Lost Memory of Skin
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 $25.19
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Scott Shepherd
-
By:
-
Russell Banks
About this listen
The acclaimed author of The Sweet Hereafter and Rule of the Bone returns with a provocative new novel that illuminates the shadowed edges of contemporary American culture with startling and unforgettable results.
Suspended in a strangely modern-day version of limbo, the young man at the center of Russell Banks’s uncompromising and morally complex new novel must create a life for himself in the wake of incarceration. Known in his new identity only as the Kid, and on probation after doing time for a liaison with an underage girl, he is shackled to a GPS monitoring device and forbidden to live within 2,500 feet of anywhere children might gather. With nowhere else to go, the Kid takes up residence under a south Florida causeway, in a makeshift encampment with other convicted sex offenders.
Barely beyond childhood himself, the Kid, despite his crime, is in many ways an innocent, trapped by impulses and foolish choices he himself struggles to comprehend. Enter the Professor, a man who has built his own life on secrets and lies. A university sociologist of enormous size and intellect, he finds in the Kid the perfect subject for his research on homelessness and recidivism among convicted sex offenders. The two men forge a tentative partnership, the Kid remaining wary of the Professor’s motives even as he accepts the counsel and financial assistance of the older man.
When the camp beneath the causeway is raided by the police, and later, when a hurricane all but destroys the settlement, the Professor tries to help the Kid in practical matters while trying to teach his young charge new ways of looking at, and understanding, what he has done. But when the Professor’s past resurfaces and threatens to destroy his carefully constructed world, the balance in the two men’s relationship shifts.
Suddenly, the Kid must reconsider everything he has come to believe, and choose what course of action to take when faced with a new kind of moral decision.
Long one of our most acute and insightful novelists, Russell Banks often examines the indistinct boundaries between our intentions and actions. A mature and masterful work of contemporary fiction from one of our most accomplished storytellers, Lost Memory of Skin unfolds in language both powerful and beautifully lyrical, show-casing Banks at his most compelling, his reckless sense of humor and intense empathy at full bore.
The perfect convergence of writer and subject, Lost Memory of Skin probes the zeitgeist of a troubled society where zero tolerance has erased any hope of subtlety and compassion - a society where isolating the offender has perhaps created a new kind of victim.
©2011 Russell Banks (P)2011 HarperCollinsPublishersListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Sweet Hereafter
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Dawn Harvey, Chris Andrew Ciulla, Dominic Hoffman, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Sweet Hereafter, Russell Banks tells a story that begins with a school bus accident. Using four different narrators, Banks creates a small-town morality play that addresses one of life's most agonizing questions: When the worst thing happens, who do you blame?
-
-
Read the book, see the movie
- By RueRue on 11-24-20
By: Russell Banks
-
The Magic Kingdom
- A Novel
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell, MacLeod Andrews
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1971, a property speculator named Harley Mann begins recording his life story onto a reel-to-reel machine. Reflecting on his childhood in the early 20th century, Harley recounts that after his father’s sudden death, his family migrated down to Florida’s swamplands—mere miles away from what would become Disney World—to join a community of Shakers.
-
-
Dry account of a shaker love story
- By Sylvia Pinegar on 01-02-23
By: Russell Banks
-
Continental Drift
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Zach Villa
- Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Now available for the first time in audiobook format, a powerful literary classic from one of contemporary fiction's most acclaimed and important writers. Russell Banks' Continental Drift is a masterful novel of hope lost and gained and a gripping, indelible story of fragile lives uprooted and transformed by injustice, disappointment, and the seductions and realities of the American dream.
-
-
Give up and die
- By AI on 12-09-21
By: Russell Banks
-
Affliction
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 15 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wade Whitehouse is an improbable protagonist for a tragedy. A well-digger and policeman in a bleak New Hampshire town, he is a former high-school star gone to beer fat, a loner with a mean streak. It is a mark of Russell Banks' artistry and understanding that Wade comes to loom in one's mind as a blue-collar American Everyman afflicted by the dark secret of the macho tradition. Told by his articulate, equally scarred younger brother, Wade's story becomes as spellbinding and inexorable as a fuse burning its way to the dynamite.
-
-
Intense family drama
- By Lorna Bolton Mills on 01-23-24
By: Russell Banks
-
Trailerpark
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Kevin Kenerly
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Get to know the colorful cast of characters at the Granite State Trailerpark, where Flora in number 11 keeps more than a hundred guinea pigs and screams at people to stay away from her babies, Claudel in number 5 thinks he is lucky until his wife burns down their trailer and runs off with Howie Leeke, and Noni in number 7 has telephone conversations with Jesus and tells the police about them. Russell Banks offers gripping, realistic portrayals of individual Americans and paints a portrait of New England life that is at once dark, witty, and revealing.
By: Russell Banks
-
Cloudsplitter
- A Novel
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 29 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Deeply researched, brilliantly plotted, and peopled with a cast of unforgettable characters both historical and wholly invented, Cloudsplitter is dazzling in its re-creation of the political and social landscape of our history during the years before the Civil War, when slavery was tearing the country apart. But within this broader scope, Russell Banks has given us a riveting, suspenseful, heartbreaking narrative filled with intimate scenes of domestic life, of violence and action in battle, of romance and familial life and death that make the listener feel in astonishing ways what it is like to be alive in that time.
-
-
Captivating read
- By James P. Barraza on 08-02-17
By: Russell Banks
-
The Sweet Hereafter
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Dawn Harvey, Chris Andrew Ciulla, Dominic Hoffman, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Sweet Hereafter, Russell Banks tells a story that begins with a school bus accident. Using four different narrators, Banks creates a small-town morality play that addresses one of life's most agonizing questions: When the worst thing happens, who do you blame?
-
-
Read the book, see the movie
- By RueRue on 11-24-20
By: Russell Banks
-
The Magic Kingdom
- A Novel
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell, MacLeod Andrews
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1971, a property speculator named Harley Mann begins recording his life story onto a reel-to-reel machine. Reflecting on his childhood in the early 20th century, Harley recounts that after his father’s sudden death, his family migrated down to Florida’s swamplands—mere miles away from what would become Disney World—to join a community of Shakers.
-
-
Dry account of a shaker love story
- By Sylvia Pinegar on 01-02-23
By: Russell Banks
-
Continental Drift
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Zach Villa
- Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Now available for the first time in audiobook format, a powerful literary classic from one of contemporary fiction's most acclaimed and important writers. Russell Banks' Continental Drift is a masterful novel of hope lost and gained and a gripping, indelible story of fragile lives uprooted and transformed by injustice, disappointment, and the seductions and realities of the American dream.
-
-
Give up and die
- By AI on 12-09-21
By: Russell Banks
-
Affliction
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 15 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wade Whitehouse is an improbable protagonist for a tragedy. A well-digger and policeman in a bleak New Hampshire town, he is a former high-school star gone to beer fat, a loner with a mean streak. It is a mark of Russell Banks' artistry and understanding that Wade comes to loom in one's mind as a blue-collar American Everyman afflicted by the dark secret of the macho tradition. Told by his articulate, equally scarred younger brother, Wade's story becomes as spellbinding and inexorable as a fuse burning its way to the dynamite.
-
-
Intense family drama
- By Lorna Bolton Mills on 01-23-24
By: Russell Banks
-
Trailerpark
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Kevin Kenerly
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Get to know the colorful cast of characters at the Granite State Trailerpark, where Flora in number 11 keeps more than a hundred guinea pigs and screams at people to stay away from her babies, Claudel in number 5 thinks he is lucky until his wife burns down their trailer and runs off with Howie Leeke, and Noni in number 7 has telephone conversations with Jesus and tells the police about them. Russell Banks offers gripping, realistic portrayals of individual Americans and paints a portrait of New England life that is at once dark, witty, and revealing.
By: Russell Banks
-
Cloudsplitter
- A Novel
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 29 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Deeply researched, brilliantly plotted, and peopled with a cast of unforgettable characters both historical and wholly invented, Cloudsplitter is dazzling in its re-creation of the political and social landscape of our history during the years before the Civil War, when slavery was tearing the country apart. But within this broader scope, Russell Banks has given us a riveting, suspenseful, heartbreaking narrative filled with intimate scenes of domestic life, of violence and action in battle, of romance and familial life and death that make the listener feel in astonishing ways what it is like to be alive in that time.
-
-
Captivating read
- By James P. Barraza on 08-02-17
By: Russell Banks
-
Rule of the Bone
- A Novel
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When we first meet him, Chappie is a punked-out teenager living with his mother and abusive stepfather in an upstate New York trailer park. During this time, he slips into drugs and petty crime. Rejected by his parents, out of school and in trouble with the police, he claims for himself a new identity as a permanent outsider; he gets a crossed-bones tattoo on his arm, and takes the name "Bone."
-
-
Out of the mouths of teenagers
- By Lori K. on 01-07-17
By: Russell Banks
-
The Bean Trees
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: C. J. Critt
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Clear-eyed and spirited, Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with the goals of avoiding pregnancy and getting away. But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she meets the human condition head-on. By the time Taylor arrives in Tucson, Arizona, she has acquired a completely unexpected child, a three-year-old American Indian girl named Turtle, and must somehow come to terms with both motherhood and the necessity of putting down roots.
-
-
Barbara, can we have a "re-do?"
- By Nancy on 02-22-12
-
Liberation Day
- Stories
- By: George Saunders
- Narrated by: George Saunders, Tina Fey, Michael McKean, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The “best short story writer in English” (Time) is back with a masterful collection that explores ideas of power, ethics, and justice, and cuts to the very heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans. With his trademark prose—wickedly funny, unsentimental, and perfectly tuned—Saunders continues to challenge and surprise: here is a collection of prismatic, deeply resonant stories that encompass joy and despair, oppression and revolution, bizarre fantasy and brutal reality.
-
-
Extraordinary
- By REBECCA on 10-18-22
By: George Saunders
-
The Handmaid's Tale: Special Edition
- By: Margaret Atwood, Valerie Martin - essay
- Narrated by: Claire Danes, full cast, Margaret Atwood, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After a violent coup in the United States overthrows the Constitution and ushers in a new government regime, the Republic of Gilead imposes subservient roles on all women. Offred, now a Handmaid tasked with the singular role of procreation in the childless household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife, can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost everything, even her own name.
-
-
Wait! It Mightn't Be What You Think--
- By Gillian on 04-05-17
By: Margaret Atwood, and others
-
Go Set a Watchman
- A Novel
- By: Harper Lee
- Narrated by: Reese Witherspoon
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An historic literary event: the publication of a newly discovered novel, the earliest known work from Harper Lee, the beloved, best-selling author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic To Kill a Mockingbird. Originally written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman was the novel Harper Lee first submitted to her publishers before To Kill a Mockingbird. Assumed to have been lost, the manuscript was discovered in late 2014.
-
-
To Kill A Mockingbird vs Go Set A Watchman
- By Sara on 07-15-15
By: Harper Lee
-
Wicked
- The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
- By: Gregory Maguire
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 19 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Heralded as an instant classic of fantasy literature, Maguire has written a wonderfully imaginative retelling of The Wizard of Oz told from the Wicked Witch's point of view. More than just a fairy tale for adults, Wicked is a meditation on the nature of good and evil.
-
-
It's not easy being green
- By PangaeaReads on 07-30-08
By: Gregory Maguire
-
Fortune Smiles
- Stories
- By: Adam Johnson
- Narrated by: W. Morgan Sheppard, Johnathan McClain, Cassandra Campbell, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his acclaimed novel about North Korea, The Orphan Master’s Son, Adam Johnson is one of America’s most provocative and powerful authors. Critics have compared him to Kurt Vonnegut, David Mitchell, and George Saunders, but Johnson’s new book will only further his reputation as one of our most original writers. Subtly surreal, darkly comic, both hilarious and heartbreaking, Fortune Smiles is a major collection of stories that gives voice to the perspectives we don’t often hear, while offering something rare in fiction: a new way of looking at the world.
-
-
Half Full or Half Empty
- By Mel on 10-29-15
By: Adam Johnson
-
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
- By: Claire North
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Harry August is on his deathbed. Again. No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes. Until now. As Harry nears the end of his 11th life, a little girl appears at his bedside. "I nearly missed you, Doctor August", she says. "I need to send a message". This is the story of what Harry does next, and what he did before, and how he tries to save a past he cannot change and a future he cannot allow.
-
-
Not what I'd feared
- By Isobel on 04-29-16
By: Claire North
-
People of the Book
- A Novel
- By: Geraldine Brooks
- Narrated by: Edwina Wren
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This ambitious, electrifying work traces the harrowing journey of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, a beautifully illuminated Hebrew manuscript created in 15th-century Spain. When it falls to Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, to conserve this priceless work, the series of tiny artifacts she discovers in its ancient binding—an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair—only begin to unlock its deep mysteries.
-
-
Amazing, fabulous, wonderful!!!
- By Yvette on 03-13-09
By: Geraldine Brooks
-
Middlesex
- By: Jeffrey Eugenides
- Narrated by: Kristoffer Tabori
- Length: 21 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry-blonde classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them - along with Callie's failure to develop physically - leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all.
-
-
Anything but middle.
- By Michael on 05-04-03
-
Before He Finds Her
- By: Michael Kardos
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everyone in the quiet Jersey Shore town of Silver Bay knows the story: on a Sunday evening in September 1991, Ramsey Miller threw a blowout block party, then murdered his beautiful wife and three-year-old daughter. But everyone is wrong. The daughter got away. Now she is nearly eighteen and tired of living in secrecy. Under the name Melanie Denison, she has spent the last fifteen years in small-town West Virginia as part of the Witness Protection Program. She has never been allowed to travel, go to a school dance, or even have internet at home. Precautions must be taken at every turn, because Ramsey Miller was never caught and might still be looking for his daughter.
-
-
Riveting Mystery Glues-2-U for Hours
- By W Perry Hall on 02-09-15
By: Michael Kardos
-
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
- By: Junot Diaz
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Staci Snell
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister—dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA.
-
-
Wondrous Book!!!
- By Robert on 06-22-12
By: Junot Diaz
Related to this topic
-
Where Serpents Lie
- By: T. Jefferson Parker
- Narrated by: Phil Gigante
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Terry Naughton, head of Orange County's Crimes Against Youth unit, is the champion of children. Someone calling themselves the Horridus has been abducting children from their beds, dressing them like little angels, and releasing them the next day, the only clue he leaves is a piece of snakeskin tucked into the folds of their gowns. So far he hasn't physically harmed any of them, but as Naughton well knows, it's only a matter of time.
-
-
Where Serpents Lie=Mystery,Suspence,Betrayel&More!
- By shelley on 11-10-14
-
The Dawn Patrol
- By: Don Winslow
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Every morning Boone Daniels is out with the Dawn Patrol: four men and one woman as single-minded about surfing as he is, or nearly. They have real jobs; Boone works as a P.I. just enough to keep himself in fish tacos and in the water. But Boone is also obsessed with the unsolved case of a young girl named Rain who was abducted while he was with the San Diego police.
-
-
Don Winslow always surprises me
- By Hannah Coale on 09-08-15
By: Don Winslow
-
The Darling
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Mary Beth Hurt
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Darling is Hannah Musgrave's story, told emotionally and convincingly years later by Hannah herself. A political radical and member of the Weather Underground, Hannah has fled America to West Africa, where she and her Liberian husband become friends and colleagues of Charles Taylor, the notorious warlord and now ex-president of Liberia. When Taylor leaves for the United States in an effort to escape embezzlement charges, he's immediately placed in prison.
-
-
Complex and compelling
- By Ellen H. Anderson on 02-05-05
By: Russell Banks
-
Baltimore Blues
- Tess Monaghan, Book 1
- By: Laura Lippman
- Narrated by: Deborah Hazlett
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Unemployed at 29, Tess Monaghan is willing to take any freelance job to pay the rent—including a bit of unorthodox snooping for her rowing buddy, Darryl "Rock" Paxton. In a city where someone is murdered almost every day, attorney Michael Abramowitz's death should be just another statistic. But the slain lawyer's notoriety—and his noontime trysts with Rock's fiancée—make the case front page news...and point to Rock as the likely murderer. But trying to prove her friend's innocence could prove costly to Tess.
-
-
I'm on #8 - This series is almost unique
- By connie on 02-19-12
By: Laura Lippman
-
The Company You Keep
- By: Neil Gordon
- Narrated by: Donald Corren, Hillary Huber, Kirby Heyborne, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set against the rise and fall of the radical antiwar group the Weather Underground, The Company You Keep is a sweeping American saga about sacrifice, the ecstatic righteousness of youth, and the tension between political ideals and family loyalties. When Jason Sinai, one of the last Vietnam-era fugitives still wanted on murder charges for a robbery gone wrong in 1974, encounters a young newspaper reporter in search of a story, he must abandon years of safe underground life for the dangerous life of the road.
-
-
Audiobook of the Year
- By connie on 05-13-12
By: Neil Gordon
-
The Deep Blue Good-By
- A Travis McGee Novel, Book 1
- By: John D. MacDonald
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
He's a self-described beach bum who won his houseboat in a card game. He's also a knight errant who's wary of credit cards, retirement benefits, political parties, mortgages, and television. He only works when his cash runs out, and his rule is simple: he'll help you find whatever was taken from you, as long as he can keep half.
-
-
Before the A-Team, there was Travis McGee
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 11-12-16
-
Where Serpents Lie
- By: T. Jefferson Parker
- Narrated by: Phil Gigante
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Terry Naughton, head of Orange County's Crimes Against Youth unit, is the champion of children. Someone calling themselves the Horridus has been abducting children from their beds, dressing them like little angels, and releasing them the next day, the only clue he leaves is a piece of snakeskin tucked into the folds of their gowns. So far he hasn't physically harmed any of them, but as Naughton well knows, it's only a matter of time.
-
-
Where Serpents Lie=Mystery,Suspence,Betrayel&More!
- By shelley on 11-10-14
-
The Dawn Patrol
- By: Don Winslow
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Every morning Boone Daniels is out with the Dawn Patrol: four men and one woman as single-minded about surfing as he is, or nearly. They have real jobs; Boone works as a P.I. just enough to keep himself in fish tacos and in the water. But Boone is also obsessed with the unsolved case of a young girl named Rain who was abducted while he was with the San Diego police.
-
-
Don Winslow always surprises me
- By Hannah Coale on 09-08-15
By: Don Winslow
-
The Darling
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Mary Beth Hurt
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Darling is Hannah Musgrave's story, told emotionally and convincingly years later by Hannah herself. A political radical and member of the Weather Underground, Hannah has fled America to West Africa, where she and her Liberian husband become friends and colleagues of Charles Taylor, the notorious warlord and now ex-president of Liberia. When Taylor leaves for the United States in an effort to escape embezzlement charges, he's immediately placed in prison.
-
-
Complex and compelling
- By Ellen H. Anderson on 02-05-05
By: Russell Banks
-
Baltimore Blues
- Tess Monaghan, Book 1
- By: Laura Lippman
- Narrated by: Deborah Hazlett
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Unemployed at 29, Tess Monaghan is willing to take any freelance job to pay the rent—including a bit of unorthodox snooping for her rowing buddy, Darryl "Rock" Paxton. In a city where someone is murdered almost every day, attorney Michael Abramowitz's death should be just another statistic. But the slain lawyer's notoriety—and his noontime trysts with Rock's fiancée—make the case front page news...and point to Rock as the likely murderer. But trying to prove her friend's innocence could prove costly to Tess.
-
-
I'm on #8 - This series is almost unique
- By connie on 02-19-12
By: Laura Lippman
-
The Company You Keep
- By: Neil Gordon
- Narrated by: Donald Corren, Hillary Huber, Kirby Heyborne, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set against the rise and fall of the radical antiwar group the Weather Underground, The Company You Keep is a sweeping American saga about sacrifice, the ecstatic righteousness of youth, and the tension between political ideals and family loyalties. When Jason Sinai, one of the last Vietnam-era fugitives still wanted on murder charges for a robbery gone wrong in 1974, encounters a young newspaper reporter in search of a story, he must abandon years of safe underground life for the dangerous life of the road.
-
-
Audiobook of the Year
- By connie on 05-13-12
By: Neil Gordon
-
The Deep Blue Good-By
- A Travis McGee Novel, Book 1
- By: John D. MacDonald
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
He's a self-described beach bum who won his houseboat in a card game. He's also a knight errant who's wary of credit cards, retirement benefits, political parties, mortgages, and television. He only works when his cash runs out, and his rule is simple: he'll help you find whatever was taken from you, as long as he can keep half.
-
-
Before the A-Team, there was Travis McGee
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 11-12-16
-
How to Find Your Way in the Dark
- The Sheldon Horowitz Series, Book 1
- By: Derek B. Miller
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twelve-year old Sheldon Horowitz is still recovering from the tragic loss of his mother only a year ago when a suspicious traffic accident steals the life of his father near their home in rural Massachusetts. It is 1938, and Sheldon, who was in the truck, emerges from the crash an orphan hell-bent on revenge. He takes that fire with him to Hartford, where he embarks on a new life under the roof of his buttoned-up Uncle Nate.
-
-
Absolutely wonderful story.
- By George Thomas on 12-11-21
By: Derek B. Miller
-
Killed at the Whim of a Hat
- By: Colin Cotterill
- Narrated by: Jeany Park
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jimm Juree was a crime reporter for the Chiang Mai Daily Mail with a somewhat eccentric family. When she is forced to follow her family to a rural village on the coast of Southern Thailand, she’s convinced her career—maybe her life—is over. So when a van containing the skeletal remains of two hippies is inexplicably unearthed in a local farmer’s field, Jimm is thrilled. Shortly thereafter an abbot at a local Buddhist temple is viciously murdered.
-
-
delighted...
- By Bobbie on 08-23-11
By: Colin Cotterill
-
Love, Africa
- A Memoir of Romance, War, and Survival
- By: Jeffrey Gettleman
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A seasoned war correspondent, Jeffrey Gettleman has covered every major conflict over the past 20 years, from Afghanistan to Iraq to the Congo. For the past decade, he has served as the East Africa bureau chief for the New York Times, fulfilling his teenage dream of living in Africa. Love, Africa is the story of how he got there - and of his difficult, winding path toward becoming a good reporter and a better man.
-
-
Loved this book!!!
- By Benjamin on 05-26-17
-
Mislaid
- A Novel
- By: Nell Zink
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Stillwater College in Virginia, 1966. Freshman Peggy, an ingénue with literary pretensions, falls under the spell of Lee, a blue-blooded poet and professor, and they begin an ill-advised affair that results in an unplanned pregnancy and marriage. The couple are mismatched from the start - she's a lesbian, he's gay - but it takes a decade of emotional erosion before Peggy runs off with their three-year-old daughter, leaving their nine-year-old son behind.
-
-
Misbegotten, mishandled, misfired novel
- By Julie W. Capell on 02-07-16
By: Nell Zink
-
Continental Drift
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Zach Villa
- Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Now available for the first time in audiobook format, a powerful literary classic from one of contemporary fiction's most acclaimed and important writers. Russell Banks' Continental Drift is a masterful novel of hope lost and gained and a gripping, indelible story of fragile lives uprooted and transformed by injustice, disappointment, and the seductions and realities of the American dream.
-
-
Give up and die
- By AI on 12-09-21
By: Russell Banks
-
Rolling Nowhere
- Riding the Rails with America's Hoboes
- By: Ted Conover
- Narrated by: Ted Conover
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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.
-
-
Had potential, but fell short.
- By Evan on 01-06-12
By: Ted Conover
-
Pacific Beat
- By: T. Jefferson Parker
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 14 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ex-cop Jim Weir thought he'd seen it all during his years on the force. That is until he saw the body of his sister Annie, brutally used by a monster in human form, then carelessly discarded. He'd never seen such grief ravage the face of his friend and brother-in-law Ray Cruz, a good cop on the Newport Beach Police Department. When Weir learns that the only witness swore the killer made his escape in a Newport Beach squad car, his disbelief turns to confusion and outrage.
-
-
Bad, bad, bad...
- By Robert E. Orlando on 11-19-14
-
Short Squeeze
- By: Chris Knopf
- Narrated by: Deanna Hurst
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet smart-aleck Southampton attorney Jackie Swaitkowski. Her business relies on constant movement of Hamptons' real estate market. After making an odd request to evict his sister-in-law from his home, one of her clients turns up dead. Jackie would have expected that to be the end of it, but an envelope found on the corpse contains an item so unusual that she finds herself working on something bigger, and more dangerous, than real estate.
-
-
Great Listen - Good Series
- By Patricia on 02-15-10
By: Chris Knopf
-
The Neon Rain
- A Dave Robicheaux Novel
- By: James Lee Burke
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York Times best-selling author James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux novels began with this first hard-hitting entry in the series. In The Neon Rain, Detective Robicheaux fishes a prostitute's corpse from a New Orleans bayou and finds that no one, not even the law, cares about a dead hooker.
-
-
Where it all began.
- By 9S on 12-06-09
By: James Lee Burke
-
Strong Motion
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: Scott Aiello
- Length: 20 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Louis Holland arrives in Boston in a spring of ecological upheaval (a rash of earthquakes on the North Shore) and odd luck: the first one kills his grandmother. Louis tries to maintain his independence, but falls in love with a Harvard seismologist whose discoveries about the earthquakes' cause complicate everything.
-
-
Compelling Story, Ridiculous Narrator
- By DianeReads on 02-28-16
By: Jonathan Franzen
-
American Rust
- By: Philipp Meyer
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in a beautiful but economically devastated Pennsylvania steel town, American Rust is a novel of the lost American dream and the desperation-as well as the acts of friendship, loyalty, and love-that arise from its loss. From local bars to train yards to prison, it is the story of two young men, bound to the town by family, responsibility, inertia, and the beauty around them, who dream of a future beyond the factories and abandoned homes.
-
-
A Web of Despair and Desperation
- By Darwin8u on 07-16-12
By: Philipp Meyer
-
The Man from Primrose Lane
- By: James Renner
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A mind-bending, genre-twisting debut novel. In West Akron, there lived a reclusive elderly man who always wore mittens, even in July. He had no friends and no family; all over town, he was known only as The the Man from Primrose Lane. And on a summer day in 2008, someone murdered him.
-
-
Good read, despite, not because of sci fi twist
- By Lulu W. on 07-18-12
By: James Renner
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Sweet Hereafter
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Dawn Harvey, Chris Andrew Ciulla, Dominic Hoffman, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Sweet Hereafter, Russell Banks tells a story that begins with a school bus accident. Using four different narrators, Banks creates a small-town morality play that addresses one of life's most agonizing questions: When the worst thing happens, who do you blame?
-
-
Read the book, see the movie
- By RueRue on 11-24-20
By: Russell Banks
-
Cloudsplitter
- A Novel
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 29 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Deeply researched, brilliantly plotted, and peopled with a cast of unforgettable characters both historical and wholly invented, Cloudsplitter is dazzling in its re-creation of the political and social landscape of our history during the years before the Civil War, when slavery was tearing the country apart. But within this broader scope, Russell Banks has given us a riveting, suspenseful, heartbreaking narrative filled with intimate scenes of domestic life, of violence and action in battle, of romance and familial life and death that make the listener feel in astonishing ways what it is like to be alive in that time.
-
-
Captivating read
- By James P. Barraza on 08-02-17
By: Russell Banks
-
Rule of the Bone
- A Novel
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When we first meet him, Chappie is a punked-out teenager living with his mother and abusive stepfather in an upstate New York trailer park. During this time, he slips into drugs and petty crime. Rejected by his parents, out of school and in trouble with the police, he claims for himself a new identity as a permanent outsider; he gets a crossed-bones tattoo on his arm, and takes the name "Bone."
-
-
Out of the mouths of teenagers
- By Lori K. on 01-07-17
By: Russell Banks
-
Trailerpark
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Kevin Kenerly
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Get to know the colorful cast of characters at the Granite State Trailerpark, where Flora in number 11 keeps more than a hundred guinea pigs and screams at people to stay away from her babies, Claudel in number 5 thinks he is lucky until his wife burns down their trailer and runs off with Howie Leeke, and Noni in number 7 has telephone conversations with Jesus and tells the police about them. Russell Banks offers gripping, realistic portrayals of individual Americans and paints a portrait of New England life that is at once dark, witty, and revealing.
By: Russell Banks
-
American Spirits
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A husband sells property to a mysterious, temperamental stranger, and is hounded on social media when he publicly questions the man’s character. A couple grows concerned when an enigmatic family moves next door, and the children start sneaking over to beg for help. Two dangerous criminals kidnap an elderly couple and begin blackmailing their grandson, demanding that he pay back what he owes.
-
-
Brilliant writing by a masterful storyteller
- By ELIZABETTA on 04-29-24
By: Russell Banks
-
Affliction
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 15 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wade Whitehouse is an improbable protagonist for a tragedy. A well-digger and policeman in a bleak New Hampshire town, he is a former high-school star gone to beer fat, a loner with a mean streak. It is a mark of Russell Banks' artistry and understanding that Wade comes to loom in one's mind as a blue-collar American Everyman afflicted by the dark secret of the macho tradition. Told by his articulate, equally scarred younger brother, Wade's story becomes as spellbinding and inexorable as a fuse burning its way to the dynamite.
-
-
Intense family drama
- By Lorna Bolton Mills on 01-23-24
By: Russell Banks
-
The Sweet Hereafter
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Dawn Harvey, Chris Andrew Ciulla, Dominic Hoffman, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Sweet Hereafter, Russell Banks tells a story that begins with a school bus accident. Using four different narrators, Banks creates a small-town morality play that addresses one of life's most agonizing questions: When the worst thing happens, who do you blame?
-
-
Read the book, see the movie
- By RueRue on 11-24-20
By: Russell Banks
-
Cloudsplitter
- A Novel
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 29 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Deeply researched, brilliantly plotted, and peopled with a cast of unforgettable characters both historical and wholly invented, Cloudsplitter is dazzling in its re-creation of the political and social landscape of our history during the years before the Civil War, when slavery was tearing the country apart. But within this broader scope, Russell Banks has given us a riveting, suspenseful, heartbreaking narrative filled with intimate scenes of domestic life, of violence and action in battle, of romance and familial life and death that make the listener feel in astonishing ways what it is like to be alive in that time.
-
-
Captivating read
- By James P. Barraza on 08-02-17
By: Russell Banks
-
Rule of the Bone
- A Novel
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When we first meet him, Chappie is a punked-out teenager living with his mother and abusive stepfather in an upstate New York trailer park. During this time, he slips into drugs and petty crime. Rejected by his parents, out of school and in trouble with the police, he claims for himself a new identity as a permanent outsider; he gets a crossed-bones tattoo on his arm, and takes the name "Bone."
-
-
Out of the mouths of teenagers
- By Lori K. on 01-07-17
By: Russell Banks
-
Trailerpark
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Kevin Kenerly
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Get to know the colorful cast of characters at the Granite State Trailerpark, where Flora in number 11 keeps more than a hundred guinea pigs and screams at people to stay away from her babies, Claudel in number 5 thinks he is lucky until his wife burns down their trailer and runs off with Howie Leeke, and Noni in number 7 has telephone conversations with Jesus and tells the police about them. Russell Banks offers gripping, realistic portrayals of individual Americans and paints a portrait of New England life that is at once dark, witty, and revealing.
By: Russell Banks
-
American Spirits
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A husband sells property to a mysterious, temperamental stranger, and is hounded on social media when he publicly questions the man’s character. A couple grows concerned when an enigmatic family moves next door, and the children start sneaking over to beg for help. Two dangerous criminals kidnap an elderly couple and begin blackmailing their grandson, demanding that he pay back what he owes.
-
-
Brilliant writing by a masterful storyteller
- By ELIZABETTA on 04-29-24
By: Russell Banks
-
Affliction
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 15 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wade Whitehouse is an improbable protagonist for a tragedy. A well-digger and policeman in a bleak New Hampshire town, he is a former high-school star gone to beer fat, a loner with a mean streak. It is a mark of Russell Banks' artistry and understanding that Wade comes to loom in one's mind as a blue-collar American Everyman afflicted by the dark secret of the macho tradition. Told by his articulate, equally scarred younger brother, Wade's story becomes as spellbinding and inexorable as a fuse burning its way to the dynamite.
-
-
Intense family drama
- By Lorna Bolton Mills on 01-23-24
By: Russell Banks
What listeners say about Lost Memory of Skin
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Shari
- 01-08-12
I loved this book!!!
On the surface this seems like a simple story of a young sex offender. Yes, it's interesting to hear how this kind of a conviction changes the lives of those convicted, forever. And we can learn to sympathize with those few who are punished for uncontrollable urges that border on mental illness, or who are simply looking for love in all the really wrong places. But this book is about so much more. I am grateful to Russell Banks for taking the most vilified people on the planet and writing a story of redemption through their eyes. By doing this he successfully illustrates what is, I think, almost a biblical parable. In fact there are many references to the Garden of Eden, the mistaken loss of innocence, the prodigal son, and finally an upside down, ironic sort of beautiful redemption. I loved this book, loved the narration, the writing. Well worth it.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 05-27-15
Amazing Scott Shepherd
Anything narrated by Shepherd is worth listening to. He is a balm to the ear.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- KPS
- 11-05-12
the story drew me in, like gawking at an accident
What did you like best about this story?
The story drew me in, in a sick sort of way, like gawking at an accident.
Which character – as performed by Scott Shepherd – was your favorite?
"The kid" is a sad sack, who never really got a fair chance in life, but you can't help rooting for him and hoping he'll get a break. The narration over all was excellent.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
I couldn't stop listening, carried along by curiosity and the beautiful descriptions of characters and settings, but my heart ached for them all.
Any additional comments?
The tale starts out almost believable, but slowly devolves into a series of vignettes of weird caricatures, and (unfortunately) "the professor" and his story become convoluted beyond recognition. I'm not sure if I exactly recommend this book, but it is certainly a memorable experience and well-crafted in many, but not all, respects.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jean
- 11-13-16
Very moving portrayal.
You know when you get asked that question "Which well-known person would you like to have a dinner conversation with?" Russell Banks is my answer to that question. I'm a psychotherapist and I work with the victims of this population and this is a story that takes it full circle. This is a rare and sensitive portrayal of a population of people with whom I would never otherwise intimately cross paths. In addition, the reading/acting of this particular story is phenomenally well done. For the first time, i'd say this particular book is better listen to than read in hardcopy. (It has to do with the quick dialogue back-and-forth, which the actor just nails.) once again russell Banks leaves me shaking my head.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Michael Bailey
- 04-15-18
Haunting and fascinating
I don’t often linger after finishing a book but I can’t stop thinking about this one
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Tiffany
- 11-29-11
Okay but nothing extraordinary
Just finished listening to this book, I have no major criticisms about the audiobook, just wasn't too impressed with the story. I found it rather dull and depressing.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Lynn
- 10-19-11
Relevant Insightful Entertaining
Russell Banks has outdone himself and given a much needed glimpse into a subculture in Lost Memory of Skin. A rambling story, Lost Memory considers guilt, criminality, justice, and character in a way that draws the reader in immediately. Along the way the reader learns about hardship, despair and resilience in a way not often seen. Other reviewers have aptly covered the outlines of the story. Just let me say that this is one book that will follow you for weeks after you have finished it. If you have never read Russell Banks, this one will make you a believer. The reading of Scott Shepherd is excellent.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kara
- 10-20-11
Too wordy....rambled on and on....
The description of this book sparked my interest. I wanted to like it, really I did!! I found "The Kid" and "The Professor" pathetic, sad and boring. Parts of the story are intriguing, then, unfortunately, the author goes off on a tangent. I agree with the previous reviewers, the way in which our justice system handles sex offenders is awful, dehumanizing, and unfair. I just didn't like this story. Scott Shepherd did an amazing job, as usual!!!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Buzz
- 08-06-12
"Canonical Novel of its Time"
“Lost Memory of Skin” is a surprisingly good book; surprising because it deals with two repulsive characters: a predatory sex offender and a morbidly obese professor with lots to hide. But, it is the capacity of literature in the hands of good writers like Russell Banks, to illuminate the interiors of such outwardly offensive characters, so that understanding eventually generates sympathy. In “Lost Memory of Skin,” Banks does not indict (that is left to the reader) nor does he preach, although he comes close at times. Rather, this is a disturbing look at some important aspects of contemporary American life, which does not provide answers, but inexorably indicates that there must be a better way. The achievement of “Lost Memory of Skin” is that it blends an exciting and suspenseful plot with existential angst. I agree with Janet Maslin writing in the NYT: “’Lost Memory of Skin’ is a major new work by Russell Banks destined to be a canonical novel of its time.”
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Lori K.
- 01-01-17
So good!
If it's true that reading increases one's empathy, then it's because of authors who write books like this. I read 'The Darling' years ago and I still think about it. It's been a few months now since I read 'Lost Memory of Skin,' and I'm still thinking about this one as well. The characters Russell Banks creates win me over with their authenticity, and what Banks shares about them helps me to understand who they are and why they became that way. He not only writes a story that engages, he writes one that challenges what we think we know. I can't think of a better way to spend my free time. Also, the narrator is fantastic!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful