-
I Was Never the First Lady
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Krizia Bajos, Frankie Corzo
- Length: 6 hrs and 25 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 $19.79
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
A lush, sensuous, and original tale of family, love, and history, set against the backdrop of the Cuban Revolution and its aftermath.
Nadia Guerra’s mother, Albis Torres, left when Nadia was just 10 years old. Growing up, the proponents of revolution promised a better future. Now that she’s an adult, Nadia finds that life in Havana hasn’t quite matched its promise; instead it has stifled her rebellious and artistic desires. Each night, she DJs a radio show government censors block from broadcasting. Frustrated, Nadia finds hope and a way out when she wins a scholarship to study in Russia.
Leaving Cuba offers her the chance to find her long-lost mother and her real father. But as she embarks on a journey east, Nadia soon begins to question everything she thought she knew and understood about her past.
As Nadia discovers more about her family, her fate becomes entwined with that of Celia Sanchez, an icon of the Cuban Revolution - a resistance fighter, ingenious spy, and the rumored lover of Fidel Castro. A tale of revolutionary ideals and promise, Celia’s story interweaves with Nadia’s search for meaning and eventually reveals secrets Nadia could never have dreamed.
Translated from the Spanish by Achy Obejas.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Violeta
- A Novel
- By: Isabel Allende, Frances Riddle
- Narrated by: Yareli Arizmendi
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first girl in a family with five boisterous sons. From the start, her life is marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth.
-
-
Not my favorite....
- By Pat Brett on 02-14-22
By: Isabel Allende, and others
-
If I Survive You
- By: Jonathan Escoffery
- Narrated by: Torian Brackett
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 1970s, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami as political violence consumes their native Kingston. But America, as the couple and their two children learn, is far from the promised land. Excluded from society as Black immigrants, the family pushes on first through Hurricane Andrew and later the 2008 recession, living in a house so cursed that the pet fish launches itself out of its own tank rather than stay. But even as things fall apart, the family remains motivated, often to its own detriment, by what their younger son, Trelawny, calls “the exquisite, racking compulsion to survive.”
-
-
Good except for the ending
- By Morris Nelms on 11-20-22
-
Signal Fires
- A Novel
- By: Dani Shapiro
- Narrated by: Dani Shapiro
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Division Street is full of secrets. An impulsive lie begets a secret—one which will forever haunt the Wilf family. And the Shenkmans, who move into the neighborhood many years later, bring secrets of their own.. Spanning fifty kaleidoscopic years, on a street—and in a galaxy—where stars collapse and stories collide, these two families become bound in ways they never could have imagined. Urgent and compassionate, Signal Fires is a magical story for our times, a literary tour de force by a masterful storyteller at the height of her powers.
-
-
Depressing, poorly read
- By Arden Mahaffey on 11-02-22
By: Dani Shapiro
-
The First Wife
- By: Jill Childs
- Narrated by: Tamsin Kennard
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Sophie’s life falls apart, she accepts an invitation from a childhood friend, Caroline, to visit her family’s beautiful beach house, miles from the nearest town. The silence is broken only by the rhythmic crash of the waves against the jagged black rocks below. But when Sophie arrives, she finds her friend much changed. Caroline - who used to be so warm and confident - is secretive and on-edge, spending long, unexplained hours away from her family. And then there’s Caroline’s little daughter Lucy - who stopped speaking soon after they moved in.
-
-
Predictable, but good.
- By Kelly on 03-19-20
By: Jill Childs
-
Our Share of Night
- A Novel
- By: Mariana Enriquez, Megan McDowell
- Narrated by: Frankie Corzo
- Length: 27 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A young father and son set out on a road trip, devastated by the death of the wife and mother they both loved. United in grief, the pair travel to her ancestral home, where they must confront the terrifying legacy she has bequeathed: a family called the Order that commits unspeakable acts in search of immortality.
-
-
This Story Grew on Me
- By Nikki on 02-17-23
By: Mariana Enriquez, and others
-
Of Women and Salt
- A Novel
- By: Gabriela Garcia
- Narrated by: Frankie Corzo, Gabriela Garcia
- Length: 7 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In present-day Miami, Jeanette is battling addiction. Daughter of Carmen, a Cuban immigrant, she is determined to learn more about her family history from her reticent mother and makes the snap decision to take in the daughter of a neighbor detained by ICE. Carmen, still wrestling with the trauma of displacement, must process her difficult relationship with her own mother while trying to raise a wayward Jeanette. Steadfast in her quest for understanding, Jeanette travels to Cuba to see her grandmother and reckon with secrets from the past destined to erupt.
-
-
Bored
- By Kay on 04-05-21
By: Gabriela Garcia
-
Violeta
- A Novel
- By: Isabel Allende, Frances Riddle
- Narrated by: Yareli Arizmendi
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first girl in a family with five boisterous sons. From the start, her life is marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth.
-
-
Not my favorite....
- By Pat Brett on 02-14-22
By: Isabel Allende, and others
-
If I Survive You
- By: Jonathan Escoffery
- Narrated by: Torian Brackett
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 1970s, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami as political violence consumes their native Kingston. But America, as the couple and their two children learn, is far from the promised land. Excluded from society as Black immigrants, the family pushes on first through Hurricane Andrew and later the 2008 recession, living in a house so cursed that the pet fish launches itself out of its own tank rather than stay. But even as things fall apart, the family remains motivated, often to its own detriment, by what their younger son, Trelawny, calls “the exquisite, racking compulsion to survive.”
-
-
Good except for the ending
- By Morris Nelms on 11-20-22
-
Signal Fires
- A Novel
- By: Dani Shapiro
- Narrated by: Dani Shapiro
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Division Street is full of secrets. An impulsive lie begets a secret—one which will forever haunt the Wilf family. And the Shenkmans, who move into the neighborhood many years later, bring secrets of their own.. Spanning fifty kaleidoscopic years, on a street—and in a galaxy—where stars collapse and stories collide, these two families become bound in ways they never could have imagined. Urgent and compassionate, Signal Fires is a magical story for our times, a literary tour de force by a masterful storyteller at the height of her powers.
-
-
Depressing, poorly read
- By Arden Mahaffey on 11-02-22
By: Dani Shapiro
-
The First Wife
- By: Jill Childs
- Narrated by: Tamsin Kennard
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Sophie’s life falls apart, she accepts an invitation from a childhood friend, Caroline, to visit her family’s beautiful beach house, miles from the nearest town. The silence is broken only by the rhythmic crash of the waves against the jagged black rocks below. But when Sophie arrives, she finds her friend much changed. Caroline - who used to be so warm and confident - is secretive and on-edge, spending long, unexplained hours away from her family. And then there’s Caroline’s little daughter Lucy - who stopped speaking soon after they moved in.
-
-
Predictable, but good.
- By Kelly on 03-19-20
By: Jill Childs
-
Our Share of Night
- A Novel
- By: Mariana Enriquez, Megan McDowell
- Narrated by: Frankie Corzo
- Length: 27 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A young father and son set out on a road trip, devastated by the death of the wife and mother they both loved. United in grief, the pair travel to her ancestral home, where they must confront the terrifying legacy she has bequeathed: a family called the Order that commits unspeakable acts in search of immortality.
-
-
This Story Grew on Me
- By Nikki on 02-17-23
By: Mariana Enriquez, and others
-
Of Women and Salt
- A Novel
- By: Gabriela Garcia
- Narrated by: Frankie Corzo, Gabriela Garcia
- Length: 7 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In present-day Miami, Jeanette is battling addiction. Daughter of Carmen, a Cuban immigrant, she is determined to learn more about her family history from her reticent mother and makes the snap decision to take in the daughter of a neighbor detained by ICE. Carmen, still wrestling with the trauma of displacement, must process her difficult relationship with her own mother while trying to raise a wayward Jeanette. Steadfast in her quest for understanding, Jeanette travels to Cuba to see her grandmother and reckon with secrets from the past destined to erupt.
-
-
Bored
- By Kay on 04-05-21
By: Gabriela Garcia
-
The Eighth Life
- By: Nino Haratischvili
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 40 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the start of the 20th century, on the edge of the Russian empire, a family prospers. It owes its success to a delicious chocolate recipe, passed down the generations with great solemnity and caution. A caution which is justified: this is a recipe for ecstasy that carries a very bitter aftertaste....
-
-
Great Historical Fiction about Georgia and the Soviet Union
- By Amazon Customer on 05-29-21
-
The Island of Missing Trees
- A Novel
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Daphne Kouma, Amira Ghazalla
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna, hidden beneath garlands of garlic, chili peppers and creeping honeysuckle, Kostas and Defne grow in their forbidden love for each other. A fig tree stretches through a cavity in the roof, and this tree bears witness to their hushed, happy meetings and eventually, to their silent, surreptitious departures. The tree is there when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, and when the teenagers vanish.
-
-
WOW! What a great story and narration!
- By Marcy on 12-02-21
By: Elif Shafak
-
Who Killed My Father
- By: Édouard Louis
- Narrated by: Edouard Louis
- Length: 1 hr and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Who Killed My Father rips into France’s long neglect of the working class and its overt contempt for the poor, accusing the complacent French - at the minimum - of negligent homicide. The author goes to visit the ugly gray town of his childhood to see his dying father, barely 50 years old, who can hardly walk or breathe: “You belong to the category of humans whom politics consigns to an early death.” It’s as simple as that.
-
-
Powerful. Poetic. Sparse. Piercing.
