Object Lessons
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 $25.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Emily Lawrence
-
By:
-
Anna Quindlen
About this listen
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
"Elaborate and playful...Honest and deeply felt....Here is the Quindlen wit, the sharp eye for the details of class and manners, [and] the ardent reading of domestic lives."
—THE NEW YORK TIMES
It is the 1960s, in suburban New York City. Maggie and her family, are in the thrall of her powerful grandfather Jack Scanlan. In the summer of her twelfth year, Maggie is desperately trying to master the object lessons her grandfather fills her head with. But there is too much going on to concentrate. Everything at home is in upheaval, her grandfather is changing, and Maggie is unsure if what she wants is worth having....
©1991 Anna Quindlen. (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Reader's Guide © 2003 by Anna Quindlen and The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. Acknowledgment is made to Cherio Corporation for permission to reprint excerpts from "Daddy's Little Girl," words and music by Bobby Burke and Horace Gerlach. © 1949 by Cherio Corp. © renewed 1977 by Cherio Corp. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Every Last One
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Hope Davis
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this breathtaking and beautiful novel, the #1 New York Times best-selling author Anna Quindlen creates an unforgettable portrait of a mother, a father, a family, and the explosive, violent consequences of what seem like inconsequential actions.
-
-
Almost Unbearably Sad, Completely Wonderful
- By Kimberly on 04-28-10
By: Anna Quindlen
-
Blessings
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Joan Allen
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Late one night, a teenage couple drives up to the big white clapboard home on the Blessing estate and leaves a box. In that instant, the lives of those who live and work there are changed forever. Skip Cuddy, the caretaker, finds a baby girl asleep in that box and decides he wants to keep the child . . . while Lydia Blessing, the matriarch of the estate, for her own reasons, agrees to help him.
-
-
Captivating
- By Janet on 12-19-02
By: Anna Quindlen
-
Miller's Valley
- A Novel
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a young girl in Miller's Valley, an ordinary farming town that may be facing its final days, Mimi is observing adults, selling corn, growing up and changing, and watching the world around her change, too. As the years go by, the unthinkable starts to seem inevitable. Anna Quindlen's novel takes us through the changing eras of Mimi and her family, as secrets are revealed, and the heartbreaks of growing up and falling in love with the wrong man are overcome.
-
-
Quietly engaging
- By Taryn on 01-07-17
By: Anna Quindlen
-
One True Thing
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Christina Moore
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A young woman sits in jail, accused of the mercy killing of her dying mother. She didn't do it, but she thinks she knows who did. In the last months of her life, Ellen Gulden's mother revealed startling secrets that challenged everything Ellen believed about her family. Now, in jail, Ellen believes those secrets will tell her who had the courage to end her mother's suffering.
-
-
Quindlen's writing skills shine in One True Thing.
- By Bonny on 08-26-13
By: Anna Quindlen
-
Nanaville
- Adventures in Grandparenting
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Cynthia Farrell
- Length: 3 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mother, mother-in-law, grandmother - the Pulitzer-winning columnist and #1 bestselling author reflects on the roles we play throughout our lives, sharing personal stories and advice on the special joys and complexities of middle age. Before blogs even existed, Anna Quindlen became a go-to writer on the joys and challenges of family, motherhood, and modern life, in her nationally syndicated column. Now she’s taking the next step and going full Nana in this lively, beautiful, and moving book about being a grandmother, and much more.
-
-
Brilliant moments with her grandson
- By Lili on 05-01-19
By: Anna Quindlen
-
Commonwealth
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Hope Davis
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating's christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny's mother, Beverly - thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families.
-
-
Patchett and Me--In-sympatico
- By Mel on 09-18-16
By: Ann Patchett
-
Every Last One
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Hope Davis
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this breathtaking and beautiful novel, the #1 New York Times best-selling author Anna Quindlen creates an unforgettable portrait of a mother, a father, a family, and the explosive, violent consequences of what seem like inconsequential actions.
-
-
Almost Unbearably Sad, Completely Wonderful
- By Kimberly on 04-28-10
By: Anna Quindlen
-
Blessings
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Joan Allen
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Late one night, a teenage couple drives up to the big white clapboard home on the Blessing estate and leaves a box. In that instant, the lives of those who live and work there are changed forever. Skip Cuddy, the caretaker, finds a baby girl asleep in that box and decides he wants to keep the child . . . while Lydia Blessing, the matriarch of the estate, for her own reasons, agrees to help him.
-
-
Captivating
- By Janet on 12-19-02
By: Anna Quindlen
-
Miller's Valley
- A Novel
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a young girl in Miller's Valley, an ordinary farming town that may be facing its final days, Mimi is observing adults, selling corn, growing up and changing, and watching the world around her change, too. As the years go by, the unthinkable starts to seem inevitable. Anna Quindlen's novel takes us through the changing eras of Mimi and her family, as secrets are revealed, and the heartbreaks of growing up and falling in love with the wrong man are overcome.
-
-
Quietly engaging
- By Taryn on 01-07-17
By: Anna Quindlen
-
One True Thing
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Christina Moore
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A young woman sits in jail, accused of the mercy killing of her dying mother. She didn't do it, but she thinks she knows who did. In the last months of her life, Ellen Gulden's mother revealed startling secrets that challenged everything Ellen believed about her family. Now, in jail, Ellen believes those secrets will tell her who had the courage to end her mother's suffering.
-
-
Quindlen's writing skills shine in One True Thing.
- By Bonny on 08-26-13
By: Anna Quindlen
-
Nanaville
- Adventures in Grandparenting
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Cynthia Farrell
- Length: 3 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mother, mother-in-law, grandmother - the Pulitzer-winning columnist and #1 bestselling author reflects on the roles we play throughout our lives, sharing personal stories and advice on the special joys and complexities of middle age. Before blogs even existed, Anna Quindlen became a go-to writer on the joys and challenges of family, motherhood, and modern life, in her nationally syndicated column. Now she’s taking the next step and going full Nana in this lively, beautiful, and moving book about being a grandmother, and much more.
-
-
Brilliant moments with her grandson
- By Lili on 05-01-19
By: Anna Quindlen
-
Commonwealth
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Hope Davis
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating's christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny's mother, Beverly - thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families.
-
-
Patchett and Me--In-sympatico
- By Mel on 09-18-16
By: Ann Patchett
-
The Great Believers
- By: Rebecca Makkai
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 18 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister.
-
-
A story for all time
- By Carla jo Thompson on 08-06-18
By: Rebecca Makkai
-
The Husband's Secret
- By: Liane Moriarty
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 13 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Imagine that your husband wrote you a letter, to be opened after his death. Imagine, too, that the letter contains his deepest, darkest secret - something with the potential to destroy not just the life you built together, but the lives of others as well. Imagine, then, that you stumble across that letter while your husband is still very much alive....
-
-
Soap Opera Digest
- By FanB14 on 02-06-14
By: Liane Moriarty
-
State of Wonder
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Hope Davis
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Research scientist Dr. Marina Singh is sent to Brazil to track down her former mentor, Dr. Annick Swenson, who seems to have disappeared in the Amazon while working on an extremely valuable new drug. The last person who was sent to find her died before he could complete his mission. Plagued by trepidation, Marina embarks on an odyssey into the insect-infested jungle in hopes of finding answers to the questions about her friend's death, her company's future, and her own past.
-
-
Do yourself a favor and listen to this book!
- By F. B. H. In TN on 06-10-11
By: Ann Patchett
-
The Latecomer
- A Novel
- By: Jean Hanff Korelitz
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 16 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Latecomer follows the story of the wealthy, New York City-based Oppenheimer family, from the first meeting of parents Salo and Johanna, under tragic circumstances, to their triplets born during the early days of IVF. As children, the three siblings—Harrison, Lewyn, and Sally—feel no strong familial bond and cannot wait to go their separate ways, even as their father becomes more distanced and their mother more desperate. When the triplets leave for college, Johanna, faced with being truly alone, makes the decision to have a fourth child.
-
-
Conservatives and religious are the villains
- By Ashley on 09-01-22
-
The Measure
- A Novel
- By: Nikki Erlick
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It seems like any other day. You wake up, drink a cup of coffee, and head out. But today, when you open your front door, waiting for you is a small wooden box. The contents of this mysterious box tells you the exact number of years you will live. From suburban doorsteps to desert tents, every person on every continent receives the same box. In an instant, the world is thrust into a collective frenzy. Where did these boxes come from? What do they mean? Is there truth to what they promise?
-
-
heavy content
- By Cherece on 09-12-22
By: Nikki Erlick
-
Barefoot
- A Novel
- By: Elin Hilderbrand
- Narrated by: Rachael Warren
- Length: 16 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From marriage, infidelity, and the mayhem of motherhood to scandal, tragedy, and illness - three women seek peace and comfort in Nantucket as they cope with life's challenges. Three women - burdened with small children, unwieldy straw hats, and some obvious emotional issues - tumble onto the Nantucket airport tarmac one hot June day. Vicki is trying to sort through the news that she has a serious illness. Her sister, Brenda, has just left her job after being caught in an affair with a student. And their friend Melanie, after seven failed in vitro attempts, is pregnant at last.
