So Cold the River
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Narrated by:
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Robert Petkoff
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By:
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Michael Koryta
About this listen
Now a major motion picture: So Cold the River is a chilling, supernatural tale "guaranteed to put the cold finger down your spine" (Michael Connelly).
It started with a beautiful woman and a challenge. As a gift for her husband, Alyssa Bradford approaches Eric Shaw to make a documentary about her father-in-law, Campbell Bradford, a 95-year-old billionaire whose past is wrapped in mystery. Eric grabs the job even though there are few clues to the man's past—just the name of his hometown and an antique water bottle he's kept his entire life.
In Bradford's hometown, Eric discovers an extraordinary history—a glorious domed hotel where movie stars, presidents, athletes, and mobsters once mingled, and hot springs whose miraculous mineral water cured everything from insomnia to malaria. Neglected for years, the resort has been restored to its former grandeur just in time for Eric's stay.
Just hours after his arrival, Eric experiences a frighteningly vivid vision. As the days pass, the frequency and intensity of his hallucinations increase and draw Eric deeper into the town's dark history. He discovers that something besides the hotel has been restored—a long-forgotten evil that will stop at nothing to regain its lost glory. Brilliantly imagined and terrifyingly real, So Cold the River is a tale of irresistible suspense with a racing, unstoppable current.
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Brooding, grainy-voiced Shakespearean stage actor Robert Petkoff narrates So Cold the River, mystery novelist Michael Koryta's icy, supernatural ghost story set in a rural Indiana town built on Pluto Water, a bottled mineral laxative of the early 1900s rumored to cure headaches, indigestion, even alcoholism. Petkoff haunts as cynical, broken Eric Shaw, a failed Hollywood documentary filmmaker who slumps home to Chicago, gets dumped by wife Claire, and starts stringing together freelance photo chronicles for weddings and funerals: "Video life portraits, that's what he called them, an attempt to lend some credibility to what was essentially a glorified slide show." Oh, and Eric also connects with dead peoples' personal belongings.
Evil snarls from the grave when grieving Alyssa Bradford hires Eric to shoot an homage to her secretive, dying 95-year-old billionaire father-in-law, Campbell. First assignment - capturing Campbell's humble roots near sparsely populated French Lick, Indiana, where Eric lodges at the improbably located luxury West Baden Springs Hotel (a real registered national historic landmark). But not even its soaring atrium dome can shade him from the rotten-egg stench of sulfur. As Eric keeps digging, an 80-year-old bottle of Pluto Water from Campbell's collection frosts, turning murky, while weather patterns predict a violent storm. He takes a sip of Pluto, and the hallucinations spin - shadows in rumpled suits, railroad trains, and violin strains pouring from a piano. At least Claire believes him.
Petkoff softens Eric with undercurrents of grit and exhaustion, so even when he's hysterical with foreshadowing, he's still grounded. The character of Anne McKinney, octogenarian widow and de facto Pluto historian, studies barometric pressure. Fittingly, her voice guides the book's emotional climate. Practical yet nostalgic, Anne nurses a daily gin and tonic at the local bar. Petkoff recognizes she's a creature of habit and tracks her quirky moods with the same steady hum. Eventually the rituals of her chuckles and her leisurely breaks and pauses stop making a difference as the past fades the present into black. - Nita Rao
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When paranoid schizophrenic killer Michael Hrubek escapes from an institution, there’s no doubt of where he’s headed: to find the woman who put him away and to finally get his revenge. Lis Atcheson knows he’s out there - the man who killed two of her students. He’s haunted every sleepless night ever since she testified against him. Now, the nightmares are coming true. He’s watching...and waiting...and he’s going to take Lis to hell with him. With a massive storm coming - in more ways than one - Lis can barely prepare for the dark cloud that approaches.
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Too many disfunctional people here
- By Trudy Owens on 06-23-20
By: Jeffery Deaver
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The Shadowkiller
- A Novel
- By: Matthew Scott Hansen
- Narrated by: William Dufris
- Length: 15 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Bigfoot wants revenge! Just as Jaws terrified people right out of the water, The Shadowkiller will keep readers out of the woods...for good.
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Excellent!
- By Nathan on 10-04-10
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Dark Memories
- By: Jeffrey S. Savage
- Narrated by: Jason Tatom
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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There are things in the darkness, things much worse than the tracks and abandoned pieces of equipment that trip the children up and gash at their feet and legs, things that brush silently past them, touching their faces before disappearing again....
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EZRA QUIT GOING TO CHURCH
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 05-11-17
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Dangerous Refuge
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth Lowell
- Narrated by: Betsy Zajko
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Beautiful, sweet Shay and dark, dangerous Tanner don′t have a lot in common. He′s a suspicious big city cop come home to his family′s ranch and she′s a bleeding heart who works for a group that seeks out ranches to conserve after the owners have passed away. But the suspicious death of Tanner′s uncle at his ranch throws the two opposites together and sparks fly.
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SADLY, IT'S NOT UP TO HER USUAL STANDARDS
- By CAROLYN 🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹 on 04-12-13
By: Elizabeth Lowell
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The Hum and the Shiver
- The Tufa Novels, Book 1
- By: Alex Bledsoe
- Narrated by: Emily Janice Card, Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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No one knows where the Tufa came from or how they ended up in the mountains of east Tennessee. When the first Europeans came to the Smoky Mountains, the Tufa were already there. Dark-haired and enigmatic, they live quietly in the hills and valleys of Cloud County, their origins lost to history. But there are clues in their music, hidden in the songs they have passed down for generations.
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Excellent story that combines music and folklore
- By T. L. Walker on 10-01-15
By: Alex Bledsoe
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Our Story Begins
- New and Selected Stories
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Wolff here returns with fresh revelations - about biding one's time, or experiencing first love, or burying one's mother - that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary. A retired Marine enrolls in college while her son trains for Iraq. A lawyer takes a difficult deposition. An American in Rome indulges the Gypsy who's picked his pocket.
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Great
- By chris on 04-11-08
By: Tobias Wolff
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You Will Pay
- By: Lisa Jackson
- Narrated by: Scott Merriman, Teri Clark Linden
- Length: 15 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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It starts as a prank - a way to blow off steam after a long summer at Camp Horseshoe. Among the teen counselors, tensions and hormones are running high. No wonder the others agree when Jo-Beth Chancellor suggests they scare Monica O'Neal a little.... or a lot. Monica has it coming, and no one will really get hurt. What could go wrong? Everything.
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Waste of a credit. No mystery here, I figured it out before finishing first chapter.
- By Toni R. on 06-10-17
By: Lisa Jackson
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Raven Stole the Moon
- A Novel
- By: Garth Stein
- Narrated by: Jennifer Van Dyck
- Length: 12 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Jenna Rosen returns to the place in Alaska where her young son, Bobby, disappeared without a trace two years before. Jenna is determined to lay to rest the aching mystery of his death. But ancient legends may have had a hand in Bobby’s fate, forcing Jenna to sift through her own Native American ancestry to uncover the truth.
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I love this book
- By Em mom of 3 on 08-27-18
By: Garth Stein
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The Supernaturals
- By: David L. Golemon
- Narrated by: Stephen R. Thorne
- Length: 16 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Seven years ago Professor Gabriel Kennedy's investigation into paranormal activity at Summer Place ended in tragedy and destroyed his career. Now Kelly Delaphoy, the ambitious producer of a top-rated ghost-hunting television series, is determined to make Summer Place the centerpiece of an epic live broadcast on Halloween night. To ensure success she needs help from the one man who has come face-to-face with the evil that dwells in Summer Place, a man still haunted by the ghosts of his own failure.
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A Review for Anybody Who Owns the Previous Version
- By Jessica Davis on 11-04-16
By: David L. Golemon
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Niceville
- By: Carsten Stroud
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Lee
- Length: 14 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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A boy literally disappears from Main Street. A security camera captures the moment of his instant, inexplicable vanishing. An audacious bank robbery goes seriously wrong: Four cops are gunned down; a TV news helicopter is shot and spins crazily out of the sky, triggering a disastrous cascade of events that ricochet across twenty different lives over the course of just 36 hours. Nick Kavanaugh, a cop with a dark side, investigates. Soon he and his wife, Kate, a distinguished lawyer from an old Niceville family, find themselves struggling to make sense of it all.
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Good Story- Wrong Reader
- By Stacy on 06-28-14
By: Carsten Stroud
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Tarantula
- A John Milton Short Story
- By: Mark Dawson
- Narrated by: David Thorpe
- Length: 2 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Meet John Milton. He considers himself an artisan. A craftsman. His trade is murder. Milton is the man the government sends after you when everything else has failed. Ruthless. Brilliant. Anonymous. Lethal. You wouldn't pick him out of a crowd but you wouldn't want to be on his list. In this second dip into his case files (see 1000 Yards for a further novella), Milton is sent to Italy to investigate the death of a colleague from Group 15.
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John Milton tries to exit British intelligence
- By Wayne on 06-03-16
By: Mark Dawson
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The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes
- By: Marcus Sakey
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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The only sign of life for miles is an empty BMW. Inside the expensive car he finds clothes that fit perfectly, shoes for his tattered feet, a Rolex, and an auto registration in the name of Daniel Hayes, resident of Malibu, California. None of it is familiar. How did he get here? Who is he? Who was he? While he searches for answers, the world searches for him - beginning with the cops that kick in the door of his dingy motel with guns drawn. Lost and alone, the man who might be Daniel Hayes flees into the night. All he remembers is a woman’s face, so he sets off for the only place he might find her.
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A Never Ending Soap Opera
- By Lu on 06-20-11
By: Marcus Sakey
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The Far Empty
- By: J. Todd Scott
- Narrated by: T. Ryder Smith
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Seventeen-year-old Caleb Ross is adrift in the wake of the sudden disappearance of his mother more than a year ago, and is struggling to find his way out of the small Texas border town of Murfee. Chris Cherry is a newly minted sheriff's deputy, a high school football hero who has reluctantly returned to his hometown.
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I really wanted to like this
- By Sandy on 01-09-20
By: J. Todd Scott
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The World Walker
- The World Walker Series, Book 1
- By: Ian W. Sainsbury
- Narrated by: Todd Boyce
- Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Just outside Los Angeles, a prisoner hidden away for 70 years sits up, gets off the bed and disappears through a solid wall. In Australia, a magician impresses audiences by producing real elephants. Nobody realizes it's not an illusion. Across the world, individuals and organizations with supernatural power suddenly detect the presence of something even they can't understand. At the center of it all, Seb Varden, a 32-year old musician with a secret in his past, slits his wrists, is shot dead and run over on the freeway.
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Good Stuff
- By DobieChuck on 01-15-17
By: Ian W. Sainsbury
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Iron Lake
- Cork O'Connor, Book 1
- By: William Kent Krueger
- Narrated by: David Chandler
- Length: 11 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Anthony Award-winning author William Kent Krueger crafts this riveting tale about a small Minnesota town’s ex-sheriff who is having trouble retiring his badge. Cork O’Connor loses his job after being blamed for a tragedy on the local Anishinaabe Indian reservation. But he must set aside his personal demons when a young boy goes missing on the same day a judge commits suicide—and no one but O’Connor suspects foul play.
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Great New Series
- By Lia on 06-01-18
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Investigator Wayne Weston is found dead of an apparent suicide in his home in an upscale Cleveland suburb, and his wife and six-year-old daughter are missing. Weston’s father insists that private investigators Lincoln Perry and Joe Pritchard take the case to exonerate his son and find his granddaughter and daughter-in-law. As they begin to work, they discover there is much more to the situation than has been described in the prevalent media reports.