- By Theophile Jones on 06-01-23
By: Édouard Louis
-
Summer
- By: Ali Smith
- Narrated by: Juliette Burton
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here is the exciting culmination of Ali Smith's celebrated Seasonal Quartet, a series of stand-alone novels, separate but interconnected (as the seasons are), wide-ranging in timescale and light-footed through histories.
-
-
terrific book, beautifully read.
- By Sasha on 02-07-21
By: Ali Smith
-
Cantoras
- A Novel
- By: Carolina De Robertis
- Narrated by: Carolina De Robertis
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A genre-defining novel and De Robertis's masterpiece, Cantoras is a breathtaking portrait of queer love, community, forgotten history, and the strength of the human spirit. At once timeless and groundbreaking, Cantoras is a tale about the fire in all our souls and those who make it burn.
-
-
Excruciating to get through
- By Xochitl Casillas on 11-30-20
-
The Wind Knows My Name
- A Novel
- By: Isabel Allende, Frances Riddle - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Maria Liatis
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vienna, 1938. Samuel Adler is five years old when his father disappears during Kristallnacht—the night his family loses everything. As her child’s safety becomes ever harder to guarantee, Samuel’s mother secures a spot for him on a Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England. He boards alone, carrying nothing but a change of clothes and his violin.
-
-
Reminiscences of House of the Spirits; too short, underdeveloped
- By J. Mirabal on 06-08-23
By: Isabel Allende, and others
-
Aftershocks
- By: Nadia Owusu
- Narrated by: Nadia Owusu
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Young Nadia Owusu followed her father, a United Nations official, from Europe to Africa and back again. Just as she and her family settled into a new home, her father would tell them it was time to say their goodbyes. The instability wrought by Nadia’s nomadic childhood was deepened by family secrets and fractures, both lived and inherited. Her Armenian American mother, who abandoned Nadia when she was two, would periodically reappear, only to vanish again. Her father, a Ghanaian, the great hero of her life, died when she was 13.
-
-
Struggled with author’s writing style
- By AF on 06-22-21
By: Nadia Owusu
-
The Night Traveler
- A Novel
- By: Armando Lucas Correa
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Berlin, 1931: Ally Keller, a talented young poet, is alone and scared when she gives birth to a mixed-race daughter she names Lilith. As the Nazis rise to power, Ally knows she must keep her baby in the shadows to protect her against Hitler’s deadly ideology of Aryan purity. But as she grows, it becomes more and more difficult to keep Lilith hidden so Ally sets in motion a dangerous and desperate plan to send her daughter across the ocean to safety.
-
-
A tangled web
- By Gina Nello on 03-12-23
-
Against the Loveless World
- A Novel
- By: Susan Abulhawa
- Narrated by: Susan Abulhawa
- Length: 13 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As Nahr sits, locked away in solitary confinement, she spends her days reflecting on the dramatic events that landed her in prison in a country she barely knows. Born in Kuwait in the 70s to Palestinian refugees, she dreamed of falling in love with the perfect man, raising children, and possibly opening her own beauty salon. Instead, the man she thinks she loves jilts her after a brief marriage, her family teeters on the brink of poverty, she’s forced to prostitute herself, and the US invasion of Iraq makes her a refugee, as her parents had been.
-
-
Don’t narrate your own books!
- By Sara on 11-21-20
By: Susan Abulhawa
-
What My Mother and I Don't Talk About
- Fifteen Writers Break the Silence
- By: Michele Filgate
- Narrated by: Michele Filgate, Fajer Al-Kaisi, Roger Casey, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As an undergraduate, Michele Filgate started writing an essay about being abused by her stepfather. It took her more than a decade to realize that she was actually trying to write about how this affected her relationship with her mother. When it was finally published, the essay went viral, shared on social media by Anne Lamott, Rebecca Solnit, and many others. This gave Filgate an idea, and the resulting anthology offers a candid look at our relationships with our mothers.
-
-
Now I’m healing
- By wonderwoman0414 on 08-24-21
By: Michele Filgate
-
Leading Men
- A Novel
- By: Christopher Castellani
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Illuminating one of the great love stories of the 20th century - Tennessee Williams and his longtime partner Frank Merlo - Leading Men is a glittering novel of desire and ambition, set against the glamorous literary circles of 1950s Italy.
-
-
Wonderful book, masterful reading!
- By Helene Atwan on 03-05-19
-
The Ungrateful Refugee
- What Immigrants Never Tell You
- By: Dina Nayeri
- Narrated by: Dina Nayeri
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel-turned-refugee camp. Eventually, she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton University. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement.
-
-
Amazing story of resilience and compassion
- By PAH on 09-06-19
By: Dina Nayeri
Related to this topic
-
The Ungrateful Refugee
- What Immigrants Never Tell You
- By: Dina Nayeri
- Narrated by: Dina Nayeri
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel-turned-refugee camp. Eventually, she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton University. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement.
-
-
Amazing story of resilience and compassion
- By PAH on 09-06-19
By: Dina Nayeri
-
The Complete Stories
- By: Clarice Lispector, Katrina Dodson, Benjamin Moser
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 22 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here, gathered in one volume, are the stories that made Clarice a Brazilian legend. Originally a cloth edition of 86 stories, now we have 89 in all, covering her whole amazing career, from her teenage years to her deathbed. In these pages, we meet teenagers becoming aware of their sexual and artistic powers, humdrum housewives whose lives are shattered by unexpected epiphanies, old people who don't know what to do with themselves - and in their stories, Clarice takes us through their lives - and hers - and ours.
-
-
Wonderful Collection
- By XX on 04-25-20
By: Clarice Lispector, and others
-
Who Killed My Father
- By: Édouard Louis
- Narrated by: Edouard Louis
- Length: 1 hr and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Who Killed My Father rips into France’s long neglect of the working class and its overt contempt for the poor, accusing the complacent French - at the minimum - of negligent homicide. The author goes to visit the ugly gray town of his childhood to see his dying father, barely 50 years old, who can hardly walk or breathe: “You belong to the category of humans whom politics consigns to an early death.” It’s as simple as that.
-
-
Powerful. Poetic. Sparse. Piercing.
- By Theophile Jones on 06-01-23
By: Édouard Louis
-
The Sum of Our Days
- By: Isabel Allende
- Narrated by: Blair Brown, Isabel Allende
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Isabel Allende reconstructs the painful reality of her own life in the wake of the tragic death of her daughter, Paula. Narrated with warmth, humor, exceptional candor, and wisdom, this remarkable memoir is as exuberant and as full of life as its creator. Allende bares her soul while sharing her thoughts on love, marriage, motherhood, spirituality and religion, infidelity, addiction, and memory - and recounts stories of the wildly eccentric, strong-minded, and eclectic tribe she gathers around her and lovingly embraces as a new kind of family.
-
-
She does not disappoint
- By ChiChi's Rule on 06-01-22
By: Isabel Allende
-
Summer
- By: Ali Smith
- Narrated by: Juliette Burton
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here is the exciting culmination of Ali Smith's celebrated Seasonal Quartet, a series of stand-alone novels, separate but interconnected (as the seasons are), wide-ranging in timescale and light-footed through histories.
-
-
terrific book, beautifully read.
- By Sasha on 02-07-21
By: Ali Smith
-
What Storm, What Thunder
- By: Myriam J.A. Chancy
- Narrated by: Ella Turenne
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Earth had buckled, and, in that movement, all that was not in its place fell upon the Earth’s children, upon the blameless as well as the guilty, without discrimination. At the end of a long sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster
-
-
We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
- By AuthorAnnaBella on 03-15-22
-
The Ungrateful Refugee
- What Immigrants Never Tell You
- By: Dina Nayeri
- Narrated by: Dina Nayeri
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel-turned-refugee camp. Eventually, she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton University. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement.
-
-
Amazing story of resilience and compassion
- By PAH on 09-06-19
By: Dina Nayeri
-
The Complete Stories
- By: Clarice Lispector, Katrina Dodson, Benjamin Moser
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 22 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here, gathered in one volume, are the stories that made Clarice a Brazilian legend. Originally a cloth edition of 86 stories, now we have 89 in all, covering her whole amazing career, from her teenage years to her deathbed. In these pages, we meet teenagers becoming aware of their sexual and artistic powers, humdrum housewives whose lives are shattered by unexpected epiphanies, old people who don't know what to do with themselves - and in their stories, Clarice takes us through their lives - and hers - and ours.
-
-
Wonderful Collection
- By XX on 04-25-20
By: Clarice Lispector, and others
-
Who Killed My Father
- By: Édouard Louis
- Narrated by: Edouard Louis
- Length: 1 hr and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Who Killed My Father rips into France’s long neglect of the working class and its overt contempt for the poor, accusing the complacent French - at the minimum - of negligent homicide. The author goes to visit the ugly gray town of his childhood to see his dying father, barely 50 years old, who can hardly walk or breathe: “You belong to the category of humans whom politics consigns to an early death.” It’s as simple as that.
-
-
Powerful. Poetic. Sparse. Piercing.
- By Theophile Jones on 06-01-23
By: Édouard Louis
-
The Sum of Our Days
- By: Isabel Allende
- Narrated by: Blair Brown, Isabel Allende
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Isabel Allende reconstructs the painful reality of her own life in the wake of the tragic death of her daughter, Paula. Narrated with warmth, humor, exceptional candor, and wisdom, this remarkable memoir is as exuberant and as full of life as its creator. Allende bares her soul while sharing her thoughts on love, marriage, motherhood, spirituality and religion, infidelity, addiction, and memory - and recounts stories of the wildly eccentric, strong-minded, and eclectic tribe she gathers around her and lovingly embraces as a new kind of family.