-
-
OMG...spoiler alert:
- By Abby Mamacos on 10-09-17
By: Elin Hilderbrand
-
Golden Girl
- By: Elin Hilderbrand
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a perfect June day, Vivian Howe, author of 13 beach novels and mother of three nearly grown children, is killed in a hit-and-run car accident while jogging near her home on Nantucket. She ascends to the Beyond where she's assigned to a Person named Martha, who allows Vivi to watch what happens below for one last summer. Vivi also is granted three “nudges” to change the outcome of events on earth.
-
-
Good read!
- By Rainy day lady on 06-05-21
By: Elin Hilderbrand
-
Signal Fires
- A Novel
- By: Dani Shapiro
- Narrated by: Dani Shapiro
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Division Street is full of secrets. An impulsive lie begets a secret—one which will forever haunt the Wilf family. And the Shenkmans, who move into the neighborhood many years later, bring secrets of their own.. Spanning fifty kaleidoscopic years, on a street—and in a galaxy—where stars collapse and stories collide, these two families become bound in ways they never could have imagined. Urgent and compassionate, Signal Fires is a magical story for our times, a literary tour de force by a masterful storyteller at the height of her powers.
-
-
Depressing, poorly read
- By Arden Mahaffey on 11-02-22
By: Dani Shapiro
-
The Nature of Fragile Things
- By: Susan Meissner
- Narrated by: Alana Kerr Collins, Jason Culp
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sophie Whalen is a young Irish immigrant so desperate to get out of a New York tenement that she answers a mail-order bride ad and agrees to marry a man she knows nothing about. San Francisco widower Martin Hocking proves to be as aloof as he is mesmerizingly handsome. Sophie quickly develops deep affection for Kat, Martin's silent five-year-old daughter, but Martin's odd behavior leaves her with the uneasy feeling that something about her newfound situation isn't right.
-
-
The Nature of Fragile Things is a 5 star listen!
- By Kathy… send to help my husband to sleep!! on 02-04-21
By: Susan Meissner
-
Bel Canto
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ann Patchett’s award winning, New York Times best-selling Bel Canto balances themes of love and crisis as disparate characters learn that music is their only common language. As in Pratchett’s other novels, including Truth & Beauty and The Magician’s Assistant, the author’s lyrical prose and lucid imagination make Bel Canto a captivating story of strength and frailty, love and imprisonment, and an inspiring tale of transcendent romance.
-
-
Opera Has Charms to Soothe the Savage Guerillas
- By Mel on 03-01-13
By: Ann Patchett
-
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
-
Lucy by the Sea
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth Strout
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a panicked world goes into lockdown, Lucy Barton is uprooted from her life in Manhattan and bundled away to a small town in Maine by her ex-husband and on-again, off-again friend, William. For the next several months, it’s just Lucy, William, and their complex past together in a little house nestled against the moody, swirling sea. Rich with empathy and emotion, Lucy by the Sea vividly captures the fear and struggles that come with isolation, as well as the hope, peace, and possibilities that those long, quiet days can inspire.
-
-
Narrator
- By J. O'Connor on 09-22-22
By: Elizabeth Strout
Related to this topic
-
One True Thing
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Christina Moore
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A young woman sits in jail, accused of the mercy killing of her dying mother. She didn't do it, but she thinks she knows who did. In the last months of her life, Ellen Gulden's mother revealed startling secrets that challenged everything Ellen believed about her family. Now, in jail, Ellen believes those secrets will tell her who had the courage to end her mother's suffering.
-
-
Quindlen's writing skills shine in One True Thing.
- By Bonny on 08-26-13
By: Anna Quindlen
-
The Magician's Assistant
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Karen Ziemba
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When a gay Los Angeles magician named Parsifal dies suddenly, he leaves behind his heartbroken assistant, Sabine, and a secret past that leads her to Nebraska and a father she never knew he had.
-
-
Patchett Has It
- By Pamela Harvey on 06-10-08
By: Ann Patchett
-
Saints for All Occasions
- A Novel
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Susan Denaker
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nora and Theresa Flynn are 21 and 17 when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand.
-
-
The narration ruined it
- By Janis Reynolds on 06-12-17
-
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (Unabridged Selections)
- By: Edited by David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris, Mary-Louise Parker, Cherry Jones
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
-
-
Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
-
The Untelling
- By: Tayari Jones
- Narrated by: Michele Blackmon
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Aria is no stranger to tragedy. Fifteen years ago, a family outing took the lives of her father and baby sister, leaving remaining members of this fractured family struggling with their own guilt - real and imagined. At 25, Aria believes she can reinvent herself through her planned marriage with all its promise of a family of her own. Her infertility changes her life as swiftly and irrevocably as the urban landscape around her.
-
-
Don’t waste your time!
- By shasha on 09-18-20
By: Tayari Jones
-
The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove
- A Novel
- By: Susan Gregg Gilmore
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bezellia Grove was born into the most prominent of Nashville families, but that didn’t stop her from having an alcoholic mother and a distant, adulterous father. Her nanny, Maizelle, and Nathaniel, the handyman, are the people who have taken care of her since she can remember. She considers them family, but her parents just consider them servants because they are Black. When Bezellia has a clandestine romance with Nathaniel's son, Whites and Blacks unite in fury at the young couple.
-
-
light southern fiction
- By suzanne on 02-08-13
-
One True Thing
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Christina Moore
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A young woman sits in jail, accused of the mercy killing of her dying mother. She didn't do it, but she thinks she knows who did. In the last months of her life, Ellen Gulden's mother revealed startling secrets that challenged everything Ellen believed about her family. Now, in jail, Ellen believes those secrets will tell her who had the courage to end her mother's suffering.
-
-
Quindlen's writing skills shine in One True Thing.
- By Bonny on 08-26-13
By: Anna Quindlen
-
The Magician's Assistant
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Karen Ziemba
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When a gay Los Angeles magician named Parsifal dies suddenly, he leaves behind his heartbroken assistant, Sabine, and a secret past that leads her to Nebraska and a father she never knew he had.
-
-
Patchett Has It
- By Pamela Harvey on 06-10-08
By: Ann Patchett
-
Saints for All Occasions
- A Novel
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Susan Denaker
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nora and Theresa Flynn are 21 and 17 when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand.
-
-
The narration ruined it
- By Janis Reynolds on 06-12-17
-
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (Unabridged Selections)
- By: Edited by David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris, Mary-Louise Parker, Cherry Jones
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
-
-
Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
-
The Untelling
- By: Tayari Jones
- Narrated by: Michele Blackmon
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Aria is no stranger to tragedy. Fifteen years ago, a family outing took the lives of her father and baby sister, leaving remaining members of this fractured family struggling with their own guilt - real and imagined. At 25, Aria believes she can reinvent herself through her planned marriage with all its promise of a family of her own. Her infertility changes her life as swiftly and irrevocably as the urban landscape around her.
-
-
Don’t waste your time!
- By shasha on 09-18-20
By: Tayari Jones
-
The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove
- A Novel
- By: Susan Gregg Gilmore
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bezellia Grove was born into the most prominent of Nashville families, but that didn’t stop her from having an alcoholic mother and a distant, adulterous father. Her nanny, Maizelle, and Nathaniel, the handyman, are the people who have taken care of her since she can remember. She considers them family, but her parents just consider them servants because they are Black. When Bezellia has a clandestine romance with Nathaniel's son, Whites and Blacks unite in fury at the young couple.
-
-
light southern fiction
- By suzanne on 02-08-13
-
The Daisy Children
- A Novel
- By: Sofia Grant
- Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Katie Garrett gets the news that she’s received an inheritance from the grandmother she hardly knew, it couldn’t have come at a better time. She flees Boston and travels to rural Texas. There, she’s greeted by her distant cousin Scarlett. Friendly and flamboyant, Scarlett couldn’t be more different from sensible Katie. And as they begin the task of sorting through their grandmother’s possessions, they discover letters and photographs that uncover the hidden truths about their shared history, and the long-forgotten tragedy of the New London school explosion of 1937 that binds them.
-
-
a little odd to me
- By G-Mom on 11-09-24
By: Sofia Grant
-
How to Be an American Housewife
- A Novel
- By: Margaret Dilloway
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington, Emily Durante
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How to Be an American Housewife is a novel about mothers and daughters and the pull of tradition. It tells the story of Shoko, a Japanese woman who married an American GI, and her grown daughter, Sue, a divorced mother whose life as an American housewife hasn't been what she'd expected. When illness prevents Shoko from traveling to Japan, she asks Sue to go in her place. The trip reveals family secrets that change their lives in dramatic and unforeseen ways.
