-
Fun with Problems
- Stories
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 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 $14.61
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
In Fun with Problems, Robert Stone demonstrates once again that he is "one of our greatest living writers" (Los Angeles Times). The pieces in this new volume vary greatly in length - some are almost novellas, others no more than a page - but all share the signature blend of longing, violence, black humor, sex, and drugs that has helped Stone illuminate the dark corners of the human soul.
Entire lives are laid out with remarkable precision, in captivating prose: a screenwriter carries on a decades-long affair with a beautiful actress, whose descent into addiction he can neither turn from nor share; a bored husband picks up a mysterious woman only to find that his ego has led him woefully astray; a world-beating Silicon Valley executive receives an unwelcome guest at his mansion in the hills; a scuba dive guides uneasy newlyweds to a point of no return.
Fun with Problems showcases Stone's great gift: to pinpoint and make real the impulses - by turns violently coercive and quietly seductive - that cause us to conceal, reveal, and betray our very selves.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
A Flag for Sunrise
- By: Robert Stone
- Narrated by: Stephen Lang
- Length: 17 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Possessed of astonishing dramatic, emotional, and philosophical resonance, A Flag for Sunrise is a novel in the grand tradition about Americans drawn into the maelstrom of a small Central American country on the brink of revolution. From the book's inception, listeners will be seized by the dangers and nightmare suspense of life lived on the rim of a political volcano.
-
-
A towering achievement
- By Skeptical on 04-24-11
By: Robert Stone
-
Vineland
- By: Thomas Pynchon
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 15 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vineland, a zone of blessed anarchy in Northern California, is the last refuge of hippiedom, a culture devastated by the sobriety epidemic, Reaganomics, and the Tube. Here, in an Orwellian 1984, Zoyd Wheeler and his daughter, Prairie, search for Prairie's long-lost mother, a '60s radical who ran off with a narc.
-
-
..everybody's a hero at least once...
- By Darwin8u on 04-18-19
By: Thomas Pynchon
-
Station Eleven (Television Tie-in)
- A Novel
- By: Emily St. John Mandel
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.
-
-
gah!
- By Stacy on 10-08-14
-
Beautiful Ruins
- By: Jess Walter
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying. And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot - searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.
-
-
My mind wandered
- By Ella on 11-25-12
By: Jess Walter
-
Less (Booktrack Edition)
- A Novel
- By: Andrew Sean Greer
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Who says you can't run away from your problems? You are a failed novelist about to turn 50. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: Your boyfriend of the past nine years is engaged to someone else. You can't say yes—it would be too awkward—and you can't say no—it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of invitations to half-baked literary events around the world. Question: How do you arrange to skip town? Answer: You accept them all. What would possibly go wrong?
-
-
Less is not more. Plus a Pulitzer?
- By Seth on 03-24-20
-
South of Broad
- By: Pat Conroy
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 20 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Leopold Bloom King has been raised in a family shattered - and shadowed - by tragedy. Lonely and adrift, he searches for something to sustain him and finds it among a tightly knit group of outsiders. Surviving marriages happy and troubled, unrequited loves and unspoken longings, hard-won successes and devastating breakdowns, as well as Charleston, South Carolina’s dark legacy of racism and class divisions, these friends will endure until a final test forces them to face something none of them are prepared for.
-
-
Authors Need to Review Pronunciations
- By Pamela on 02-23-10
By: Pat Conroy
-
A Flag for Sunrise
- By: Robert Stone
- Narrated by: Stephen Lang
- Length: 17 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Possessed of astonishing dramatic, emotional, and philosophical resonance, A Flag for Sunrise is a novel in the grand tradition about Americans drawn into the maelstrom of a small Central American country on the brink of revolution. From the book's inception, listeners will be seized by the dangers and nightmare suspense of life lived on the rim of a political volcano.
-
-
A towering achievement
- By Skeptical on 04-24-11
By: Robert Stone
-
Vineland
- By: Thomas Pynchon
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 15 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vineland, a zone of blessed anarchy in Northern California, is the last refuge of hippiedom, a culture devastated by the sobriety epidemic, Reaganomics, and the Tube. Here, in an Orwellian 1984, Zoyd Wheeler and his daughter, Prairie, search for Prairie's long-lost mother, a '60s radical who ran off with a narc.
-
-
..everybody's a hero at least once...
