Fortune Smiles
Stories
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By:
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Adam Johnson
About this listen
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his acclaimed novel about North Korea, The Orphan Master’s Son, Adam Johnson is one of America’s most provocative and powerful authors. Critics have compared him to Kurt Vonnegut, David Mitchell, and George Saunders, but Johnson’s new book will only further his reputation as one of our most original writers. Subtly surreal, darkly comic, both hilarious and heartbreaking, Fortune Smiles is a major collection of stories that gives voice to the perspectives we don’t often hear, while offering something rare in fiction: a new way of looking at the world.
In six masterly stories, Johnson delves deep into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal. “Nirvana,” which won the prestigious Sunday Times short story prize, portrays a programmer whose wife has a rare disease finding solace in a digital simulacrum of the president of the United States. In “Hurricanes Anonymous”—first included in the Best American Short Stories anthology—a young man searches for the mother of his son in a Louisiana devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. “George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine” follows a former warden of a Stasi prison in East Germany who vehemently denies his past, even as pieces of it are delivered in packages to his door. And in the unforgettable title story, Johnson returns to his signature subject, North Korea, depicting two defectors from Pyongyang who are trying to adapt to their new lives in Seoul, while one cannot forget the woman he left behind.
Unnerving, riveting, and written with a timeless quality, these stories confirm Johnson as one of America’s greatest writers and an indispensable guide to our new century.
Readers:
“Nirvana” read by Johnathan McClain
“Hurricanes Anonymous” read by Dominic Hoffman
“Interesting Facts” read by Cassandra Campbell
“George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine” read by W. Morgan Sheppard
“Dark Meadow” read by Will Damron
“Fortune Smiles” read by Greg Chun
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Critic reviews
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When high-school teacher Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, while Caelum is away, Maureen finds herself in the library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed. Miraculously, she survives. But when Caelum and Maureen flee to an illusion of safety on the Quirk family's Connecticut farm, they discover that the effects of chaos are not easily put right.
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excellent all around yarn
- By G. on 01-10-09
By: Wally Lamb
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Pacific Beat
- By: T. Jefferson Parker
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 14 hrs and 32 mins
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Ex-cop Jim Weir thought he'd seen it all during his years on the force. That is until he saw the body of his sister Annie, brutally used by a monster in human form, then carelessly discarded. He'd never seen such grief ravage the face of his friend and brother-in-law Ray Cruz, a good cop on the Newport Beach Police Department. When Weir learns that the only witness swore the killer made his escape in a Newport Beach squad car, his disbelief turns to confusion and outrage.
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Bad, bad, bad...
- By Robert E. Orlando on 11-19-14
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The Leaving
- By: Tara Altebrando
- Narrated by: Karissa Vacker
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
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Eleven years ago, six kindergartners went missing without a trace. After all that time, the people left behind moved on, or tried to, until today. Today five of those kids returned. But as details of the disappearance begin to unfold, no one is prepared for the truth. This unforgettable novel with its rich characters, high stakes, and plot twists will leave listeners breathless.
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Plot Twist
- By Josh F. on 01-07-21
By: Tara Altebrando
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Where Serpents Lie
- By: T. Jefferson Parker
- Narrated by: Phil Gigante
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
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Terry Naughton, head of Orange County's Crimes Against Youth unit, is the champion of children. Someone calling themselves the Horridus has been abducting children from their beds, dressing them like little angels, and releasing them the next day, the only clue he leaves is a piece of snakeskin tucked into the folds of their gowns. So far he hasn't physically harmed any of them, but as Naughton well knows, it's only a matter of time.
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Where Serpents Lie=Mystery,Suspence,Betrayel&More!
- By shelley on 11-10-14
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Our Story Begins
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- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Wolff here returns with fresh revelations - about biding one's time, or experiencing first love, or burying one's mother - that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary. A retired Marine enrolls in college while her son trains for Iraq. A lawyer takes a difficult deposition. An American in Rome indulges the Gypsy who's picked his pocket.
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Great
- By chris on 04-11-08
By: Tobias Wolff
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Since We Fell
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- By: Dennis Lehane
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Since We Fell follows Rachel Childs, a former journalist who, after an on-air mental breakdown, now lives as a virtual shut-in. In all other respects, however, she enjoys an ideal life with an ideal husband. Until a chance encounter on a rainy afternoon causes that ideal life to fray. As does Rachel's marriage. As does Rachel herself. Sucked into a conspiracy thick with deception, violence, and possibly madness, Rachel must find the strength within herself to conquer unimaginable fears and mind-altering truths.
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Wait ....
- By Ann on 05-17-17
By: Dennis Lehane
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Forty Words for Sorrow
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- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
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When the badly decomposed body of 13-year-old Katie Pine is found, John Cardinal is vindicated. It was Cardinal who'd kept the Pine case open and Cardinal had been demoted to the burglary squad for his excessive zeal. But Katie Pine isn't the only youngster to have gone missing and Cardinal is now given the go-ahead to reopen the files on three other lost kids. When another youth is reported missing, he begins to see a pattern that screams "serial killer."
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even better than the TV show
- By Allison Payne on 04-21-20
By: Giles Blunt
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Strong Motion
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: Scott Aiello
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Louis Holland arrives in Boston in a spring of ecological upheaval (a rash of earthquakes on the North Shore) and odd luck: the first one kills his grandmother. Louis tries to maintain his independence, but falls in love with a Harvard seismologist whose discoveries about the earthquakes' cause complicate everything.
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Compelling Story, Ridiculous Narrator
- By DianeReads on 02-28-16
By: Jonathan Franzen
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The Lost Ones
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It begins with a phone call that Nora Watts has dreaded for 15 years - since the day she gave her newborn daughter up for adoption. Bonnie has vanished. The police consider her a chronic runaway and aren't looking, leaving her desperate adoptive parents to reach out to her birth mother as a last hope. A biracial product of the foster system, transient, homeless, scarred by a past filled with pain and violence, Nora knows intimately what happens to vulnerable girls on the streets.
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Would make a great movie!
- By Shay on 08-27-17
By: Sheena Kamal
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Lost Memory of Skin
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Scott Shepherd
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
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Suspended in a strangely modern-day version of limbo, the young man at the center of Russell Banks’s uncompromising and morally complex new novel must create a life for himself in the wake of incarceration. Known in his new identity only as the Kid, and on probation after doing time for a liaison with an underage girl, he is shackled to a GPS monitoring device and forbidden to live within 2,500 feet of anywhere children might gather. With nowhere else to go, the Kid takes up residence under a south Florida causeway, in a makeshift encampment with other convicted sex offenders.
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Amazing "Must Read" Tale of (In)Justice in America
- By Ellen H. Anderson on 10-15-11
By: Russell Banks
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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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Crimes by Moonlight
- Mysteries from the Dark Side
- By: Charlaine Harris - author/editor
- Narrated by: Natalie Ross
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
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In number-one New York Times best-selling author Charlaine Harris’s "Dahlia Underground,” venerable vampire Dahlia Lynley-Chivers survives an attack by an anti-vampire terrorist group, only to show them they tried to blow up the wrong bloodsucker. Bailey Ruth Raeburn, a ghost assigned to assist humans in trouble, steps into the middle of a marital dispute with surprising twists in Carolyn Hart’s “Riding High”....
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Pleasantly surprised
- By Bonnie on 08-06-11
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What listeners say about Fortune Smiles
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jessica
- 07-30-16
Well written
All the stories are well written an well performed and very original. A few of them resonated with me more than others.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Darwin8u
- 09-26-15
Blown away by every single page and every story
These stories BREAK me. Johnson pulls each story's string to the point of breaking and then plays them beautifully with precision and dexterity. 'Interesting Facts' about crushed me -- so good. Blown away by every single page and every story. Seriously, I might just have to put back on my white shirt and name badge from my 19 yo missionary days and go door-to-door evangelizing about Adam Johnson's book. "Have you read Adam Johnson?" "I know Adam Johnson is True." "A man get nearer to God by reading Adam Johnson's short-stories than any other fiction writer, save perhaps McCarthy". Oh, fine. That is probably an exaggeration, but still, GOD, these stories were amazing. Scary even. Like being transported to a foreign land and buried alive. He captures the language of the other and once you get on his train there is no getting off. OK. Perhaps again I am exaggerating. Perhaps, I am caught up in a convert's euphoria. But I'm not new to Adam Johnson. I've read The Orphan Master's Son and loved that too.
The narrations were perfect too. Each one balanced the art of reading with the dance of drama. They never crowded the stories with their voices, but supported the stories and made them each unique.
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39 people found this helpful
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- Deborah
- 08-07-18
beautiful
I love Adam Johnson's work. these stories are so rich in emotion and insight. the final, titular tale may be the best, especially in this audio version, as the reader's accent and cadence really bring the story into vivid color. I think the narrators were quite well cast. I definitely recommend/well worth the credit!
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- Lynne Wheaten
- 11-03-18
AN ECLECTIC MIX OF STORIES
This is an eclectic mix of stories told in disparate voices but convergent themes. Adam Johnson’s world is not a nice place and some times his heroes aren’t very heroic; but each voice rings clearly and truthfully and compels you to continue.
