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Instructions for a Heatwave
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
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Publisher's summary
Sophisticated, intelligent, impossible to put down, Maggie O’Farrell’s beguiling novels—After You’d Gone, winner of a Betty Trask Award; The Distance Between Us, winner of a Somerset Maugham Award; The Hand That First Held Mine, winner of the Costa Novel Award; and her unforgettable bestseller The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox—blend richly textured psychological drama with page-turning suspense. Instructions for a Heatwave finds her at the top of her game, with a novel about a family crisis set during the legendary British heatwave of 1976.
Gretta Riordan wakes on a stultifying July morning to find that her husband of forty years has gone to get the paper and vanished, cleaning out his bank account along the way. Gretta’s three grown children converge on their parents’ home for the first time in years: Michael Francis, a history teacher whose marriage is failing; Monica, with two stepdaughters who despise her and a blighted past that has driven away the younger sister she once adored; and Aoife, the youngest, now living in Manhattan, a smart, immensely resourceful young woman who has arranged her entire life to conceal a devastating secret.
Maggie O’Farrell writes with exceptional grace and sensitivity about marriage, about the mysteries that inhere within families, and the fault lines over which we build our lives—the secrets we hide from the people who know and love us best. In a novel that stretches from the heart of London to New York City’s Upper West Side to a remote village on the coast of Ireland, O’Farrell paints a bracing portrait of a family falling apart and coming together with hard-won, life-changing truths about who they really are.
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Critic reviews
"Acutely observed...revelatory, redemptive, and moving.... There is a deliciousness to this novel, a warmth and readability that render it unputdownable and will surely make it a hit. O’Farrell has done it again." (Joanna Briscoe, The Guardian)
"A literary event...evocative, articulate, and joyously readable.... O’Farrell’s talent for drawing intriguing but relatable characters is eclipsed only by a rare gift for description that is almost photographic in its imagery.... An author at the top of her game." (Charlotte Heathcote, The Sunday Express)
"Humorous, humane, and perceptive.... O’Farrell depicts relationships with piercing acuity in haunting, intense prose...a deliciously insightful writer...Her sharp but humane eye dissects every form of human interaction." (Leyla Sanai, The Independent on Sunday)
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Jenny is a successful family doctor, the mother of three great teenagers, married to a celebrated neurosurgeon. But when her youngest child, 15-year-old Naomi, doesn't come home after her school play, Jenny's seemingly ideal life begins to crumble. The authorities launch a nationwide search with no success. Naomi has vanished, and her family is broken.
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BORING...
- By Nyesha on 06-08-15
By: Jane Shemilt
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The Year of the Runaways
- By: Sunjeev Sahota
- Narrated by: Sartaj Garewal
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Thirteen young men live in a house in Sheffield, each in flight from India and in desperate search of a new life. Tarlochan, a former rickshaw driver, will say nothing about his past in Bihar, and Avtar has a secret that binds him to protect the choatic Randeep. Randeep, in turn, has a visa wife in a flat on the other side of town: a clever, devout woman whose cupboards are full of her husband's clothes, in case the immigration men surprise her with a call.
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Maybe easier to read than to listen to.
- By Eric on 06-15-16
By: Sunjeev Sahota
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Crooked Heart
- A Novel
- By: Lissa Evans
- Narrated by: Karen Cass
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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When Noel Bostock - aged 10, no family - is evacuated from London to escape the Nazi bombardment, he lands in a suburb northwest of the city with Vera Sedge - a 36-year-old widow drowning in debts and dependents. Always desperate for money, she's unscrupulous about how she gets it.
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Surviving The Blitz In WWII Great Britain
- By Sara on 04-24-16
By: Lissa Evans
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The Walking People
- By: Mary Beth Keane
- Narrated by: Sile Bermingham
- Length: 16 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Greta Cahill never believed she would leave her village in the west of Ireland until she found herself on a ship bound for New York, along with her sister Johanna and a boy named Michael Ward. Labeled a "softheaded goose" by her family, Greta discovers that in America she can fall in love, raise her own family, and earn a living.