- By Darwin8u on 04-18-19
By: Thomas Pynchon
-
Station Eleven (Television Tie-in)
- A Novel
- By: Emily St. John Mandel
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.
-
-
gah!
- By Stacy on 10-08-14
-
Beautiful Ruins
- By: Jess Walter
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying. And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot - searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.
-
-
My mind wandered
- By Ella on 11-25-12
By: Jess Walter
-
Less (Booktrack Edition)
- A Novel
- By: Andrew Sean Greer
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Who says you can't run away from your problems? You are a failed novelist about to turn 50. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: Your boyfriend of the past nine years is engaged to someone else. You can't say yes—it would be too awkward—and you can't say no—it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of invitations to half-baked literary events around the world. Question: How do you arrange to skip town? Answer: You accept them all. What would possibly go wrong?
-
-
Less is not more. Plus a Pulitzer?
- By Seth on 03-24-20
-
South of Broad
- By: Pat Conroy
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 20 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Leopold Bloom King has been raised in a family shattered - and shadowed - by tragedy. Lonely and adrift, he searches for something to sustain him and finds it among a tightly knit group of outsiders. Surviving marriages happy and troubled, unrequited loves and unspoken longings, hard-won successes and devastating breakdowns, as well as Charleston, South Carolina’s dark legacy of racism and class divisions, these friends will endure until a final test forces them to face something none of them are prepared for.
-
-
Authors Need to Review Pronunciations
- By Pamela on 02-23-10
By: Pat Conroy
-
Before He Finds Her
- By: Michael Kardos
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everyone in the quiet Jersey Shore town of Silver Bay knows the story: on a Sunday evening in September 1991, Ramsey Miller threw a blowout block party, then murdered his beautiful wife and three-year-old daughter. But everyone is wrong. The daughter got away. Now she is nearly eighteen and tired of living in secrecy. Under the name Melanie Denison, she has spent the last fifteen years in small-town West Virginia as part of the Witness Protection Program. She has never been allowed to travel, go to a school dance, or even have internet at home. Precautions must be taken at every turn, because Ramsey Miller was never caught and might still be looking for his daughter.
-
-
Riveting Mystery Glues-2-U for Hours
- By W Perry Hall on 02-09-15
By: Michael Kardos
-
The Crying of Lot 49
- By: Thomas Pynchon
- Narrated by: George Wilson
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Quite unexpectedly, Mrs. Oedipa Maas finds herself the executor of the estate of Pierce Inverarity, a man she used to know in a more-or-less intimate fashion. When Oedipa heads off to Southern California to sort through Pierce's affairs, she becomes ensnared in a hilarious and puzzling worldwide conspiracy.
-
-
Good book, Average recording
- By James on 08-12-07
By: Thomas Pynchon
-
Managing Expectations
- A Memoir in Essays
- By: Minnie Driver
- Narrated by: Minnie Driver
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this intimate, beautifully crafted collection, Driver writes and narrates with disarming charm and candor about her bohemian upbringing between England and Barbados; her post-university travails and triumphs—from being the only student in her acting school not taken on by an agent to being discovered at a rave in a muddy field in the English countryside; shooting to fame in one of the most influential films of the 1990s and being nominated for an Academy Award; and finding the true light of her life, her son.
-
-
Love the stories
- By None of Your Business on 09-27-22
By: Minnie Driver
-
Stories
- All-New Tales
- By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, Al Sarrantonio - editor, Joe Hill, and others
- Narrated by: Anne Bobby, Jonathan Davis, Katherine Kellgren, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal.
-
-
Something for Everyone
- By Nicole on 05-24-17
By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, and others
-
Underworld
- By: Don DeLillo
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 31 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nick Shay and Klara Sax knew each other once, intimately, and they meet again in the American desert. He is trying to outdistance the crucial events of his early life, haunted by the hard logic of loss and by the echo of a gunshot in a basement room. She is an artist who has made a blood struggle for independence.
-
-
CYBEX burned into my eyes
- By Ruth Ann Orlansky on 07-01-12
By: Don DeLillo
-
A Single Man
- By: Christopher Isherwood
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 4 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When A Single Man was originally published, it shocked many by its frank, sympathetic, and moving portrayal of a gay man in midlife. George, the protagonist, is adjusting to life on his own after the sudden death of his partner, and determines to persist in the routines of his daily life; the course of A Single Man spans 24 hours in an ordinary day.
