Sunset and Sawdust
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Narrated by:
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Deborah Marlow
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By:
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Joe R. Lansdale
About this listen
He has been called “hilarious...refreshing...a terrifically gifted storyteller with a sharp country-boy wit” (Washington Post Book World), and praised for his “folklorist’s eye for telling detail and [his] front-porch raconteur’s sense of pace” (New York Times Book Review).
Now, Joe R. Landsdale gives us a fast-moving, electrifying new novel: a murder mystery set in a steamy backwater of Depression-era East Texas. It begins with an explosion: Sunset Jones kills her husband with a bullet to the brain. Never mind that he was raping her. Pete Jones was constable of the small sawmill town of Camp Rapture (“Camp Rupture” to the local blacks), where no woman, least of all Pete's, refuses her husband what he wants.
So most everyone is surprised and angry when, thanks to the unexpected understanding of her mother-in-law - three-quarter owner of the mill - Sunset is named the new constable. And they're even more surprised when she dares to take the job seriously: beginning an investigation into the murder of a woman and an unborn baby whose oil-drenched bodies are discovered buried on land belonging to the only black landowner in town. Yet no one is more surprised than Sunset herself when the murders lead her - through a labyrinth of greed, corruption, and unspeakable malice - not only to the shocking conclusion of the case, but to a well of inner strength she never knew she had.
Landsdale brings the thick backwoods and swamps of East Texas vividly to life, and he paints a powerfully evocative picture of a time when Jim Crow and the Klan ruled virtually unopposed, when the oil boom was rolling into and over Texas, when any woman who didn't know her place was considered a threat and a target. In Sunset, he gives us a woman who defies all expectations, wrestling a different place for herself with spirit and spit, cunning and courage. And in Sunset and Sawdust he gives us a wildly energetic novel - galvanizing from first to last.
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"The book opens with a cyclone, ends with a plague of grasshoppers and in between there's insanity, extreme violence, sex, grotesques aplenty and an excellent dog. What's not to like?" (Publishers Weekly)
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Debut novelist Wayne Caldwell's Cataloochee -a rich, vivid, arresting work beginning at the dawn of Reconstruction - sprawls across the succeeding generations like the vast green mountains of its rural North Carolina setting. Best-selling author Charles Frazier calls it "a brilliant portrait of a community and a way of life long gone, a lost America." This enthralling saga evokes the full color spectrum of mountain life, from lights to darks and every shade in between.
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Love It!
- By Cynthia J. Hakansson on 02-27-09
By: Wayne Caldwell
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Fourth of July Creek
- A Novel
- By: Smith Henderson
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews, Jenna Lamia
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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After trying to help Benjamin Pearl, an undernourished, nearly feral 11-year-old boy living in the Montana wilderness, social worker Pete Snow comes face-to-face with the boy's profoundly disturbed father, Jeremiah. With courage and caution, Pete slowly earns a measure of trust from this paranoid survivalist itching for a final conflict that will signal the coming End Times. But as Pete's own family spins out of control, Pearl's activities spark the full-blown interest of the FBI, putting Pete at the center of a massive manhunt from which no one will emerge unscathed.
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The Ghost of Tom Joad & the Wrath of Grapes
- By Mel on 06-30-14
By: Smith Henderson
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Leather Maiden
- By: Joe Lansdale
- Narrated by: Tom Butler
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Edgar Award winner Joe R. Lansdale writes outrageous fiction that rockets along with violent spikes of action and intense humor. Gulf War vet Cason Statler has moved back to his East Texas hometown after losing his job as a reporter in Houston (sleeping with both the boss' wife and 30-year-old stepdaughter has a way of ruining career prospects). But when his new gig has him investigating a local girl's disappearance, Cason opens a can of worms that might get him killed.
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Good Story with So-So narration
- By Daniel McAfee on 09-11-12
By: Joe Lansdale
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Provinces of Night
- By: William Gay
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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E.F. Bloodworth has returned to his home - a forgotten corner of Tennessee - after 20 years of roaming. The wife he walked out on has withered and faded, his three sons are grown and angry. Warren is a womanizing alcoholic, Boyd is driven by jealousy to hunt down his wife's lover, and Brady puts hexes on his enemies from his mamma's porch. Only Fleming, the old man's grandson, treats him with the respect his age commands, and sees past all the hatred to realize the way it can posion a man's soul.
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Story and Narration a perfect match
- By 99hedys on 10-03-15
By: William Gay
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Mudbound
- By: Hillary Jordan
- Narrated by: Ezra Knight, Kate Forbes, Joseph Collins, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Hillary Jordan's mesmerizing debut novel won the Bellwether Prize for fiction. A powerful piece of Southern literature, Mudbound takes on prejudice in its myriad forms on a Mississippi Delta farm in 1946. City girl Laura McAllen attempts to raise her family despite questionable decisions made by her husband. Tensions continue to rise when her brother-in-law and the son of a family of sharecroppers both return from WWII as changed men bearing the scars of combat.
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May this South never rise again.
- By Betty on 03-25-12
By: Hillary Jordan
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Deadwood
- A Novel
- By: Peter Dexter
- Narrated by: J. Rodney Turner
- Length: 16 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Deadwood, Dakota Territories, 1876: Legendary gunman Wild Bill Hickcock and his friend Charlie Utter have come to the Black Hills town of Deadwood fresh from Cheyenne, fleeing an ungrateful populace. Bill, aging and sick but still able to best any man in a fair gunfight, just wants to be left alone to drink and play cards. But in this town of played-out miners, bounty hunters, upstairs girls, Chinese immigrants, and various other entrepreneurs and miscreants, he finds himself pursued by a vicious sheriff, a perverse whore man bent on revenge, and a besotted Calamity Jane.
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What the hell is it with Narrators of Westerns?
- By Kevin on 06-10-19
By: Peter Dexter
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The Rabbit Factory
- By: Marshall Karp
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte, James Jenner
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Marshall Karp is an acclaimed playwright known for his witty sense of humor and crackling dialogue. His debut novel The Rabbit Factory stars the irreverent LAPD detective duo of Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs. Dean Lamaar is the architect of an entertainment empire and the creator of iconic characters like Rambunctious Rabbit and McGreedy the Moose.
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Bizarre but engaging mystery.1st-rate performance.
- By MidwestGeek on 12-19-12
By: Marshall Karp
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Alabama Moon
- By: Watt Key
- Narrated by: Nick Landrum
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
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Ten-year-old Moon has lived in an Alabama forest with his Pap ever since he can remember. Pap, a Vietnam vet, taught Moon how to survive ? and how to keep away from the government.
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A Modern Huckleberry Finn
- By tamara.riley-wilson on 05-08-08
By: Watt Key
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One of Us
- By: Craig DiLouie
- Narrated by: Maxwell Hamilton
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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A startlingly remarkable novel set in 1984 where a group of teenagers begin to discover powerful secrets about themselves, and learn that the only way to create their own future is to break away from previous generations.They call it the plague. A generation of children born with extreme genetic mutations. They call it a home. But it's a place of neglect and forced labor. They call him a freak. But Dog is just a boy who wants to be treated as normal. They call them dangerous. They might be right.
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Not Bad...
- By NikiLow723 on 07-24-18
By: Craig DiLouie
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The Stand
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 47 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides - or are chosen.
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My First Completed Stephen King Novel
- By Meaghan Bynum on 02-20-12
By: Stephen King
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Signals: New and Selected Stories
- By: Tim Gautreaux
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 13 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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After the stunning historical novels The Clearing and The Missing, Tim Gautreaux now ranges freely through contemporary life with 12 new stories and eight from previous collections. Most are set in his beloved Louisiana, many hard by or on the Mississippi River, others in North Carolina, and even in midwinter Minnesota. But generally it's heat, humidity, and bugs that beset his people as they wrestle with affairs of the heart, matters of faith, and the pros and cons of tight-knit communities.
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Perfection! Amazing writer/amazing reader
- By Monique on 01-08-19
By: Tim Gautreaux
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This Side of the Sky
- By: Elyse Singleton
- Narrated by: Myra Taylor, Sharon Washington, Richard Ferrone
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning journalist Elyse Singleton delivers what Essence calls “a gem - the perfect book to curl up with.”
Best friends Lilian and Myraleen, two African American women from rural Mississippi, travel to Europe during World War II to act as members of the Women’s Army Corps. During this time of segregation and destruction, both women discover love and heartbreak, triumph and defeat.
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A Breath of Fresh Air
- By Adina Andreu on 07-19-12
By: Elyse Singleton
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It's 1933 in East Texas and the Depression lingers in the air like a slow-moving storm. When a young Harry Collins and his little sister stumble across the body of a black woman who has been savagely mutilated and left to die in the bottoms of the Sabine River, their small town is instantly charged with tension. When a second body turns up, this time of a white woman, there is little Harry can do from stopping his Klan neighbors from lynching an innocent black man.
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Loved it!
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What listeners say about Sunset and Sawdust
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- A. Compton
- 12-19-05
Good Story, Lame Reader
I would give it 5 stars if not for the reader. Her style is much better suited to children's books. Every sentece was delivered in a slow, deliberate voice as if reading to children, and when characters were conversing, each stament she read, her voice inflected up as if the statments where questions - much the way a 5 or 6 y.o. speaks when nervously telling a story. Or if you've seen American Pie "one time, at band camp..." It was exactly like that.
If you can get past the reader, the story itself is great.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Snoodely
- 03-18-10
Not Hap and Leonard
I'm just beginning to discover Mr. Lansdale's novels. I enjoyed the Hap-and-Leonard novels, because of their humor. "Sunset and Sawdust" emerges from a different wellspring of Mr. Lansdale's imagination -- a more serious and sober wellspring -- which doesn't provide the laughs that Hap and Leonard elicit. "Sunset and Sawdust" takes place during the Great Depression, among people enduring hard times. The story kept me wondering, "Could this have really happened, even during the Depression?" Having not lived through the Depression, and not having studied about it much, I don't know; but some of the events in "Sunset and Sawdust" strained my credibility a bit. I don't mind when a funny story strains my credibility; but when a serious story does so, it troubles me. On the other hand, the reader, Deborah Marlow, does a wonderful job narrating this audiobook ... to the extent that, in my opinion, she rescues it. She has a beautiful voice which she can command into a wide variety of characters. I would recommend this audiobook to anyone who has an interest in the Great Depression, feminism, or east Texas hardscrabble folk.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Sherry
- 01-12-23
Couldn't listen anymore
Maybe I didn't give it enough time, but I just couldn't listen to any more. I'm not usually thin skinned, but this one was just too... crass... for me. I'm going to blame both the writing and the narrator. I'm giving it three stars only because I didn't finish and it doesn't seem fair to totally downgrade something I haven't see through to the end. I'll be returning this one.
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Overall
- Samantha
- 08-26-05
TERRIFIC TERRIFIC TERRIFIC
If I could give this book 6 stars I would. It's an amazing story - some of it a bit "fantasy" but overall a very good tale. And the narrator was incredibly good. I've been with Audible for a year and this is the best one I've read yet.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Carmela
- 06-23-04
Texas time
Elements of "Sunset and Sawdust" reminded me of the stories my parents and grandparents told of the depression in rural areas in Texas. This book evokes that period better than any historical rendition. But the cultural and social details are just the foundation of a solid mystery, with characters as finely drawn as hairs on a frog's chin. This book may not appeal to everyone, it can be as slowpaced as an August day on the Brazos, but if you want to be placed in a different time and, probably, in a different part of the country, I cannot think of a better book.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall
- M. Akin
- 09-01-04
Entertaining Book1
Overall its an entertaining book. It had very interesting characters and a good story. It occasionally got bogged down because the reader was a little sub par.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Daniel Piscopo
- 08-10-15
Good story
Good story interesting characters. Metaphors and similes abound. Lansdale never disappoints. Racial terms may offend.
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Overall
- Carl
- 08-05-11
Raw, Violent, and Exciting
Joe R. Landsdale seems to specialize in stories that depict Texas as a Hell on earth. While he is a wonderful storyteller and has wonderful characters his novels are set in poverty, dreariness, violent, prejudice, and the desolation of a flat heat baked sqaulid land. It's nice to have a mystery that not about the rich and famous set in beautiful places Joe swings the pendulum all the way to the other side. It's important to be exposed to the side of America we don't like to see but it is a bitter pill to swallow.
If you can get past that, this is a great story. His use of language will prove offensive to most be it is honest down to its most raw. The mystery keeps you guessing, character's surprise, the bad guys are original, and the ending is an oll out orgasm.
Reader is tops.
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- BikeVON
- 08-31-17
An original story!
A great story set in the early 1900s in the time of Jim Crow in the south. The belief at that time is a woman is a man’s property. He can do whatever he wants to her, including rape. Within the first 20 minutes of the book, we see what option Sunset feels she has.
At this time society feels Blacks do not have any rights other than what a white man cares to acknowledge and a man can take a girl’s virginity.
We see the selfish and greed that are accepted. Those that have some resources are not above cheating others even when it means a child will not be able to eat.
On a stormy night, while being beaten by her husband, Sunset decides that enough is enough and she will not endure being beaten and rape. She kills her husband, in self defense. The male dominated town council has a problem because a woman a shot her husband. It does not matter if it was self defense. In addition, he was the town constable!
Sunset has a personal dilemma. Her husband was worshipped by, Karen, her daughter and her mother-in-law. Her killing sets the southern white male to face the misconceptions white males’ superiority to women and blacks and the greed of man. Much of the time, men think sex is the method of controlling women. They do it by sweet talking, paying for sex or rapping them.
Joe R. Lansdale accurately portrays the racial and sexual attitudes of society. He illustrates the viciousness of drama using the rain and locus as back drops. The rain washes away traditional place in man’s superior place in the law and employer of the town. Now a woman, holds the power of a man’s ability to provide for his family and the financial incentive to force a female law representative. Using three generation of women, Joe, shows the evolution of how Sunset’s killing her husband effects decisions of the past, present and future role of women in the family.
Joe uses the symbolism of large black men to represent the good and evil that society forces upon them. One man must endure the stigma of being a bi-racial educated man and another is a threat simply because he is big and black. With locus cleaning away all life, in the end there is still death for black men in a white man’s fight for riches.
This was very emotional for me to read. As a black woman, the issues “place of women and blacks” are still prevalent, we have just covered them over.
It is 2017, much of the racial bigotry is still happening and being sanction at the highest levels of the country, Trump. To keep, niggers in their place the KKK was the go to force in this story. Through Trump’s “both sides” comment, he gave KKK the justification to exist today.
I applaud Joe for writing such an original story on the racial inequities and sexual abuse of women. At one point it got slow but stick with the story.
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- Daniel McAfee
- 09-11-12
Good Story and Book with Gnawing Drawling Narrator
I'm not sure why two of Lansdale's novels (non-Happ and Leonard) rated such poor narrators.
The story is pretty good. I listened to this one after all the Happ and Leonard books and it was a relief from his formulaic approach in the Happ and Leonard books.
This is the first in a two part series about "Camp Rapture", a town / settlement in East Texas. There is no need to take them in order as they are virtually unrelated.
I'm not much of a fan of female narrators because there are so few good ones, so there may be a bias here, but listen to a sample first to make sure you can stand her droning slow and irritating voice.
Overall, I recommend the story, just be cautious with the narrator.
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