Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century
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Narrated by:
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Piper Goodeve
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Sean Patrick Hopkins
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Samara Naeymi
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Gary Tiedemann
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Jeena Yi
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By:
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Kim Fu
About this listen
In the 12 unforgettable tales of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, the strange is made familiar and the familiar strange, such that a girl growing wings on her legs feels like an ordinary rite of passage, while a bug-infested house becomes an impossible Kafkaesque nightmare. Each story builds a new world all its own: A group of children steal a haunted doll; a runaway bride encounters a sea monster; a vendor sells toy boxes that seemingly control the passage of time; an insomniac is seduced by the Sandman. These visions of modern life wrestle with themes of death and technological consequence, guilt and sexuality, and unmask the contradictions that exist within all of us.
Mesmerizing, electric, and wholly original, Kim Fu’s Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century blurs the boundaries of the real and fantastic, offering intricate and surprising insights into human nature.
©2022 Kim Fu (P)2022 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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STORYTELLING AS CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING
- By Christopher Meeks on 05-25-19
By: T. C. Boyle
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The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 4
- By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, Stephen King, Peter Straub
- Narrated by: Meredith Mitchell, Rebecca Mitchell, Michael Healy, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, and featuring Datlow’s comprehensive overview of the year in horror, now, more than ever, The Best Horror of the Year provides the petrifying horror fiction readers have come to expect - and enjoy.
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Only a few decent stories in this bunch.
- By Jerry on 12-06-14
By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, and others
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Our Little Secret
- By: Roz Nay
- Narrated by: Erin Moon
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Angela is being held in a police interrogation room. Her ex's wife has gone missing, and Detective Novak is sure Angela knows something, despite her claim that she's not involved. At Novak's prodding, Angela tells a story going back 10 years, explaining how she met and fell in love with her high school friend HP. But as her past unfolds, she reveals a disconcerting love triangle and a dark, tangled web of betrayals. Is Angela a scorned ex-lover with criminal intent? Or a pawn in someone else's revenge scheme?
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Amazing
- By lisa on 12-31-19
By: Roz Nay
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The Mad Scientist's Daughter
- By: Cassandra Rose Clarke
- Narrated by: Kate Rudd
- Length: 12 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Finn looks and acts human, though he has no desire to be. He was programmed to assist his owners, and performs his duties to perfection. A billion-dollar construct, his primary task now is to tutor Cat. As she grows into a beautiful young woman, Finn is her guardian, her constant companion…and more. But when the government grants rights to the ever-increasing robot population, however, Finn struggles to find his place in the world, and in Cat’s heart.
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An Exquisite Tale of Transforming Love
- By JTF on 04-18-14
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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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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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Black & White
- By: Dani Shapiro
- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Clara Brodeur has spent her entire adult life pulling herself away from her famous mother, the renowned and controversial photographer Ruth Dunne, whose towering reputation rests on the unsettling nude portraits she took of her young daughter from the ages of three to 14. As Clara charts a path connecting her childhood with her adult life, Shapiro's novel weaves together past and present in images as stark and intense as the photographs that tore the Dunnes apart.
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It was okay
- By Lucy7 on 02-13-19
By: Dani Shapiro
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Marrow
- By: Tarryn Fisher
- Narrated by: Audra Pagano
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Margo is not like other girls. She lives in a derelict neighborhood called the Bone, in a cursed house, with her cursed mother, who hasn't spoken to her in over two years. She lives her days feeling invisible. It's not until she develops a friendship with her wheelchair-bound neighbor, Judah Grant, that things begin to change. When a neighborhood girl, seven-year-old Neveah Anthony, goes missing, Judah sets out to help Margo uncover what happened to her. What Margo finds changes her, and with a new perspective on life she's determined to find evil and punish it.
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HUH?? I'm so confused LOL
- By ❤️Cyndi Marie❤️🎧Audiobook Addicts🎧 on 09-15-16
By: Tarryn Fisher
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The Invisible Circus
- By: Jennifer Egan
- Narrated by: Madeleine Lambert
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In Pulitzer Prize-winner Jennifer Egan's highly acclaimed first novel, set in 1978, the political drama and familial tensions of the 1960s form a backdrop for the world of Phoebe O'Connor, age eighteen. Phoebe is obsessed with the memory and death of her sister Faith, a beautiful idealistic hippie who died in Italy in 1970. In order to find out the truth about Faith's life and death, Phoebe retraces her steps from San Francisco across Europe, a quest which yields both complex and disturbing revelations about family, love, and Faith's lost generation.
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Too bad zero was not a choice...
- By IVAL on 04-28-13
By: Jennifer Egan
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Lie Still
- A Novel
- By: Julia Heaberlin
- Narrated by: Rebecca Gibel
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Nursing the faded scars of a long-held trauma, Emily Page and her husband, awaiting the arrival of their first child, move from New York City to the uber-wealthy Clairmont, Texas. There, Emily is swept into a world of opulent privilege and shifting loyalties. But the secrets she keeps follow her south, and with them comes the danger that her new friends can't protect her from, and her new enemies will not hesitate to use to destroy her once and for all.
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Lie Still
- By Mary K on 06-27-17
By: Julia Heaberlin
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Shadow Show
- All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury
- By: Sam Weller - editor, Mort Castle - editor
- Narrated by: George Takei, Edward Herrmann, Kate Mulgrew, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Ray Bradbury - peerless storyteller, poet of the impossible, and one of America's most beloved authors - is a literary giant whose remarkable career spanned seven decades. Now 26 of today's most diverse and celebrated authors offer new short works in honor of the master; stories of heart, intelligence, and dark wonder from a remarkable range of creative artists.
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THE MAN WHO FORGOT RAY BRADBURY
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 05-27-17
By: Sam Weller - editor, and others
What listeners say about Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- sarmishta mahendra
- 05-11-22
Eerie, strange and beautiful
It’s one of the best short story novels I’ve read. The stories are vivid and well narrated. The the writing Is beautiful and evoking
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- Kate Brennan
- 06-27-23
Fascinating & Darkly Engaging
What a fascinating compendium of tales, a reminder that the short stories are magical. As with all collections, I enjoyed some more than others, but they are all unique and inventive.
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- Jill Marie Pajka
- 01-30-23
Into itttt
Weird dark, funny. Good stuff. Performance was also very good and matched each story. Read it!
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- Georgia Moir
- 02-04-22
Masterfully Original and Compelling
This collection of short stories is edgy with a hint of erotica. I found the author to be a gifted storyteller! The content is clever and thought provoking; illustrating a modern perspective. I loved it!
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2 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-30-23
it hooks you
I have to say that I didn't love every story, but it usually takes me several weeks to finish an audio book. I finished this in a week. Well worth the read.
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- DJ
- 01-10-23
Strong, Though a Bit Uneven
Kim Fu's "Lesser Known Monsters of the 20th Century" is a strong, albeit somewhat uneven collection of short stories. Fu is at her best in the stories that tone down the DeLillo-like cultural critique, and simply focus on the strange events that confront her characters. Personal favorites included "Sandman," "Scissors," and "Twenty Hours."
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- Elizabeth Dinkova
- 12-10-23
Fascinating speculative fiction, excellently read
I loved the daring and interesting, and yet relatable, provocations for each story - occasionally similar to Black Mirror in style, these stories investigated our relationship to technology, to each other, and to the strange and surreal in the everyday. The readers were stellar - the perfect balance between emotion and story.
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- Drew
- 10-10-23
For fans of Black Mirror and The Twilight Zone
Consider my rating more of a 3.5 if anything. This is a worthwhile listen, especially it you think of yourself as a fan of the aforementioned TV shows. Some of these short stories are bangers, especially the first one that you hear in the preview. a couple of others are also pretty good, but lean so heavily into Stranger Things-esque settings that I've had to double check if they actually take place in the early 00s when I was a kid or if the entire title of the collection is a misnomer.
The other stories all present an interesting premise that has some sci-fi/supernatural angle, but they either overstay their welcome just a little bit or just feel like a bit of a drag to listen to at times. Not all, but some and your mileage may vary.
Ultimately, I think what I don't like about these least interesting stories is what makes the better ones stand out. Each is read like a theatrical performance piece of sorts. This works great when characters are interacting with other characters but gets too drawn out and enters a realm of experimental prose at times in the audio audiobook format when the main character is narrating to themselves.
Overall. despite my seemingly harsh rating, I'm still going to recommend this one to those who have read this review this far. If you're someone wistfully nostalgic for weird period pieces about..um, girls starting their peripds or haunted dolls and metaphors for growing up. These stories particular are worth experiencing. if you're also someone deeply interested in bleak futures, these stories will also be for you.
In fact, the final story sort of combines both of these into a synergy of sorts - one obviously heavily inspired by the phenomenon of people losing their sense of taste during Covid-19. The main character is one of many in her generation who gets fixated on the nostalgia for the taste of food while her daughter and her peers have largely forgotten about what the big deal was and have moved on to whatever lies ahead in their future.
it's a great conclusion and tying together of the collection's themes and motifs, but...the performative prose just doesn't do it for me.
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- Amazon Customer
- 10-05-24
Just not for me
I just did not get the stories. Some were odd but most were just stuff that I could not understand or get into. Listened to the whole thing because I cannot stand not finishing a book - always give the benefit of the doubt. Wish I had not because I was just disappointed.
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- T Kaz
- 03-30-22
BLAH
Blah, a couple good stories nothing exceptional or noteworthy just so so difficult to finish
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