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1 person found this helpful
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- B Hughes
- 04-02-19
Both great and terrible
The Orphan Master’s Son is one of my favorite books, so I was excited to read these stories. However, the opening story is so depressing without being compelling or even making much sense that I almost gave up on the book. To me only 1 of the stories, “George Orwell...” is truly great, and it alone is worth the price of the book.
I know Nirvana won awards but I found it oppressive and simply boring. “Hurricanes...” held my interest but portions seemed absurdly unrealistic and I HATED the ending. Fortune Smiles was ok, but felt contrived. I had expected much more from the author’s return to Korean subject matter. “Orwell” on the other hand is a work of art. Similar to Orphan Master, it provides insight into the mind of someone who is living in a reality they have developed to keep from facing the world around them. I hung on every word and wanted more. It was brilliant.
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- blkwarmblood
- 05-26-20
Stories take u away
I enjoyed this book for the most part, however it was very upsetting when the child porn story was being narrated.
The accents were good. The stories were well written. You could tell that there was a lot of care put into the production of this audiobook. It is really appreciated.
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- Mel
- 10-29-15
Half Full or Half Empty
How can you explain why something resonated in you and bounced off someone else? Just look at the two reviews that appear here for this book right now, 5:30 p.m. MST 10/28/15 "Darwin" and "Unhappy Sirius Camper". A 5* and a1*; it couldn't be more disparate. I am aligned completely with Darwin's opinion of this book (and have to thank him for a glowing review that compelled me to get this) . It MUST be a case of how you see the glass. For the Unhappy guy/gal this is a half empty, for me it is absolutely overflowing. Author Adam Johnson captures the fragility of *us*, and shows that we are, as Whitman wrote, "Multitudes."
Johnson gives us a collection of 6 stories, the final "Fortune Smiles," a return to his 2013 Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Orphan Master's Son. In these few stories (far too few IMO) Johnson reaches deep into the situations and lives of People, pushes illness, death, jealousy, mourning, hope, even pornography and pedophilia, into the background and lets these wretched aching souls speak beyond words and judgements. I imagine each person will read them subjective to their own lives, but Johnson has a talent for slipping you into the story just barely ahead of your own biases or experience. The unrolling facts of each story, written so fluidly concise, take turns with you on an emotional and intellectual level -- a battle of the mind and the heart. Though not for every reader, others may find themselves in new frontiers of humanity -- seeing the child that was, in the monster; the other side of the coin; walking a mile in someone else's shoes; understanding how love and hatred can occupy simultaneously one feeling.
I remember for just a second feeling a thought skitter across my mind, formed somewhere beneath my consciousness (I can't even recall which story it was I was listening to). It whispered, this must be how God sees us. It may be hard to read, the human condition seems so raw, but it is at the same time reaffirming. Collectively we struggle, we fail, we carry on. There is a beauty in our ability to do so. I loved this read and hope it is read and loved by others. If I knew the sound your heart makes when it is pierced and wrung out, I would type those letters here, or if there was only an emoji -- it would be so much easier, because sometimes words just aren't enough. So I'll say it with 5 little stars.
The mixed narration is done beautifully, turning the stories into soliloquys unaware of an audience. How many times do we get to listen to a voice that conveys such emotion? Even in the gruff voice of the narrator on "George Orwell is a Friend of Mine" you hear the struggle of conscience overtake pride and position.
To those that think they will (or those that did) hear Betrayal, Danger, Denial, Selfishness, and Smashed Hopes, I heard my own conventionalities shatter their confines and expand. For me, the stories spoke gently that the glass, no matter how much it contains, has capacity. We are "Multitudes," and for a few brief stories, Adam Johnson was "the poet of the soul."
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44 people found this helpful
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- Anna-Marie SF
- 12-10-16
Captivating!
Adam Johnson transports the reader through profound, unexpected life experiences stimulating deep reflection and sometimes laughter. Each unique narrator reveals thought-provoking perspectives on, and reactions to potentially disconcerting circumstances. Captivating!
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- Julika Barrett
- 06-24-16
Spectacular Story Telling
Haunting and beautiful! Left me wanting more. What come next in each story. Impressed
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- Andre
- 10-18-23
Magnificent!
Adam Johnson’s “Fortune Smiles” is a magnificent collection of stories. These are among the best written recently. They are dark and sparkling, featuring anti-heroes that enthralled and repelled me, but kept me reading more to see how the stories end. My favorite one is “Dark Meadows” about a male survivor of sexual abuse trying to be a hero to the abused. These stories captivated me. I look forward to more.
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