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Never
- A Novel
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 23 hrs and 58 mins
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Publisher's summary
New York Times Best Seller
The new must-listen epic from master storyteller Ken Follett: more than a thriller, it’s an action-packed, globe-spanning drama set in the present day.
“A compelling story, and only too realistic.” (Lawrence H. Summers, former U.S. Treasury Secretary)
“Every catastrophe begins with a little problem that doesn’t get fixed.” So says Pauline Green, president of the United States, in Follett’s nerve-racking drama of international tension.
A shrinking oasis in the Sahara Desert; a stolen US Army drone; an uninhabited Japanese island; and one country’s secret stash of deadly chemical poisons: all these play roles in a relentlessly escalating crisis.
Struggling to prevent the outbreak of world war are a young woman intelligence officer; a spy working undercover with jihadists; a brilliant Chinese spymaster; and Pauline herself, beleaguered by a populist rival for the next president election.
Never is an extraordinary novel, full of heroines and villains, false prophets and elite warriors, jaded politicians and opportunistic revolutionaries. It brims with cautionary wisdom for our times, and delivers a visceral, heart-pounding story that transports listeners to the brink of the unimaginable.
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When two of his American employees were held hostage in a heavily guarded prison fortress in Iran, one man took matters into his own hands: American businessman H. Ross Perot. His team consisted of a group of volunteers from the executive ranks of his corporation, hand-picked and trained by a retired Green Beret officer. To free the imprisoned Americans, they would face incalculable odds on a mission that only true heroes would have dared.
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Was the narrator in a hurry?
- By Tammy on 06-19-08
By: Ken Follett
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Proof of Life
- Twenty Days on the Hunt for a Missing Person in the Middle East
- By: Daniel Levin
- Narrated by: Will Collyer
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Daniel Levin was at his office when he got a call from an acquaintance with an urgent, cryptic request to meet in Paris. A young man had gone missing in Syria. No government, embassy, or intelligence agency would help. Could he? Would he? So begins a suspenseful, shocking, and at times brutal true story of one man’s search to find a missing person in Syria over twenty tense days.
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Gripping and intriguing
- By Domenica Antonini on 11-10-24
By: Daniel Levin
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Taking Morgan
- A Political Thriller
- By: David Rose
- Narrated by: Eva Kaminsky
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Morgan Cooper has always found it difficult to balance her home life - mother of two young children and wife of a workaholic civil rights lawyer - with her work life as an undercover CIA officer. When Morgan gets stressed, anxious, or scared, whether at home or in the field, she tends to talk to herself until she can clear her head. This habit, though, puts her life in danger during an assignment in the strife-torn Gaza Strip.
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unrealistic
- By Coverdale on 08-09-22
By: David Rose
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Targets of Deception
- Jordan Sandor, Book 1
- By: Jeffrey S. Stephens
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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When Jordan Sandor resigned from active service with the Central Intelligence Agency, it was before September 11th, before the fall of Saddam Hussein, and before the world had so dramatically changed. He is reluctantly drawn back into action when a series of violent events leads him to suss out a new al-Qaeda conspiracy to initiate cataclysmic assaults with poison gas.
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Plenty of Murder, Espionage, Suspense & Thrills!!!
- By shelley on 04-09-18
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Prince of Spies
- The Richard Prince Thrillers, Book 1
- By: Alex Gerlis
- Narrated by: Rupert Bush
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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1942: a German spy comes ashore on a desolate stretch of Lincolnshire beach. But he is hunted down by a young detective, Richard Prince. The secret services have need of a man like him.... In occupied Europe, Denmark is a hotbed of problems for British intelligence. Rumours of a war-ending weapon being developed by the Germans are rife. Sent to Copenhagen, Prince is soon caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse. Dodging Gestapo agents, SS muscle and the danger of betrayal, his survival - and the war effort - hangs in the balance.
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An excellent story, however...
- By A Happy Sort Of OCD on 03-23-22
By: Alex Gerlis
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What You Have Heard Is True
- A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
- By: Carolyn Forché
- Narrated by: Carolyn Forché
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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What You Have Heard is True is a devastating, lyrical, and visionary memoir about a young woman’s brave choice to engage with horror in order to help others. Written by one of the most gifted poets of her generation, this is the story of a woman’s radical act of empathy, and her fateful encounter with an intriguing man who changes the course of her life.
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Beautiful story
- By Norhilda on 05-09-19
By: Carolyn Forché
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Moscow Sting
- By: Alex Dryden
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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When Finn, a former British spy, is poisoned by a Russian assassin, his ex-boss Adrian, chief of MI6, wants vengeance. He also wants answers - information that only Finn's widow, Anna, knows. Taken to America for protection and information, the former Russian agent faces her greatest test: to ensure her freedom and protect her child, she must uncover the full truth before anyone else - even as friend and foe both set her in their sights.
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will keep you guessing right up to the end
- By Catherine J. Pondozzi on 11-24-12
By: Alex Dryden
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By Order of the President
- Presidential Agent, Book 1
- By: W. E. B. Griffin
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 20 hrs
- Unabridged
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Two armed men board a 727 that has been all but forgotten at an airfield in Angola. Hijacking the jet, they then slit the throat of the lone crew and fly to parts unknown. The consternation is immediate, as the CIA, FBI, and other agencies race to find out what happened, in the process elbowing one another in the sides a little too vigorously. Fed up, the president of the United States turns to an outside investigator to determine the truth.
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Could have been better ...
- By Ragna on 02-08-11
By: W. E. B. Griffin
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Midnight in Mexico
- A Reporter's Journey through a Country's Descent into Darkness
- By: Alfredo Corchado
- Narrated by: Timothy Andres Pabon
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Noted Mexican American journalist Alfredo Corchado refuses to shrink from reporting on government corruption, murders in Juarez, or the ruthless drug cartels of Mexico. One night, Corchado received a tip that he could be the next target of the Zetas, a violent paramilitary group - and that he had 24 hours to find out if the threat was true. Midnight in Mexico is the story of one man's quest to report the truth of his country - as he races to save his own life.
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Fascinating & suspenseful historical non-fiction!
- By Ruth Barrie on 06-30-19
By: Alfredo Corchado
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Against the Wind
- The Raines of Wind Canyon, Book 1
- By: Kat Martin
- Narrated by: Jack Garrett
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times best-selling author Kat Martin launches a riveting contemporary romance series starring the Raines boys of Wind Canyon, Wyoming. Back in high school, Jackson Raines was humiliated by the beautiful Sarah Allen, who wanted out of Wind Canyon at any cost. Now Jackson reluctantly opens his ranch to the recently widowed Sarah. And as sparks ignite, he finds himself protecting her from her dead husband’s shady business partners.
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Just not my style
- By LeftyMom on 11-22-11
By: Kat Martin
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Triple poorly performed
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Disappointing
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Triple poorly performed
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Riveting historical fiction
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An Outstanding Spy Novel
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A missing canister of a deadly virus. A lab technician bleeding from the eyes. Toni Gallo, the security director of a Scottish medical research firm, knows she has problems, but she has no idea of the nightmare to come. As a Christmas Eve blizzard whips out of the north, several people, Toni among them, converge on a remote family house. All have something to gain or lose from the drug developed to fight the virus. As the storm worsens, the emotional sparks—jealousies, distrust, sexual attraction, rivalries—crackle; desperate secrets are revealed; hidden traitors and unexpected heroes emerge.
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Ken Follett goes Danielle Steeel
- By B. W. Larsen on 01-27-05
By: Ken Follett
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This lush novel, set in 1766 England and America, evokes an era ripe with riot and revolution, from the teeming streets of London to the sprawling grounds of a Virginia plantation. Mack McAsh burns with the desire to escape his life of slavery in Scottish coal mines while Lizzie Hallim is desperate to shed a life of sheltered subjugation to her spineless husband. United in America, their only chance for freedom lies beyond the Western frontier - if they're brave enough to take it.
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Expected better than a historical romance
- By Lynette Garet on 01-09-17
By: Ken Follett
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The Third Twin
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The study of twins and the genetics of aggression totally consumes research scientist Jeannie Ferrami. An accomplished and headstrong researcher, Jeannie has developed a sophisticated software program to identify identical twins reared apart. But Jeannie's breakthrough project is threatened by the appearance of a sudden impossibility - identical twins born weeks apart to different mothers at separate locations.
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Classic 90's Style
- By Empress Karen on 10-06-17
By: Ken Follett
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The Hammer of Eden
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The FBI doesn't believe it. The governor wants the problem to disappear. But Agent Judy Maddox knows the threat is real: an extreme group of ecoterrorists has the means and the know-how to set off a massive earthquake of epic proportions. For California, time is running out. Now Maddox is scrambling to hunt down a petty criminal turned cult leader turned homicidal mastermind. Because she knows that the dying has already begun.
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A Change In Time and Naive Revenge
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Code to Zero
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A man wakes to find himself lying on the ground in a railway station. He does not remember how he got there. He has forgotten where he lives. He cannot even remember his own name.
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Code to Zero
- By William on 05-14-05
By: Ken Follett
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Lie Down with Lions
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Ellis, the American. Jean-Pierre, the Frenchman.... They were two men on opposite sides of the cold war, with a woman torn between them. Together, they formed a triangle of passion and deception, racing from terrorist bombs in Paris to the violence and intrigue of Afghanistan - and on to the moment of truth and a deadly decision for all of them.
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makes me want my money back
- By tannk on 09-30-08
By: Ken Follett
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On Wings of Eagles
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When two of his American employees were held hostage in a heavily guarded prison fortress in Iran, one man took matters into his own hands: American businessman H. Ross Perot. His team consisted of a group of volunteers from the executive ranks of his corporation, hand-picked and trained by a retired Green Beret officer. To free the imprisoned Americans, they would face incalculable odds on a mission that only true heroes would have dared.
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Was the narrator in a hurry?
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By: Ken Follett
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Notre-Dame
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In this short, spellbinding book, international best-selling author Ken Follett describes the emotions that gripped him when he learned about the fire that threatened to destroy one of the greatest cathedrals in the world - the Notre-Dame de Paris. Follett then tells the story of the cathedral, from its construction to the role it has played across time and history, and he reveals the influence that the Notre-Dame had upon cathedrals around the world and on the writing of one of Follett's most famous and beloved novels, The Pillars of the Earth.
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informative
- By BILL O'NEILL on 05-12-20
By: Ken Follett
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The Mahdi
- Cooch Series, Book 4
- By: Robert Cook
- Narrated by: Walles Hamonde, Carrie Brewer, Ryan Edlinger, and others
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- Unabridged
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When Alex takes on a mission to reclaim stolen Bedouin land, he finds himself imprisoned and branded a criminal. Meanwhile, Caitlin faces her own dangers, becoming the target of an extremist plot. But the rules of warfare change forever when Caitlin condenses an electromagnetic pulse into shootable ammunition and deploys an AI chatbot–quantum computer that can use the internet to control secure Israeli communications and provide strategic intel.
By: Robert Cook
What listeners say about Never
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- Jon B
- 11-16-21
January LaVoy mastered every voice. Fantastic job!
story was too, too, although I would have been happy with just Abdul and Kia's story.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Geoffrey
- 12-14-21
The Guns of August?
Its’ OK, not one of Follett’s best efforts. The book is really two books, one about human trafficking in the third world, and the second, a novelist’s rendition of the Guns of August, set in present day.
The human trafficking story can’t really survive on its own as quality fiction, but it does relate to those of us in the developed world, how short, hard, and violent, life remains for half the planet caught in the third world.
The Guns of August Story is more interesting to examine. For those unfamiliar with the Guns of August, it is an historical book about how WWI started despite everyone’s best efforts to prevent it. JFK was reportedly enamored with the volume during his Presidency, using it to ensure that he did not fall into the same trap with the USSR. History however, records that it was Khrushchev and not Kennedy, who had the courage to back down publicly, and prevent WWIII, while getting the concessions he really wanted on the sly. It likely cost him his leadership role in the USSR, but it saved us all. I'm sure some will argue with me there, but if so, read The Cold War by John Lewis Gaddis.
