon ford on 05-01-20
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We Were the Mulvaneys
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Judd is the youngest of the four Mulvaney children - three boys and a girl - on their parents’ lush farm in upstate New York. In his childhood, Judd is swept along by the sheer energy of the Mulvaneys and their wealth of beloved family stories. But now, 30 years old, Judd looks back through his memories to tell the secrets that eventually ripped apart the fabric of his storybook family.
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Overlooked Masterpiece
- By Jason on 10-26-12
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Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense
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The book opens with a woman, naked except for her high-heeled shoes, seated in front of the window in an apartment she cannot, on her own, afford. In this exquisitely tense narrative reimagining of Edward Hopper's Eleven A.M., 1926, the reader enters the minds of both the woman and her married lover, each consumed by alternating thoughts of disgust and arousal, as he rushes, amorously, murderously, to her door.
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What??????
- By KR on 09-19-22
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American Appetites
- By: Joyce Carol Oates
- Narrated by: Barbara Caruso
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- Unabridged
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Ian and Glynnis McCullough, intelligent, professional, and successful, are the envy of their affluent friends. But suddenly, an unexpected plea for help and a cancelled check send their tranquility spinning out of control.
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Another Great Book By Joyce Carol Oates
- By Jason on 12-06-12
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Lovely, Dark, Deep
- By: Joyce Carol Oates
- Narrated by: Jason Culp, Maggi-Meg Reed
- Length: 16 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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From the legendary literary master, winner of the National Book Award and New York Times best-selling author Joyce Carol Oates, a collection of ten spellbinding stories that maps the eerie darkness within us all. Insightful, disturbing, and mesmerizing in their lyrical precision, the stories in Lovely, Dark, Deep display Joyce Carol Oates's astonishing ability to make visceral the fear, hurt, and uncertainty that lurks at the edges of ordinary lives.
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Definitely Dark and Deep
- By Monica on 01-10-17
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Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars.
- A Novel
- By: Joyce Carol Oates
- Narrated by: Cheryl Smith
- Length: 30 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. is a gripping examination of contemporary America through the prism of a family tragedy: When a powerful parent dies, each of his adult children reacts in startling and unexpected ways, and his grieving widow in the most surprising way of all. Stark and penetrating, Joyce Carol Oates’s latest novel is a vivid exploration of race, psychological trauma, class warfare, grief, and eventual healing, as well as an intimate family novel in the tradition of the author’s best-selling We Were the Mulvaneys.
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A New All Time Favorite
- By Meg on 06-22-20
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A Book of American Martyrs
- A Novel
- By: Joyce Carol Oates
- Narrated by: Neil Hellegers, Tavia Gilbert, Kirsten Potter
- Length: 24 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In this striking, enormously affecting novel, Joyce Carol Oates tells the story of two very different yet intimately linked American families. Luther Dunphy is an ardent Evangelical who envisions himself as acting out God's will when he assassinates an abortion provider in his small Ohio town while Augustus Voorhees, the idealistic doctor who is killed, leaves behind a wife and children scarred and embittered by grief.
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NO! Just NO! INSULTING!
- By Jill Reynolds on 06-01-17
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Beautiful Days
- Stories
- By: Joyce Carol Oates
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert, Stephen Graybill, Caitlin Kelly
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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A collection of 13 mesmerizing stories by American master Joyce Carol Oates, including the 2017 Pushcart Prize-winning "Undocumented Alien". The diverse stories of Beautiful Days explore the most secret, intimate, and unacknowledged interior lives of characters not unlike ourselves, who assert their independence in acts of bold and often irrevocable defiance.
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Poor editing
- By Needles on 11-18-18
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A Widow's Story
- A Memoir
- By: Joyce Carol Oates
- Narrated by: Ellen Parker
- Length: 14 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In a work unlike anything she's written before, National Book Award-winner Joyce Carol Oates unveils a poignant, intimate memoir about the unexpected death of her husband of 46 years and its wrenching, surprising aftermath.
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Breathless!
- By Pamela Harvey on 02-18-11
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Butcher
- A Novel
- By: Joyce Carol Oates
- Narrated by: Amy Shiels, Edoardo Ballerini, Cassandra Campbell, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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In this harrowing story based on authentic historical documents, we follow the career of Dr. Silas Weir, “Father of Gyno-Psychiatry,” as he ascends from professional anonymity to national renown. Humiliated by a procedure gone terribly wrong, Weir is forced to take a position at the New Jersey Asylum for Female Lunatics, where he reigns. There, he is allowed to continue his practice, unchecked for decades, making a name for himself by focusing on women who have been neglected by the state—women he subjects to the most grotesque modes of experimentation.
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JCO is a treasure
- By wooden indian on 10-16-24
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My Life as a Rat
- A Novel
- By: Joyce Carol Oates
- Narrated by: Sadie Alexandru
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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My Life as a Rat follows Violet Rue Kerrigan, a young woman who looks back upon her life in exile from her family following her testimony, at age 12, concerning what she knew to be the racist murder of an African American boy by her older brothers. In a succession of vividly recalled episodes, Violet contemplates the circumstances of her life as the initially beloved youngest child of seven Kerrigan children who inadvertently “informs” on her brothers, setting into motion their arrests and convictions and her own long estrangement.
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Heavy Topics & Satisfying Story
- By Oscar on 06-30-19
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The (Other) You
- Stories
- By: Joyce Carol Oates
- Narrated by: Kate Reading, Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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In this stirring, reflective collection of short stories, Joyce Carol Oates ponders alternate destinies: the other lives we might have led if we’d made different choices. An accomplished writer returns to her childhood home of Yewville, but the homecoming stirs troubled thoughts about the person she might have been if she’d never left. A man in prison contemplates the gravity of his irreversible act. A student’s affair with a professor results in a pregnancy that alters the course of her life forever. Even the experience of reading is investigated.
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Amazing
- By Betsy Ross on 01-28-23
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Blonde
- By: Joyce Carol Oates
- Narrated by: Jayne Atkinson
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Abridged
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She was an all-American girl who became a legend of unparalleled stature. She inspired the adoration of millions, and her life has beguiled generations of fans and fellow artists. The story of Norma Jeane Baker, better known by her studio name, Marilyn Monroe, has been dissected for more than three decades, but never has it been captured in a narrative as breathtaking and transforming as Blonde.
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ARE YOU KIDDING ME? NO UNABRIDGED VERSION?
- By ClearlyCrystalAnn on 02-07-13
What listeners say about Extenuating Circumstances
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Lady in the Pink House
- 01-26-23
Very Dark
Just as dark and intriguing as always, Joyce Carol Oates never disappoints or bores her readers.
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- Polly
- 06-11-24
Interesting stores
A bunch of short unexpected plots. Each story totally different With untold stories and unusual people.
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- Gary & Jay
- 10-04-22
Skipped a number of stories.
I'm a great fan of Joyce Carol Oates, and have read or listened to a lot of her work.
In this anthology she often uses animal cruelty or torture as illustration, and while I'm not squeamish or triggered, I just didn't like it.
If this was her early writing, I'm glad she grew up.
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