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Lean on Pete
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Willy Vlautin
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
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Publisher's summary
Willy Vlautin's award-winning novel Lean on Pete, a moving and compassionate story about a 15-year-old boy's unlikely connection to a failing racehorse as he struggles to find a place to call home - now a major motion picture from A24, the studio behind Moonlight and Lady Bird, starring Charlie Plummer, Steve Buscemi, Chloë Sevigny, and directed by Andrew Haigh (45 Years, Looking).
Fifteen-year-old Charley Thompson wants a home, food on the table, and a high school he can attend for more than part of a year. But as the son of a single father working in warehouses across the Pacific Northwest, Charley's been pretty much on his own. When tragic events leave him homeless weeks after their move to Portland, Oregon, Charley seeks refuge in the tack room of a run-down horse track. Charley's only comforts are his friendship with a failing racehorse named Lean on Pete and a photograph of his only known relative. In an increasingly desperate circumstance, Charley will head east, hoping to find his aunt who had once lived a thousand miles away in Wyoming - but the journey to find her will be a perilous one.
In Lean on Pete, Willy Vlautin reveals the lives and choices of American youth like Charley Thompson who were failed by those meant to protect them and who were never allowed the chance to just be a kid.
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Zou Lei, orphan of the desert, migrates to work in America and finds herself slaving in New York's kitchens. She falls in love with a young man whose heart has been broken in another desert. A new life may be possible if together they can survive homelessness, lockup, and the young man's nightmares, which may be more prophecy than madness.
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Incredible craftsmanship.
- By B.J. on 04-23-15
By: Atticus Lish
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My Friend Leonard
- By: James Frey
- Narrated by: Andy Paris
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Perhaps the most unconventional and literally breathtaking father-son story you'll ever read, My Friend Leonard pulls you immediately and deeply into a relationship as unusual as it is inspiring. The father figure is Leonard, the high-living, recovering coke addict, "West Coast Director of a large Italian-American finance firm" (read: mobster) who helped to keep James Frey clean in A Million Little Pieces.
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Great book
- By Kathy on 11-04-05
By: James Frey
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The People We Keep
- By: Allison Larkin
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Little River, New York, 1994: April Sawicki is living in a motorless motorhome that her father won in a poker game. Failing out of school, picking up shifts at a local diner, she’s left fending for herself in a town where she’s never quite felt at home. When she “borrows” her neighbor’s car to perform at an open mic night, she realizes her life could be much bigger than where she came from. After a fight with her dad, April packs her stuff and leaves for good, setting off on a journey to find a life that’s all hers.
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Absolutely loved this book!
- By chatteycathi on 08-09-21
By: Allison Larkin
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Fourth of July Creek
- A Novel
- By: Smith Henderson
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews, Jenna Lamia
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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After trying to help Benjamin Pearl, an undernourished, nearly feral 11-year-old boy living in the Montana wilderness, social worker Pete Snow comes face-to-face with the boy's profoundly disturbed father, Jeremiah. With courage and caution, Pete slowly earns a measure of trust from this paranoid survivalist itching for a final conflict that will signal the coming End Times. But as Pete's own family spins out of control, Pearl's activities spark the full-blown interest of the FBI, putting Pete at the center of a massive manhunt from which no one will emerge unscathed.
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The Ghost of Tom Joad & the Wrath of Grapes
- By Mel on 06-30-14
By: Smith Henderson
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Where I'm Calling From
- Selected Stories
- By: Raymond Carver
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 16 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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By the time of his early death in 1988, Raymond Carver had established himself as one of the great practitioners of the American short story. Where I'm Calling From, his last collection, encompasses classic stories from Cathedral, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, and earlier Carver volumes, along with seven new works previously unpublished in book form.
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Love Carver, But Dietz Ruins It With Reading
- By Noirbat on 05-10-18
By: Raymond Carver
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Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?
- Stories
- By: Raymond Carver
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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With this, his first collection of stories, Raymond Carver breathed new life into the American short story and instantly became both the recognized master of the form and one of our best-loved fiction writers. Carver shows us the humor and tragedy that dwell in the hearts of ordinary people; his stories are the classics of our time.
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Humanity at the Breaking Point
- By Darwin8u on 03-31-19
By: Raymond Carver
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Rolling Nowhere
- Riding the Rails with America's Hoboes
- By: Ted Conover
- Narrated by: Ted Conover
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Riding the rails, Ted Conover tasted the life of a tramp with companions like Pistol Pete, BB, and Sheba Sheila Sheils. From them he learned survival skills - how to "read" a freight train, scavenge for food and clothing, avoid the railroad "bulls." He was initiated into the customs of their unique, shadowy society - men and women bound together by a mutual bond of failure, camaraderie, and distrust.
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Had potential, but fell short.
- By Evan on 01-06-12
By: Ted Conover
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Stick
- By: Andrew Smith
- Narrated by: Josh Hurley
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Fourteen-year-old Stark McClellan (nicknamed Stick because he’s tall and thin) is bullied for being "deformed" - he was born with only one ear. His older brother, Bosten, is always there to defend Stick. But the boys can’t defend each other from their abusive parents. When Stick realizes Bosten is gay, he knows that to survive his father's anger, Bosten must leave home. Stick has to find his brother, or he will never feel whole again. In his search, he will encounter good people, bad people, and people who are simply indifferent to kids from the wrong side of the tracks. But he never loses hope of finding love - and his brother.
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Amazing book!
- By Christopher Gaines on 02-19-18
By: Andrew Smith
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Leather Maiden
- By: Joe Lansdale
- Narrated by: Tom Butler
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Edgar Award winner Joe R. Lansdale writes outrageous fiction that rockets along with violent spikes of action and intense humor. Gulf War vet Cason Statler has moved back to his East Texas hometown after losing his job as a reporter in Houston (sleeping with both the boss' wife and 30-year-old stepdaughter has a way of ruining career prospects). But when his new gig has him investigating a local girl's disappearance, Cason opens a can of worms that might get him killed.
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Good Story with So-So narration
- By Daniel McAfee on 09-11-12
By: Joe Lansdale
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The Year We Disappeared
- By: Cylin Busby, John Busby
- Narrated by: Cylin Busby, David Baker
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
A peaceful summer night is shattered by gunfire as an unseen assailant tries to murder police officer John Busby. Though horribly wounded, Busby survives. But the perpetrator remains at large, meaning neither Busby, nor his wife, nor their three children are safe. In separate chapters John and his daughter, Cylin, who was nine at the time, recount the story of that year. John writes graphically, and movingly, of his wounds, his pain, his multiple surgeries, and his rage.
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Heartbreaking. Justice just out of reach.
- By Amanda on 01-07-14
By: Cylin Busby, and others
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Falling from Horses
- By: Molly Gloss
- Narrated by: David Aaron Baker
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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>In 1938, 19-year-old cowboy Bud Frazer sets his sights on becoming a stunt rider in the movies. Fantasizing about rubbing shoulders with the great screen cowboys of his youth, he leaves his home in Echol Creek, Oregon, and heads for Hollywood. On the long bus ride south, Bud meets a young woman who also harbors dreams of making it in the movies, though not as a starlet but as a writer, a real writer.
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Good
- By MJ Strub on 10-26-23
By: Molly Gloss
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Best book I have ever heard!
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Fleeing Las Vegas and her abusive boyfriend, Allison Johnson moves to Reno, intent on making a new life for herself. Haunted by the mistakes of her past, and lacking any self-belief, her only comfort seems to come from the imaginary conversations she has with Paul Newman, and the characters he played. But as life crawls on and she finds work, small acts of kindness start to reveal themselves to her, and slowly the chance of a new life begins to emerge.
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With "echoes of Of Mice and Men" (The Bookseller, UK), The Motel Life explores the frustrations and failed dreams of two Nevada brothers - on the run after a hit-and-run accident - who, forgotten by society, and short on luck and hope, desperately cling to the edge of modern life.
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a bit of a tear jerker
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It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man, faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery that forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.
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Al Ward lives on an isolated mining claim in the high desert of central Nevada fifty miles from the nearest town. A grizzled man in his sixties, he survives on canned soup, instant coffee, and memories of his ex-wife, friends and family he’s lost, and his life as a touring musician. Hampered by insomnia, bouts of anxiety, and a chronic lethargy that keeps him from moving back to town, Al finds himself teetering on the edge of madness and running out of reasons to go on—until a horse arrives on his doorstep: nameless, blind, and utterly helpless.
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Wonderful audio book!
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Horace Hopper is a half-Paiute, half-Irish ranch hand who wants to be somebody. He's spent most of his life on the ranch of his kindly guardians, Mr. and Mrs. Reese, herding sheep alone in the mountains. But while the Reeses treat him like a son, Horace can't shake the shame he feels from being abandoned by his parents. He decides to leave the only loving home he's known to prove his worth by training to become a boxer.
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What listeners say about Lean on Pete
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- J. T. Carter
- 02-17-22
Great Author and Story
I have really enjoyed every book written and performed by this author. They have a relatable feel. ~J
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- Linda S.
- 08-31-21
Wonderful Story and Narrator
This is a wonderful story about teenager Charlie whose life is hard. He has no mother in his life and his father loves Charlie but gives him minimal attention. To earn money, Charlie works for Dale Montgomery, a crude, dishonest horse owner. Charlie wants to learn about horses, is in desperate need of money, and is Dale's lowly worker doing anything Dale is too lazy or too drunk to do himself. Charlie and horse Lean on Pete have a close bond as Charlie understands and cares about Pete, who is a race horse and is also struggling to get through the days. Willy Vlautin is an excellent narrator with a nice tone and inflictions that just sound like Charlie would talk. He has nice pacing and is also great with different characters' voices. This is an easy fiction book to listen to especially if you normally listen to non-fiction books like I do. There is also some nice music at the beginning and the ending of the book which adds to the listening experience. Thank you Willy Vlautin...I loved everything about this book.
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- Misty D.
- 12-28-22
Good but....
This was a tough story in ways. The tragedies that Charlie faces over and over made me wonder how the book would end. I did like the ending.
I really felt for Charlie and found myself thinking about him when I wasn't listening to the book. That's always a sign of a good book.
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- Jo H.
- 09-27-24
good listen
thoughtful plot, well-built, multi-dimensional characters, and excellent narration make this an exceptional listen. I highly recommend it.
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- MBrew
- 04-24-18
Oaf, that was tough
This was a sad story and depressing story for me. I typically like dark, but at times it was too much going wrong and nothing going right. The main character goes through a lot, but doesn't express to the reader the emotions that go with it. So, I felt distant from the story and characters most of the time. I liked the readers voice and it fit the story and main character.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Christie Bravo
- 06-18-18
Great story
A sweet story, kind of sad at times. Happy ending. I really enjoyed it. The reader's voice very enjoyable.
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2 people found this helpful