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Magic Terror
- 7 Tales
- Narrated by: Ron McLarty, Beth MacDonald
- Length: 14 hrs and 26 mins
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Publisher's summary
Welcome to another kind of terror as Peter Straub leads us into the outer reaches of the psyche. Here the master of the macabre is at his absolute best in seven exquisite tales of living, dying, and the terror that lies in between. . . .
Isn’t It Romantic?
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Critic reviews
"When Peter Straub turns on all his jets, no one in the scream factory can equal him."-Stephen King
"No one can speak the unspeakable as gruesomely as Peter Straub. The most magical thing about Magic Terror is its sheer bloodcurdling range: a variety of genre-defying tales, no two of the seven remotely resembling each other except in the brilliance of the invention and the writing, and in Straub's power to spook you out of your wits."-Donald Harington, author of When Angels Rest
"I have been a fan of the novelist Peter Straub ever since Ghost Story. That he can be just as compelling and scary in brief bites is a welcome revelation. Seven wonderful tales."-Donald Westlake, author of The Hook and The Ax
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Poke Rafferty was writing offbeat travel guides for the young and terminally bored when Bangkok stole his heart. Now the American expat is assembling a new family with Rose, the former go-go dancer he wants to marry, and Miaow, the tiny, streetwise urchin he wants to adopt. But trouble in the guise of good intentions comes calling just when everything is beginning to work out.
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Ever been to Bangkok?
- By Richard Delman on 12-11-11
By: Timothy Hallinan
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Our Story Begins
- New and Selected Stories
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Wolff here returns with fresh revelations - about biding one's time, or experiencing first love, or burying one's mother - that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary. A retired Marine enrolls in college while her son trains for Iraq. A lawyer takes a difficult deposition. An American in Rome indulges the Gypsy who's picked his pocket.
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Great
- By chris on 04-11-08
By: Tobias Wolff
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Strong Motion
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: Scott Aiello
- Length: 20 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Compelling Story, Ridiculous Narrator
- By DianeReads on 02-28-16
By: Jonathan Franzen
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Hark! The Herald Angels Scream
- By: Christopher Golden - editor, Joe R. Lansdale, Scott Smith, and others
- Narrated by: Charles Constant, Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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That there is darkness at the heart of the Yuletide season should not surprise. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is filled with scenes that are unsettling. The hideous children - Want and Ignorance - beneath the robe of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. In the finest versions of this story, the best parts are the terrifying parts. Best-selling author and editor Christopher Golden shares his love for Christmas horror stories with this anthology of all-new short fiction from some of the most talented and original writers of horror today.
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Some good, some clunkers. Some fun, none scary.
- By Max Trivial on 12-24-18
By: Christopher Golden - editor, and others
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Miss Lonelyhearts
- By: Nathanael West
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser, Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 2 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Miss Lonelyhearts is an unnamed male newspaper columnist writing an advice column, which is viewed by the newspaper as a joke. As "Miss Lonelyhearts" reads letters from desperate New Yorkers, he feels terribly burdened and falls into a cycle of deep depression, accompanied by heavy drinking and occasional barfights. The novel is essentially a black comedy and is characterized by an extremely dark but clever sense of humor and irony.
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Charged with Meaning, and Far Leftist Leaning
- By W Perry Hall on 01-27-16
By: Nathanael West
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Lost Boy, Lost Girl
- By: Peter Straub
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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A woman commits suicide for no apparent reason. A week later, her son- fifteen-year-old Mark Underhill - vanishes. His uncle, novelist Timothy Underhill, searches his hometown of Millhaven for clues that might help unravel this horrible dual mystery. He soon learns that a pedophilic murderer is on the loose in the vicinity, and that shortly before his mother's suicide, Mark had become obsessed with an abandoned house where he imagined the killer might have taken refuge.
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ALAN ALDA WITHOUT THE SMIRK
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 04-11-15
By: Peter Straub
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Laguna Heat
- By: T. Jefferson Parker
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Laguna: a place where a crazed killer has turned paradise into a Disneyland of depraved violence - with a fiery vengeance - and where homicide cop Tom Shephard unravels a grisly mystery. It reaches back across 40 years of sordid sex, blackmail, and suicide into the dark corners of his own past.
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Fabulous
- By Stacy on 02-24-09
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Blackmail, My Love
- A Murder Mystery
- By: Katie Gilmartin
- Narrated by: Eva Kaminsky
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Josie O'Conner travels to San Francisco in 1951 to locate her gay brother, a private dick investigating a blackmail ring targeting lesbians and gay men. Jimmy's friends claim that just before he disappeared he became a rat, informing the cops on the bar community. Josie adopts Jimmy's trousers and wingtips, battling to clear his name, halt the blackmailers, and exact justice for the many queer corpses.
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Fine Writing, Beautifully Read
- By CJ on 06-14-15
By: Katie Gilmartin
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Bullet in the Brain
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Anders is an angry, cynical man. A book critic known for his scathing reviews, he finds any excuse to dismiss, belittle, or insult. This afternoon is no more agitating than the next. Angers finds himself in a long line at the bank, waiting to reach a teller. Even after two men - wearing masks and carrying guns - take control of the building, Anders is unfazed. It's this behavior that lands him with a pistol against his stomach and a man screamingin his face. And when the bank robber, indignant over Anders' behavior, shoots the book critic in the head, his mind floats through the memories of his life, settling on one particular event....
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The Perfect Example
- By Sarah on 08-01-17
By: Tobias Wolff
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London Fields
- By: Martin Amis
- Narrated by: Steven Pacey
- Length: 21 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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The murderee is Nicola Six, a "black hole" of sex and self-loathing who is intent on orchestrating her own extinction. The murderer may be Keith Talent, a violent lowlife whose only passions are pornography and darts; or the rich, honorable, and dimly romantic Guy Clinch. As Nicola leads her suitors towards the precipice, London--and, indeed, the whole world--seems to shamble after them in a corrosively funny novel of complexity and morality.
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Big chewy novel, excellent narration
- By Sand on 08-21-14
By: Martin Amis
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What listeners say about Magic Terror
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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- Steve
- 04-11-13
I really tried hard to make it through this
I made it through four hours and couldn't take anymore. It was sooo boring. I just don't understand how anyone could think it to be interesting. I know Peter Straub is reputable, so I'm completely perplexed. If you're going to read books by Peter Straub, I recommend avoiding this one.
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Overall
- Skeezix
- 09-18-07
Magic? Terror?
On the whole I enjoyed this book and find myself coming back to a few of the stories again and again (while others I wish I could permanently delete). I find myself scratching my head over the title, while some of the tales definitely had visions of 'terror', there was little 'magic' and a great majority of stories were completely lacking both! My greatest problem was with Audible's lack of effort in separating the download by story. They resorted to throwing in a series of random breaks that succeeded in turning a 'meandering compilation' into a 'labyrinthine compilation'.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Kelly Sue Plamp
- 02-23-11
Great Stories, Bad Formatting
The stories in this book are terrific -- creepy and disturbing. However, the way they are put together without any break or announcement when one story ends another begins makes it very difficult to listen to. I made several attempts and finally looked up the stories on the internet to figure out how many stories there were and what they were about, and finally was able to separate them.
100 points for the author, -10 for Audible.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Toivo J Luick
- 05-31-10
I call this pretty good
There are some pretty excellent stories here. Maybe they aren't everybody's cup of tea, but they are good. Porkpie Hat I call brilliant.
Don't buy this expecting 12 page O Henry ironic twisters. These aren't those kind of stories. These stories are longer and darker. They don't necessarily end neatly resolved. More than once I got to the end thinking, "what just happened here?" I savored each story for quite a while after finishing.
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3 people found this helpful
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- jacques
- 01-27-13
disturbing
Any additional comments?
Peter Straub has an interest in pedophelia which I do not share. His descriptions of human cruelty and outright psychopathy are gruesome, detailed and offputting. I'm not the sort who goes out of his way to find things to be offended by, but this guy pushes the limits of good taste. His prose is unique, and annoying after a few hours, you'll have to listen to a sample to understand what i mean. It's difficult to describe, street thugs who talk like university professors. Long speeches using long words do describe a trip to the medicine cabinet for aspirin. It's just wierd, I listened to the whole book, hoping it would get better because I liked what he did with Stephen King. but I found myself feeling kind of queasy sometimes, vivid descriptions of rape and torture and child abuse. Not really my bag. I could compare this to what you might get from a movie like Saw. If you've seen that, and you liked it, you'll probably like this.
In a nutshell, it was sick.
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Overall
- Clint
- 09-18-06
Terrible
I am about three hours into this book and am giving up on it. The writing is terrible. The stories jump around, making no sense and leaving the listener confused. The writing is almost cryptic...it's as if the author is trying to convey a silent message to the listener, but even he doesn't know what it is. Don't waste a credit on this one.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Nathan
- 09-13-05
Terrible - I stopped listening in the middle
This book is terrible. All of the stories are very slow. Some of them are sick and make no sense. I stopped listening in the middle.
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6 people found this helpful
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Overall
- FDTracy
- 04-09-07
Had to re-listen twice
I am not sure if I was just missing something or if I really did not get it. I did not read the other reviews before I purchased this book and I really wish I had. I had to play it twice to make sure, but the stories did not make since to me and it flowed from one to the next without any closure. I was still on Ms. Ash and next thing I knew I was in Paris with someone else waiting for a connection. Like the other reader stated, don't waste a credit.
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Ron
- 09-09-06
HUH?
I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I have some intelligence. That being said I found myself wondering what the stories were about. I just didn't get it. Each one seemed to go on forever with no real begining or end. I enjoyed the last story a bit but that was it.
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Terra
- 11-26-06
Magic Terror
Excellent! Peter Straub really has a knack for bringing his characters to life.
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2 people found this helpful