-
-
Gorgeous Writing but Not for Everyone
- By Catherine on 01-27-13
-
The Christmas Kid
- And Other Brooklyn Stories
- By: Pete Hamill
- Narrated by: Henry Leyva
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Never before collected in one volume, here are Pete Hamill's stories about Brooklyn, the borough in which he was born and grew up, and the one closest to his heart. A young boy with a mysterious past forever transforms the lives of the neighborhood toughs. A man returns to his old haunts to avenge the death of his brother. A couple chooses to embrace their memories of a bygone era rather than live in a diminished future. These are stories of a New York almost lost but not forgotten.
-
-
Matter of taste
- By Avid Reader on 02-20-21
By: Pete Hamill
-
Vigil Harbor
- A Novel
- By: Julia Glass
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Kimberly Farr, Jeremy Davidson, and others
- Length: 17 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A decade from now, in the historic town of Vigil Harbor, there's been a rash of divorces among the yacht-club set; a marine biologist despairs at the state of the world; a spurned wife is bent on revenge; and the renowned architect Austin Kepner pursues a passion for building homes designed to withstand the escalating fury of relentless storms. Austin's stepson, Brecht, has dropped out of college in New York and returned home after narrowly escaping one of the terrorist acts that, like hurricanes, have become increasingly common.
-
-
Good performances of this overly ambitious novel
- By Jeff Lacy on 08-08-22
By: Julia Glass
-
City of Night
- By: John Rechy
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 17 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When John Rechy's explosive first novel appeared in 1963, it marked a radical departure in fiction, and gave voice to a subculture that had never before been revealed with such acuity. It earned comparisons to Genet and Kerouac, even as Rechy was personally attacked by scandalized reviewers. Nevertheless, the book became an international best seller, and 50 years later, it has become a classic. Bold and inventive in style, Rechy is unflinching in his portrayal of one hustling "youngman" and his search for self-knowledge.
-
-
A seminal classic
- By Robert Simmons on 09-22-19
By: John Rechy
-
Season's End
- By: Will North
- Narrated by: Tom Taylorson
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On his way to work, Colin Ryan finds the woman whom he has loved for 30 years - his best friend’s wife – lying motionless on a dangerous bend in the road, unconscious and near death from alcohol poisoning. Believing she’s tried to kill herself, Colin does what he’s done since the beginning of their turbulent friendship: he nurtures and comforts her, this time with an eye toward solving the mystery that’s left her half dead on the foggy roadside. In signature North style, at once lyrical and gripping, Season's End gathers a brilliant cast of characters - richly rendered and beautifully grounded - against the sumptuous backdrop of Washington State’s Puget Sound.
-
-
A superb piece of writing by a gifted author.
- By P. D. Small on 10-06-16
By: Will North
-
On Java Road
- A Novel
- By: Lawrence Osborne
- Narrated by: Michael Obiora
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After two decades as a journalist in Hong Kong, ex-pat Englishman Adrian Gyle has very little to show for it. Evenings are whiled away with soup dumplings and tea at Fung Shing, the restaurant downstairs from his home on Java Road, watching the city erupt in violence as pro-democracy demonstrations hit ever closer to home. Watching from the skyrises is Adrian’s old friend Jimmy Tang, the scion of one of Hong Kong’s wealthiest families. Just as Gyle prepares to turn his back on Hong Kong, he finds one last intrigue: Rebecca, a student involved in the protests.
-
-
Another winning novel by Laurence Osborne
- By Reed Ramlow on 09-26-22
By: Lawrence Osborne
-
Slow Days, Fast Company
- The World, The Flesh, and L.A.
- By: Eve Babitz
- Narrated by: Mia Barron
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eve Babitz captured the voluptuous quality of LA in the 1960s in a wildly original, totally unique voice. These stories are time capsule gems, as poignant and startling today as they were when published in the early 1970s. Eve Babitz is not well known today, but she should be. Her firsthand experiences in the LA cultural scene, translated into haunting fiction, are an unforgettable glimpse at a lost world and a magical time.
-
-
obsessed with Eve
- By Debbie L. Smith on 06-25-20
By: Eve Babitz
Editorial reviews
The characters in novelist Robert Stone's latest collection of short stories are depraved, depressed, and debauched, struggling just as much with their vices as their own dark souls. The people who populate Fun With Problems the reckless journalist, the lonely husband, the freebasing actress, the self-destructive professor are beyond redemption, barreling toward an abyss from which they can't or won't stop themselves. This here is heavy stuff.
Narrating is David Colacci, a gruff-voiced orator whose brusque delivery gives these tales of addiction, infidelity, and hopelessness an emotional urgency. The risk here is that Colacci could veer into hokey, sentimental territory, sympathizing with the characters in a way Stone doesn't intend. But Colacci's interpretation is spot-on, oozing with the venomous contempt these characters feel toward themselves and those around them. In "High Wire", the longest (and best) of the eight stories, about the long-term relationship between two addicts, Colacci is particularly heartbreaking, his voice and cadence perfectly reflecting a junkie's sad descent: "We would embrace. Sometimes we would hold each other, as chaste as Hansel and Gretel, to show we cared. We hoped we cared."
This isn't to say the book, clocking in at just over six hours, is an unpleasant experience, though at times it makes for an uncomfortable one. As much as the characters can be unlikeable and their actions unconscionable, they aren't entirely hard to relate to. They may represent the bleaker sides of humanity, but they still come across as, well, human. This as much due to Colacci's forceful yet wistful portrayal as it is to Stone's poignant storytelling. Jaime Buerger
Critic reviews
Related to this topic
-
City of Night
- By: John Rechy
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 17 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When John Rechy's explosive first novel appeared in 1963, it marked a radical departure in fiction, and gave voice to a subculture that had never before been revealed with such acuity. It earned comparisons to Genet and Kerouac, even as Rechy was personally attacked by scandalized reviewers. Nevertheless, the book became an international best seller, and 50 years later, it has become a classic. Bold and inventive in style, Rechy is unflinching in his portrayal of one hustling "youngman" and his search for self-knowledge.
-
-
A seminal classic
- By Robert Simmons on 09-22-19
By: John Rechy
-
A Flag for Sunrise
- By: Robert Stone
- Narrated by: Stephen Lang
- Length: 17 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Possessed of astonishing dramatic, emotional, and philosophical resonance, A Flag for Sunrise is a novel in the grand tradition about Americans drawn into the maelstrom of a small Central American country on the brink of revolution. From the book's inception, listeners will be seized by the dangers and nightmare suspense of life lived on the rim of a political volcano.
-
-
A towering achievement
- By Skeptical on 04-24-11
By: Robert Stone
-
Netherland
- By: Joseph O'Neill
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alone and un-tethered, feeling lost in the country he had come to regard as home, Hans stumbles upon the vibrant New York subculture of cricket, where he revisits his lost childhood and, thanks to a friendship with a charismatic and charming Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon, begins to reconnect with his life and his adopted country. Ramkissoon, a Gatsby-like figure who is part idealist and part operator, introduces Hans to an "other" New York populated by immigrants and strivers of every race and nationality.
-
-
Get Your Post-Colonial Gatsby ON!
- By Darwin8u on 04-13-12
By: Joseph O'Neill
-
Stories
- All-New Tales
- By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, Al Sarrantonio - editor, Joe Hill, and others
- Narrated by: Anne Bobby, Jonathan Davis, Katherine Kellgren, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal.
-
-
Something for Everyone
- By Nicole on 05-24-17
By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, and others
-
Sunny's Nights
- Lost and Found at the Bar at the End of the World
- By: Tim Sultan
- Narrated by: Robert Malloch
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Imagine that Alice had walked into a bar instead of falling down the rabbit hole. In the tradition of J. R. Moehringer’s The Tender Bar and the classic reportage of Joseph Mitchell, here is an indelible portrait of what is quite possibly the greatest bar in the world—and the mercurial, magnificent man behind it. The first time he saw Sunny’s Bar, in 1995, Tim Sultan was lost, thirsty for a drink, and intrigued by the single bar sign among the forlorn warehouses lining the Brooklyn waterfront.
-
-
Visiting an Era
- By Carolyn on 03-01-16
By: Tim Sultan
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
THE MAN WHO FORGOT RAY BRADBURY
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 05-27-17
By: Sam Weller - editor, and others
-
City of Night
- By: John Rechy
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 17 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When John Rechy's explosive first novel appeared in 1963, it marked a radical departure in fiction, and gave voice to a subculture that had never before been revealed with such acuity. It earned comparisons to Genet and Kerouac, even as Rechy was personally attacked by scandalized reviewers. Nevertheless, the book became an international best seller, and 50 years later, it has become a classic. Bold and inventive in style, Rechy is unflinching in his portrayal of one hustling "youngman" and his search for self-knowledge.
-
-
A seminal classic
- By Robert Simmons on 09-22-19
By: John Rechy
-
A Flag for Sunrise
- By: Robert Stone
- Narrated by: Stephen Lang
- Length: 17 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Possessed of astonishing dramatic, emotional, and philosophical resonance, A Flag for Sunrise is a novel in the grand tradition about Americans drawn into the maelstrom of a small Central American country on the brink of revolution. From the book's inception, listeners will be seized by the dangers and nightmare suspense of life lived on the rim of a political volcano.
-
-
A towering achievement
- By Skeptical on 04-24-11
By: Robert Stone
-
Netherland
- By: Joseph O'Neill
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alone and un-tethered, feeling lost in the country he had come to regard as home, Hans stumbles upon the vibrant New York subculture of cricket, where he revisits his lost childhood and, thanks to a friendship with a charismatic and charming Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon, begins to reconnect with his life and his adopted country. Ramkissoon, a Gatsby-like figure who is part idealist and part operator, introduces Hans to an "other" New York populated by immigrants and strivers of every race and nationality.
-
-
Get Your Post-Colonial Gatsby ON!
- By Darwin8u on 04-13-12
By: Joseph O'Neill
-
Stories
- All-New Tales
- By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, Al Sarrantonio - editor, Joe Hill, and others
- Narrated by: Anne Bobby, Jonathan Davis, Katherine Kellgren, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal.
-
-
Something for Everyone
- By Nicole on 05-24-17
By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, and others
-
Sunny's Nights
- Lost and Found at the Bar at the End of the World
- By: Tim Sultan
- Narrated by: Robert Malloch
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Imagine that Alice had walked into a bar instead of falling down the rabbit hole. In the tradition of J. R. Moehringer’s The Tender Bar and the classic reportage of Joseph Mitchell, here is an indelible portrait of what is quite possibly the greatest bar in the world—and the mercurial, magnificent man behind it. The first time he saw Sunny’s Bar, in 1995, Tim Sultan was lost, thirsty for a drink, and intrigued by the single bar sign among the forlorn warehouses lining the Brooklyn waterfront.
-
-
Visiting an Era
- By Carolyn on 03-01-16
By: Tim Sultan
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
THE MAN WHO FORGOT RAY BRADBURY
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 05-27-17
By: Sam Weller - editor, and others
-
Driving on the Rim
- By: Thomas McGuane
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The unforgettable voyager of this dark picaresque is I. B. "Berl" Pickett, M.D., whose die was probably cast the moment his mother thought to name him after Irving Berlin. Other insults piled on apace thereafter: the spasms of Pentecostal Sunday worship; the social debilitation of following his parents' itinerant rug-shampooing business; the erotic initiation at the hands of his aunt. It's hard to imagine what would have become of him had he not gone to medical school.
-
-
Delightful
- By Roy on 01-05-11
By: Thomas McGuane
-
Beautiful Animals
- A Novel
- By: Lawrence Osborne
- Narrated by: Tim Campbell
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a hike during a white-hot summer break on the Greek island of Hydra, Naomi and Samantha make a startling discovery: a man named Faoud, sleeping heavily, exposed to the elements, but still alive. As the two women learn more about the man, a migrant from Syria and a casualty of the crisis raging across the Aegean Sea, their own burgeoning friendship intensifies. But when their seemingly simple plan to help Faoud unravels, all must face the horrific consequences they have set in motion.
-
-
please offer more of this author's books
- By S. Liskey on 07-20-17
By: Lawrence Osborne
-
If I Forget You
- A Novel
- By: Thomas Christopher Greene
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twenty-one years after they were driven apart by circumstances beyond their control, two former lovers have a chance encounter on a Manhattan street. What follows is a tense, suspenseful exploration of the many facets of enduring love. Told from alternating points of view through time, If I Forget You tells the story of Henry Gold, a poet whose rise from poverty embodies the American dream, and Margot Fuller, the daughter of a prominent, wealthy family, and their unlikely, star-crossed love affair.
-
-
Good, but not great.
- By Amazon Customer on 07-01-16
-
Continental Drift
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Zach Villa
- Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Now available for the first time in audiobook format, a powerful literary classic from one of contemporary fiction's most acclaimed and important writers. Russell Banks' Continental Drift is a masterful novel of hope lost and gained and a gripping, indelible story of fragile lives uprooted and transformed by injustice, disappointment, and the seductions and realities of the American dream.
-
-
Give up and die
- By AI on 12-09-21
By: Russell Banks
-
The Night Ocean
- By: Paul La Farge
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Marina Willett, MD, has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends - or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears.
-
-
Frustratingly Uneven Due to Clumsy Plot Structure
- By Adam on 06-15-17
By: Paul La Farge
-
Strong Motion
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: Scott Aiello
- Length: 20 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Compelling Story, Ridiculous Narrator
- By DianeReads on 02-28-16
By: Jonathan Franzen
-
Laguna Heat
- By: T. Jefferson Parker
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Laguna: a place where a crazed killer has turned paradise into a Disneyland of depraved violence - with a fiery vengeance - and where homicide cop Tom Shephard unravels a grisly mystery. It reaches back across 40 years of sordid sex, blackmail, and suicide into the dark corners of his own past.
-
-
Fabulous
- By Stacy on 02-24-09
-
The Secret of the Villa Mimosa
- By: Elizabeth Adler
- Narrated by: Monica Buckley
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A beautiful Jane Doe with no memory of who she is or how she got to the bottom of a treacherous ravine; and a psychiatrist who joins her on her search for her identity. Dr. Phyl Forster was intrigued by the lovely woman who had been recovered from a San Francisco hillside and taken to the hospital where Forster was a resident psychiatrist. When Jane Doe regained consciousness, Dr. Phyl was at her side. It was then she realized that the patient had lost all memory.
-
-
Into the dark side!
- By anya on 10-11-21
By: Elizabeth Adler
-
Outside Looking In
- A Novel
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: Johnathan McClain
- Length: 14 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1943, LSD is synthesized in Basel. Two decades later, a coterie of grad students at Harvard are gradually drawn into the inner circle of renowned psychologist and psychedelic drug enthusiast Timothy Leary. Fitzhugh Loney, a psychology PhD student, and his wife, Joanie, become entranced by the drug’s possibilities such that their “research” becomes less a matter of clinical trials and academic papers and instead turns into a freewheeling exploration of mind expansion, group dynamics, and communal living.
-
-
STORYTELLING AS CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING
- By Christopher Meeks on 05-25-19
By: T. C. Boyle
-
Wind/Pinball
- Two Novels
- By: Haruki Murakami, Ted Goossen - translator
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 1978, a young Haruki Murakami sat down at his kitchen table and began to write. The result: two remarkable short novels—Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973—that launched the career of one of the most acclaimed authors of our time. These powerful, at times surreal, works about two young men coming of age—the unnamed narrator and his friend the Rat—are stories of loneliness, obsession, and eroticism. They bear all the hallmarks of Murakami’s later books, and form the first two-thirds, with A Wild Sheep Chase, of the trilogy of the Rat.
-
-
FOR AMUSEMENT ONLY: Extra Ball at 600,000 points
- By Darwin8u on 08-12-15
By: Haruki Murakami, and others
-
The Map of True Places
- By: Brunonia Barry
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Zee Finch has come a long way from a motherless childhood spent stealing boats—a talent that earned her the nickname Trouble. She’s now a respected psychotherapist working with the world-famous Dr. Liz Mattei. She’s also about to marry one of Boston’s most eligible bachelors. But the suicide of Zee’s patient Lilly Braedon throws Zee into emotional chaos and takes her back to places she thought she’d left behind.
-
-
Bad Narrator
- By Samantha on 06-30-10
By: Brunonia Barry
-
The Visiting Privilege
- New and Collected Stories
- By: Joy Williams
- Narrated by: Richard Powers, Emily Woo Zeller, Elisabeth Rodgers, and others
- Length: 20 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joy Williams has been celebrated as a master of the short story for four decades, her renown passing from one generation to the next even in the shifting landscape of contemporary writing. And at long last the incredible scope of her singular achievement is put on display: 33 stories drawn from three much-lauded collections and another 13 appearing here for the first time in book form.
-
-
I sure tried.
- By A.C. CALLOWAY on 01-28-24
By: Joy Williams
What listeners say about Fun with Problems
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
- robert
- 05-11-10
great book for listening
I'm not much of a fan of the audio book experience so far. But this is a great book for this format. The stories are done well and work great for audio in the short story format.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful