My Absolute Darling
A Novel
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 $22.50
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Alex McKenna
-
By:
-
Gabriel Tallent
About this listen
A brilliant and immersive, all-consuming audiobook about one 14-year-old girl's heart-stopping fight for her own soul.
Turtle Alveston is a survivor. At 14, she roams the woods along the Northern California coast. The creeks, tide pools, and rocky islands are her haunts and her hiding grounds, and she is known to wander for miles. But while her physical world is expansive, her personal one is small and treacherous. Turtle has grown up isolated since the death of her mother, in the thrall of her tortured and charismatic father, Martin. Her social existence is confined to the middle school (where she fends off the interest of anyone, student or teacher, who might penetrate her shell) and to her life with her father.
Then Turtle meets Jacob, a high-school boy who tells jokes, lives in a big clean house, and looks at Turtle as if she is the sunrise. And for the first time, the larger world begins to come into focus: Her life with Martin is neither safe nor sustainable. Motivated by her first experience with real friendship and a teenage crush, Turtle starts to imagine escape, using the very survival skills her father devoted himself to teaching her. The listener tracks Turtle's escalating acts of physical and emotional courage and watches, heart in throat, as she struggles to become her own hero - and, in the process, becomes ours as well.
Shot through with striking language in a fierce natural setting, My Absolute Darling is an urgently told, profoundly moving book that marks the debut of an extraordinary new writer.
©2017 Gabriel Tallent (P)2017 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Covenant of Water
- By: Abraham Verghese
- Narrated by: Abraham Verghese
- Length: 31 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.
-
-
Story Telling At Its Best
- By Regina on 05-06-23
By: Abraham Verghese
-
My Dark Vanessa
- A Novel
- By: Kate Elizabeth Russell
- Narrated by: Grace Gummer
- Length: 16 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, 15-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful 42-year-old English teacher. 2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: Remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past.
-
-
I apologize
- By Judy George on 03-13-20
-
Bastard Out of Carolina
- By: Dorothy Allison
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Evans
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Greenville County, South Carolina, is a wild, lush place that is home to the Boatwright family - a tight-knit clan of rough-hewn, hard- drinking men who shoot up each other's trucks, and indomitable women who get married young and age too quickly. At the heart of this story is Ruth Anne Boatwright, known simply as Bone, a bastard child who observes the world around her with a mercilessly keen perspective.
-
-
Not for the Faint of Heart
- By Carolyn on 12-31-12
By: Dorothy Allison
-
Tampa
- By: Alissa Nutting
- Narrated by: Kathleen McInerney
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Celeste Price is an eighth-grade English teacher in suburban Tampa. But Celeste's devotion lies elsewhere. She has a singular sexual obsession: 14-year-old boys. In slaking her sexual thirst, Celeste Price is remorseless and deviously free of hesitation, a monstress driven by pure motivation. She deceives everyone, and cares nothing for anyone or anything but her own pleasure. With crackling, rampantly unadulterated prose, Tampa is a grand, uncompromising, seriocomic examination of want and a scorching literary debut.
-
-
This author is pretty gutsy
- By Linda on 02-19-14
By: Alissa Nutting
-
We Need to Talk About Kevin
- A Novel
- By: Lionel Shriver
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 16 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eva never really wanted to be a mother - and certainly not the mother of a boy who ends up murdering seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his 16th birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin’s horrific rampage, in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklin.
-
-
A smart, chilling story. Told in a very unique way
- By aaron on 01-09-12
By: Lionel Shriver
-
Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
-
-
Wow! It’s a Masterpiece
- By Billy on 10-25-22
-
The Covenant of Water
- By: Abraham Verghese
- Narrated by: Abraham Verghese
- Length: 31 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.
-
-
Story Telling At Its Best
- By Regina on 05-06-23
By: Abraham Verghese
-
My Dark Vanessa
- A Novel
- By: Kate Elizabeth Russell
- Narrated by: Grace Gummer
- Length: 16 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, 15-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful 42-year-old English teacher. 2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: Remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past.
-
-
I apologize
- By Judy George on 03-13-20
-
Bastard Out of Carolina
- By: Dorothy Allison
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Evans
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Greenville County, South Carolina, is a wild, lush place that is home to the Boatwright family - a tight-knit clan of rough-hewn, hard- drinking men who shoot up each other's trucks, and indomitable women who get married young and age too quickly. At the heart of this story is Ruth Anne Boatwright, known simply as Bone, a bastard child who observes the world around her with a mercilessly keen perspective.
-
-
Not for the Faint of Heart
- By Carolyn on 12-31-12
By: Dorothy Allison
-
Tampa
- By: Alissa Nutting
- Narrated by: Kathleen McInerney
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Celeste Price is an eighth-grade English teacher in suburban Tampa. But Celeste's devotion lies elsewhere. She has a singular sexual obsession: 14-year-old boys. In slaking her sexual thirst, Celeste Price is remorseless and deviously free of hesitation, a monstress driven by pure motivation. She deceives everyone, and cares nothing for anyone or anything but her own pleasure. With crackling, rampantly unadulterated prose, Tampa is a grand, uncompromising, seriocomic examination of want and a scorching literary debut.
-
-
This author is pretty gutsy
- By Linda on 02-19-14
By: Alissa Nutting
-
We Need to Talk About Kevin
- A Novel
- By: Lionel Shriver
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 16 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eva never really wanted to be a mother - and certainly not the mother of a boy who ends up murdering seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his 16th birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin’s horrific rampage, in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklin.
-
-
A smart, chilling story. Told in a very unique way
- By aaron on 01-09-12
By: Lionel Shriver
-
Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
-
-
Wow! It’s a Masterpiece
- By Billy on 10-25-22
-
Tender Is the Flesh
- By: Agustina Bazterrica
- Narrated by: Joseph Balderrama
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans - though no one calls them that anymore. His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the "Transition". Now, eating human meat - "special meat" - is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.
-
-
Uhhhhhhh....
- By Josh E. on 12-05-20
-
Living Dead Girl
- By: Elizabeth Scott
- Narrated by: Kate Reinders
- Length: 2 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Alice was 10, Ray took her away from her family, her friends - her life. She learned to give up all power, to endure pain. She waited for the nightmare to be over. Now Alice is 15 and Ray still has her, but he speaks more and more of her death. He does not know it is what she longs for. She does not know he has something more terrifying than death in mind for her. This is Alice's story. It is one you have never heard, and one you will never, ever forget.
-
-
Serious book with a different point of view
- By Barbara Reed on 11-02-12
By: Elizabeth Scott
-
The Bee Sting
- A Novel
- By: Paul Murray
- Narrated by: Heather O’Sullivan, Barry Fitzgerald, Beau Holland, and others
- Length: 26 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under—but Dickie is spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife, Imelda, is selling off her jewelry on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attention of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike, while their teenage daughter, Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge drink her way through her final exams. As for twelve-year-old PJ, he’s on the brink of running away.
-
-
Bone Clocks meets Jonathan Franzen
- By Cranson on 10-26-23
By: Paul Murray
-
Yellow
- By: Aron Beauregard
- Narrated by: John Wayne Comunale
- Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Oliver Fitch has a troubling issue: He lives in a state of constant terror. After purchasing a convenience store in a once civil society, the streets around him have rapidly devolved into utter lawlessness. They're now festering with sinister gutter scum that live only to harass and intimidate him. His pathetic profits are gouged under the threat of violence, and there isn't a damn thing he can do about it. Because in a city with no rules, where the sun never shines, the authorities are no help. In fact, they're an equal part of the problem.
-
-
So disturbing that it pulls you in
- By Anonymous User on 08-18-22
By: Aron Beauregard
-
The First Day of Spring
- A Novel
- By: Nancy Tucker
- Narrated by: Kristin Atherton
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Chrissie is eight and she has a secret: she has just killed a boy. The feeling made her belly fizz like soda pop. Her playmates are tearful and their mothers are terrified, keeping them locked indoors. But Chrissie rules the roost - she's the best at wall-walking, she knows how to get free candy, and now she has a feeling of power that she never gets at home, where food is scarce and attention scarcer.
-
-
Heart Wrenching
- By Jennifer on 05-30-21
By: Nancy Tucker
-
Educated
- A Memoir
- By: Tara Westover
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University.
-
-
The Other Side of Idaho's Mountains
- By Darwin8u on 03-28-18
By: Tara Westover
-
Brother
- By: Ania Ahlborn
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Deep in the heart of Appalachia stands a crooked farmhouse miles from any road. The Morrows keep to themselves, and it's served them well so far. When girls go missing off the side of the highway, the cops don't knock on their door. Which is a good thing, seeing what's buried in the Morrows' backyard. But 19-year-old Michael Morrow isn't like the rest of his family. He doesn't take pleasure in the screams that echo through the trees.
-
-
Worth the credit.
- By James & Mary F on 11-02-15
By: Ania Ahlborn
-
Where the Crawdads Sing
- By: Delia Owens
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand.
-
-
Don't listen to the negative reviews.
- By Kyle on 12-03-19
By: Delia Owens
-
Sing, Wild Bird, Sing
- A Novel
- By: Jacqueline O'Mahony
- Narrated by: Aoife McMahon
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s 1849 on the west coast of Ireland. Resilient Honora O’Donoghue is accustomed to fending for herself and to reading the language of the natural world. It was always said she’d been marked for something different, but it’s not until she suffers devastating losses in a country gripped by the Famine that Honora begins to understand how that difference will save her. With the hope of a better life in America calling, Honora keeps moving toward her freedom.
-
-
Beautifully written and narrated
- By Grace B. Monroe on 11-07-23
-
Off Season
- By: Jack Ketchum
- Narrated by: Richard Davidson
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
September. A beautiful New York editor retreats to a lonely cabin on a hill in the quiet Maine beach town of Dead River - off season - awaiting her sister and friends. Nearby, a savage human family with a taste for flesh lurks in the darkening woods, watching, waiting for the moon to rise and night to fall.
-
-
Wow!
- By Barry S. Sharpnack on 11-22-09
By: Jack Ketchum
-
Dark Horses
- A Novel
- By: Susan Mihalic
- Narrated by: Alex Allwine
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fifteen-year-old equestrian prodigy Roan Montgomery has only ever known two worlds: inside the riding arena and outside of it. Both, for as long as she can remember, have been ruled by her father, who demands strict obedience in all areas of her life. The warped power dynamic of coach and rider extends far beyond the stables, and Roan's relationship with her father has long been inappropriate. She has been able to compartmentalize that dark aspect of her life, ruthlessly focusing on her ambitions as a rider heading for the Olympics, just as her father had done.
-
-
Incredible but Very Dark.
- By Erin M. Bleier on 02-18-21
By: Susan Mihalic
-
Angela's Ashes
- By: Frank McCourt, Jeannette Walls - introduction
- Narrated by: Frank McCourt, Jeannette Walls - introduction
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why we think it’s a great listen: There’s no gentle way to put this – Frank McCourt’s performance of Angela’s Ashes is just better than the Pulitzer Prize-winning book. Frank McCourt shares his sometimes heartwarming, sometimes heartbreaking story of growing up poor, Irish, and Catholic in the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir Angela's Ashes.
-
-
A classic book *and* a classic audiobook
- By Karen on 01-30-03
By: Frank McCourt, and others
Critic reviews
"Alex McKenna's performance of Tallent's disturbing debut novel is likely to incite goose bumps and nightmares." (AudioFile)
"The word 'masterpiece' has been cheapened by too many blurbs, but My Absolute Darling absolutely is one." (Stephen King)
"My Absolute Darling is a novel that readers will gulp down, gasping.... Tallent [is a] prodigiously talented new writer.” (The Washington Post)
Related to this topic
-
The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley
- By: Hannah Tinti
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After years spent living on the run, Samuel Hawley moves with his teenage daughter, Loo, to Olympus, Massachusetts. There, in his late wife's hometown, Hawley finds work as a fisherman, while Loo struggles to fit in at school and grows curious about her mother's mysterious death. Haunting them both are twelve scars Hawley carries on his body, from twelve bullets in his criminal past - a past that eventually spills over into his daughter's present, until together they must face a reckoning yet to come.
-
-
Odd choice for narrator
- By lindsey b. on 01-23-19
By: Hannah Tinti
-
Passenger
- By: Andrew Smith
- Narrated by: Mark Boyett
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Best friends Jack and Conner can’t stay away from Marbury. It’s partly because of their obsession with this alternate world and the unresolved war that still wages there. But it’s also because forces in Marbury - including the darkest of the dark, who were not revealed in The Marbury Lens - are beckoning the boys back in order to save their friends… and themselves.
-
-
plot twist at the end of the book 🤤🤤
- By melanie on 11-10-17
By: Andrew Smith
-
Descent
- By: Tim Johnston
- Narrated by: Xe Sands, R.C. Bray
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the day Caitlin vanishes the lives of her family members are irrevocably altered, each assuming blame for that day's tragic events. As the initial days of hope are replaced by weeks of anxiety and despair, they find themselves increasingly isolated, each wondering: Is she still alive? Will we ever know what happened?
-
-
Even a Monkey Knows the Value of a Stick
- By tooonce72 on 01-09-15
By: Tim Johnston
-
The Fireman
- A Novel
- By: Joe Hill
- Narrated by: Kate Mulgrew
- Length: 22 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it's Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies - before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.
-
-
GOD'S WAITING ROOM; AKA FLORIDA
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 04-25-17
By: Joe Hill
-
A Death in Kitchawank, and Other Stories
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: T. C. Boyle
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Few authors write with such sheer love of story and language as T. C. Boyle, and that is nowhere more evident than in his inventive, wickedly funny, and always entertaining short stories. Here are 14 new tales previously unpublished in book form. By turns mythic and realistic, farcical and tragic, ironic and moving, Boyle's stories have mapped a wide range of human emotions. The stories here reflect his maturing themes.
-
-
Mixed Bag
- By AuntGert on 09-22-20
By: T. C. Boyle
-
NOS4A2
- A Novel
- By: Joe Hill
- Narrated by: Kate Mulgrew
- Length: 19 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Victoria McQueen has an uncanny knack for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. When she rides her bicycle over the rickety old covered bridge in the woods near her house, she always emerges in the places she needs to be. Vic doesn't tell anyone about her unusual ability, because she knows no one will believe her. She has trouble understanding it herself.
-
-
Gripping performance by Kate Mulgrew....
- By Leslie on 05-06-13
By: Joe Hill
-
The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley
- By: Hannah Tinti
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After years spent living on the run, Samuel Hawley moves with his teenage daughter, Loo, to Olympus, Massachusetts. There, in his late wife's hometown, Hawley finds work as a fisherman, while Loo struggles to fit in at school and grows curious about her mother's mysterious death. Haunting them both are twelve scars Hawley carries on his body, from twelve bullets in his criminal past - a past that eventually spills over into his daughter's present, until together they must face a reckoning yet to come.
-
-
Odd choice for narrator
- By lindsey b. on 01-23-19
By: Hannah Tinti
-
Passenger
- By: Andrew Smith
- Narrated by: Mark Boyett
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Best friends Jack and Conner can’t stay away from Marbury. It’s partly because of their obsession with this alternate world and the unresolved war that still wages there. But it’s also because forces in Marbury - including the darkest of the dark, who were not revealed in The Marbury Lens - are beckoning the boys back in order to save their friends… and themselves.
-
-
plot twist at the end of the book 🤤🤤
- By melanie on 11-10-17
By: Andrew Smith
-
Descent
- By: Tim Johnston
- Narrated by: Xe Sands, R.C. Bray
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the day Caitlin vanishes the lives of her family members are irrevocably altered, each assuming blame for that day's tragic events. As the initial days of hope are replaced by weeks of anxiety and despair, they find themselves increasingly isolated, each wondering: Is she still alive? Will we ever know what happened?
-
-
Even a Monkey Knows the Value of a Stick
- By tooonce72 on 01-09-15
By: Tim Johnston
-
The Fireman
- A Novel
- By: Joe Hill
- Narrated by: Kate Mulgrew
- Length: 22 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it's Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies - before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.
-
-
GOD'S WAITING ROOM; AKA FLORIDA
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 04-25-17
By: Joe Hill
-
A Death in Kitchawank, and Other Stories
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: T. C. Boyle
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Few authors write with such sheer love of story and language as T. C. Boyle, and that is nowhere more evident than in his inventive, wickedly funny, and always entertaining short stories. Here are 14 new tales previously unpublished in book form. By turns mythic and realistic, farcical and tragic, ironic and moving, Boyle's stories have mapped a wide range of human emotions. The stories here reflect his maturing themes.
-
-
Mixed Bag
- By AuntGert on 09-22-20
By: T. C. Boyle
-
NOS4A2
- A Novel
- By: Joe Hill
- Narrated by: Kate Mulgrew
- Length: 19 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Victoria McQueen has an uncanny knack for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. When she rides her bicycle over the rickety old covered bridge in the woods near her house, she always emerges in the places she needs to be. Vic doesn't tell anyone about her unusual ability, because she knows no one will believe her. She has trouble understanding it herself.
-
-
Gripping performance by Kate Mulgrew....
- By Leslie on 05-06-13
By: Joe Hill
-
Call Me Evie
- By: J. P. Pomare
- Narrated by: Olivia Mackenzie-Smith
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Evie and her uncle Jim have just moved to an isolated cabin in a remote beach town - a far cry from their hometown of Melbourne. But Evie isn't her real name. And Jim isn't really her uncle. Jim tells Evie she did something terrible back home, that he's hiding her to protect her. But Evie can't remember anything about that night - for all she knows, he's lying. As fragments of her memory return, she starts to wonder if Jim is really her savior...or her captor.
-
-
Wow
- By lolo610 on 03-30-19
By: J. P. Pomare
-
The Necromancer's House
- By: Christopher Buehlman
- Narrated by: Todd Haberkorn
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Andrew Ranulf Blankenship is a handsome, stylish nonconformist with wry wit, a classic Mustang, and a massive library. He is also a recovering alcoholic and a practicing warlock, able to speak with the dead through film. His house is a maze of sorcerous booby traps and escape tunnels, as yours might be if you were sitting on a treasury of Russian magic stolen from the Soviet Union thirty years ago.
-
-
Finally - Magic / Fantasy Novel for adults.
- By David on 04-23-14
-
Southern Gods
- By: John Hornor Jacobs
- Narrated by: Eric G Dove
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Recent World War II veteran Bull Ingram is working as muscle when a Memphis DJ hires him to find Ramblin' John Hastur. The mysterious blues man's dark, driving music - broadcast at ever-shifting frequencies by a phantom radio statio - is said to make living men insane and dead men rise. Disturbed and enraged by the bootleg recording the DJ plays for him, Ingram follows Hastur's trail into the strange, uncivilized backwoods of Arkansas, where he hears rumors the musician has sold his soul to the Devil.
-
-
Big, Bold and Bright
- By John on 08-23-11
-
Cruel World
- A Novel
- By: Joe Hart
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hidden away from the world by his famous father, Quinn Kelly strives to find meaning in his life while struggling with a deformity that has kept him from leaving the only home he has ever known. On the eve of his departure a sudden and deadly virus sweeps across the nation, killing nearly all it touches. Within days Quinn is left to fend for himself in an empty world. But there is something still very much alive beyond the walls of his sanctuary.
-
-
BEST post apocalyptic story
- By melinda a rister on 10-02-21
By: Joe Hart
-
Mannheim Rex
- By: Robert Pobi
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 14 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Recently widowered and grieving, Gavin flees New York City for the quiet of the country. His new home on Lake Caldasac has surprisingly few visitors, and the author soon learns why: a suspiciously high number of people have gone missing in the small town. The deaths have all been ruled accidents, but Finn Horn, a handicapped boy obsessed with fishing, knows the truth. There’s a monster in the lake. And it wants to feed.
-
-
Interesting and fun
- By Bob on 01-14-13
By: Robert Pobi
-
The Reapers Are the Angels
- By: Alden Bell
- Narrated by: Tai Sammons
- Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For 25 years, civilization has survived in meager enclaves, guarded against a plague of the dead. Temple wanders this blighted landscape, keeping to herself and keeping her demons inside her heart. She can’t remember a time before the zombies, but she does remember an old man who took her in and the younger brother she cared for until the tragedy that set her off on her personal journey toward redemption.
-
-
Literary Limbo-ing
- By Mel on 04-25-13
By: Alden Bell
-
Bloodman
- By: Robert Pobi
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this psychological thriller, Jake Cole returns to his childhood home after his elderly father nearly kills himself by setting himself on fire and plowing through a plate-glass window. Jake’s father - a great American painter - is a man whose shadow Jake has tried to outrun since he was a boy. Now a contractor for the FBI who possesses a unique gift for recreating crime scenes, Jake is pulled into a hauntingly familiar double homicide investigation. He recognizes the artistic signature in the slayings from his childhood.
-
-
Cop Out
- By Alan on 05-28-12
By: Robert Pobi
-
Blackbirds
- Miriam Black, Book 1
- By: Chuck Wendig
- Narrated by: Emily Beresford
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Miriam Black knows when you will die. Still in her early twenties, she’s foreseen hundreds of car crashes, heart attacks, strokes, suicides, and slow deaths by cancer. But when Miriam hitches a ride with truck driver Louis Darling and shakes his hand, she sees that in thirty days he will be gruesomely murdered while he calls her name. Miriam has given up trying to save people; that only makes their deaths happen. No matter what she does, she can’t save Louis. But if she wants to stay alive, she’ll have to try.
-
-
Not for the faint of heart or kids but exciting
- By Steph on 04-07-14
By: Chuck Wendig
-
The Marbury Lens
- By: Andrew Smith
- Narrated by: Mark Boyett
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sixteen-year-old Jack gets drunk and finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time: he is kidnapped, but escapes, narrowly. The only person he tells is his best friend, Conner. When they arrive in London as planned for their summer break, a stranger hands Jack a pair of glasses. Through the lenses, he sees another world called Marbury. There is war in Marbury, which is a desolate and murderous place where Jack is responsible for the survival of two younger boys.
-
-
Like an addiction, I just couldn't stop listening.
- By Gini McKellar on 11-24-10
By: Andrew Smith
-
Bleeding Violet
- By: Dia Reeves
- Narrated by: Suzy Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With a head plagued by hallucinations, a medicine cabinet full of pills, and a closet stuffed with frilly, violet dresses, Hanna's tired of being the outcast, the weird girl, the freak. So she runs away to Portero, Texas, in search of a new home. But Portero is a stranger town than Hanna expects. She discovers secrets that would terrify any normal soul. Good thing for Hanna, she's far from normal. As this crazy girl meets an even crazier town, only two things are certain: Anything can happen, and no one is safe.
-
-
Didn't like it. Sorry, not sorry
- By Cii'Em on 02-15-16
By: Dia Reeves
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Only a few decent stories in this bunch.
- By Jerry on 12-06-14
By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, and others
-
Fourth of July Creek
- A Novel
- By: Smith Henderson
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews, Jenna Lamia
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After trying to help Benjamin Pearl, an undernourished, nearly feral 11-year-old boy living in the Montana wilderness, social worker Pete Snow comes face-to-face with the boy's profoundly disturbed father, Jeremiah. With courage and caution, Pete slowly earns a measure of trust from this paranoid survivalist itching for a final conflict that will signal the coming End Times. But as Pete's own family spins out of control, Pearl's activities spark the full-blown interest of the FBI, putting Pete at the center of a massive manhunt from which no one will emerge unscathed.
-
-
The Ghost of Tom Joad & the Wrath of Grapes
- By Mel on 06-30-14
By: Smith Henderson
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Roanoke Girls
- A Novel
- By: Amy Engel
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After her mother's suicide, 15-year-old Lane Roanoke came to live with her grandparents and fireball cousin, Allegra, on their vast estate in rural Kansas. Lane knew little of her mother's mysterious family, but she quickly embraced life as one of the rich and beautiful Roanoke girls. But when she discovered the dark truth at the heart of the family, she ran...fast and far away. Eleven years later Lane is adrift in Los Angeles when her grandfather calls to tell her Allegra has gone missing. Did she run, too? Or something worse?
-
-
Ick, ugh, yuck! Spoilers ahead!
- By NMwritergal on 03-12-17
By: Amy Engel
-
Bloodroot
- By: Amy Greene
- Narrated by: Lorna Raver, Kirby Heyborne, Jessie Bernstein, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Named for a flower whose blood-red sap possesses the power both to heal and poison, Bloodroot is a stunning fiction debut about the legacies - of magic and madness, faith and secrets, passion and loss - that haunt one family across the generations, from the Great Depression to today. The novel is told in a kaleidoscope of seamlessly woven voices and centers around an incendiary romance that consumes everyone in its path.
-
-
Amazing story
- By MJ on 02-16-10
By: Amy Greene
-
Excavation
- A Memoir
- By: Wendy C. Ortiz
- Narrated by: Bonne Kramer
- Length: 5 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wendy C. Ortiz was an only child and a bookish, insecure girl living with alcoholic parents in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Her relationship with a charming and deeply flawed private school teacher 15 years her senior appeared to give her the kind of power teenagers wish for, regardless of consequences.
-
-
Too Much About Not Much
- By Lifeisshort on 12-22-14
By: Wendy C. Ortiz
-
My Absolute Darling [French Version]
- By: Gabriel Tallent
- Narrated by: Marie Bouvet
- Length: 12 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
À quatorze ans, Turtle Alveston arpente les bois de la côte nord de la Californie avec un fusil et un pistolet pour seuls compagnons. Elle trouve refuge sur les plages et les îlots rocheux qu'elle parcourt sur des kilomètres. Mais si le monde extérieur s'ouvre à elle dans toute son immensité, son univers familial est étroit et menaçant : Turtle a grandi seule, sous la coupe d'un père charismatique et abusif. Sa vie sociale est confinée au collège, et elle repousse quiconque essaye de percer sa carapace.
By: Gabriel Tallent
-
The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley
- By: Hannah Tinti
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After years spent living on the run, Samuel Hawley moves with his teenage daughter, Loo, to Olympus, Massachusetts. There, in his late wife's hometown, Hawley finds work as a fisherman, while Loo struggles to fit in at school and grows curious about her mother's mysterious death. Haunting them both are twelve scars Hawley carries on his body, from twelve bullets in his criminal past - a past that eventually spills over into his daughter's present, until together they must face a reckoning yet to come.
-
-
Odd choice for narrator
- By lindsey b. on 01-23-19
By: Hannah Tinti
-
All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
- A Novel
- By: Bryn Greenwood
- Narrated by: Jorjeana Marie
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As the daughter of a drug dealer, Wavy knows not to trust people, not even her own parents. It's safer to keep her mouth shut and stay out of sight. Struggling to raise her little brother, Donal, eight-year-old Wavy is the only responsible adult around. Obsessed with the constellations, she finds peace in the starry night sky above the fields behind her house until one night her stargazing causes an accident. After witnessing his motorcycle wreck, she forms an unusual friendship with one of her father's thugs, Kellen, a tattooed ex-con with a heart of gold.
-
-
So many 'hard to listen to' moments
- By jksullycats on 12-27-16
By: Bryn Greenwood
-
The Roanoke Girls
- A Novel
- By: Amy Engel
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After her mother's suicide, 15-year-old Lane Roanoke came to live with her grandparents and fireball cousin, Allegra, on their vast estate in rural Kansas. Lane knew little of her mother's mysterious family, but she quickly embraced life as one of the rich and beautiful Roanoke girls. But when she discovered the dark truth at the heart of the family, she ran...fast and far away. Eleven years later Lane is adrift in Los Angeles when her grandfather calls to tell her Allegra has gone missing. Did she run, too? Or something worse?
-
-
Ick, ugh, yuck! Spoilers ahead!
- By NMwritergal on 03-12-17
By: Amy Engel
-
Bloodroot
- By: Amy Greene
- Narrated by: Lorna Raver, Kirby Heyborne, Jessie Bernstein, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Named for a flower whose blood-red sap possesses the power both to heal and poison, Bloodroot is a stunning fiction debut about the legacies - of magic and madness, faith and secrets, passion and loss - that haunt one family across the generations, from the Great Depression to today. The novel is told in a kaleidoscope of seamlessly woven voices and centers around an incendiary romance that consumes everyone in its path.
-
-
Amazing story
- By MJ on 02-16-10
By: Amy Greene
-
Excavation
- A Memoir
- By: Wendy C. Ortiz
- Narrated by: Bonne Kramer
- Length: 5 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wendy C. Ortiz was an only child and a bookish, insecure girl living with alcoholic parents in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Her relationship with a charming and deeply flawed private school teacher 15 years her senior appeared to give her the kind of power teenagers wish for, regardless of consequences.
-
-
Too Much About Not Much
- By Lifeisshort on 12-22-14
By: Wendy C. Ortiz
-
My Absolute Darling [French Version]
- By: Gabriel Tallent
- Narrated by: Marie Bouvet
- Length: 12 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
À quatorze ans, Turtle Alveston arpente les bois de la côte nord de la Californie avec un fusil et un pistolet pour seuls compagnons. Elle trouve refuge sur les plages et les îlots rocheux qu'elle parcourt sur des kilomètres. Mais si le monde extérieur s'ouvre à elle dans toute son immensité, son univers familial est étroit et menaçant : Turtle a grandi seule, sous la coupe d'un père charismatique et abusif. Sa vie sociale est confinée au collège, et elle repousse quiconque essaye de percer sa carapace.
By: Gabriel Tallent
-
The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley
- By: Hannah Tinti
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After years spent living on the run, Samuel Hawley moves with his teenage daughter, Loo, to Olympus, Massachusetts. There, in his late wife's hometown, Hawley finds work as a fisherman, while Loo struggles to fit in at school and grows curious about her mother's mysterious death. Haunting them both are twelve scars Hawley carries on his body, from twelve bullets in his criminal past - a past that eventually spills over into his daughter's present, until together they must face a reckoning yet to come.
-
-
Odd choice for narrator
- By lindsey b. on 01-23-19
By: Hannah Tinti
-
All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
- A Novel
- By: Bryn Greenwood
- Narrated by: Jorjeana Marie
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As the daughter of a drug dealer, Wavy knows not to trust people, not even her own parents. It's safer to keep her mouth shut and stay out of sight. Struggling to raise her little brother, Donal, eight-year-old Wavy is the only responsible adult around. Obsessed with the constellations, she finds peace in the starry night sky above the fields behind her house until one night her stargazing causes an accident. After witnessing his motorcycle wreck, she forms an unusual friendship with one of her father's thugs, Kellen, a tattooed ex-con with a heart of gold.
-
-
So many 'hard to listen to' moments
- By jksullycats on 12-27-16
By: Bryn Greenwood
What listeners say about My Absolute Darling
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Katherine S.
- 01-13-18
Precious meets Misery meets Die Hard
I bought this book on Stephen King’s much touted endorsement: “a masterpiece,” he called it. Overall an enjoyable but dark read which loses its way in the last quarter of the book when it moves from a tight psychological thriller to basically Die Hard 3 in an instant. I think the author was aiming to secure a film option — over-the-top machine-gun violence at a prom on a beach. Really?
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
17 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Cherilyn Parsons
- 10-09-17
Wow... And excellent audio
This book was difficult to listen to at times because the story was so intense and dark, but it was so worthwhile. I could hardly stop listening. The writing is superb. I’ve read about the controversy around this male author writing a story from the perspective of an abused girl, but I found the novel to be sophisticated, insightful, and deeply compassionate — all that a novel should be around a topic that should be explored in fiction much more than it is. (Besides, writers should be able to explore any topic and point of view that appeals to their imagination, especially when done with such care as was the case here.) I applaud the writer for taking on such an important topic and doing it so well. Full, rich, highly nuanced worlds were created in this novel, both psychological and physical worlds.
I also must comment on the narrator for the audiobook. I could hardly imagine a more perfect voice, and the delivery was flawless. I highly recommend this book in the audio version, and I think I may also buy the hardcover version to have a copy of this fine novel for my library and to enjoy the language at a slower pace than by listening.
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
- Gail
- 09-07-17
Compelling
Beautifully written and narrated. Kept me reading. I think this book could have been stronger without all the in depth gun descriptions that were likely lost and over the top for the average reader. Also, there was a bit too much circular and repetitive dialog between the characters. which got annoying. Perhaps a tad more editing would have made this an epic tale. All in all this book got to me .I found myself wanting to throttle Julia into action. I look forward to more from this author.
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
- KLH
- 09-23-17
A Book of Firsts
First 1st. I've never hated a character as much as I hated one of the main characters. Second 1st. I've never shouted at the characters in an audible book. Third 1st. I've never had such mixed feelings about a book.
This book is gritty, brutal, beautifully written, and at times heartbreaking. The characters are not like any people you know in your life. Maybe because of that you can remove yourself from the violence of the narrative.
If violence and enough swearing to make your ears bleed make you queasy, then pass on this one. If you want to listen to a book unlike anything you've read/listened to before, then dive in.
Alex McKenna has a raspy voice befitting the story. Listen to a sample to decide if her voice annoys you. I happen to love her voice but many of the reviewers do not. She narrated "Sweetbitter" so I was familiar with her voice.
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
- Amanda Turner
- 11-10-18
interesting read
If you can look past some of the more gruesome details in this book, the story is a great tale of survival at all costs. I enjoyed it.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- J. Martin
- 09-13-19
Not agreeing with the negative reviews!
This is a brutally harsh story. Not for the faint of heart. If you are not looking for a touchy feel good book, and for a story with a serious troubling edge, this is a great book. Hopeful, shocking and traumatic all the way through. I had to go back and re listen to earlier chapters at the end. Narrator is excellent. If you dont think so in the beginning you will very quickly.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 10-29-17
Amazing story beautifully written and told
Story is gripping and spell binding from the first. Characters come to life. Narration is wonderful. Highly recommend this.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Cynthia laduca
- 11-04-18
Horrific
As awful a story it was and I wanted to stop reading it I had to keep listening to see just how sad and horrific this story was. It will stay with me for a long time
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- KentuckyWoman
- 07-02-22
Troubling
I couldn't stop listening. it was horrible and heart wrenching and I couldn't stop listening. I am a social worker. I did child abuse investigations then worked with children in foster care for 35 years. It's a tough field. I found this story to be spot on with feelings, emotions, skewed thinking and a profound love for a parent even through horrific fear and abuse. The ending was not what I wanted, but it was so appropriate because the road to healing is a continuous journey.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 09-26-22
Masterful
This book is a must-read, but only if you can stomach it. Brilliant and visceral.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!