-
-
She does not disappoint
- By ChiChi's Rule on 06-01-22
By: Isabel Allende
-
Summer
- By: Ali Smith
- Narrated by: Juliette Burton
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here is the exciting culmination of Ali Smith's celebrated Seasonal Quartet, a series of stand-alone novels, separate but interconnected (as the seasons are), wide-ranging in timescale and light-footed through histories.
-
-
terrific book, beautifully read.
- By Sasha on 02-07-21
By: Ali Smith
-
What Storm, What Thunder
- By: Myriam J.A. Chancy
- Narrated by: Ella Turenne
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Earth had buckled, and, in that movement, all that was not in its place fell upon the Earth’s children, upon the blameless as well as the guilty, without discrimination. At the end of a long sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster
-
-
We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
- By AuthorAnnaBella on 03-15-22
-
The Undocumented Americans
- By: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
- Narrated by: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
- Length: 4 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Writer Karla Cornejo Villavicencio was on DACA when she decided to write about being undocumented for the first time using her own name. It was right after the election of 2016, the day she realized the story she'd tried to steer clear of was the only one she wanted to tell. So she wrote her immigration lawyer's phone number on her hand in Sharpie and embarked on a trip across the country to tell the stories of her fellow undocumented immigrants—and to find the hidden key to her own.
-
-
Raw, heartbreaking - we can do better by others
- By RapaciousReader on 04-11-20
-
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
-
Mother Tongue
- By: Demetria Martinez
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan
- Length: 3 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A nameless El Salvadoran man, fleeing torture and imprisonment, arrives in the United States - his only hope for asylum. The American woman who has volunteered to help him is searching for something to add meaning to her life. When these two lonely people meet, their haunting relationship fulfills their hearts' desires, but it also gives life to their darkest dreams.
-
-
Amazing Story
- By Alexa :3 on 09-26-24
-
Nine Continents
- A Memoir In and Out of China
- By: Xiaolu Guo
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Xiaolu Guo has traveled further than most to become who she needed to be. Now, as she experiences the birth of her daughter in a London maternity ward surrounded by women from all over the world, she looks back on that journey. It begins in the fishing village shack on the East China Sea where her illiterate grandparents raised her, and brings her to a rapidly changing Beijing, full of contradictions: a thriving underground art scene amid mass censorship, curious Westerners who held out affection only to disappear back home.
-
-
must read
- By Jeff Darlington on 10-22-17
By: Xiaolu Guo
-
Something She's Not Telling Us
- A Novel
- By: Darcey Bell
- Narrated by: Vivienne Leheny, Carly Robins, Pete Simonelli, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charlotte has everything in life that she ever could have hoped for: a doting, artistic husband, a small-but-thriving flower shop, and her sweet, smart five-year-old daughter, Daisy. Her relationship with her mother might be strained, but the distance between them helps. And her younger brother Rocco may have horrible taste in women, but when he introduces his new girlfriend to Charlotte and her family, they are cautiously optimistic that she could be The One. Daisy seems to love Ruth, and she can’t be any worse than the klepto Rocco brought home the last time.
-
-
Should be "Something Almost Happened"
- By Kimberly Wasilewski on 05-03-20
By: Darcey Bell
-
With or Without You
- By: Caroline Leavitt
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After almost 20 years together, Stella and Simon are starting to run into problems. An up-and-coming rock musician when they first met, Simon has been clinging to dreams of fame even as the possibility of it has grown dimmer, and now that his band might finally be on the brink again, he wants to go on the road, leaving Stella behind.
-
-
not my cup of tea
- By Grekis on 12-23-20
By: Caroline Leavitt
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Malas
- A Novel
- By: Marcela Fuentes
- Narrated by: Christine Avila, Victoria Villarreal
- Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1951, a mysterious old woman confronts Pilar Aguirre in the small border town of La Cienega, Texas. The old woman is sure Pilar stole her husband and, in a heated outburst, lays a curse on Pilar and her family. More than forty years later, Lulu Muñoz is dodging chaos at every turn: her troubled father’s moods, his rules, her secret life as singer in a punk band, but most of all her upcoming quinceañera. When her beloved grandmother passes away, Lulu finds herself drawn to the glamorous stranger who crashed the funeral and who lives alone and shunned on the edge of town.
-
-
Unique and interesting
- By Josie on 10-21-24
By: Marcela Fuentes
-
On a Night of a Thousand Stars
- By: Andrea Yaryura Clark
- Narrated by: Paula Christensen
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York, 1998. Santiago Larrea, a wealthy Argentine diplomat, is holding court alongside his wife, Lila, and their daughter, Paloma, a college student and budding jewelry designer, at their annual summer polo match and soiree. All seems perfect in the Larreas’ world—until an unexpected party guest from Santiago's university days shakes his usually unflappable demeanor. The woman's cryptic comments spark Paloma’s curiosity about her father’s past, of which she knows little. Paloma is determined to learn more about his life in the years leading up to the dictatorship of 1976.
