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In the Country of Men
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Khalid Abdalla
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
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Publisher's summary
Libya, 1979. Nine-year-old Suleiman's days are circumscribed by the narrow rituals of childhood: outings to the ruins surrounding Tripoli, games with friends played under the burning sun, exotic gifts from his father's constant business trips abroad. But his nights have come to revolve around his mother's increasingly disturbing bedside stories full of old family bitterness. And then one day Suleiman sees his father across the square of a busy marketplace, his face wrapped in a pair of dark sunglasses. Wasn't he supposed to be away on business yet again? Why is he going into that strange building with the green shutters? Why did he lie? Suleiman is soon caught up in a world he cannot hope to understand - where the sound of the telephone ringing becomes a portent of grave danger; where his mother frantically burns his father's cherished books; where a stranger full of sinister questions sits outside in a parked car all day; where his best friend's father can disappear overnight, next to be seen publicly interrogated on state television.
In the Country of Men is a stunning depiction of a child confronted with the private fallout of a public nightmare. But above all, it is a debut of rare insight and literary grace.
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The global fiction sensation - published in 32 countries around the world: Meet Doris, a 96-year-old woman living alone in her Stockholm apartment. She has few visitors, but her weekly Skype calls with Jenny - her American grandniece, and her only relative - give her great joy and remind her of her own youth. In writing down the stories of her colorful past - working as a maid in Sweden, modelling in Paris during the '30s, fleeing to Manhattan at the dawn of the Second World War - she may help Jenny, haunted by a difficult childhood, unlock the secrets of their family....
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narrator was overwrought
- By Janet L. Hamilton on 02-22-19
By: Sofia Lundberg, and others
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Mr. Fox
- A Novel
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Carol Boyd
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently....
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A Great Novel, just Poor for Audio
- By James A. Dittes on 08-13-16
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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Fruit of the Drunken Tree
- A Novel
- By: Ingrid Rojas Contreras
- Narrated by: Marisol Ramirez, Almarie Guerra, Ingrid Rojas Contreras
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister, Cassandra, enjoy carefree lives thanks to their gated community in Bogotá, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities and capture the attention of the nation. When their mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city's guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona's mysterious ways.
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Maybe better to read this book than listen???
- By Amazon Customer on 12-12-18
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The Star Side of Bird Hill
- By: Naomi Jackson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Two sisters, ages 10 and 16, are exiled from Brooklyn to Bird Hill in Barbados, after their mother can no longer care for them. The young Phaedra and her older sister, Dionne, live, for the summer of 1989, with their grandmother, Hyacinth, a midwife and practitioner of the local spiritual practice of obeah. Dionne spends the summer in search of love, testing her grandmother's limits, and wanting to go home. Phaedra explores Bird Hill, where her family has lived for generations.
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My absolute favorite book of all time
- By Eme on 07-16-15
By: Naomi Jackson
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Guapa
- By: Saleem Haddad
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Rasa spends his days translating for Western journalists and pining for the nights when he can sneak his lover, Taymour, into his room. One night Rasa's grandmother - the woman who raised him - catches them in bed together. The following day Rasa is consumed by the search for his best friend, Maj, a fiery activist and drag queen star of the underground bar Guapa, who has been arrested by the police.
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Guapa
- By Mah Maass on 08-25-16
By: Saleem Haddad
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The Kite Runner
- By: Khaled Hosseini
- Narrated by: Khaled Hosseini
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Why we think it’s a great listen: Never before has an author’s narration of his fiction been so important to fully grasping the book’s impact and global implications. Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of its monarchy to the present, The Kite Runner is the unforgettable story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them.
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A Worhty Read
- By P. C..S. on 08-17-03
By: Khaled Hosseini
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Praise Song for the Butterflies
- A Novel
- By: Bernice L. McFadden
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Abeo Kata lives a comfortable, happy life in West Africa as the privileged nine-year-old daughter of a government employee and stay-at-home mother. But when the Katas' idyllic lifestyle takes a turn for the worse, Abeo's father, following his mother's advice, places the girl in a religious shrine, hoping that the sacrifice of his daughter will serve as atonement for the crimes of his ancestors. Unspeakable acts befall Abeo for the 15 years she is held in the shrine. When she is finally rescued, broken and battered, she must struggle to overcome her past.
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Searing!
- By Susie Bright on 09-05-18
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Brick Lane
- By: Monica Ali
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Sastre
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Nanzeen's inauspicious birth in a Bangladeshi village imbues in her a sense of fatalism that she carries across continents. Married off to a man old enough to be her father, Nanzeen moves to London and cares for her family. But gradually she begins to question whether fate controls her or whether she has a hand in her own destiny. She discovers both the complexity that comes with free choice and the depth of her attachment to her husband, her daughters and her new world.
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A truly wonderful book!
- By A M on 11-24-03
By: Monica Ali
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The Secret Keeper
- By: Kate Morton
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 19 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
England, 1959: Laurel Nicolson is 16 years old, dreaming alone in her childhood tree house during a family celebration at their home, Green Acres Farm. She spies a stranger coming up the long road to the farm and then observes her mother, Dorothy, speaking to him. And then she witnesses a crime.
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Kate Morton (and Caroline Lee) does it again!
- By Maria on 10-20-12
By: Kate Morton
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East of the Sun
- By: Julia Gregson
- Narrated by: Tania Rodrigues
- Length: 19 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Autumn 1928. Three young women are on their way to India, each with a new life in mind. Rose, a beautiful but naive bride-to-be, is anxious about leaving her family and marrying a man she hardly knows. Victoria, her bridesmaid couldn't be happier to get away from her overbearing mother, and is determined to find herself a husband. And Viva, their inexperienced chaperone, is in search of the India of her childhood, ghosts from the past and freedom.
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Indian history takes a back seat to 3 young women
- By Richard on 05-24-16
By: Julia Gregson
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The Space Between Us
- By: Thrity Umrigar
- Narrated by: Purva Bedi
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Best-selling author Thrity Umrigar won the Nieman Fellowship and earned a finalist spot for the PEN/Beyond Margins award with The Space Between Us. Set in modern-day India, this evocative novel follows upper-middle-class Parsi housewife Sera Dubash and 65-year-old illiterate household worker Bhima as they make their way through life. Though separated by their stations in life, the two women share bonds of womanhood that prove far stronger than the divisions of class or culture.
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A Story that stays with you
- By gardener97 on 04-25-15
By: Thrity Umrigar
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The Blue Between Sky and Water
- By: Susan Abulhawa
- Narrated by: Jennifer Woodward
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
It is 1947, and Beit Daras, a quiet village in Palestine surrounded by olive groves, is home to the Baraka family. Eldest daughter Nazmiyeh looks after her widowed mother, prone to wandering and strange outbursts, while her brother, Mamdouh, tends to the village bees. Their younger sister, Mariam, with her striking mismatched eyes, spends her days talking to imaginary friends and writing.
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Horrible pronunciation
- By Debra Sabah Press on 11-08-18
By: Susan Abulhawa
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The Beach Trees
- By: Karen White
- Narrated by: Ki Gottberg, Gin Hammond
- Length: 15 hrs and 6 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For Julie Holt, travelling to the beautiful but ravaged coast of Biloxi, Mississippi, is a journey into a secret past, and a life she never expected.... Julie first knew loss at the age of 12, when her sister disappeared, never to be found. As her once close-knit family grew apart, Julie's mother obsessively searched for the girl, and when her mother died, Julie took up the search, never letting go of the hope. Then, at an art exhibition in New York, she meets Monica....
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The ending was very weak
- By Missi Boyd on 10-31-16
By: Karen White
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In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet - sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair, and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors - doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice.
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Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and to devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding, Lucrezia is thrust into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father just as quick to accept on her behalf. Having barely left girlhood behind, Lucrezia must make her way in a court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed.
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Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state—separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family's strangeness; of François's union with Barbara; of Chloe, the result of that union.
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Wild Houses
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The riotous, raucous, and deeply resonant debut novel from “one of the best story writers in the English language today” (Financial Times), Wild Houses follows two outsiders caught in the crosshairs of a small-town revenge kidnapping gone awry.
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Four lives are drawn together in a sweeping, panoramic new novel from Richard Powers, showcasing the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs. Ina Aroita grows up in naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home. Two polar opposites at an elite Chicago high school bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game; Rafi Young will get lost in literature, while Todd Keane’s work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough.
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The Bee Sting
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The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under—but Dickie is spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife, Imelda, is selling off her jewelry on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attention of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike, while their teenage daughter, Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge drink her way through her final exams. As for twelve-year-old PJ, he’s on the brink of running away.
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What listeners say about In the Country of Men
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- Wendy Flesner
- 05-12-23
Beautifully written!
Gorgeous writing. Powerful psychological insights into the nature of humans and the human spirit. Stunning
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- Alex Klop
- 09-13-24
5 Stars!
This was an exceptionally difficult book to read. This story is told through the perspective of a 9 year old boy in 1979, living through the reign of Moammar Qaddafi in Libya.
Through the eyes of Suleiman, our narrator, we see how his peaceful and consistent life is changed by Qaddafi’s ruling. We hear through his mother’s stories how she was forced into marriage at 14 and see her struggling with depression and a drug addiction.
I read a lot of dark romance and don’t usually have a hard line in books, but this story at times was more than I could handle. Knowing that people lived (and are living) through these awful heartbreaking situations is absolutely devastating. Finishing this book was relieving, because reading it really took its toll. An absolutely heartbreaking and soul shattering story.
Two quotes from the book that stuck with me are:
Chapter 2: “Her story was mine too, it bound us, turned us into one, “two halves of the same soul, two open pages of the same book,” as she used to say.”
Chapter 16: “I imagined what I would have done to save her. In my fantasy I would tap on the window of the room where she was held captive and help her jump out. We would run away somewhere no one could find us. And to avoid people’s gossip we would pretend to be brother and sister, because I would be nine and she would be fourteen. I would make sesame sticks and sell them to children, delivering them on my big motorcycle. I would spend the money I made on books for her. And one day she would meet that boy she was with in the Italian Coffee House-perhaps by the seashore, or at a café, or in a line in a bakery-and fall in love with him again. Many times I would drive by on my motorcycle and see them holding hands above a table in a café, big, silent smiles on their faces. And after they had found many reasons to be together and all the books in the world were read, it would be the time for me to be born. My imagination turned the tale in my head-I saved her, went away with her, then came back to save her again-until sleep curled itself around me and I sank into it, feeling the dark, warm glow of hope spread itself around within me.”
Chapter 23: “And like all Libyans who don’t return, the shadow of the suspicion fell firmly on me, strengthened further by yet another decree, issued when I was fourteen, promising that all “Stray Dogs” who refused to return would be hunted down. These decrees got ever more desperate. The governments next move was to refuse my parents visa to leave the country, holding them hostage, as it were, until the evading Stray Dog returned:
Why does our country long for us so savagely? What could we possibly give her that hasn’t already been taken?”
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- chris
- 07-27-23
I wish I could have learned more….
Redundancy abounds in this novel that drones on in only one person’s point of view, that of a whining self-absorbed 9 year old boy. I Wish I could have learned more about Libya and the political situation occurring.
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- Dorothy
- 08-01-24
Nothing likable
Most of the story from the point of view of a child and then switches to the voice of the same child as an adult. Not a very likable kid or adult.
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