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Irish immigratn story
- By Chrissie on 09-10-13
By: Mary Beth Keane
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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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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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The Girls in the Garden
- A Novel
- By: Lisa Jewell
- Narrated by: Colleen Prendergast
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Imagine that you live on a picturesque communal garden square, an oasis in urban London where your children run free, in and out of other people's houses. You've known your neighbors for years and you trust them. Implicitly. You think your children are safe. But are they really? On a midsummer night, as a festive neighborhood party is taking place, preteen Pip discovers her 13-year-old sister Grace lying unconscious and bloody in a hidden corner of a lush rose garden. What really happened to her?
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Delightful
- By Julie on 11-03-17
By: Lisa Jewell
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Everything She Forgot
- A Novel
- By: Lisa Ballantyne
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
They're calling it the worst pileup in London history. Margaret Holloway is driving home, but her mind is elsewhere - on a troubled student, her daughter's acting class, the next day's meeting - when she's rear-ended and trapped in the wreckage. Just as she begins to panic, a disfigured stranger pulls her from the car seconds before it's engulfed in flames. Then he simply disappears.
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Surprisingly emotional
- By RueRue on 04-09-16
By: Lisa Ballantyne
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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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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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The Red Address Book
- By: Sofia Lundberg, Alice Menzies - translator
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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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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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (Unabridged Selections)
- By: Edited by David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris, Mary-Louise Parker, Cherry Jones
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
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Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
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Behind the Scenes at the Museum
- A Novel
- By: Kate Atkinson
- Narrated by: Pearl Hewitt
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Ruby Lennox begins narrating her life at the moment of conception, and from there takes us on a whirlwind tour of the 20th century as seen through the eyes of an English girl determined to learn about her family and its secrets.
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Another Kate Atkinson multi-generational story
- By Satisfied Customer on 11-08-18
By: Kate Atkinson
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The Au Pair
- By: Emma Rous
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Sastre, Nicola Barber
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Seraphine Mayes and her twin brother, Danny, were born in the middle of summer at their family's estate on the Norfolk coast. Within hours of their birth, their mother threw herself from the cliffs, the au pair fled, and the village thrilled with whispers of dark cloaks, changelings, and the aloof couple who drew a young nanny into their inner circle.
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Just ridiculous
- By ROBIN on 02-06-19
By: Emma Rous
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A Share in Death
- By: Deborah Crombie
- Narrated by: Michael Deehy
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A week's holiday in a luxurious hotel is just what Scotland Yard's Superintendent Duncan Kincaid needs. But his vacation ends dramatically with the discovery of a dead body in the whirlpool bath. Despite a suspicious lack of cooperation from the local constabulary, Kincaid's keen sense of duty won't allow him to ignore the heinous crime, impelling him to send for his enthusiastic young assistant, Sergeant Gemma James. But the stakes are raised significantly when a second murder occurs....
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series readers, start here
- By connie on 02-09-13
By: Deborah Crombie
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Alice Raikes takes a train from London to Scotland to visit her family, but when she gets there she witnesses something so shocking that she insists on returning to London immediately. A few hours later, Alice is lying in a coma after an accident that may or may not have been a suicide attempt. Alice’s family gathers at her bedside and as they wait, argue, and remember, long-buried tensions emerge. The more they talk, the more they seem to conceal. Alice, meanwhile, slides between varying levels of consciousness, recalling her past and a love affair that recently ended.
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Very well written.
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Lexie Sinclair yearns for more than her parents’ genteel country life. She makes her way to the city, where she meets a magazine editor, Innes, a man unlike any she has ever imagined. He introduces her to the thrilling world of Bohemian postwar London, and Lexie learns to become a reporter, to know art and artists, to live fully, unconventionally, and with deep love. And when she finds herself pregnant by a man wholly unsuitable for marriage or fatherhood, she doesn’t hesitate a minute to have the baby on her own.
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Enjoy as much as I did.
- By Anonymous User on 11-09-21
By: Maggie O’Farrell
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The Distance Between Us
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- Narrated by: Susie Riddell
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
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On a cold February afternoon, Stella catches sight of a man she hasn't seen for many years, but instantly recognises. Or thinks she does. At the same moment on the other side of the globe, in the middle of a crowd of Chinese New Year revellers, Jake realises that things are becoming dangerous. They know nothing of one another's existence, but both Stella and Jake flee their lives: Jake in search of a place so remote it doesn't appear on any map, and Stella for a destination in Scotland, the significance of which only her sister, Nina, will understand.
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Not my favorite Maggie O’Farrell novel…
- By serene ghazi on 03-05-24
By: Maggie O'Farrell
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The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
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Iris Lockhart is busy tending to the everyday business of her vintage clothing shop and her complicated love affairs when she receives a stunning phone call. Her great-aunt Esme, whom she never even knew existed, is being released from a psychiatric hospital where she has been locked away for over 60 years.
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The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
- By Jessica on 06-19-08
By: Maggie O'Farrell
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This Must Be the Place
- By: Maggie O'Farrell
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- Length: 14 hrs and 44 mins
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Meet Daniel Sullivan, a man with a complicated life. A New Yorker living in the wilds of Ireland, he has children he never sees in California; a father he loathes in Brooklyn; and a wife, Claudette, who is a reclusive ex-film star given to shooting at anyone who ventures up their driveway. He is also about to find out something about a woman he lost touch with 20 years ago, and this discovery will send him off course, far away from wife and home. Will his love for Claudette be enough to bring him back?
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A good story spoiled
- By White rose on 03-24-17
By: Maggie O'Farrell
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I Am, I Am, I Am
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- By: Maggie O'Farrell
- Narrated by: Daisy Donovan
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
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Overall
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I Am, I Am, I Am is Maggie O'Farrell's astonishing memoir of the near-death experiences that have punctuated and defined her life. The childhood illness that left her bedridden for a year, which she was not expected to survive. A teenage yearning to escape that nearly ended in disaster. An encounter with a disturbed man on a remote path. And, most terrifying of all, an ongoing, daily struggle to protect her daughter - for whom this book was written - from a condition that leaves her unimaginably vulnerable to life's myriad dangers.
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Her prose is beautiful!
- By Judy on 03-25-18
By: Maggie O'Farrell
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After You’d Gone
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- Narrated by: Elle Newlands
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
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Alice Raikes takes a train from London to Scotland to visit her family, but when she gets there she witnesses something so shocking that she insists on returning to London immediately. A few hours later, Alice is lying in a coma after an accident that may or may not have been a suicide attempt. Alice’s family gathers at her bedside and as they wait, argue, and remember, long-buried tensions emerge. The more they talk, the more they seem to conceal. Alice, meanwhile, slides between varying levels of consciousness, recalling her past and a love affair that recently ended.
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Very well written.
- By Audible Fan on 02-24-21
By: Maggie O'Farrell
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The Hand That First Held Mine
- By: Maggie O’Farrell
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Lexie Sinclair yearns for more than her parents’ genteel country life. She makes her way to the city, where she meets a magazine editor, Innes, a man unlike any she has ever imagined. He introduces her to the thrilling world of Bohemian postwar London, and Lexie learns to become a reporter, to know art and artists, to live fully, unconventionally, and with deep love. And when she finds herself pregnant by a man wholly unsuitable for marriage or fatherhood, she doesn’t hesitate a minute to have the baby on her own.
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Enjoy as much as I did.
- By Anonymous User on 11-09-21
By: Maggie O’Farrell
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On a cold February afternoon, Stella catches sight of a man she hasn't seen for many years, but instantly recognises. Or thinks she does. At the same moment on the other side of the globe, in the middle of a crowd of Chinese New Year revellers, Jake realises that things are becoming dangerous. They know nothing of one another's existence, but both Stella and Jake flee their lives: Jake in search of a place so remote it doesn't appear on any map, and Stella for a destination in Scotland, the significance of which only her sister, Nina, will understand.
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Not my favorite Maggie O’Farrell novel…
- By serene ghazi on 03-05-24
By: Maggie O'Farrell
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The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
- By: Maggie O'Farrell
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Iris Lockhart is busy tending to the everyday business of her vintage clothing shop and her complicated love affairs when she receives a stunning phone call. Her great-aunt Esme, whom she never even knew existed, is being released from a psychiatric hospital where she has been locked away for over 60 years.
-
-
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
- By Jessica on 06-19-08
By: Maggie O'Farrell
-
This Must Be the Place
- By: Maggie O'Farrell
- Narrated by: Graham Rowat, Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 14 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Meet Daniel Sullivan, a man with a complicated life. A New Yorker living in the wilds of Ireland, he has children he never sees in California; a father he loathes in Brooklyn; and a wife, Claudette, who is a reclusive ex-film star given to shooting at anyone who ventures up their driveway. He is also about to find out something about a woman he lost touch with 20 years ago, and this discovery will send him off course, far away from wife and home. Will his love for Claudette be enough to bring him back?
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A good story spoiled
- By White rose on 03-24-17
By: Maggie O'Farrell
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Her prose is beautiful!
- By Judy on 03-25-18
By: Maggie O'Farrell
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My Lover’s Lover
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- Narrated by: Elle Newlands
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Lily slips on the sidewalk outside a London gallery and literally falls at the feet of a stranger, Marcus, the attraction is instant and electric. Within a week, she is sharing this magnetic yet elusive architect’s waterfront loft and sleeping in the room that belonged to his girlfriend, Sinead, about whom he will only say that “she’s no longer...with us”. But there lingers a distinct presence, of a woman who seems to have disappeared abruptly - leaving behind a single sexy dress in the closet, a puzzling mark on the wall, and the suffocating scent of jasmine.
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Kind of a pointless waste of time
- By Kathleen on 07-05-24
By: Maggie O'Farrell
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The Marriage Portrait
- A Novel
- By: Maggie O'Farrell
- Narrated by: Genevieve Gaunt, Maggie O'Farrell
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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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If You Love Alternate Histories, Get This
- By Jim on 09-26-22
By: Maggie O'Farrell
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Hamnet
- By: Maggie O'Farrell
- Narrated by: Ell Potter
- Length: 12 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.
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A masterpiece
- By Molly-o on 08-03-20
By: Maggie O'Farrell
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Bad Men
- By: Julie Mae Cohen
- Narrated by: Nathalie Buscombe
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- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Saffy Huntley-Oliver is an intelligent and glamorous socialite; she also happens to be a proficient serial killer. For the past fifteen years, she’s hunted down and dispatched rapists, murderers, domestic abusers—bad men all. But leading a double life has left her lonely—dating’s tough when your boyfriend might turn out to be your next victim. Saffy thinks she’s finally found a truly good man in Jonathan Desrosiers, a true-crime podcaster who’s amassed legions of diehard fans for cracking cold cases and bringing justice to victims.
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Fun pov strong bad woman
- By M on 09-02-24
By: Julie Mae Cohen
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The Garnett Girls
- A Novel
- By: Georgina Moore
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Forbidden, passionate and all-encompassing, Margo and Richard’s love affair was the stuff of legend—but, ultimately, doomed. When Richard walked out, Margo locked herself away, leaving her three daughters, Rachel, Imogen, and Sasha, to run wild. Years later, charismatic Margo entertains lovers and friends in her cottage on the Isle of Wight, refusing to ever speak of Richard and her painful past. But her silence is keeping each of the Garnett girls from finding true happiness.
By: Georgina Moore
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The Testament of Mary
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 3 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Meryl Streep’s performance of Colm Tóibín's acclaimed portrait of Mary is hailed by the New York Times Book Review as “an ideal audiobook,” presenting the three-time Academy Award-winner in “yet another great role.” Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Colm Tóibín's The Testament of Mary presents Mary as a solitary older woman still seeking to understand the events that become the narrative of the New Testament and the foundation of Christianity. In the ancient town of Ephesus, Mary lives alone, years after her son's crucifixion. She has no interest in collaborating with the authors of the Gospel. They are her keepers, providing her with food and shelter and visiting her regularly. She does not agree that her son is the Son of God; nor that his death was "worth it"; nor that the "group of misfits he gathered around him, men who could not look a woman in the eye," were holy disciples. This woman who we know from centuries of paintings and scripture as the docile, loving, silent, long-suffering, obedient, worshipful mother of Christ becomes a tragic heroine with the relentless eloquence of Electra or Medea or Antigone, in a portrait so vivid and convincing that our image of Mary will be forever transformed.
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hated it
- By bibliophile on 06-14-14
By: Colm Toibin
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The Night Guest
- By: Hildur Knútsdóttir, Mary Robinette Kowal - translator
- Narrated by: Mary Robinette Kowal
- Length: 2 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Iðunn is in yet another doctor's office. She knows her constant fatigue is a sign that something's not right, but practitioners dismiss her symptoms and blood tests haven't revealed any cause. When she talks to friends and family about it, the refrain is the same—have you tried eating better? exercising more? establishing a nighttime routine? She tries to follow their advice, buying everything from vitamins to sleeping pills to a step-counting watch. Nothing helps. Until one night Iðunn falls asleep with the watch on, and wakes up to find she’s walked over 40,000 steps in the night.
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Interesting & creepy
- By Jaimie Welbourn on 09-20-24
By: Hildur Knútsdóttir, and others
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Behind the Scenes at the Museum
- A Novel
- By: Kate Atkinson
- Narrated by: Pearl Hewitt
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Ruby Lennox begins narrating her life at the moment of conception, and from there takes us on a whirlwind tour of the 20th century as seen through the eyes of an English girl determined to learn about her family and its secrets.
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Another Kate Atkinson multi-generational story
- By Satisfied Customer on 11-08-18
By: Kate Atkinson
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The Memory Police
- A Novel
- By: Yoko Ogawa, Stephen Snyder - translator
- Narrated by: Traci Kato-Kiriyama
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses - until things become much more serious. Most of the island's inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few imbued with the power to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten. When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards.
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A Calm, Quiet Dystopian
- By Booky Nooky on 12-13-19
By: Yoko Ogawa, and others
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The Safekeep
- By: Yael van der Wouden
- Narrated by: Stina Nielsen, Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
An exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961—a powerful exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past.
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dragged on forever
- By k on 10-31-24
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Bel Canto
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Ann Patchett’s award winning, New York Times best-selling Bel Canto balances themes of love and crisis as disparate characters learn that music is their only common language. As in Pratchett’s other novels, including Truth & Beauty and The Magician’s Assistant, the author’s lyrical prose and lucid imagination make Bel Canto a captivating story of strength and frailty, love and imprisonment, and an inspiring tale of transcendent romance.
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Opera Has Charms to Soothe the Savage Guerillas
- By Mel on 03-01-13
By: Ann Patchett
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Brooklyn
- A Novel
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: Saoirse Ronan
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
“One of the most unforgettable characters in contemporary literature” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the hard years following World War Two. When an Irish priest from Brooklyn offers to sponsor Eilis in America, she decides she must go, leaving her fragile mother and her charismatic sister behind. Eilis finds work in a department store on Fulton Street, and when she least expects it, finds love. Tony, who loves the Dodgers and his big Italian family, slowly wins her over with patient charm.
By: Colm Toibin
What listeners say about Instructions for a Heatwave
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- andrea
- 07-04-22
Charming story …
But doesn’t hold a candle to the story of Esme Lennox in depth or surprise.
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- Amazon Customer
- 04-23-24
Choppy
Not my favorite book by this author Too choppy. I was never sure if the narrator was talking about the present or the past. Story line was a bit weak but the narrator had a pleasant voice.
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- LizM
- 10-09-18
Just ok
This was a pretty easy read. There weren't any characters that I really loved though. Overall it was ok but nothing to write home about.
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- Jenny D.
- 07-20-23
Not Hamnet, but still a good story
I believe I have read almost all the books written by O'Farrell available on Audible. She's an amazing story teller. While this is a different type of story from Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait - it's set in the mid-1970s and focused on the dynamics of one family - it's still incredibly well written and engaging.
I appreciate that it's read by John Lee, too. He can be so over the top sometimes, but I prefer it to the author reading her own work (usually).
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- Cariola
- 07-17-13
Another Gem from O'Farrell
Once again, Maggie O'Farrell creates a set of well-developed characters and turns her focus to complex family dynamics. The year is 1976, and England is in the midst of a heatwave. While his wife Gretta follows her usual morning bread baking routine, recent retiree Robert Riordan goes for his morning walk--and doesn't return. As most of us would do in a time of crisis, Gretta calls the family together for support. There's her favorite, Monica, a childless woman married to a second husband whose daughters despise her; Michael Francis, a high school history teacher who hates his job and whose ideal family may not be so ideal behind closed doors; and Aiofe, the so-called black sheep, who never seemed to get anything right and had moved to New York eight years earlier to escape the constant criticism and disappointments.
As they reunite to decide how to proceed in finding Robert, repressed emotions, individual frailties, and long-held secrets come to the surface. O'Farrell does a masterful job of moving from one perspective to another and between past and present, showing us the truth within each character and the source of their misperceptions about one another. Towards the end, we learn that the children aren't the only ones living lives built of facades: Gretta and Robert have their own buried secrets.
In the end, many threads are left to be untangled. The lack of a neatly tied-up conclusion might be considered a flaw, but it also highlights the fact that the relationships among the Riordans and her characters' psyches are O'Farrell's intended focus, more so than the story of a missing person. The writing here is quite fine; not only are the descriptions vivid and the dialogue believable, but the author has a gift for subtly evoking a reader's empathy even for characters who may not be on their best behavior. Instructions for a Heatwave may not be the best Maggie O'Farrell novel I've read, but it comes pretty close.
John Lee is one of my all-time favorite narrators, and he gets to use his wonderful brogue in this one--a delight to listen to!
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12 people found this helpful
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- Slopeggy
- 02-25-21
Superb narration
The narrator is excellent. What a talent. Amazing character development and I’ll miss hearing about the ongoing conversations and interactions with this family. Maggie O can spin a story!
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- Cindy J Scribner
- 12-09-23
Left wanting more
MOF does not disappoint- downright normal lives containing everything from tedium to tragedy, portrayed in delicious details. She plays on a sense of time that is simultaneously slowed way down and speeded up. Delightful.
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- Regina
- 11-29-23
Compelling
…Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Maggie O'Farrell is such a talent. Outstanding characters told with love and kindness. So well written.
Outstanding narration; simply perfection.
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- Barbara
- 08-01-14
Three siblings meet to find their missing father
O'Farrell writes sympathetic characters, and that's an important issue for me. I have to be able to identify with at least one in any book. Here, each one - even the unlikable, has some redeeming characteristic. A good depiction of adult family relationships just as each is reaching a crisis point in his or her life. There was only one thing I had trouble believing: One sister is illiterate. By now she's figured out how to hide it. But is it really possible that she made it all the way through her school years without anyone ever suspecting she might have a learning disability - or discovering that she never learned to read?
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- Rebecca Studer
- 08-27-21
lovely Irish lilt to the narrative
started a bit slow but the rhythm of the language and development of the story soon drew me in.
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