Seeking Fortune Elsewhere
Stories
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 $17.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Soneela Nankani
-
By:
-
Sindya Bhanoo
About this listen
These intimate stories of South Indian immigrants and the families they left behind center women's lives and ask how women both claim and surrender power—a stunning debut collection from an O. Henry Prize winner
Traveling from Pittsburgh to Eastern Washington to Tamil Nadu, these stories about dislocation and dissonance see immigrants and their families confront the costs of leaving and staying, identifying sublime symmetries in lives growing apart.
In "Malliga Homes," selected by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for an O. Henry Prize, a widow in a retirement community glimpses her future while waiting for her daughter to visit from America. In "No. 16 Model House Road," a woman long subordinate to her husband makes a choice of her own after she inherits a house. In "Nature Exchange," a mother grieving in the wake of a school shooting finds an unusual obsession. In "A Life in America," a professor finds himself accused of having exploited his graduate students.
Sindya Bhanoo's haunting stories show us how immigrants' paths, and the paths of those they leave behind, are never simple. Bhanoo takes us along on their complicated journeys where regret, hope, and triumph appear in disguise.
©2022 Sindya Narayanaswamy (P)2023 HighBridge, a division of Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
-
A History of Burning
- By: Janika Oza
- Narrated by: Lipica Shah, KP Upadhyayula
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1898, Pirbhai, a teenage boy looking for work, is taken from his village in India to labor for the British on the East African Railway. Far from home, Pirbhai commits a brutal act in the name of survival that will haunt him and his family for years to come. So begins Janika Oza’s masterful, richly told epic, where the embers of this desperate act are fanned into flame over four generations, four continents, throughout the twentieth century.
-
-
Slow burn
- By Workin'Grrrrl on 06-15-23
By: Janika Oza
-
The Bandit Queens
- A Novel
- By: Parini Shroff
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 13 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Five years ago, Geeta lost her no-good husband. As in, she actually lost him—he walked out on her and she has no idea where he is. But in her remote village in India, rumor has it that Geeta killed him. And it’s a rumor that just won’t die.
-
-
Not great
- By Brandy T on 01-09-23
By: Parini Shroff
-
Homesickness
- Stories
- By: Colin Barrett
- Narrated by: Trevor Kaneswaran
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A quiet night in a local pub is shattered by the arrival of a sword wielding fugitive; a funeral party teeters on the edge of this world and the next, as ghosts simply won’t lay in wake; a shooting sees a veteran policewoman confront the banality of her own existence; and an aspiring writer grapples with his father’s cancer diagnosis and in his despair wreaks havoc on his mentor’s life.
-
-
Irish Stories
- By Donea Clancy on 03-28-24
By: Colin Barrett
-
This Is Not Miami
- By: Fernanda Melchor
- Narrated by: Elodie Martinez
- Length: 4 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in and around the Mexican city of Veracruz, This Is Not Miami delivers a series of devastating stories—spiraling from real events—that bleed together reportage and the author’s rich and rigorous imagination.
By: Fernanda Melchor
-
Temple Folk
- By: Aaliyah Bilal
- Narrated by: Amir Abdullah, Chanté McCormick, Soneela Nankani, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Temple Folk, Black Muslims contemplate the convictions of their race, religion, economics, politics, and sexuality in America. The ten “beautiful and vivid” (Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award–winning and New York Times bestselling author) stories in this collection contribute to the bounty of diverse narratives about Black life by intimately portraying the experiences of a community that resists the mainstream culture to which they are expected to accept and aspire to while functioning within the country in which they are born.
-
-
Insightful
- By Amazon Customer on 04-25-24
By: Aaliyah Bilal
-
A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times
- Stories
- By: Meron Hadero
- Narrated by: Samba Schutte, Emebeit Beyene, Dele Ogundiran, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set across the United States and abroad, Meron Hadero’s stories feature immigrants, refugees, and those on the brink of dispossession, all struggling to begin again, all fighting to belong. Moving through diverse geographies and styles, this captivating collection follows characters on the journey toward home, which they dream of, create and redefine, lose and find, and make their own. Beyond migration, these stories examine themes of race, gender, class, friendship, betrayal, the despair of loss, and the enduring resilience of hope.
By: Meron Hadero
-
A History of Burning
- By: Janika Oza
- Narrated by: Lipica Shah, KP Upadhyayula
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1898, Pirbhai, a teenage boy looking for work, is taken from his village in India to labor for the British on the East African Railway. Far from home, Pirbhai commits a brutal act in the name of survival that will haunt him and his family for years to come. So begins Janika Oza’s masterful, richly told epic, where the embers of this desperate act are fanned into flame over four generations, four continents, throughout the twentieth century.
-
-
Slow burn
- By Workin'Grrrrl on 06-15-23
By: Janika Oza
-
The Bandit Queens
- A Novel
- By: Parini Shroff
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 13 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Five years ago, Geeta lost her no-good husband. As in, she actually lost him—he walked out on her and she has no idea where he is. But in her remote village in India, rumor has it that Geeta killed him. And it’s a rumor that just won’t die.
-
-
Not great
- By Brandy T on 01-09-23
By: Parini Shroff
-
Homesickness
- Stories
- By: Colin Barrett
- Narrated by: Trevor Kaneswaran
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A quiet night in a local pub is shattered by the arrival of a sword wielding fugitive; a funeral party teeters on the edge of this world and the next, as ghosts simply won’t lay in wake; a shooting sees a veteran policewoman confront the banality of her own existence; and an aspiring writer grapples with his father’s cancer diagnosis and in his despair wreaks havoc on his mentor’s life.
-
-
Irish Stories
- By Donea Clancy on 03-28-24
By: Colin Barrett
-
This Is Not Miami
- By: Fernanda Melchor
- Narrated by: Elodie Martinez
- Length: 4 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in and around the Mexican city of Veracruz, This Is Not Miami delivers a series of devastating stories—spiraling from real events—that bleed together reportage and the author’s rich and rigorous imagination.
By: Fernanda Melchor
-
Temple Folk
- By: Aaliyah Bilal
- Narrated by: Amir Abdullah, Chanté McCormick, Soneela Nankani, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Temple Folk, Black Muslims contemplate the convictions of their race, religion, economics, politics, and sexuality in America. The ten “beautiful and vivid” (Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award–winning and New York Times bestselling author) stories in this collection contribute to the bounty of diverse narratives about Black life by intimately portraying the experiences of a community that resists the mainstream culture to which they are expected to accept and aspire to while functioning within the country in which they are born.
-
-
Insightful
- By Amazon Customer on 04-25-24
By: Aaliyah Bilal
-
A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times
- Stories
- By: Meron Hadero
- Narrated by: Samba Schutte, Emebeit Beyene, Dele Ogundiran, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set across the United States and abroad, Meron Hadero’s stories feature immigrants, refugees, and those on the brink of dispossession, all struggling to begin again, all fighting to belong. Moving through diverse geographies and styles, this captivating collection follows characters on the journey toward home, which they dream of, create and redefine, lose and find, and make their own. Beyond migration, these stories examine themes of race, gender, class, friendship, betrayal, the despair of loss, and the enduring resilience of hope.
By: Meron Hadero
-
The Sorrows of Others
- By: Ada Zhang
- Narrated by: Catherine Ho, Si Chen, Kaipo Schwab
- Length: 4 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In New York City, an art student finds an unexpected subject when she moves in with a grandmother from Xi’an, and boundaries are put into question. When a newlywed couple moves to Arizona, adapting to unfamiliar customs keeps their marriage from falling apart. A woman grapples with what it means to care for another, and the limits of that care, when her dying husband returns from Beijing years after abandoning her. And during a rainy summer in Texas, a visitor exposes the unspoken but unburiable history that binds two families together.
-
-
Bravo
- By Anonymous User on 11-08-24
By: Ada Zhang
-
Leg
- The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It
- By: Greg Marshall
- Narrated by: Greg Marshall
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Greg Marshall's early years were pretty bizarre. Rewind the VHS tapes and you'll see a lopsided teenager limping across a high school stage, or in a wheelchair after leg surgeries, pondering why he's crushing on half of the Utah Jazz. Add to this home video footage a mom clacking away at her newspaper column between chemos, a dad with ALS, and a cast of foulmouthed siblings. Fast forward the tape and you'll find Marshall happily settled into his life as a gay man only to discover he's been living in another closet his whole life.
-
-
Funny and sweet
- By Anonymous User on 06-27-24
By: Greg Marshall
-
Destination Wedding
- A Novel
- By: Diksha Basu
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Tina Das finds herself at a crossroads both professionally and personally, she wonders if a weeklong trip to Delhi for her cousin’s lavish wedding might be just the right kind of escape. Maybe a little time away from New York will help get her mind straight about her stalled career, her recent breakup, and her nagging suspicion that she’ll never feel as at home in America as she does in India. Tina hopes this destination wedding, taking place at Delhi’s poshest country club, Colebrookes, will be the perfect way to reflect and unwind.
-
-
too many details but also not enough
- By LovelyD on 02-27-24
By: Diksha Basu
-
A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness
- Stories
- By: Jai Chakrabarti
- Narrated by: Sharmila Devar, Shawn K. Jain
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the fifteen masterful stories that make up this collection, Jai Chakrabarti crosses continents and cultures to explore what it means to cultivate a family today, across borders, religions, and race.
-
-
Worth a Second Listen
- By Andre on 04-14-23
By: Jai Chakrabarti
-
The Immortal King Rao
- By: Vauhini Vara
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 15 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In an Indian village in the 1950s, a precocious child is born into a family of Dalit coconut farmers. King Rao will grow up to be the most accomplished tech CEO in the world and, eventually, the leader of a global, corporate-led government. In a future in which the world is run by the Board of Corporations, King’s daughter, Athena, reckons with his legacy—literally, for he has given her access to his memories, among other questionable gifts.
-
-
it didn't have a resolution.
- By Cooper Travis on 06-24-22
By: Vauhini Vara
-
Scent of a Garden
- A Novel
- By: Namrata Patel
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The daughter of proud Napa Valley hoteliers, Asha “Poppy” Patel chose a different line as a Paris perfumer, gifted with a nose for fragrances and business. Until her heightened sense of smell disappears. Her career in jeopardy, her world now muted, Poppy returns home. Maybe tending to her grandmother’s massive aromatic garden, where Poppy’s gift first flowered, will bring restorative hope. But when she arrives, Poppy discovers that the land upon which the beautiful garden once thrived has been uprooted and destroyed.
-
-
I Have Never Disliked Main Characters So Much In My Life
- By Amazon Customer on 07-02-23
By: Namrata Patel
-
Pearl
- By: Siân Hughes
- Narrated by: Laura Brydon
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Marianne is eight years old when her mother goes missing. Left behind with her baby brother and grieving father in a ramshackle house on the edge of a small village, she clings to the fragmented memories of her mother’s love; the smell of fresh herbs, the games they played, and the songs and stories of her childhood. As time passes, Marianne struggles to adjust, fixated on her mother’s disappearance and the secrets she’s sure her father is keeping from her.
-
-
a meditation of memory, grief, and motherhood.
- By Barbara S on 10-08-23
By: Siân Hughes
-
They Called Us Exceptional
- And Other Lies That Raised Us
- By: Prachi Gupta
- Narrated by: Prachi Gupta
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Prachi Gupta’s family embodied the American Dream: a doctor father and a nurturing mother who raised two high-achieving children with one foot in the Indian American community, the other in Pennsylvania’s white suburbia. But their belonging was predicated on a powerful myth: that Asian Americans have perfected the alchemy of middle-class life, raising tight-knit, ambitious families that are immune to hardship.
-
-
Good good
- By Wild on 08-29-23
By: Prachi Gupta
-
Young Skins
- Stories
- By: Colin Barrett
- Narrated by: Jack Reynolds
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Enter the small, rural town of Glanbeigh - a place whose fate took a downturn with the Celtic Tiger. It's a desolate spot where buffoonery and tension simmer and erupt, and booze-sodden boredom fills the corners of every pub and nightclub. Here, and in the towns beyond, the young live hard and wear the scars.
By: Colin Barrett
-
Summer of '69
- By: Elin Hilderbrand
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Welcome to the most tumultuous summer of the 20th century. It's 1969, and for the Levin family, the times they are a-changing. Every year, the children have looked forward to spending the summer at their grandmother's historic home in downtown Nantucket. But like so much else in America, nothing is the same.
-
-
great story
- By Amazon Customer on 07-09-19
By: Elin Hilderbrand
-
Crying in H Mart
- A Memoir
- By: Michelle Zauner
- Narrated by: Michelle Zauner
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian-American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.
-
-
Broken Korean
- By Tim on 04-21-21
By: Michelle Zauner
-
Stories from the Tenants Downstairs
- By: Sidik Fofana
- Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Nile Bullock, Sidik Fofana, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Like Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place, Sidik Fofana’s electrifying collection of eight interconnected stories showcases the strengths, struggles, and hopes of one residential community in a powerful storytelling experience. Each short story follows a tenant in the Banneker Homes, a low-income high rise in Harlem where gentrification weighs on everyone’s mind. We root for these characters and more as they weave in and out of each other’s lives, endeavoring to escape from their pasts and blaze new paths forward for themselves and the people they love.
-
-
blah
- By Amazon Customer on 11-09-22
By: Sidik Fofana
Related to this topic
-
In the Time of Our History
- By: Susanne Pari
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marnò
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twelve months after her younger sister Anahita's death, Mitra Jahani reluctantly returns to her parents' home in suburban New Jersey to observe the Iranian custom of "The One Year." Ana is always in Mitra's heart, though they chose very different paths. While Ana, sweet and dutiful, bowed to their domineering father's demands and married, Mitra rebelled, and was banished.
-
-
Enjoyable
- By J. E. Jordan on 05-23-23
By: Susanne Pari
-
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 Parted Earth
- By: Anjali Enjeti
- Narrated by: Deepti Gupta
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning more than half a century and cities from New Delhi to Atlanta, Anjali Enjeti’s debut is a heartfelt and human portrait of the long shadow of the partition of the Indian subcontinent on the lives of three generations.
-
-
Riveting
- By MSE on 05-14-21
By: Anjali Enjeti
-
Black Sunday
- A Novel
- By: Tola Rotimi Abraham
- Narrated by: Liz Femi, Dele Ogundiran, Miebaka Yohannes, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twin sisters Bibike and Ariyike are enjoying a relatively comfortable life in Lagos in 1996. Then their mother loses her job due to political strife, and the family, facing poverty, is drawn into the New Church, an institution led by a charismatic pastor who is not shy about worshipping earthly wealth. Soon Bibike and Ariyike's father wagers the family home on a sure bet that evaporates like smoke.
-
-
Good Story - Awful accents
- By Tamara C-J on 02-15-21
-
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
-
Lone Stars
- By: Justin Deabler
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lone Stars follows the arc of four generations of a Texan family in a changing America. Julian Warner, a father at last, wrestles with a question his husband posed: what will you tell our son about the people you came from, now that they're gone? Finding the answers takes Julian back in time to Eisenhower's immigration border raids, an epistolary love affair during the Vietnam War, crumbling marriages, queer migrations to Cambridge and New York, up to the disorienting polarization of Obama's second term.
-
-
Read for bookclub but fell in Love
- By Ericka Lawson on 09-11-22
By: Justin Deabler
-
In the Time of Our History
- By: Susanne Pari
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marnò
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twelve months after her younger sister Anahita's death, Mitra Jahani reluctantly returns to her parents' home in suburban New Jersey to observe the Iranian custom of "The One Year." Ana is always in Mitra's heart, though they chose very different paths. While Ana, sweet and dutiful, bowed to their domineering father's demands and married, Mitra rebelled, and was banished.
-
-
Enjoyable
- By J. E. Jordan on 05-23-23
By: Susanne Pari
-
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 Parted Earth
- By: Anjali Enjeti
- Narrated by: Deepti Gupta
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning more than half a century and cities from New Delhi to Atlanta, Anjali Enjeti’s debut is a heartfelt and human portrait of the long shadow of the partition of the Indian subcontinent on the lives of three generations.
-
-
Riveting
- By MSE on 05-14-21
By: Anjali Enjeti
-
Black Sunday
- A Novel
- By: Tola Rotimi Abraham
- Narrated by: Liz Femi, Dele Ogundiran, Miebaka Yohannes, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twin sisters Bibike and Ariyike are enjoying a relatively comfortable life in Lagos in 1996. Then their mother loses her job due to political strife, and the family, facing poverty, is drawn into the New Church, an institution led by a charismatic pastor who is not shy about worshipping earthly wealth. Soon Bibike and Ariyike's father wagers the family home on a sure bet that evaporates like smoke.
-
-
Good Story - Awful accents
- By Tamara C-J on 02-15-21
-
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
-
Lone Stars
- By: Justin Deabler
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lone Stars follows the arc of four generations of a Texan family in a changing America. Julian Warner, a father at last, wrestles with a question his husband posed: what will you tell our son about the people you came from, now that they're gone? Finding the answers takes Julian back in time to Eisenhower's immigration border raids, an epistolary love affair during the Vietnam War, crumbling marriages, queer migrations to Cambridge and New York, up to the disorienting polarization of Obama's second term.
-
-
Read for bookclub but fell in Love
- By Ericka Lawson on 09-11-22
By: Justin Deabler