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Adam Austin hasn't spoken to his brother in years. When they were teenagers, their sister was abducted and murdered, and their devastated family never recovered. Now Adam keeps to himself, scraping by as a bail bondsman. Kent Austin is the beloved coach of the local high school football team, a religious man and hero in the community. After years of near misses, Just before playoffs begin, the town and the team are thrown into shock when horrifically, impossibly, another teenage girl is found murdered.
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Once a wife, mother, and witness to a gruesome crime, Leah Trenton was extended a miraculous olive branch in the form of the state's protected witness program. But for this second chance at life, Leah would have to leave behind her Midwestern roots to the northernmost tip of Maine. Alone and isolated along the banks of the Allagash River, she is determined to focus on the present, on her reclaimed future, but the demons of her past, are relentlessly chipping away at Leah's protected hideaway.
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What listeners say about So Cold the River
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Vicki
- 06-15-10
Incredible!
This is an author I was not at all familiar with, but this book seemed to be so highly recommended that I took a chance. I am very glad that I did! The writing is so descriptive that it grabs your imagination in the first sentence, and keeps you captive to the very end. The narration is very well done, and the background sound effects tasteful. I live in Ohio and have visited French Lick many times. I will look at it differently next time. This is an author that I will add to my list of favorites. He reminds me a bit of Stephen King with a little of the mystery of Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes tossed in. It's one of those books you can't put down, and know that it is also one you will read again. Fantastic!
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33 people found this helpful
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- Michele Poe
- 08-29-10
Very good listen
I ran across this as a recommendation from Stephen King. I don't always agree with his choices but this one did not disappoint. Great reader and interesting story. If you like a historical education with your stories then you will not be disappointed. I remember when the French Lick resorts were first restored and I always found it interesting that they would restore a resort out in the middle of nowhere. Now I have a better appreciation for the history and the place. It makes me want to go there next time I am through Indiana but it isn't cheap!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Kindle Customer
- 12-07-18
Great spooky story ruined by a sex scene.
Really enjoyed the story but a descriptive sex scene added absolutely nothing and was not necessary. Great narration.
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- Lynn
- 11-23-12
Close to home
I live about 40 minutes from Springs Valley so this book was like dejavu.....made me want to go walk in the woods, ride the train and just walk the halls of the hotel.....loved loved loved the style of this writer....kept you so interested throughout the entire book.....and with the audio....and the sound effects....gave me chills sometimes down your back. I'd like to read another one of this author I think...he was so interesting
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- Wandergirltlc
- 12-03-22
Enjoyable story about a glorious hotel
Being from around this area, I very much enjoyed this book. I wish that the end would’ve provided a better explanation, but overall, I still recommend this book. Very well written, and a unique story.
What I did not like, was the performance of the audio book. Having sound effects drove me completely insane. I found it very distracting and had I not been in the car, I would’ve stopped the audio book and just read the hard copy.
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- lujer
- 07-08-24
The story
Tight narrative that builds a good story with interesting details of actual places. Good narrative and character building
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- Pam Estes
- 12-10-18
delightful
nice twists that keep you guessing. good suspense. sometimes spine tingling. good wrap up ending
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- Linda
- 12-11-18
Interesting setting, unsatisfying end
I loved the period research location characters and start of the concept. The narrator did a superb job. The ending left too much hanging loose like the editor told the author finish it NOW! Things never got explained or resolved. A tornado came and ... done. What??!!
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- Lynda
- 11-01-21
WOW This is a must read
ABSOLUTELY captivating and creative writing that draws you in and keeps you entertained for hours and the characters are realistic and diverse. I highly recommended this novel, wonderfully written and narrated.
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- Christine
- 12-12-21
Intense!
This book was very good. It was interesting and intense. It was a little unbelievable, but it was diverting. This audiobook includes ghosts, violence, sexual intercourse, and cursing. Therefore, I would not recommend it for younger listeners. Still, I think most adults would enjoy it.
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