-
-
Amazing narration, moving story!
- By Suzanne B on 04-03-22
-
Where There Was Fire
- A Novel
- By: John Manuel Arias
- Narrated by: Adriana Sananes
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Costa Rica, 1968. When a lethal fire erupts at the American Fruit Company’s most lucrative banana plantation burning all evidence of a massive cover-up, the future of Teresa Cepeda Valverde’s family is changed forever. Now, twenty-seven years later, Teresa and her daughter Lyra are still picking up the pieces. Lyra wants nothing to do with Teresa, but is desperate to find out what happened to her family that fateful night. Teresa, haunted by a missing husband and the bitter ghost of her mother, Amarga, is unable to reconcile the past.
-
-
A few holes
- By julia on 10-09-23
-
Woman of Light
- A Novel
- By: Kali Fajardo-Anstine
- Narrated by: Melinna Bobadilla
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Luz “Little Light” Lopez, a tea leaf reader and laundress, is left to fend for herself after her older brother, Diego, a snake charmer and factory worker, is run out of town by a violent white mob. As Luz navigates 1930s Denver, she begins to have visions that transport her to her Indigenous homeland in the nearby Lost Territory. Luz recollects her ancestors’ origins, how her family flourished, and how they were threatened. She bears witness to the sinister forces that have devastated her people and their homelands for generations.
-
-
Historical Fiction that needs to be told
- By Kristen Cannon on 06-22-22
-
Daughter of Fire
- A Novel
- By: Sofia Robleda
- Narrated by: Ana Lucia Robleda
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Catalina de Cerrato is being raised by her widowed father, Don Alonso, in 1551 Guatemala, scarcely thirty years since the Spanish invasion. A ruling member of the oppressive Spanish hierarchy, Don Alonso holds sway over the newly relegated lower class of Indigenous communities. Fiercely independent, Catalina struggles to honor her father and her late mother, a Maya noblewoman to whom Catalina made a vow that only she can keep: preserve the lost sacred text of the Popol Vuh, the treasured and now forbidden history of the K’iche’ people.
-
-
The oppressor and the oppressed.
- By Ana Sanchez on 10-30-24
By: Sofia Robleda
-
Miss del Río
- By: Bárbara Mujica
- Narrated by: Frankie Corzo
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1910, Mexico. As the country’s revolution spreads, Dolores, the daughter of a wealthy banker, must flee her comfortable life in Durango or risk death. Her family settles in Mexico City, where, at sixteen, she marries the worldly Jaime del Río. But in a twist of fate, at a party she meets an influential American director who recognizes in her a natural performer. He invites her to Hollywood, and practically overnight, the famous Miss del Río is born.
-
-
beautiful story
- By rosemarie camacho on 05-13-24
By: Bárbara Mujica
-
Malas
- A Novel
- By: Marcela Fuentes
- Narrated by: Christine Avila, Victoria Villarreal
- Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1951, a mysterious old woman confronts Pilar Aguirre in the small border town of La Cienega, Texas. The old woman is sure Pilar stole her husband and, in a heated outburst, lays a curse on Pilar and her family. More than forty years later, Lulu Muñoz is dodging chaos at every turn: her troubled father’s moods, his rules, her secret life as singer in a punk band, but most of all her upcoming quinceañera. When her beloved grandmother passes away, Lulu finds herself drawn to the glamorous stranger who crashed the funeral and who lives alone and shunned on the edge of town.
-
-
Unique and interesting
- By Josie on 10-21-24
By: Marcela Fuentes
-
On a Night of a Thousand Stars
- By: Andrea Yaryura Clark
- Narrated by: Paula Christensen
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York, 1998. Santiago Larrea, a wealthy Argentine diplomat, is holding court alongside his wife, Lila, and their daughter, Paloma, a college student and budding jewelry designer, at their annual summer polo match and soiree. All seems perfect in the Larreas’ world—until an unexpected party guest from Santiago's university days shakes his usually unflappable demeanor. The woman's cryptic comments spark Paloma’s curiosity about her father’s past, of which she knows little. Paloma is determined to learn more about his life in the years leading up to the dictatorship of 1976.
-
-
Amazing narration, moving story!
- By Suzanne B on 04-03-22
-
Where There Was Fire
- A Novel
- By: John Manuel Arias
- Narrated by: Adriana Sananes
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Costa Rica, 1968. When a lethal fire erupts at the American Fruit Company’s most lucrative banana plantation burning all evidence of a massive cover-up, the future of Teresa Cepeda Valverde’s family is changed forever. Now, twenty-seven years later, Teresa and her daughter Lyra are still picking up the pieces. Lyra wants nothing to do with Teresa, but is desperate to find out what happened to her family that fateful night. Teresa, haunted by a missing husband and the bitter ghost of her mother, Amarga, is unable to reconcile the past.
-
-
A few holes
- By julia on 10-09-23
-
Woman of Light
- A Novel
- By: Kali Fajardo-Anstine
- Narrated by: Melinna Bobadilla
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Luz “Little Light” Lopez, a tea leaf reader and laundress, is left to fend for herself after her older brother, Diego, a snake charmer and factory worker, is run out of town by a violent white mob. As Luz navigates 1930s Denver, she begins to have visions that transport her to her Indigenous homeland in the nearby Lost Territory. Luz recollects her ancestors’ origins, how her family flourished, and how they were threatened. She bears witness to the sinister forces that have devastated her people and their homelands for generations.
-
-
Historical Fiction that needs to be told
- By Kristen Cannon on 06-22-22
-
Daughter of Fire
- A Novel
- By: Sofia Robleda
- Narrated by: Ana Lucia Robleda
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Catalina de Cerrato is being raised by her widowed father, Don Alonso, in 1551 Guatemala, scarcely thirty years since the Spanish invasion. A ruling member of the oppressive Spanish hierarchy, Don Alonso holds sway over the newly relegated lower class of Indigenous communities. Fiercely independent, Catalina struggles to honor her father and her late mother, a Maya noblewoman to whom Catalina made a vow that only she can keep: preserve the lost sacred text of the Popol Vuh, the treasured and now forbidden history of the K’iche’ people.
-
-
The oppressor and the oppressed.
- By Ana Sanchez on 10-30-24
By: Sofia Robleda
-
Miss del Río
- By: Bárbara Mujica
- Narrated by: Frankie Corzo
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1910, Mexico. As the country’s revolution spreads, Dolores, the daughter of a wealthy banker, must flee her comfortable life in Durango or risk death. Her family settles in Mexico City, where, at sixteen, she marries the worldly Jaime del Río. But in a twist of fate, at a party she meets an influential American director who recognizes in her a natural performer. He invites her to Hollywood, and practically overnight, the famous Miss del Río is born.
-
-
beautiful story
- By rosemarie camacho on 05-13-24
By: Bárbara Mujica
-
The Seventh Veil of Salome
- By: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
- Narrated by: Caitlin Kelly, Atlanta Amado, Victoria Villarreal, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1950s Hollywood: Every actress wants to play Salome, the star-making role in a big-budget movie about the legendary woman whose story has inspired artists since ancient times. So when the film’s mercurial director casts Vera Larios, an unknown Mexican ingenue, in the lead role, she quickly becomes the talk of the town. Vera also becomes an object of envy for Nancy Hartley, a bit player whose career has stalled, and who will do anything to win the fame she believes she richly deserves.
-
-
Well-told story, fantastic narration
- By A. Hernandez on 09-01-24
-
The Great Divide
- A Novel
- By: Cristina Henriquez
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is said that the canal will be the greatest feat of engineering in history. But first, it must be built. For Francisco, a local fisherman who resents the foreign powers clamoring for a slice of his country, nothing is more upsetting than the decision of his son, Omar, to work as a digger in the excavation zone. But for Omar, whose upbringing was quiet and lonely, this job offers a chance to finally find connection.
-
-
Story went nowhere
- By Michelle Maple on 04-11-24
-
The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina
- A Novel
- By: Zoraida Córdova
- Narrated by: Frankie Corzo
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Montoyas are used to a life without explanations. They know better than to ask why the pantry never seems to run low, or why their matriarch won’t ever leave their home in Four Rivers - not for graduations, weddings, or baptisms. But when Orquídea Divina invites them to her funeral and to collect their inheritance, they hope to learn the secrets that she has held onto so tightly their whole lives. Instead, Orquídea is transformed into a ceiba tree, leaving them with more questions than answers.
-
-
Magical Realism Weirdness
- By @abagoflit on 09-08-21
By: Zoraida Córdova
-
Seven Empty Houses
- By: Samanta Schweblin, Megan McDowell - translator
- Narrated by: Yareli Arizmendi, Gisela Chipe, Ines del Castillo, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The seven houses in these seven stories are empty. Some are devoid of love or life or furniture, of people or the truth or of memories. But in Samanta Schweblin’s tense, visionary tales, something always creeps back in: a ghost, a fight, trespassers, a list of things to do before you die, a child’s first encounter with a dark choice or the fallibility of parents.
-
-
Weird
- By Caruso on 09-17-24
By: Samanta Schweblin, and others
-
The Border Between Us
- By: Rudy Ruiz
- Narrated by: Eddie Lopez
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ramón López was born along the US–Mexico border but is determined to get out and embrace the American dream—and he’s not sure whether his complicated family is a help or a hindrance. As the son of immigrants, as Ramón grows, his admiration for his entrepreneurial father sours as he watches his dad’s dreams of success wither on the vine. Ramón’s mother is constantly preoccupied with his younger brother, who struggles with intellectual disabilities. And the outside world is rife with danger and temptations threatening to distract Ramón from his dreams of making it to New York.
By: Rudy Ruiz
-
The Wind Knows My Name
- A Novel
- By: Isabel Allende, Frances Riddle - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Maria Liatis
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vienna, 1938. Samuel Adler is five years old when his father disappears during Kristallnacht—the night his family loses everything. As her child’s safety becomes ever harder to guarantee, Samuel’s mother secures a spot for him on a Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England. He boards alone, carrying nothing but a change of clothes and his violin.
-
-
Reminiscences of House of the Spirits; too short, underdeveloped
- By J. Mirabal on 06-08-23
By: Isabel Allende, and others
-
Anita de Monte Laughs Last
- A Novel
- By: Xochitl Gonzalez
- Narrated by: Jessica Pimentel, Jonathan Gregg, Stacy Gonzalez
- Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1985. Anita de Monte, a rising star in the art world, is found dead in New York City; her tragic death is the talk of the town. Until it isn’t. By 1998 Anita’s name has been all but forgotten—certainly by the time Raquel, a third-year art history student is preparing her final thesis. On College Hill, surrounded by privileged students whose futures are already paved out for them, Raquel feels like an outsider. Students of color, like her, are the minority there, and the pressure to work twice as hard for the same opportunities is no secret.
-
-
Thoroughly enjoyed every minute of this book.
- By Ulissa on 03-14-24
By: Xochitl Gonzalez
-
Sun of Blood and Ruin
- A Novel
- By: Mariely Lares
- Narrated by: Victoria Villarreal
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In sixteenth-century New Spain, witchcraft is punishable by death, indigenous temples have been destroyed, and tales of mythical creatures that once roamed the land have become whispers in the night. Hidden behind a mask, Pantera uses her magic and legendary swordplay skills to fight the tyranny of Spanish rule. To all who know her, Leonora de las Casas Tlazohtzin never leaves the palace and is promised to the heir of the Spanish throne. The respectable, law-abiding Lady Leonora faints at the sight of blood. No one suspects that Leonora and Pantera are the same person.
-
-
2-d story that leans too heavily on religion bashing
- By Madeleine Leenstra on 03-01-24
By: Mariely Lares
-
The Waves Take You Home
- A Novel
- By: María Alejandra Barrios Vélez
- Narrated by: Krysta Gonzales
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Violeta Sanoguera had always done what she was told. She left the man she loved in Colombia in pursuit of a better life for herself and because her mother and grandmother didn’t approve of him. Chasing dreams of education and art in New York City, and with a new love, twenty-eight-year-old Violeta establishes a new life for herself, on her terms. But when her grandmother suddenly dies, everything changes.
-
-
Gripping hear felt listen!
- By Pamela Ann Plumer on 05-26-24
-
América del Norte
- By: Nicolás Medina Mora
- Narrated by: Andre Bellido
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sebastián lived a childhood of privilege in Mexico City. Now in his twenties, he has a degree from Yale, an American girlfriend, and a slot in the University of Iowa's MFA program. But Sebastián's life is shaken by the Trump administration's restrictions on immigrants, his mother's terminal cancer, the cracks in his relationship, and his father's forced resignation at the hands of Mexico's new president. As he struggles through the Trump and Lopez Obrador years, Sebastián must confront his father's role in the Mexican drug war and navigate his whiteness in Mexican contexts.
-
Tell It to Me Singing
- A Novel
- By: Tita Ramirez
- Narrated by: Yareli Arizmendi, Frankie Corzo
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Monica Campo is pregnant with her first child when, moments before being wheeled into emergency heart surgery, her mother confesses a long-held secret: Monica’s father is not the man who raised her. But when her mother wakes up and begins having delusional episodes, Monica doesn’t know what to believe—whether the confession was real or just a channeling of the telenovela her mother watches nightly. In her despair, Monica wants to speak with only one person: her ex-boyfriend of five years, Manny.
-
-
Too repetitive
- By Debra Warren on 10-25-24
By: Tita Ramirez
-
Chicano Frankenstein
- By: Daniel A. Olivas
- Narrated by: Thom Rivera
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An unnamed paralegal, brought back to life through a controversial process, maneuvers through a near-future world that both needs and resents him. As the United States president spouts anti-reanimation rhetoric and giant pharmaceutical companies rake in profits, the man falls in love with lawyer Faustina Godínez. His world expands as he meets her network of family and friends, setting him on a course to discover his first-life history, which the reanimation process erased.
-
-
Enjoyed this imaginative story
- By Laura Humphrey on 06-10-24
By: Daniel A. Olivas