-
-
big disappointment
- By Kirsten on 04-12-12
-
The Wednesday Sisters
- By: Meg Waite Clayton
- Narrated by: Julie Dretzin
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For 35 years, Frankie, Linda, Kath, Brett, and Ally have met every Wednesday at the park near their homes in Palo Alto, California. Defined when they first meet by what their husbands do, the young homemakers and mothers are far removed from the Summer of Love that has enveloped most of the Bay Area in 1967.
-
-
Loved it!
- By Denise Wallace on 06-26-09
-
The Star Side of Bird Hill
- By: Naomi Jackson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two sisters, ages 10 and 16, are exiled from Brooklyn to Bird Hill in Barbados, after their mother can no longer care for them. The young Phaedra and her older sister, Dionne, live, for the summer of 1989, with their grandmother, Hyacinth, a midwife and practitioner of the local spiritual practice of obeah. Dionne spends the summer in search of love, testing her grandmother's limits, and wanting to go home. Phaedra explores Bird Hill, where her family has lived for generations.
-
-
My absolute favorite book of all time
- By Eme on 07-16-15
By: Naomi Jackson
-
The Visiting Privilege
- New and Collected Stories
- By: Joy Williams
- Narrated by: Richard Powers, Emily Woo Zeller, Elisabeth Rodgers, and others
- Length: 20 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joy Williams has been celebrated as a master of the short story for four decades, her renown passing from one generation to the next even in the shifting landscape of contemporary writing. And at long last the incredible scope of her singular achievement is put on display: 33 stories drawn from three much-lauded collections and another 13 appearing here for the first time in book form.
-
-
I sure tried.
- By A.C. CALLOWAY on 01-28-24
By: Joy Williams
-
Don't Let Him Know
- By: Sandip Roy
- Narrated by: Tania Rodrigues
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a boxy apartment building in an Illinois university town, Romola Mitra, a newly arrived young bride, anxiously awaits her first letter from home in India. When she accidentally opens the wrong letter, it changes her life. Decades later, her son Amit finds that letter and thinks he has discovered his mother's secret. But secrets have their own secrets sometimes.
-
-
another great book by Roy
- By Amazon Customer on 04-27-15
By: Sandip Roy
-
She's Come Undone
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: Linda Stephens
- Length: 18 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Beached like a whale in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally rolls into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before really going belly-up.
-
-
Really disappointing narrator!
- By Jessica Williams on 01-21-12
By: Wally Lamb
-
Shadow Show
- All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury
- By: Sam Weller - editor, Mort Castle - editor
- Narrated by: George Takei, Edward Herrmann, Kate Mulgrew, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ray Bradbury - peerless storyteller, poet of the impossible, and one of America's most beloved authors - is a literary giant whose remarkable career spanned seven decades. Now 26 of today's most diverse and celebrated authors offer new short works in honor of the master; stories of heart, intelligence, and dark wonder from a remarkable range of creative artists.
-
-
THE MAN WHO FORGOT RAY BRADBURY
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 05-27-17
By: Sam Weller - editor, and others
-
The Beach Trees
- By: Karen White
- Narrated by: Ki Gottberg, Gin Hammond
- Length: 15 hrs and 6 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For Julie Holt, travelling to the beautiful but ravaged coast of Biloxi, Mississippi, is a journey into a secret past, and a life she never expected.... Julie first knew loss at the age of 12, when her sister disappeared, never to be found. As her once close-knit family grew apart, Julie's mother obsessively searched for the girl, and when her mother died, Julie took up the search, never letting go of the hope. Then, at an art exhibition in New York, she meets Monica....
-
-
The ending was very weak
- By Missi Boyd on 10-31-16
By: Karen White
-
The Lost Girls
- A Novel
- By: Heather Young
- Narrated by: Alice Rosengard, Laurel Schroeder
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1935, six-year-old Emily Evans vanishes from her family's vacation home on a remote Minnesota lake. Her disappearance destroys the family - her father commits suicide, and her mother and two older sisters spend the rest of their lives at the lake house, keeping a decades-long vigil for the lost child. Sixty years later, Lucy, the quiet and watchful middle sister, lives in the lake house alone. Before her death, she writes the story of that devastating summer in a notebook that she leaves, along with the house, to the only person who might care: her grandniece, Justine.
-
-
Engaging story spanning three generations.
- By LilMissMolly on 09-23-16
By: Heather Young
-
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
-
Chanel Bonfire
- By: Wendy Lawless
- Narrated by: Wendy Lawless
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By the time Wendy Lawless turned 17, she'd known for quite some time that she didn't have a normal mother. But that didn't stop her from wanting one.... Georgann Rea didn't bake cookies or go to PTA meetings; she wore a mink coat and always had a lit Dunhill plugged into her cigarette holder. She went through men like Kleenex, and didn't like dogs or children. Georgann had the ice queen beauty of a Hitchcock heroine and the cold heart to match.
-
-
Not an Engaging Listen
- By Sobriquet on 03-13-13
By: Wendy Lawless
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
One True Thing
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Christina Moore
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A young woman sits in jail, accused of the mercy killing of her dying mother. She didn't do it, but she thinks she knows who did. In the last months of her life, Ellen Gulden's mother revealed startling secrets that challenged everything Ellen believed about her family. Now, in jail, Ellen believes those secrets will tell her who had the courage to end her mother's suffering.
-
-
Quindlen's writing skills shine in One True Thing.
- By Bonny on 08-26-13
By: Anna Quindlen
-
Every Last One
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Hope Davis
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this breathtaking and beautiful novel, the #1 New York Times best-selling author Anna Quindlen creates an unforgettable portrait of a mother, a father, a family, and the explosive, violent consequences of what seem like inconsequential actions.
-
-
Almost Unbearably Sad, Completely Wonderful
- By Kimberly on 04-28-10
By: Anna Quindlen
-
Blessings
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Joan Allen
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Late one night, a teenage couple drives up to the big white clapboard home on the Blessing estate and leaves a box. In that instant, the lives of those who live and work there are changed forever. Skip Cuddy, the caretaker, finds a baby girl asleep in that box and decides he wants to keep the child . . . while Lydia Blessing, the matriarch of the estate, for her own reasons, agrees to help him.
-
-
Captivating
- By Janet on 12-19-02
By: Anna Quindlen
-
Miller's Valley
- A Novel
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a young girl in Miller's Valley, an ordinary farming town that may be facing its final days, Mimi is observing adults, selling corn, growing up and changing, and watching the world around her change, too. As the years go by, the unthinkable starts to seem inevitable. Anna Quindlen's novel takes us through the changing eras of Mimi and her family, as secrets are revealed, and the heartbreaks of growing up and falling in love with the wrong man are overcome.
-
-
Quietly engaging
- By Taryn on 01-07-17
By: Anna Quindlen
-
Black and Blue
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Ruth Ann Phimister
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When 19-year-old Fran married Bobby Benedetto, she never dreamed that she would find herself in an abusive relationship. Every time her New York City policeman husband hit her, she would think of convincing reasons to stay. Now, with her 10-year-old son in tow, she is running for her life.
-
-
Another Quindlen Jewel
- By Carol T. Carr on 09-11-12
By: Anna Quindlen
-
Rise and Shine
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Carol Monda
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's Monday morning when Meghan Fitzmaurice blows her perfect life to bits. The host of Rise and Shine, the country's highest-rated morning talk show, Meghan cuts to a commercial break, but not before she mutters two forbidden words into her open mike. It's the end of an era, not only for Meghan, a household face who is not equipped to deal with disgrace, but for her younger sister Bridget, a social worker in the Bronx who has always lived in Meghan's long shadow.
-
-
Not her best
- By Yorkshire Exile on 11-12-06
By: Anna Quindlen
-
One True Thing
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Christina Moore
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A young woman sits in jail, accused of the mercy killing of her dying mother. She didn't do it, but she thinks she knows who did. In the last months of her life, Ellen Gulden's mother revealed startling secrets that challenged everything Ellen believed about her family. Now, in jail, Ellen believes those secrets will tell her who had the courage to end her mother's suffering.
-
-
Quindlen's writing skills shine in One True Thing.
- By Bonny on 08-26-13
By: Anna Quindlen
-
Every Last One
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Hope Davis
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this breathtaking and beautiful novel, the #1 New York Times best-selling author Anna Quindlen creates an unforgettable portrait of a mother, a father, a family, and the explosive, violent consequences of what seem like inconsequential actions.
-
-
Almost Unbearably Sad, Completely Wonderful
- By Kimberly on 04-28-10
By: Anna Quindlen
-
Blessings
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Joan Allen
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Late one night, a teenage couple drives up to the big white clapboard home on the Blessing estate and leaves a box. In that instant, the lives of those who live and work there are changed forever. Skip Cuddy, the caretaker, finds a baby girl asleep in that box and decides he wants to keep the child . . . while Lydia Blessing, the matriarch of the estate, for her own reasons, agrees to help him.
-
-
Captivating
- By Janet on 12-19-02
By: Anna Quindlen
-
Miller's Valley
- A Novel
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a young girl in Miller's Valley, an ordinary farming town that may be facing its final days, Mimi is observing adults, selling corn, growing up and changing, and watching the world around her change, too. As the years go by, the unthinkable starts to seem inevitable. Anna Quindlen's novel takes us through the changing eras of Mimi and her family, as secrets are revealed, and the heartbreaks of growing up and falling in love with the wrong man are overcome.
-
-
Quietly engaging
- By Taryn on 01-07-17
By: Anna Quindlen
-
Black and Blue
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Ruth Ann Phimister
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When 19-year-old Fran married Bobby Benedetto, she never dreamed that she would find herself in an abusive relationship. Every time her New York City policeman husband hit her, she would think of convincing reasons to stay. Now, with her 10-year-old son in tow, she is running for her life.
-
-
Another Quindlen Jewel
- By Carol T. Carr on 09-11-12
By: Anna Quindlen
-
Rise and Shine
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Carol Monda
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's Monday morning when Meghan Fitzmaurice blows her perfect life to bits. The host of Rise and Shine, the country's highest-rated morning talk show, Meghan cuts to a commercial break, but not before she mutters two forbidden words into her open mike. It's the end of an era, not only for Meghan, a household face who is not equipped to deal with disgrace, but for her younger sister Bridget, a social worker in the Bronx who has always lived in Meghan's long shadow.
-
-
Not her best
- By Yorkshire Exile on 11-12-06
By: Anna Quindlen
-
Still Life with Bread Crumbs
- A Novel
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Still Life with Bread Crumbs begins with an imagined gunshot and ends with a new tin roof. Between the two is a wry and knowing portrait of Rebecca Winter, a photographer whose work made her an unlikely heroine for many women. Her career is now descendent, her bank balance shaky, and she has fled the city for the middle of nowhere. There she discovers, in a tree stand with a roofer named Jim Bates, that what she sees through a camera lens is not all there is to life.
-
-
A Gentrified Harlequin
- By Michele Kellett on 03-24-14
By: Anna Quindlen
-
Alternate Side
- A Novel
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Some days Nora Nolan thinks that she and her husband, Charlie, lead a charmed life - except when there’s a crisis at work, a leak in the roof at home, or a problem with their twins at college. And why not? New York City was once Nora’s dream destination, and her clannish dead-end block has become a safe harbor, a tranquil village amid the urban craziness. Then one morning she returns from her run to discover that a terrible incident has shaken the neighborhood, and the fault lines begin to open: on the block, at her job, especially in her marriage.
-
-
An excellent listen
- By Irene on 03-27-18
By: Anna Quindlen
-
After Annie
- A Novel
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Gilli Messer
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Annie Brown dies suddenly, her husband, her children, and her closest friend are left to find a way forward without the woman who has been the lynchpin of all their lives. Bill is overwhelmed without his beloved wife, and Annemarie wrestles with the bad habits her best friend had helped her overcome. And Ali, the eldest of Annie’s children, has to grow up overnight, to care for her younger brothers and even her father and to puzzle out for herself many of the mysteries of adult life. Over the course of the next year what saves them all is Annie.
-
-
Quindlen’s latest
- By Anonymous User on 03-03-24
By: Anna Quindlen
-
Touch
- A Novel
- By: Olaf Olafsson
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the pandemic hits, Kristofer is forced to shutter his successful restaurant in Reykjavik, sending him into a spiral of uncertainty, even as his memory seems to be failing. But an uncanny bolt from the blue—a message from Miko Nakamura, a woman whom he’d known in the sixties when they were students in London—both inspires and rattles him, as he is drawn inexorably back into a love story that has marked him for life.
-
-
Awful reader
- By maryelleninmaine on 05-19-24
By: Olaf Olafsson
-
The Diary of Mattie Spenser
- By: Sandra Dallas
- Narrated by: Celeste Ciulla
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No one is more surprised than Mattie Spenser herself when Luke Spenser, considered the great catch of their small Iowa town, asks her to marry him. Less than a month later, they are off in a covered wagon to build a home on the Colorado frontier. Mattie's only company is a slightly mysterious husband and her private journal, where she records the joys and frustrations not just of frontier life, but also of a new marriage to a handsome, but distant stranger.
-
-
Good book. Liked the lessons learned.
- By Shelly on 04-27-17
By: Sandra Dallas
-
The Last Equation of Isaac Severy
- By: Nova Jacobs
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Just days after mathematician and family patriarch Isaac Severy dies of an apparent suicide, his adopted granddaughter Hazel, owner of a struggling Seattle bookstore, receives a letter from him by mail. In it, Isaac alludes to a secretive organization that is after his final bombshell equation, and he charges Hazel with safely delivering it to a trusted colleague. But first, she must find where the equation is hidden.
-
-
Spoiler Alert
- By Andre on 03-04-20
By: Nova Jacobs
-
My Husband
- A Novel
- By: Maud Ventura, Emma Ramadan - translator
- Narrated by: Kiiri Sandy
- Length: 5 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At forty years old, she has an enviable life: a successful career, stunning looks, a beautiful house in the suburbs, two healthy children, and most importantly, an ideal husband, whose wealthy background allows her to transcend her own social class. After fifteen years together, she is still besotted with him. But she’s never quite sure that her passion is reciprocated.
-
-
Mind numbingly boring and shallow.
- By GAYANE TOROSYAN on 10-27-23
By: Maud Ventura, and others
-
The Bookshop
- By: Penelope Fitzgerald
- Narrated by: Pearl Hewitt
- Length: 3 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1959, Florence Green, a kindhearted widow with a small inheritance, risks everything to open a bookshop - the only bookshop - in the seaside town of Hardborough. By making a success of a business so impractical, she invites the hostility of the town's less prosperous shopkeepers. By daring to enlarge her neighbors' lives, she crosses Mrs. Gamart, the local arts doyenne. Florence's warehouse leaks, her cellar seeps, and the shop is apparently haunted. Only too late does she begin to suspect the truth: a town that lacks a bookshop isn't always a town that wants one.
-
-
Fitzgerald keeps it real.
- By Patrick Zircher on 06-25-24
-
Picture Perfect Autumn
- A Novel
- By: Shelley Noble
- Narrated by: Em Grosland
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dani Campbell is the latest darling of the Manhattan art scene. As a self-taught photographer, Dani is loving every minute of her sudden popularity, but has no idea how she got there, or a clue as to how to stay. On a shoot at an antiques barn, she discovers an envelope of old photos and sees in them what her photos are missing. Her search for their source leads Dani to a small Rhode Island town, a dilapidated American Gothic beach house—and Lawrence Sinclair.
-
-
I liked the story very much
- By Izzy on 03-17-24
By: Shelley Noble
-
The Golden Gals' French Adventure
- By: Judy Leigh
- Narrated by: Phyllida Nash
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fliss might not be great at life’s chores, but she is great at seizing opportunities, so when the chance for a jaunt to France’s beautiful Brittany comes her way, she decides it’s just what she and Shirl need. And as the sun-soaked town of Plouvannec-Sur-Mer begins to work its magic on the women, they realise there’s another way to live.
-
-
Fun, but a very slow start
- By Ambini on 11-19-24
By: Judy Leigh
-
Under the Light of the Italian Moon
- By: Jennifer Anton
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nina Argenta doesn’t want the traditional life of a rural Italian woman. The daughter of a strong-willed midwife, she is determined to define her own destiny. But when her brother emigrates to America, she promises her mother to never leave. When childhood friend Pietro Pante briefly returns to their mountain town, passion between them ignites while Mussolini forces political tensions to rise. Just as their romance deepens, Pietro must leave again for work in the coal mines of America. Nina is torn between joining him and her commitment to Italy and her mother.
-
-
Bravo!
- By BlueBoots6 on 05-01-24
By: Jennifer Anton
-
The Bookshop
- By: Penelope Fitzgerald, Stephanie Racine, David Nicholls - introduction
- Narrated by: Eve Karpf, David Nicholls
- Length: 4 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a small East Anglian town, Florence Green decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop. Hardborough becomes a battleground. Florence has tried to change the way things have always been done, and as a result she has to take on not only the people who have made themselves important but natural and even supernatural forces, too. Her fate will strike a chord with anyone who knows that life has treated them with less than justice.
-
-
On my to read list for a long time
- By theenglishmajor on 02-23-18
By: Penelope Fitzgerald, and others
What listeners say about Object Lessons
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Natalie
- 05-20-19
Poignant story of life
The author captured the differences and interconnectedness of the characters in a family incredibly well. The narrator was able to handle the many different voices of the characters in a way that brought them to life.
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
- Pat
- 01-02-20
Worst reader ever
This was a good book but the reader was so awful that I almost returned it. Her wispy monotone was bad enough, but her mispronunciations were miserable to hear. For example, she pronounced possessives such as kids’ as “kidses ”... weird and annoying after a while.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful