-
Learwife
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 14 hrs and 36 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 $25.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
"I am the queen of two crowns, banished 15 years, the famed and gilded woman, bad-luck baleful girl, mother of three small animals, now gone. I am 55 years old. I am Lear's wife. I am here."
Word has come. Care-bent King Lear is dead, driven mad and betrayed. His three daughters too, broken in battle. But someone has survived: Lear's queen, exiled to a nunnery years ago, written out of history, her name forgotten. Now she can tell her story.
Though her grief and rage may threaten to crack the earth open, she knows she must seek answers. Why was she sent away in shame and disgrace? What has happened to Kent, her oldest friend and ally? And what will become of her now, in this place of women? To find peace, she must reckon with her past and make a terrible choice - one upon which her destiny, and that of the entire abbey, rests.
Giving unforgettable voice to a woman whose absence has been a tantalizing mystery, Learwife is a breathtaking novel of loss and renewal about how history bleeds into the present.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Booth
- By: Karen Joy Fowler
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 13 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1822, a secret family moves into a secret cabin some thirty miles northeast of Baltimore, to farm, to hide, and to bear ten children over the course of the next sixteen years. Junius Booth—breadwinner, celebrated Shakespearean actor, and master of the house in more ways than one—is at once a mesmerizing talent and a man of terrifying instability. One by one the children arrive, as year by year, the country draws frighteningly closer to the boiling point of secession and civil war.
-
-
Fascinating
- By E. Creagh on 06-20-22
By: Karen Joy Fowler
-
Shadowplay
- By: Joseph O'Connor
- Narrated by: Anna Chancellor, Barry McGovern
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Henry Irving decides to open the Lyceum, his own London theater, with the goal of making it the greatest playhouse on earth, he hires a young Dublin clerk harboring literary ambitions by the name of Abraham Stoker as his assistant. Together, Irving and Stoker fall under the spell of Ellen Terry, a dazzlingly talented Shakespearean actress, known to all as a proto-feminist, and the lives of all three become intertwined with the Lyceum and each other.
-
-
A pleasure to read & to listen to
- By Reader in New Mexico on 07-10-20
By: Joseph O'Connor
-
Ghost Stories: Stephen Fry's Definitive Collection
- By: Stephen Fry, Washington Irving, M.R. James, and others
- Narrated by: Stephen Fry
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As the days grow shorter and the temperature drops, Halloween approaches. Come, brave listener, pull up a chair, and spend some time with master storyteller Stephen Fry as he tells us some of his favourite ghost stories of all time, in truly terrifying spatial audio. From the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow to the tortured spirits of M.R. James, from Edgar Allan Poe’s terrifying tale of a doppelganger to Charlotte Riddell’s Open Door that should definitely stay shut, join Stephen as he tells you some truly terrifying tales.
-
-
Wonderful narration. Mediocre stories.
- By Michael Fuchs on 11-07-23
By: Stephen Fry, and others
-
The Weaver and the Witch Queen
- By: Genevieve Gornichec
- Narrated by: Nina Yndis
- Length: 16 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Oddny and Gunnhild meet as children in tenth century Norway, and they could not be more different: Oddny hopes for a quiet life, while Gunnhild burns for power and longs to escape her cruel mother. But after a visiting wisewoman makes an ominous prophecy that involves Oddny, her sister Signy, and Gunnhild, the three girls take a blood oath to help one another always. When Oddny’s farm is destroyed and Signy is kidnapped by Viking raiders, Oddny is set adrift from the life she imagined—but she's determined to save her sister no matter the cost.
-
-
Loved it!
- By Emily Cross on 10-08-23
-
North Woods
- A Novel
- By: Daniel Mason
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall, Michael Crouch, Jason Culp, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When two young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to growing apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths an ancient mass grave—only to discover that the earth refuse to give up their secrets.
-
-
An American Masterpiece
- By Psumissyh on 09-21-23
By: Daniel Mason
-
Night Watch
- A Novel
- By: Jayne Anne Phillips
- Narrated by: Karissa Vacker, Theo Stockman, Maggi-Meg Reed
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From one of our most accomplished novelists, a mesmerizing story about a mother and daughter seeking refuge in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War.
-
-
An oasis in the middle of hell
- By Janet Hazboun on 06-24-24
-
Booth
- By: Karen Joy Fowler
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 13 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1822, a secret family moves into a secret cabin some thirty miles northeast of Baltimore, to farm, to hide, and to bear ten children over the course of the next sixteen years. Junius Booth—breadwinner, celebrated Shakespearean actor, and master of the house in more ways than one—is at once a mesmerizing talent and a man of terrifying instability. One by one the children arrive, as year by year, the country draws frighteningly closer to the boiling point of secession and civil war.
-
-
Fascinating
- By E. Creagh on 06-20-22
By: Karen Joy Fowler
-
Shadowplay
- By: Joseph O'Connor
- Narrated by: Anna Chancellor, Barry McGovern
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Henry Irving decides to open the Lyceum, his own London theater, with the goal of making it the greatest playhouse on earth, he hires a young Dublin clerk harboring literary ambitions by the name of Abraham Stoker as his assistant. Together, Irving and Stoker fall under the spell of Ellen Terry, a dazzlingly talented Shakespearean actress, known to all as a proto-feminist, and the lives of all three become intertwined with the Lyceum and each other.
-
-
A pleasure to read & to listen to
- By Reader in New Mexico on 07-10-20
By: Joseph O'Connor
-
Ghost Stories: Stephen Fry's Definitive Collection
- By: Stephen Fry, Washington Irving, M.R. James, and others
- Narrated by: Stephen Fry
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As the days grow shorter and the temperature drops, Halloween approaches. Come, brave listener, pull up a chair, and spend some time with master storyteller Stephen Fry as he tells us some of his favourite ghost stories of all time, in truly terrifying spatial audio. From the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow to the tortured spirits of M.R. James, from Edgar Allan Poe’s terrifying tale of a doppelganger to Charlotte Riddell’s Open Door that should definitely stay shut, join Stephen as he tells you some truly terrifying tales.
-
-
Wonderful narration. Mediocre stories.
- By Michael Fuchs on 11-07-23
By: Stephen Fry, and others
-
The Weaver and the Witch Queen
- By: Genevieve Gornichec
- Narrated by: Nina Yndis
- Length: 16 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Oddny and Gunnhild meet as children in tenth century Norway, and they could not be more different: Oddny hopes for a quiet life, while Gunnhild burns for power and longs to escape her cruel mother. But after a visiting wisewoman makes an ominous prophecy that involves Oddny, her sister Signy, and Gunnhild, the three girls take a blood oath to help one another always. When Oddny’s farm is destroyed and Signy is kidnapped by Viking raiders, Oddny is set adrift from the life she imagined—but she's determined to save her sister no matter the cost.
-
-
Loved it!
- By Emily Cross on 10-08-23
-
North Woods
- A Novel
- By: Daniel Mason
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall, Michael Crouch, Jason Culp, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When two young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to growing apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths an ancient mass grave—only to discover that the earth refuse to give up their secrets.
-
-
An American Masterpiece
- By Psumissyh on 09-21-23
By: Daniel Mason
-
Night Watch
- A Novel
- By: Jayne Anne Phillips
- Narrated by: Karissa Vacker, Theo Stockman, Maggi-Meg Reed
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From one of our most accomplished novelists, a mesmerizing story about a mother and daughter seeking refuge in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War.
-
-
An oasis in the middle of hell
- By Janet Hazboun on 06-24-24
-
Still Life
- A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel)
- By: Sarah Winman
- Narrated by: Sarah Winman
- Length: 14 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tuscany, 1944: As Allied troops advance and bombs fall around deserted villages, a young English soldier, Ulysses Temper, finds himself in the wine cellar of a deserted villa. There, he has a chance encounter with Evelyn Skinner, a middle-aged art historian who has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the ruins and recall long-forgotten memories of her own youth. In each other, Ulysses and Evelyn find a kindred spirit amidst the rubble of war-torn Italy, and set off on a course of events that will shape Ulysses's life for the next four decades.
-
-
Almost a DNF
- By Robert Bryant on 03-07-22
By: Sarah Winman
-
The Marriage Portrait
- A Novel
- By: Maggie O'Farrell
- Narrated by: Genevieve Gaunt, Maggie O'Farrell
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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.
-
-
If You Love Alternate Histories, Get This
- By Jim on 09-26-22
By: Maggie O'Farrell
-
The Odd Women
- By: George Gissing
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 16 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The young Monica Madden cries for two days before her marriage to Edmund Widdowson; the ensuing claustrophobia, which opens the door for the more desirable Bevis, contrasts with Rhoda's independence - yet Rhoda's own principles are tested when she falls in love rather by accident.... The Odd Women is a remarkable book, ultimately optimistic in its hope for a societal shift that will benefit both men and women alike.
-
-
Excellent novel beautifully read
- By Merlin on 07-28-22
By: George Gissing
-
The Vaster Wilds
- A Novel
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A servant girl escapes from a colonial settlement in the wilderness. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds in this terra incognita is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief in everything that her own civilization has taught her.
-
-
Slow torture written too hastily
- By Jennifer on 09-23-23
By: Lauren Groff
-
Middlemarch
- By: George Eliot
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 35 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dorothea Brooke is an ardent idealist who represses her vivacity and intelligence for the cold, theological pedant Casaubon. One man understands her true nature: the artist Will Ladislaw. But how can love triumph against her sense of duty and Casaubon’s mean spirit? Meanwhile, in the little world of Middlemarch, the broader world is mirrored: the world of politics, social change, and reforms, as well as betrayal, greed, blackmail, ambition, and disappointment.
-
-
Best Audible book ever
- By Molly-o on 12-25-11
By: George Eliot
-
The Good Wife of Bath
- A Novel
- By: Karen Brooks
- Narrated by: Fran Burgoyne
- Length: 19 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
England, 1364: When married off at aged twelve to an elderly farmer, brazen redheaded Eleanor quickly realizes it won’t matter what she says or does, God is not on her side—or any poor woman’s for that matter. But then again, Eleanor was born under the joint signs of Venus and Mars, making her both a lover and a fighter.
-
-
Interesting, funny and thought provoking
- By Dawn Umstot on 07-01-22
By: Karen Brooks
-
Circe
- By: Madeline Miller
- Narrated by: Perdita Weeks
- Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child—not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power—the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.
-
-
Refined writing with an intimate performance
- By Michael - Audible Editor on 04-11-18
By: Madeline Miller
-
House of Names
- By: Colm Tóibín
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson, Charlie Anson, Pippa Nixon
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"I have been acquainted with the smell of death." So begins Clytemnestra's tale of her own life in ancient Mycenae, the legendary Greek city from which her husband, King Agamemnon, left when he set sail with his army for Troy. Clytemnestra rules Mycenae now, along with her new lover, Aegisthus, and together they plot the bloody murder of Agamemnon on the day of his return after nine years at war.
-
-
Power. Control. Restraint.
- By David on 06-27-17
By: Colm Tóibín
-
Empty Theatre
- By: Jac Jemc
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
History knows them as King Ludwig II of Bavaria and Empress Elizabeth of Austria, icons of the late nineteenth century who died young and left behind magnificent portraits and palaces. But to each other they were Ludwig and Sisi, cousins who shared a passion for beauty and a stubborn refusal to submit to the roles imposed upon them.
-
-
An extraordinary satire
- By R. Glynn on 03-22-23
By: Jac Jemc
-
The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock
- A Novel
- By: Imogen Hermes Gowar
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1780s London, a prosperous merchant finds his quiet life upended when he unexpectedly receives an unusual creature - and meets a most extraordinary woman - in this much-lauded, atmospheric debut that examines our capacity for wonder, obsession, and desire. One September evening in 1785, Jonah Hancock hears an urgent knocking on his front door near the docks of London. The captain of one of Jonah’s trading vessels is waiting eagerly on the front step, bearing shocking news. On a voyage to the Far East, he sold the Jonah’s ship for something rare and far more precious: a mermaid.
-
-
Gave up
- By Isabella Piestrzynska on 10-27-18
-
After the Forest
- By: Kell Woods
- Narrated by: Esther Wane
- Length: 13 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twenty years after the witch in the gingerbread house, Greta and Hans are struggling to get by. Their mother and stepmother are long dead, Hans is deeply in debt from gambling, and the countryside lies in ruin, its people starving in the aftermath of a brutal war. Greta has a secret, though: the witch's grimoire, secreted away and whispering in Greta's ear for the past two decades, and the recipe inside that makes the best gingerbread you've ever tasted. As long as she can bake, Greta can keep her small family afloat.
-
-
Fantastic!
- By Brazilla A. Leonard on 11-07-23
By: Kell Woods
-
Birnam Wood
- A Novel
- By: Eleanor Catton
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. For years, the group has struggled to break even. To occupy the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last. But the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine also has an interest in the place.
-
-
Outstanding thriller w/ exceptional character development
- By Bradley T. Collins on 04-21-23
By: Eleanor Catton
Related to this topic
-
Mirror Mirror
- By: Gregory Maguire
- Narrated by: John McDonough, Kate Forbes, Barbara Rosenblat, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is 1502, and seven-year-old Bianca de Nevada lives at Montefiore, the farm of her father, Don Vicente. But one day a noble entourage makes its way up to the farm. In the presence of Cesare Borgia and his sister, the lovely and vain Lucrezia, no one can claim innocence for very long. When Borgia sends Don Vicente on a quest, he leaves Bianca under the care of Lucrezia. She plots a dire fate for the young girl in the woods below the farm, but salvation can be found in the dark forest as well.
-
-
Interesting re-telling of the fairy tale.
- By Patricia on 03-04-10
By: Gregory Maguire
-
Palimpsest
- By: Catherynne M. Valente
- Narrated by: Aasne Vigesaa
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Between life and death, dreaming and waking, at the train stop beyond the end of the world is the city of Palimpsest. To get there is a miracle, a mystery, a gift, and a curse - a voyage permitted only to those who’ve always believed there’s another world than the one that meets the eye. Those fated to make the passage are marked forever by a map of that wondrous city tattooed on their flesh after a single orgasmic night. To this kingdom of ghost trains, lion-priests, living kanji, and cream-filled canals come four travelers.
-
-
Excellent Prose, but lacks maturity
- By Michael on 08-09-15
-
Deathless
- By: Catherynne M. Valente
- Narrated by: Kim de Blecourt
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Koschei the Deathless is to Russian folklore what devils or wicked witches are to Western European culture: a menacing, evil figure; the villain of countless stories that have been passed on through story and text for generations. But Koschei has never before been seen through the eyes of Catherynne Valente, whose modernized and transformed take on the legend brings the action to modern times, spanning many of the great developments of Russian history in the 20th century.
-
-
My Favorite Fantasy Book of the Year
- By Robert on 12-29-13
-
The Anchoress
- By: Robyn Cadwallader
- Narrated by: Mary Jane Wells, Steve West
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sarah is just 17 when she chooses to become an anchoress, a holy woman shut away in a cell that measures only seven by nine paces, at the side of the village church. Fleeing the grief of losing a much-loved sister in childbirth as well as pressure to marry the local lord's son, she decides to renounce the world - with all its dangers, desires, and temptations - and commit herself to a life of prayer. But it soon becomes clear that the thick, unforgiving walls of Sarah's cell cannot protect her as well as she had thought.
-
-
Entertaining
- By Here-and-faraway on 07-01-15
-
The Essex Serpent
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Perry
- Narrated by: Juanita McMahon
- Length: 14 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Cora Seaborne's brilliant, domineering husband dies, she steps into her new life as a widow with as much relief as sadness: her marriage was not a happy one. Wed at 19, this woman of exceptional intelligence and curiosity was ill-suited for the role of society wife. Seeking refuge in fresh air and open space in the wake of the funeral, Cora leaves London for a visit to coastal Essex, accompanied by her inquisitive and obsessive 11-year old son, Francis, and the boy's nanny, Martha.
-
-
Unbearable Narrator
- By ACB on 06-08-17
By: Sarah Perry
-
Illuminations
- A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen
- By: Mary Sharratt
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Skillfully interweaving historical fact with psychological insight and vivid imagination, Sharratt's redemptive novel brings to life one of the most extraordinary women of the Middle Ages: Hildegard von Bingen, Benedictine abbess, visionary, and polymath. Offered to the Church at the age of eight, Hildegard was entombed in a small room where she was expected to live out her days in silent submission as the handmaiden of a renowned but disturbed young nun, Jutta von Sponheim.
-
-
Strong woman; weak novel
- By connie on 12-01-12
By: Mary Sharratt
-
Mirror Mirror
- By: Gregory Maguire
- Narrated by: John McDonough, Kate Forbes, Barbara Rosenblat, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is 1502, and seven-year-old Bianca de Nevada lives at Montefiore, the farm of her father, Don Vicente. But one day a noble entourage makes its way up to the farm. In the presence of Cesare Borgia and his sister, the lovely and vain Lucrezia, no one can claim innocence for very long. When Borgia sends Don Vicente on a quest, he leaves Bianca under the care of Lucrezia. She plots a dire fate for the young girl in the woods below the farm, but salvation can be found in the dark forest as well.
-
-
Interesting re-telling of the fairy tale.
- By Patricia on 03-04-10
By: Gregory Maguire
-
Palimpsest
- By: Catherynne M. Valente
- Narrated by: Aasne Vigesaa
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Between life and death, dreaming and waking, at the train stop beyond the end of the world is the city of Palimpsest. To get there is a miracle, a mystery, a gift, and a curse - a voyage permitted only to those who’ve always believed there’s another world than the one that meets the eye. Those fated to make the passage are marked forever by a map of that wondrous city tattooed on their flesh after a single orgasmic night. To this kingdom of ghost trains, lion-priests, living kanji, and cream-filled canals come four travelers.
-
-
Excellent Prose, but lacks maturity
- By Michael on 08-09-15
-
Deathless
- By: Catherynne M. Valente
- Narrated by: Kim de Blecourt
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Koschei the Deathless is to Russian folklore what devils or wicked witches are to Western European culture: a menacing, evil figure; the villain of countless stories that have been passed on through story and text for generations. But Koschei has never before been seen through the eyes of Catherynne Valente, whose modernized and transformed take on the legend brings the action to modern times, spanning many of the great developments of Russian history in the 20th century.
-
-
My Favorite Fantasy Book of the Year
- By Robert on 12-29-13
-
The Anchoress
- By: Robyn Cadwallader
- Narrated by: Mary Jane Wells, Steve West
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sarah is just 17 when she chooses to become an anchoress, a holy woman shut away in a cell that measures only seven by nine paces, at the side of the village church. Fleeing the grief of losing a much-loved sister in childbirth as well as pressure to marry the local lord's son, she decides to renounce the world - with all its dangers, desires, and temptations - and commit herself to a life of prayer. But it soon becomes clear that the thick, unforgiving walls of Sarah's cell cannot protect her as well as she had thought.
-
-
Entertaining
- By Here-and-faraway on 07-01-15
-
The Essex Serpent
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Perry
- Narrated by: Juanita McMahon
- Length: 14 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Cora Seaborne's brilliant, domineering husband dies, she steps into her new life as a widow with as much relief as sadness: her marriage was not a happy one. Wed at 19, this woman of exceptional intelligence and curiosity was ill-suited for the role of society wife. Seeking refuge in fresh air and open space in the wake of the funeral, Cora leaves London for a visit to coastal Essex, accompanied by her inquisitive and obsessive 11-year old son, Francis, and the boy's nanny, Martha.
-
-
Unbearable Narrator
- By ACB on 06-08-17
By: Sarah Perry
-
Illuminations
- A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen
- By: Mary Sharratt
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Skillfully interweaving historical fact with psychological insight and vivid imagination, Sharratt's redemptive novel brings to life one of the most extraordinary women of the Middle Ages: Hildegard von Bingen, Benedictine abbess, visionary, and polymath. Offered to the Church at the age of eight, Hildegard was entombed in a small room where she was expected to live out her days in silent submission as the handmaiden of a renowned but disturbed young nun, Jutta von Sponheim.
-
-
Strong woman; weak novel
- By connie on 12-01-12
By: Mary Sharratt
-
All the Ever Afters
- The Untold Story of Cinderella’s Stepmother
- By: Danielle Teller
- Narrated by: Jane Copland
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the vein of Wicked, The Woodcutter, and Boy, Snow, Bird, a luminous re-imagining of a classic tale, told from the perspective of Agnes, Cinderella’s "evil" stepmother. We all know the story of Cinderella. Or do we? As rumors about the cruel upbringing of beautiful newlywed Princess Cinderella roil the kingdom, her stepmother, Agnes, who knows all too well about hardship, privately records the true story...
-
-
Not what I was expecting...
- By IonyWinter on 07-15-19
By: Danielle Teller
-
The Sekhmet Bed
- The She-King, #1
- By: L.M. Ironside
- Narrated by: Amanda C. Miller
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The second daughter of the Pharaoh, Ahmose has always dreamed of a quiet life as a priestess, serving Egypt's gods, ministering to the people of the Two Lands. But when the Pharaoh dies without an heir, she is given instead as Great Royal Wife to the new king - a soldier of common birth. For Ahmose is god-chosen, gifted with the ability to read dreams, and it is her connection to the gods which ensures the new Pharaoh his right to rule.
-
-
Never listened to a story about Egypt before...
- By E. M. on 12-14-13
By: L.M. Ironside
-
Deerskin
- By: Robin McKinley
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The only daughter of a beloved king and queen, Princess Lissar has grown up in the shadow of her parents' infinite adoration for each other - an infatuation so great that it could only be broken by the queen's unexpected passing. As Lissar reaches womanhood, it becomes clear to everyone in the kingdom that she has inherited her late mother's breathtaking beauty. But on the eve of her seventeenth birthday, Lissar's exquisite looks become a curse. Betrayed and abused, Lissar is forced to flee her home to escape her father's madness.
-
-
Poor Narrator choice :/
- By Elizabeth on 05-29-18
By: Robin McKinley
-
A Vision of Light
- A Margaret of Ashbury Novel, Book 1
- By: Judith Merkle Riley
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Margaret of Ashbury wants to write her life story. However, like most women in 14th-century England, she is illiterate. Three clerics contemptuously decline to be Margaret’s scribe, and only the threat of starvation persuades Brother Gregory, a Carthusian friar with a mysterious past, to take on the task. As she narrates her life, we discover a woman of startling resourcefulness.
-
-
Old fashioned heroine
- By Margaret on 06-22-13
-
Miranda and Caliban
- By: Jacqueline Carey
- Narrated by: Gemma Dawson, Alex Wyndham
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A lovely girl grows up in isolation where her father, a powerful magus, has spirited them to in order to keep them safe. We all know the tale of Prospero's quest for revenge, but what of Miranda? Or Caliban, the so-called savage Prospero chained to his will? In this incredible retelling of the fantastical tale, Jacqueline Carey shows listeners the other side of the coin - the dutiful and tenderhearted Miranda, who loves her father but is terribly lonely. And Caliban, the strange and feral boy Prospero has bewitched to serve him.
-
-
Beautiful, charming, slightly scary story
- By DabOfDarkness on 09-16-17
By: Jacqueline Carey
-
The Woodcutter
- By: Kate Danley
- Narrated by: Sarah Coomes
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Deep within the Wood, a young woman lies dead. Not a mark on her body. No trace of her murderer. Only her chipped glass slippers hint at her identity. The Woodcutter, keeper of the peace between the Twelve Kingdoms of Man and the Realm of the Faerie, must find the maiden’s killer before others share her fate. Guided by the wind and aided by three charmed axes won from the River God, the Woodcutter begins his hunt, searching for clues in the whispering dominions of the enchanted unknown. But quickly he finds that one murdered maiden is not the only nefarious mystery afoot....
-
-
Fantasy for fairy tale lovers
- By A. Sines on 03-25-15
By: Kate Danley
-
Dragon's Keep
- By: Janet Lee Carey
- Narrated by: Bianca Amato
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On Wilde Island, Rosalind and her mother live their lives in exile, awaiting the time they can reclaim their rightful place on the throne. And there is reason to hope - a 600-year-old prophesy has decreed that they will do just that. But little do they know, their destinies hinge on Rosalind's amazing, shameful secret. Beneath her gold gloves, the fourth finger of her left hand is in truth a dragon's claw.
-
-
Get ready to be whisked away!
- By Corinne on 06-27-08
By: Janet Lee Carey
-
Wintersong
- By: S. Jae-Jones
- Narrated by: Eva Kaminsky
- Length: 14 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
All her life, 19-year-old Liesl has heard tales of the beautiful, mysterious Goblin King. He is the Lord of Mischief, the Ruler Underground, and the muse around which her music is composed. Yet, as Liesl helps shoulder the burden of running her family's inn, her dreams of composition and childish fancies about the Goblin King must be set aside in favor of more practical concerns. But when her sister Kathe is taken by the goblins, Liesl journeys to their realm to rescue her sister and return her to the world above.
-
-
Muddled
- By Ingrid on 03-13-17
By: S. Jae-Jones
-
Battle of Kings
- By: M. K. Hume
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 17 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the town of Segontium a wild storm washes a fugitive ashore. He brutally rapes the granddaughter of the ruler of the Deceangli tribe, leaving her to bear his son, Myrddion Merlinus (Merlin). Spurned as a demon seed, the child is raised by his grandmother and, as soon as he turns nine, he is apprenticed to a skilled alchemist who hones the boy’s remarkable gift of prophecy. Meanwhile, the High King of the Britons, Vortigern, is rebuilding the ancient fortress at Dinas Emrys.
-
-
Underrated book author and narrator!
- By Zachary on 04-15-22
By: M. K. Hume
-
Ophelia
- By: Lisa Klein
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this re-imagining of Shakespeare's famous tragedy, it is Ophelia who takes center stage. A rowdy, motherless girl, she grows up at Elsinore Castle to become the queens most trusted lady-in-waiting. She catches the attention of the captivating, dark-haired Prince Hamlet, and their love blossoms in secret. But bloody deeds soon turn Denmark into a place of madness, and ultimately, Ophelia must choose between her love for Hamlet and her own life.
-
-
nice idea, poorly executed
- By Darryl on 06-11-16
By: Lisa Klein
-
Merivel
- A Man of His Time
- By: Rose Tremain
- Narrated by: Sean Barrett
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In search of answers, Merivel sets off for the French court. But Versailles leaves him in despair, until a chance encounter with a seductive Swiss botanist allows him to dream of an honorable future. But back home, his loyalty and medical skill are about to be tested to the limit, while the captive bear he has brought back from France begins to cause havoc.
-
-
On Foolishness and Mortality
- By Ilana on 12-27-14
By: Rose Tremain
-
The Bone Doll's Twin
- Tamir Triad, Book 1
- By: Lynn Flewelling
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine, Lynn Flewelling
- Length: 16 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As people start to recall the Oracle's prophecy, Erius begins to quietly kill off his female relatives who pose the only threat to his monarchy. Constantly in fear for her life, Princess Ariani the King's sister, gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl. But Ariani is married to Lord Rhius, the patron of the powerful wizard Iya, and Iya has sinister plans for the babes.
-
-
Not a bad beginning, but . . .
- By bluestatereader on 12-29-10
By: Lynn Flewelling
What listeners say about Learwife
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- LiburConi
- 08-27-23
wow
very intense. triumphant, bittersweet, and tragic. it's...a lot. also, it's not really as described in the summary.
the character is very complex and worth getting to know. the story can get a bit too caught up in its own language at times, though.
a much better listen than read for me because of juliet stevenson. she's a global treasure as far as i'm concerned and keeps you listening. a really transcendent talent.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!