Follett’s present day Cuban Missile Crisis storyline documents well, how utilizing the “reasonable man” theory in estimating the reactions of your national counterparts falls apart quickly, once hostilities have broken out, leading to inevitable escalation. Each leader believes his/her counterpart will back down once he/she finishes this last round of escalation proving his/her superiority in the conflict. People don’t act rationally to violent situations, and the real courage is in being able to stop. The book is excellent here.
Unfortunately, the book lacks both an in-depth understanding of the Chinese persona, or world view, and solid research into military capabilities and countermeasures. Also, all the females in the story, including the female US President, seem preoccupied with sex and relationships – despite the fact there isn’t a sex scene in the whole book.
The Chinese are portrayed as reincarnations of Russian commissars from the USSR. Having worked with them for ten years, they are far more pragmatic and educated. The perception is, “Why blow up the world, when you can obtain it in one piece through peaceful economic expansion”. The “one-child policy” alone, also means that any son lost in violent conflict means the entire lineage is lost. One should meet a few PRC communist officials before one writes books about their reactions. I thought the portrayals were weak. I don’t know the South Koreans as well, but I sense their portrayal was equally American/European perception.
One of the things that made the early Clancy books so authentic, was his in-depth understanding of military capabilities and protocols across the globe. Follett’s descriptions are thin, and there are numerous mistakes in tactics and capabilities. For example, the PAC3 missile system which is part of a layered US layered missile defense system prefers low trajectories, it is ballistic trajectories that make it miss – a vertical drop at high speed. The North Koreans don’t have MARV warhead capabilities, etcetera, etcetera. The lack of understanding and research into the military aspects of the book, tend to weaken the believability of the escalating violence.
Lastly, it has been my experience that powerful people are not overly indulged in their personal relationships, and/or sex life, other than as a diversion from real power. It is Creative Writing 101 character development, rather than looking at the real motivators for world leaders.
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5 people found this helpful
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- cristina
- 12-30-21
Carpe Diem
Ken Follett is among my favorite authors. I loved the story - it kept me alert. The voice of the narrator is warm and pleasant. I loved the characters Tamara and Abdul and felt happy for each of them.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Vivian Grant
- 11-16-21
Kept me awake
This is a very disturbing story, mainly because it seems so plausible. My only issue with the book is that the Africa part of the story was only tangentially related to the China/Korea part. Either could have stood alone.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 11-20-21
WOW! just wow!!!
I have read most of Ken Follets books. I love his historical fiction, so I was worried that this would be too different, bit oh my gosh. I wish it didn't have to end.
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- rosenberger Inbar
- 11-15-21
Ken Follet is a master story teller but.....
At first I was dissapointed by this book thinking there were too many locations and people and things not making sense.
When it all started coming together I remembered again what a Master at his trade Follet is.
This is not an easy tale to read/listen to or take in.
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- Shelly Dee
- 11-15-21
Non-stop listen for me
Intricate and compelling characters / storylines. Could have done without indulged presidential brat. Narrator LaVoy excellent as usual.
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- Keith
- 01-05-22
Looking forward to the sequel!
Wow! What a great book. The story and characters were so real. The emotions that, so true to life. The details, perfect. And the performance was magnificent.
I listen while driving and I have bad ears so some performances/productions are impossible to listen to as the performer uses volume to indicate tense or excited emotional moments. Listening to Never I didn’t miss a word and the tension and emotion were incredible.
Another Follett masterpiece and a performance of equal matching skill.
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- leeoklahoma
- 12-14-21
Something we all fear. Ken Follett is amazing!
Something we all have thought about and this has now been put into words. Enjoy!
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- Moynard
- 01-21-22
Not up to his usual excellence
I hoped I would like this but was somewhat disappointed with how predictable I found it. I won’t hold this against Mr Follett who has provided our family endless hours of suspenseful entertainment and lively discussions. The narrator was excellent.
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