-
In a Perfect World
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 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 $24.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
This is the way the world ends....
It was a fairy tale come true when Mark Dorn - handsome pilot, widower, tragic father of three - chose Jiselle to be his wife. The other flight attendants were jealous: She could quit now, leaving behind the million daily irritations of the job. (Since the outbreak of the Phoenix flu, passengers had become even more difficult and nervous, and a life of constant travel had grown harder.) She could move into Mark Dorn's precious log cabin and help him raise his three beautiful children. But fairy tales aren't like marriage. Or motherhood.
With Mark almost always gone, Jiselle finds herself alone, and lonely. She suspects that Mark's daughters hate her. And the Phoenix flu, which Jiselle had thought of as a passing hysteria (when she had thought of it at all), well...it turns out that the Phoenix flu will change everything for Jiselle, for her new family, and for the life she thought she had chosen.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
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
-
Olive Kitteridge
- Fiction
- By: Elizabeth Strout
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.
-
-
Depressing! Watse of a credit!
- By Amazon Customer on 10-28-19
By: Elizabeth Strout
-
Orphan Train
- A Novel
- By: Christina Baker Kline
- Narrated by: Jessica Almasy, Suzanne Toren
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Penobscot Indian Molly Ayer is close to "aging out" out of the foster care system. A community-service position helping an elderly woman clean out her home is the only thing keeping Molly out of juvie and worse.... As she helps Vivian sort through her possessions and memories, Molly learns that she and Vivian aren’t as different as they seem to be. A young Irish immigrant orphaned in New York City, Vivian was put on a train to the Midwest with hundreds of other children whose destinies would be determined by luck and chance.
-
-
Moving story of sharing and transformation.
- By Kathi on 04-03-13
-
Middlesex
- By: Jeffrey Eugenides
- Narrated by: Kristoffer Tabori
- Length: 21 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry-blonde classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them - along with Callie's failure to develop physically - leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all.
-
-
Anything but middle.
- By Michael on 05-04-03
-
And the Mountains Echoed
- By: Khaled Hosseini
- Narrated by: Khaled Hosseini, Navid Negahban, Shohreh Aghdashloo
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Khaled Hosseini, the number-one New York Times best-selling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, has written a new novel about how we love, how we take care of one another, and how the choices we make resonate through generations.
-
-
Does the End Justify the Means
- By FanB14 on 05-24-13
By: Khaled Hosseini
-
Interpreter of Maladies
- By: Jhumpa Lahiri
- Narrated by: Matilda Novak
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With accomplished precision and gentle eloquence, Jhumpa Lahiri traces the crosscurrents set in motion when immigrants, expatriates, and their children arrive, quite literally, at a cultural divide. The nine stories in this stunning debut collection unerringly chart the emotional journeys of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of nations and generations.
-
-
skip it
- By Sheri on 06-30-09
By: Jhumpa Lahiri
-
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
-
Olive Kitteridge
- Fiction
- By: Elizabeth Strout
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.
-
-
Depressing! Watse of a credit!
- By Amazon Customer on 10-28-19
By: Elizabeth Strout
-
Orphan Train
- A Novel
- By: Christina Baker Kline
- Narrated by: Jessica Almasy, Suzanne Toren
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Penobscot Indian Molly Ayer is close to "aging out" out of the foster care system. A community-service position helping an elderly woman clean out her home is the only thing keeping Molly out of juvie and worse.... As she helps Vivian sort through her possessions and memories, Molly learns that she and Vivian aren’t as different as they seem to be. A young Irish immigrant orphaned in New York City, Vivian was put on a train to the Midwest with hundreds of other children whose destinies would be determined by luck and chance.
-
-
Moving story of sharing and transformation.
- By Kathi on 04-03-13
-
Middlesex
- By: Jeffrey Eugenides
- Narrated by: Kristoffer Tabori
- Length: 21 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry-blonde classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them - along with Callie's failure to develop physically - leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all.
-
-
Anything but middle.
- By Michael on 05-04-03
-
And the Mountains Echoed
- By: Khaled Hosseini
- Narrated by: Khaled Hosseini, Navid Negahban, Shohreh Aghdashloo
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Khaled Hosseini, the number-one New York Times best-selling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, has written a new novel about how we love, how we take care of one another, and how the choices we make resonate through generations.
-
-
Does the End Justify the Means
- By FanB14 on 05-24-13
By: Khaled Hosseini
-
Interpreter of Maladies
- By: Jhumpa Lahiri
- Narrated by: Matilda Novak
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With accomplished precision and gentle eloquence, Jhumpa Lahiri traces the crosscurrents set in motion when immigrants, expatriates, and their children arrive, quite literally, at a cultural divide. The nine stories in this stunning debut collection unerringly chart the emotional journeys of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of nations and generations.
-
-
skip it
- By Sheri on 06-30-09
By: Jhumpa Lahiri
-
Swan Song
- By: Robert R. McCammon
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 34 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Facing down an unprecedented malevolent enemy, the government responds with a nuclear attack. America as it was is gone forever, and now every citizen - from the President of the United States to the homeless on the streets of New York City - will fight for survival. In a wasteland born of rage and fear, populated by monstrous creatures and marauding armies, earth's last survivors have been drawn into the final battle between good and evil, that will decide the fate of humanity.
-
-
Simply an Amazing Story
- By Amanda H. on 06-21-12
-
The Dog Stars
- By: Peter Heller
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hig survived the flu that killed everyone he knows. His wife is gone, his friends are dead, he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, his only neighbor a gun-toting misanthrope. In his 1956 Cessna, Hig flies the perimeter of the airfield or sneaks off to the mountains to fish and to pretend that things are the way they used to be. But when a random transmission somehow beams through his radio, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life exists beyond the airport.
-
-
Absolutely Stellar!
- By Mel on 08-10-12
By: Peter Heller
-
White Oleander
- By: Janet Fitch
- Narrated by: Oprah Winfrey
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this gripping first novel, a young girl, orphaned when her mother murders an ex-lover, endures the shuffle of a foster child's life. Oprah enjoyed her book club pick so much that she narrates the audiobook edition!
Browse more Oprah Picks.
-
-
White Oleander
- By Tracy on 04-09-04
By: Janet Fitch
-
Mrs. Kimble
- By: Jennifer Haigh
- Narrated by: Martha Plimpton
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A captivating exploration of human love, marriage, and the illusions upon which it is founded, Mrs. Kimble presents a fascinating psychological portrait of a mesmerizing opportunist and the women who believe in him. Beautifully wrought, stunningly original, Jennifer Haigh's sparkling debut marks the arrival of a remarkable new talent.
-
-
Disappointing
- By Katherine on 01-10-05
By: Jennifer Haigh
-
The Apocalypse Boxed Set Novels 1-3
- The Undead World Series
- By: Peter Meredith
- Narrated by: Basil Sands
- Length: 42 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Greed, terrorism, and simple bad luck conspire to bring mankind to its knees as a viral infection spreads out of control, reducing those infected to undead horrors that feed upon the rest. It's a time of misery and death for most, however there are some who are lucky, some who are ruthless, and some who are just too damned tough to go down without a fight. This is their story.
-
-
Worst writing and VO in HISTORY
- By kd on 11-25-20
By: Peter Meredith
-
The Lost Girls
- A Novel
- By: Heather Young
- Narrated by: Alice Rosengard, Laurel Schroeder
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1935, six-year-old Emily Evans vanishes from her family's vacation home on a remote Minnesota lake. Her disappearance destroys the family - her father commits suicide, and her mother and two older sisters spend the rest of their lives at the lake house, keeping a decades-long vigil for the lost child. Sixty years later, Lucy, the quiet and watchful middle sister, lives in the lake house alone. Before her death, she writes the story of that devastating summer in a notebook that she leaves, along with the house, to the only person who might care: her grandniece, Justine.
-
-
Engaging story spanning three generations.
- By LilMissMolly on 09-23-16
By: Heather Young
-
Turtle Moon
- By: Alice Hoffman
- Narrated by: Sandra Burr
- Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Turtle Moon transports the listener to Verity, Florida, a place where anything can happen during the month of May, when migrating sea turtles come to town, mistaking the glow of the streetlights for the moon. A young single mother is murdered in her apartment and her baby is gone. Keith, a 12-year-old boy in the same apartment building also disappears. In pursuit of the baby, the boy and the killer, are Keith's divorced mother and a cop who himself was once considered the meanest boy in town.
-
-
An enchanting story
- By A.J. on 05-09-11
By: Alice Hoffman
-
Blessings
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Joan Allen
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Late one night, a teenage couple drives up to the big white clapboard home on the Blessing estate and leaves a box. In that instant, the lives of those who live and work there are changed forever. Skip Cuddy, the caretaker, finds a baby girl asleep in that box and decides he wants to keep the child . . . while Lydia Blessing, the matriarch of the estate, for her own reasons, agrees to help him.
-
-
Captivating
- By Janet on 12-19-02
By: Anna Quindlen
-
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender
- By: Leslye Walton
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Magical realism, lyrical prose, and the pain and passion of human love haunt this hypnotic generational saga. Foolish love appears to be the Roux family birthright, an ominous forecast for its most recent progeny, Ava Lavender.
-
-
Beautiful and Haunting Fairytale
- By FanB14 on 07-24-15
By: Leslye Walton
-
The Memory Keeper's Daughter
- By: Kim Edwards
- Narrated by: Ilyana Kadushin
- Length: 15 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kim Edwards' stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964 in Lexington, Kentucky, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Down syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect Norah, his wife, he makes a split-second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret. Instead she disappears into another city to raise the child herself.
-
-
A favorite
- By Amazon Customer on 04-20-17
By: Kim Edwards
-
Sabrina & Corina
- Stories
- By: Kali Fajardo-Anstine
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s magnetic story collection breathes life into her Indigenous Latina characters and the land they inhabit. Against the remarkable backdrop of Denver, Colorado - a place that is as fierce as it is exquisite - these women navigate the land the way they navigate their lives: with caution, grace, and quiet force. In “Sugar Babies,” ancestry and heritage are hidden inside the Earth but tend to rise during land disputes.
-
-
Absolutely wonderful
- By Brady on 05-21-19
-
The Refugees
- By: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Narrated by: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Length: 5 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With the coruscating gaze that informed The Sympathizer, in The Refugees Viet Thanh Nguyen gives voice to lives led between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of birth. From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will.
-
-
Good collection of short stories
- By Thomas More on 03-19-17
Critic reviews
What listeners say about In a Perfect World
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Rebecca
- 06-19-12
I was promised an apocalypse novel!
A saintly stepmother begins caring for her husband's 3 rotten teenager children right before a slow apocalypse begins. Her one-dimensional, Mother-Theresa-like good nature lasts and lasts for the entire book, despite having a nasty crone mother, her neighbor's wife being a cheating slut, and her new husband basically abandoning her with his 3 spoiled children to raise.
The apocalypse details that I read for were not there until maybe the last 1/10th of this novel, and it was in no way worth reading through the rest of this unrealistic tale of the Mother Theresa of the Apocalypse who never did one selfish thing ever in her whole life to get to them.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 09-07-15
fabulous story
powerful and gripping. a slowly unspooling tragedy. a swan song perhaps for a way of living that cannot last.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Danielle
- 02-19-13
Worth listening to again and again!
Having listened to this audiobook at least five times, I feel I have a pretty solid viewpoint on it. I LOVE this book. It isn't a linear time line, which usually confuses the listener, but for some reason really works in the story. I enjoy post-apocalyptic thrillers as they are usually large scale, fantastic reads (LONG) that involve a wide cast of characters (i.e: The Passage, Swan Song) so finding that I found a under-ten-hour audiobook so intriguing says a lot about the story and the narrator.
This is a small cast of characters with whom you will connect with and care about, wanting the very best for them but not wanting the book to end too soon. It truly will move the reader to another place and make it sad to leave that place. Enjoy!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Gisele
- 10-04-11
Oh boy! Still 10 chapters to go
Sorry but I have to force myself to go to the end. I'm tempted by abandoning it. The story is non-existent, and it has a taste of deja vu. The only thing that saves my listening is the narrator who's perfect for a foreigner who has English as a second language.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
- criticalbuyer
- 07-09-10
A dull, droning, factually flawed bore.
The narrator enunciates her words so precisely that she makes a one syllable word into three syllables and causes the reading to be twice as long as it would be if someone had read it in a manner that did not make the listener feel like a hearing impaired senior. The characters are not developed so we could not care less what happens to them and in all cases do not find out. The premise and facts are plain ridiculous. In an apocolypse they do not even group together with the town or nor are given any instructions by government to handle things. They merely sit at home and bake bread and stoke the fire? They run out of writing paper and consider writing on the walls before the bank in town even closes up? A six year old is teaching chess or designing a grilling tripod and coming up with a recipe for mint toothpaste? COME ON!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Scott
- 10-21-14
Waste of money
What would have made In a Perfect World better?
Its missing a story. In full disclosure I didn't finish the book. I don't know how it ends and honestly don't care. Its a bad sign when you can skip two chapters and don't miss anything in the story. Slow story that droned on and on with pointless side notes. Shallow characters with no development.
Has In a Perfect World turned you off from other books in this genre?
No. This should not be in the post apocalyptic genre. The first 90% of the book barely talks about the epidemic and is totally unrealistic in how the public would respond (always plenty of food at the store and the electricity always comes back on, no riots or looters). I couldn't bring myself to finish the last 45 minutes of the audio book. Just wasn't worth my time.
You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?
No.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!