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The Air You Breathe
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Rebecca Mozo
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
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Publisher's summary
"[A] glorious, glittery saga of friendship and loss.... I read The Air You Breathe in two nights. (One might say I inhaled it.)." (NPR)
"Echoes of Elena Ferrante resound in this sumptuous saga." (O, The Oprah Magazine)
"Enveloping...Peebles understands the shifting currents of female friendship, and she writes so vividly about samba that you close the book certain its heroine's voices must exist beyond the page." (People)
The story of an intense female friendship fueled by affection, envy and pride - and each woman's fear that she would be nothing without the other.
Some friendships, like romance, have the feeling of fate.
Skinny, nine-year-old orphaned Dores is working in the kitchen of a sugar plantation in 1930s Brazil when in walks a girl who changes everything. Graça, the spoiled daughter of a wealthy sugar baron, is clever, well fed, pretty, and thrillingly ill behaved. Born to wildly different worlds, Dores and Graça quickly bond over shared mischief, and then, on a deeper level, over music. One has a voice like a songbird; the other feels melodies in her soul and composes lyrics to match. Music will become their shared passion, the source of their partnership and their rivalry, and, for each, the only way out of the life to which each was born. But only one of the two is destined to be a star. Their intimate, volatile bond will determine each of their fortunes - and haunt their memories.
Traveling from Brazil's inland sugar plantations to the rowdy streets of Rio de Janeiro's famous Lapa neighborhood, from Los Angeles during the Golden Age of Hollywood back to the irresistible drumbeat of home, The Air You Breathe unfurls a moving portrait of a lifelong friendship - its unparalleled rewards and lasting losses - and considers what we owe to the relationships that shape our lives.
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Performance
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Miss Lonelyhearts is an unnamed male newspaper columnist writing an advice column, which is viewed by the newspaper as a joke. As "Miss Lonelyhearts" reads letters from desperate New Yorkers, he feels terribly burdened and falls into a cycle of deep depression, accompanied by heavy drinking and occasional barfights. The novel is essentially a black comedy and is characterized by an extremely dark but clever sense of humor and irony.
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Charged with Meaning, and Far Leftist Leaning
- By W Perry Hall on 01-27-16
By: Nathanael West
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Glorious
- By: Bernice L. McFadden
- Narrated by: Alfre Woodard
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Glorious is set against the backdrops of the Jim Crow South, the Harlem Renaissance, and the civil rights era. Blending the truth of American history with the fruits of Bernice L. McFadden's rich imagination, this is the story of Easter Venetta Bartlett, a fictional Harlem Renaissance writer whose tumultuous path to success, ruin, and revival offers a candid portrait of the American experience in all its beauty and cruelty.
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Gruesome violence
- By Marilyn on 11-22-11
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The Red Address Book
- By: Sofia Lundberg, Alice Menzies - translator
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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The global fiction sensation - published in 32 countries around the world: Meet Doris, a 96-year-old woman living alone in her Stockholm apartment. She has few visitors, but her weekly Skype calls with Jenny - her American grandniece, and her only relative - give her great joy and remind her of her own youth. In writing down the stories of her colorful past - working as a maid in Sweden, modelling in Paris during the '30s, fleeing to Manhattan at the dawn of the Second World War - she may help Jenny, haunted by a difficult childhood, unlock the secrets of their family....
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narrator was overwrought
- By Janet L. Hamilton on 02-22-19
By: Sofia Lundberg, and others
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The Lonely Hearts Hotel
- A Novel
- By: Heather O'Neill
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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From the author of When We Lost Our Heads, a spellbinding story about two gifted orphans - in love with each other since they can remember - whose childhood talents allow them to rewrite their future. The Lonely Hearts Hotel is a love story with the power of legend. An unparalleled tale of charismatic pianos, invisible dance partners, radicalized chorus girls, drug-addicted musicians, brooding clowns, and an underworld whose economy hinges on the price of a kiss. In a landscape like this, it takes great creative gifts to thwart one’s origins.
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IMPECCABLE BEAUTIFUL Writing, Interesting Story
- By Jordyn on 05-24-17
By: Heather O'Neill
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The Girl from the Savoy
- A Novel
- By: Hazel Gaynor
- Narrated by: Jennifer Jones, Lucy Rayner, Paul Fox
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Dolly Lane is a dreamer, a downtrodden maid who longs to dance on the London stage, but her life has been fractured by the Great War. Memories of the soldier she loved, of secret shame and profound loss, by turns pull her back and spur her on to make a better life. When she finds employment as a chambermaid at London's grandest hotel, The Savoy, Dolly takes a step closer to the glittering lives of the Bright Young Things who thrive on champagne, jazz, and rebellion.
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WONDERFUL‼️❤️❤️❤️
- By Leslie Gail Mnich on 12-05-19
By: Hazel Gaynor
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Trading Dreams at Midnight
- By: Diane McKinney-Whetstone
- Narrated by: Shari Peele
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Diane McKinney-Whetstone, the award-winning and best-selling author of Tumbling, presents Trading Dreams at Midnight - - an Essence Book Club Recommended Read. Back in 1984, 15-year-old Neena's mother left and never came back. And now Neena is following in her footsteps.
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Hard to follow
- By Nevada on 08-13-10
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Guapa
- By: Saleem Haddad
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Rasa spends his days translating for Western journalists and pining for the nights when he can sneak his lover, Taymour, into his room. One night Rasa's grandmother - the woman who raised him - catches them in bed together. The following day Rasa is consumed by the search for his best friend, Maj, a fiery activist and drag queen star of the underground bar Guapa, who has been arrested by the police.
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Guapa
- By Mah Maass on 08-25-16
By: Saleem Haddad
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The Magician's Lie
- A Novel
- By: Greer Macallister
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan, Nick Podehl
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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The Amazing Arden is the most famous female illusionist of her day, renowned for her notorious trick of sawing a man in half on stage. One night in Waterloo, Iowa, with young policeman Virgil Holt watching from the audience, she swaps her trademark saw for a fire ax. Is it a new version of the illusion, or an all-too-real murder? When Arden's husband is found lifeless beneath the stage later that night, the answer seems clear.
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Too Fantastic
- By Ms. Lucy on 02-22-15
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Fruit of the Drunken Tree
- A Novel
- By: Ingrid Rojas Contreras
- Narrated by: Marisol Ramirez, Almarie Guerra, Ingrid Rojas Contreras
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister, Cassandra, enjoy carefree lives thanks to their gated community in Bogotá, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities and capture the attention of the nation. When their mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city's guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona's mysterious ways.
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Maybe better to read this book than listen???
- By Amazon Customer on 12-12-18
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In the Country
- Stories
- By: Mia Alvar
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu, Don Castro
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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These nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora. Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere - and sometimes turning back again.
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My introduction to Filipino literature and culture
- By Amazon Customer on 03-28-16
By: Mia Alvar
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Angel of Harlem
- By: Kuwanna Haulsey
- Narrated by: Brenda Pressley
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Inspired by the extraordinary events of Dr. May Chinn’s life, Angel of Harlem is a deeply affecting story of love and transcendence. Weaving seamlessly scenes from the battlefields of the Civil War, during which her father escaped from slavery, to the Harlem living rooms and kitchen tables where May is sometimes forced to operate on her patients, this fascinating novel lays bare the heart of a woman who changed the face of medicine.
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Really Enjoyed!
- By Amazon Customer on 08-08-19
By: Kuwanna Haulsey
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Hum If You Don't Know the Words
- By: Bianca Marais
- Narrated by: Katharine Lee McEwan, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 14 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a 10-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation but worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her children alone after her husband's death. Both lives have been built upon the division of race, and their meeting should never have occurred...until the Soweto Uprising.
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Completely wrong accents
- By Debbie on 02-12-22
By: Bianca Marais
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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
What listeners say about The Air You Breathe
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Michelle Indianer
- 09-21-18
outstanding tale of love and friendship
this book is beautiful, lyrical, hunting, and compelling. one of the real treats was having the lyrics at the beginning of each section and then allowing the story to unfold from those lyrics.
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- MusicLover
- 02-06-24
A happy surprise
I was casting about for historical fiction from South America, and this title popped up. The plot moves around in time from the 1920'2-1940's, eventually landing later in the century in Brazil and the US. There is much to learn of music and history, which are two of my passions. The story is presented by its narrator, and the reader's performance is excellent.
This is a book that grabbed me from its beginning. (If you are queasy about non-binary people, then this isn't for you. It's not offensive or salacious, but it is part of the plot.) The two main characters are from opposite ends of the economic spectrum who leave their city of origin to make music together. There are adventures to be had and psychologies to explore. The supporting characters are equally as intriguing.
There are many books I listen to that turn out just to be background entertainment, but this one sucked me in, and I found myself making more time for it and staying up way too late to finish it. The author has written only one other book; I wish she'd write some more.
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- coffee shop owner
- 07-04-22
Read like a memoir
Gripping saga of the enduring, mostly painful and definitely hard to watch friendship between two women. Beginning in Brazil in the 30’s, one woman is a rich sugar baron’s daughter, and the other is a servant. Their lives are fraught with struggles. Struggles to be loved. To belong. To be seen. And heard. And wanted. They love one another, are jealous of one another and cannot live without the other.
We follow their lives as one becomes a famous samba singer and the other is behind the scenes. The stories of samba and the people who made it what it became are so realistic that several times I stopped to Google the characters to see if they were real.
Heartbreaking, gut wrenching and filled with grit. Definitely worth a read.
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- crushed
- 08-12-23
moving and heartfelt
beautifully written. you can hear the music as you listen to the writers
words.
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- Mary Krauss
- 09-10-18
Speed up narration and enjoy much more
The reader over-emphasizes every line so that each note is high drama. She improves markedly about half way through. But I also discovered that putting the narration on 1.5 speed worked to decrease the melodrama somehow. Kind of amazing actually. Once the speed went up, the dramatic pauses quit wrecking a wonderfully complex story of love and art.
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10 people found this helpful
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- Denise
- 09-20-19
An achingly raw journey
An achingly raw journey as we follow Gracia and Dor from childhood into women. De Pontes Peebles literally gives them voice. She also explores the relentless presence people can have in your life long after they have passed. This book begs to be made into a movie, as Samba is a main character and needs to be heard. The narrator is perfect.Her voice was like music, and her performance enhanced the rawness and power of the story.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 12-05-18
Beautiful
This book was an absolute delight to listen to. Rebecca Mozo did a wonderful job at bringing The Air You Breathe to life.
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- Tara Misplay
- 01-05-24
Left Breathless
I picked this book up in a sale on a whim…what a great choice this turned out to be! From the start the story sucked me in. I laughed I cried I was outraged at times and cheering at others. This one left me breathless.
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- Sully
- 01-01-21
Fiction...non-fiction
I originally enjoyed this book thoroughly although I found it to be too long. Upon further understanding I ended up getting extremely frustrated. What should have been fiction is loosely based on Carmen Miranda's life. She creates these characters based off real people. If you wanted to create a fictional character like Doris, why alter the facts on Miranda's life? By using so many real details she just made me irrate to have to then research about the real person. The 3 main characters are based on real people. Names of bands and things that happened are just altered.. Leaving you with inaccurate information.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Linda
- 08-31-18
Wonderfully written and narrated!
As I listened to this wonderful book I was transformed to another century in another culture. The story was interesting, uncomfortable, happy and tragic. What more could a reader want? I did want one more thing—to hear the songs sung instead of the words spoken. That would have been the icing on a memorable cake. Brava Ms. de Pontes Peebles and Ms. Mozo!!!
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1 person found this helpful